Meal Plan

This week, we are having:

Ham and potatoes
Chipotle Chicken
Tortilla soup made from left over chicken
Pot Roast
And J will grill out.  Yum!

Still haven't started planning out all meals, but I'm just happy to had dinners for the week. :)

School was good again today.  L had a harder time, but that's to be expected.  It will take him awhile to get into the routine.  I also skipped morning chores because I'm hoping to get to the grocery store today.  I didn't think I could get to both.  Back to school.  I should say that I get most (all?) of our school projects from pinterest, but I'm really bad about saving the pin and giving credit to whom credit is due.  If I stole your ideas, THANK YOU and I'm sorry!  So, we are on F.  T worked on his book and did great, but didn't ask to do more today.  It was a lot of coloring and that isn't his favorite.

L worked on a flower picture (because it begins with F).  T did one after he finished his book.

 

 We did some science today.  I made up papers for them to predict whether objects will float (F theme).

 

 L absolutely loves water, so he had a blast.  T loved it, too.  L didn't really do the paper, but he did say his thoughts (usually after he put the object into the water; he doesn't like being wrong).  Please ignore our recycling in the background.  T made those "decorations" hanging on the wall. 

I let them watch a few youtube videos on a frog's life cycle.  Double science lessons today! 

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/474003929501133127/ This one was made by a 2nd grade class.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/474003929501640913/ Another one, not as cute though.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/474003929501640670/ This is a cute little song they enjoyed.

 

T did a little bit of math from his math book.  He never finished the second book last year, so we will slowly make our way through it.  He gets a little bored with it after a while, so we are in no hurry.  L didn't do any math.  He reached his limit pretty quickly today.

 

Menu Plan- July 21

I'm getting back to menu plans, but only doing dinners for now.  Eventually, I'd like to plan out all of our food.  But for now, just dinners :)

1. Carnitas. Mmm.  I have a friend who had a baby yesterday (YAY!!!) so I'm hoping to bring her some.  I'll cook these whatever day she tells me she wants a meal.
2. Meatloaf
3. Chicken Fried Rice
4. Tatertot Casserole
5. Ham and Potatoes

We usually go out to eat once as a family and then eat out with my parents on Sundays, which is a late lunch due to church.  We end up getting a light snack instead of a meal Sunday evenings.

The boys start swimming lessons tomorrow.  They are very excited.  T has done a great job swimming so far this year and I'm sure he's going to do amazingly well with his lessons.  L has been timid, but has already come a LONG way with being comfortable in the water.  Since he's only 2 and timid, his lessons might be interesting.  But he will love them :)  (Swim pictures are from our visit to my sister's house)

Princess hasn't been sleeping.  I am one tired momma.  Being tired makes me cranky.  Poor kids.  But I keep reminding myself that this phase is temporary.  Hopefully the up-all-night phase will be very, very temporary!  For everyone's sake.....

Let's get back to meal plans!

Princess C will be a month old tomorrow.  Tomorrow!!!  A month!  Wow, how did that happen???  Anyway, now that she's been here for a month, it's time for us to start cooking for ourselves again.  We are eating our last freezer meal tonight and meals from friends have stopped (but I have been beyond blessed with almost two full weeks of meals from people!).  I really don't want my family eating out a ton, and even if I did, we are very limited with our food allergies...especially now that the Princess is having reflux and we have decided to see if cutting dairy from my diet (which will take it out of my breast milk).  So, it's time to start planning meals.

1. Meatloaf tonight.  Our last freezer meal :)
2. Ground Beef Shepherd's Pie  I have not tried this recipe, but we already have all of the ingredients so I'm going to make it.  Hope it's good!
3. Pot Roast in the crock pot, because I love my crock pot.
4. Hamburgers on the grill.
5. Either chicken tacos or chicken taquitos.  I'll probably decide which one at the last minute.
6. DH's bean, ground beef, and (dairy free) cheese meal.  It's not my favorite, but he loves it.  Plus he will be the one to make it!  Whoop whoop!

I'll end this post with a picture of my beautiful daughter.  I have a DAUGHTER!!!!   Yay!

Personal nightmare, I mean trainer :)

My gym gave me one free session with a personal trainer.  I was really nervous about going, but excited too.  I can now understand why people spend so much money on meeting with them every week!  I learned how to use a lot of the equipment and it was motivating because I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of him.  I felt like I HAD to work hard instead of giving it a half effort.  I don't normal give it a half effort, but I tried harder than normal.  I learned that some of the things I was doing were not correct.  For example, my goal is to burn calories.  I thought it would be best to do the elliptical at a decent pace for 30 minutes instead of burning myself out and then slowing down.  The PT said that if I do the elliptical on intervals, I will actually burn more calories than if I just went at the same pace the whole time.  By a lot.  I used to do 50 RPM with a resistances level set at 6.  He had me doing 70 RPM at level 8 for 2 minutes, and then I was able to slow down and lower the level for a minute, then back up.  Like I said, he also showed me how to use different pieces of equipment.  Not sure how much I'll actually take advantage of that, but I think I'll do some of it.

I've been doing ok with my eating too.  Not great, but not terrible.  I stepped on the scale at my gym and found out that my parents' scale is 5 pounds off.  I weight more than I thought.  Bummer!  Oh well.  Just means I have to work harder.  I'd like to lose about 9-10 lbs before out trip to the beach this summer.  At this point, I am not sure how realistic that is.  But I'll do the best I can.  I feel like 1/2 a lb a week is good for me.  If I am able to do that, I'll be close but not quite there.  I'll be happy with that :)

My family tried a "Green Smoothie" this past weekend for breakfast.  It was pretty good!  It needed more fruit, but that's easy to do.  Even the kids drank it.  Not a lot of it because they had already eaten some cereal, but I think I could get them to have that for breakfast a couple times a week.  For those of you who don't know, a green smoothie is green from spinach.  You can't taste the spinach though.

I've fallen back to just planning our main meal for each day.  With all the other areas I've fallen behind on, I'll let this one slide until I get back on track with everything else.  Our dinners this week are:

Baked Chicken with some yummy seasoning
Chicken Fajitas
Shepherd's Pie
Tacos made with ground turkey
Caramel apple pork chops

Monday's are usually my day to go grocery shopping, but I've got two kids who are acting like they're coming down with something.  J is a wonderful husband and agreed to go for me :)  Hopefully my kids stay healthy.  Maybe they just needed a day to rest from the fun we had this weekend.  That's what I'm hoping, at least!  Did I share what we did this weekend?  We went to a local college basketball game.  It was a lot of fun!  The kids and I didn't see much of the game (we played out where they had other things set up), but we still had a good time.

That's about all for me.  I hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend and is off to a great work week!

Counting Calories

I've started doing something this week that I thought I'd never do... counting calories.  As I've already shared, my sister and I have started exercising more but for some strange reason, I seem to be gaining weight instead of losing it.  In fact, my clothes are actually getting a little snug.  It makes me want to cry, but I'm trusting everything that I've read that says I will start to see results soon.  J has been exercising for a few months now and looks great, but he decided to count calories with me.  It's nice doing this together.  We are using a site called my fitness pal.  We log everything we eat and it tells us how many calories we've had that day.  If we exercise, we get extra calories.  I was really surprised at first as to how many calories I actually eat.  It was a lot more than I thought!  As far as exercising goes, I love my gym!  We (Stacy and I) have been going about 3x a week.  It's not as often as I would like (I want to go 4x), but it's more than before!  We've gone to a Pilate's class and tonight we are trying out Zumba!  I'm also getting my free personal trainer session tomorrow.  Yay!!!  I was really nervous at first but now I'm more excited.

My house work has not been going as well as my diet and exercise.  In fact, I had an unexpected visitor yesterday and was so embarrassed!!!  But, she has kids and understands :)  The house looks a lot better now.  Not going to let THAT happen again!  But I'm still way behind on where I'd like to be. 

The kids are ok.  Sick again, poor guys!  T has some sort of infection.  The dr took a strep test which came back negative.  She said it's possible he had a false negative, or he has some other type of infection.  Either way, he's on antibiotics and feels better.  L has been such a fun little guy lately.  His personality is really developing.  He's much more adventurous and outgoing than I thought he'd be.  After I got over the initial shock of have two climbers, destroyers, and crazy kids, I have been able to enjoy watching them play.  We have lots of tears, broken toys/furniture/gates, and bruises, but they have a blast together. 

Time to get dinner going. Tonight, we are eating Lasagna rolls.  Mmm

Menu Monday, Jan 23. and Buckwheat Cookies

I'm kind of slacking off this week.  I know I shouldn't, but I'm doing it anyway.  I have meals planned, but no sides to go with them.  I'll just grab something out of the freezer each day I guess. 

Breakfast: waffles, eggs, bananas, cereal on the days we eat eggs, and I'm going to make some gf chocolate chip muffins
Snack: same ol' same ol'  Fruit (I have a few apples, clementines and grapes left from last week.)
Lunch: hopefully leftovers most days.  I also have some lunch meat and some bread in the freezer.
Snack: raisins, fruit snacks, cookies (which I haven't baked yet but hopefully will)
Dinner: Pizza with Bob's Red Mill's pizza dough mix, Tater tot casserole, Potato Soup, and French Onion Pork chops.  J's birthday is this week.  His last birthday in his 20's.  I think we're planning to go out for it.

For this week's recipe, I'm going to post my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Actually, I'm going to post the link to it,  It's from the Gluten Free Goddess.  HERE ya go!

Menu Monday + a recipefor Taco Seasoning

I thought it would be nice to include a little recipe for the taco seasoning I've started making, just so I have it written down somewhere easy to get to.  But first, this week's menu :)

Breakfast: waffles x 2, eggs and cereal x 3, pancakes x 2.  As always, a banana and chocolate milk. 
Morning snack: apples, clementines, and grapes.
Lunch: leftovers x 4, lunch meat x 3.  I am going to try to make some bread to go with our lunch meat this week.  We will either have yogurt or string cheese, and then some type of snack like rice cakes or animal cookies (they are chocolate and my favorite gf cookie from the store.  mmm....)
Afternoon snack: raisins, apple sauce, yogurt, or string cheese
Dinner: Tacos (we like cheese and salsa on our tacos, but nothing else.  No other sides with this meal), meatloaf and peas, pulled bbq chicken with corn bread and salads, and brown sugar ham with potatoes and green beans.

You may have noticed that I only have four meals planned for dinner.  That's because my sister cooks for us once a week, we don't usually eat dinner on Sundays because we eat a big, late lunch after church, and then I leave one day open just in case we end up at my parents house for a meal or we feel like going out to eat.  I don't like to eat alone if J is working late, so we eat with my parents on those days. 

Ok, now for my pinterest taco seasoning find :)  I used parts of two different recipes, this and this.  Here's what I did:

1/2 cup chili powder
1/4 cup onion powder
1/8 cup ground cumin
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon sea salt

 

 

That is the recipe on the second link above.  Then I added in about 1 t of crushed red pepper flakes (from the first link above) because we like things a little more spicy.  We use about 2 TBS, but I'm not sure exactly how much since I just sprinkle it on there.  It's really not spicy, but has a really yummy taste.  Even my picky boys like it!

First Menu Monday!

Here's my first weekly mean plan :)  I have been doing a dinner plan for a while now, but this is the first time I've planned all foods. 

Breakfast: Banana every day, eggs X 4 (we're big egg people.  It's just so easy and quick!) Pancakes X2, and waffles.
Snack: apples X 2, Orange X 2, apple sauce X 2, and snacks at church
Lunch: leftover chicken nachos, lunch meat with fruit snacks and string cheese, lunch meat with fruit snacks and yogurt, leftover creamy chicken with chips and string cheese, out with mom, and I still don't have a plan for Saturday.
Snack: raisins and dried strawberries, cookies and yogurt, raisins and string cheese, cookies, chips
Dinner: Leftovers, Stacy cooks,Creamy Italian Chicken with rice and broccoli, Brinner (eggs, gf toast, bacon, potatoes), Bacon wrapped chicken with peas and rolls, leftovers.

I realize that this isn't the healthiest of menu plans, especially our snacks.  But I figure once I have this whole menu planning under control, I can start working on making healthier choices.  One thing at a time here.  If anyone would like to post YOUR weekly menu, I'd love to see it!  I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed trying to figure this out and would love to copy some of your meals :)