One of the many reasons my kids are awesome

There are tons of things that are priorities for my family and never nearly enough money to go around. I don’t usually spend a lot of money on anything out of the realm of what we need. Especially not big ticket items.

Of course, a Nintendo Wii isn’t at all a necessary item, but something that we thought we would get good use out of and be fun for the whole family. We knew better than to try to find one around the holidays, so we had waited till after the holidays. It was something we had planned to purchase for quite a while since playing on a friend’s while visiting for a few days. The husband and I had a ridiculous amount of fun with that thing.

So Saturday, before the bad weather was supposed to hit we went out to see if we could possibly find a Wii. First we went to Game Stop, and they were out. Max found a Zelda collection game for the Gamecube we currently own that he really wanted, so we told him that if we couldn’t find a Wii then he could get it, since Miles didn’t have any objections. Next we went to Best Buy, all out of Wiis. So across the parking lot to Costco.

I’d had a Sam’s membership for years, and never really liked it all that much, but it did come in useful on occasion. I decided that I wanted to try out Costco this time, and stop giving even more of my money to Wal-Mart. WOW! Costco is awesome! They have a lot of natural foods, and their produce section is WONDERFUL. I’ve only had a membership for about a week and a half and I have done more shopping there than I did at Sam’s in the last year.

So anyway, while we were there checking to see if they had Wiis (No), I wanted to grab a few veggies. On our way to the back, we saw that the Vita-Mix show was still there. The guy had been there the previous weekend and I was very sad about my (haha, only at at my husband’s insistence) practicality winning out over my many long years coveted Vita-Mix blender. Instead we went to Ikea and bought the kids’ bed we had been wanting/needing to get for a year.

So, back to Saturday at Costco, and the guy with the well practiced schtick for one of my all time favorite products EVER. He starts a demo and the kids beg to watch (I wanted to bypass because I didn’t want to once again be tempted by this $400 amazing piece of machinery), but what the heck, free smoothies for the kids! So we watched. And the kids were in love with this machine. They were telling me that we should get one. I told them I really wanted one, and maybe one day, but that they were really pricey.

And you know what my AWESOME, AMAZING children did then? They said they didn’t care about a Wii at all if it meant that we could get a Vita-Mix blender…

So Saturday evening was spent at home with the kids playing Zelda and watching Stardust, while the kids tried many new smoothies and “ice creams” made with our (MY!!) new Vita-Mix 5200!

I am ridiculously happy with this purchase. I made dinner with it tonight (black bean/tortilla soup in a couple of minutes) and I’m now drinking my green smoothie.
There will be posts in the future about my blender. The husband still cannot believe we bought a $400 appliance, but he’s happy with it, too.

I had also wanted a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer for a long time, and was actually given the money for one on my last birthday by my step-mother-in-law. She said she really hoped I would get one but understood if I didn’t and pay other more pressing bills, which of course is what happened.

Since then I have done a lot of thinking about that particular appliance and realized I probably would not use it very often. So, if I think about this as my birthday present from her for last year and my husband’s birthday present to me this year, I don’t feel quite so guilty. And I do think that this particular item will have a huge impact on our health and eating habits. And with a 7 year warranty and excellent customer service, I can really be certain that my investment is worth it.

My kids are so awesome. They are so excited about this blender and have told everyone we see about it. They honestly could care less about the Wii, I think Chris and I wanted it more than they did.

Now this is even more motivation to get back in with my local CSA, Central City Co-op.