Menu Plan Monday–Week of April 23

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Tricia

Four out of the five of us spent the weekend sick, so I am in recovery mode today.  Combine that with needing to stock my freezer for summer meals and I decided to make this week a out-of-the-freezer week.  Then I can defrost the freezer and work on filling it up with some summer meals!

Monday Sonic Leftovers Grilled chicken, smashed potatoes (FZ)
Tuesday  Smoothies Red mystery meal (FZ) Arrachera (FZ), Mexican brown rice
Wednesday Peanut butter baked oatmeal Out to eat Tacos
Thursday  cereal Hamburgers (FZ) Mongolian beef (FZ), rice, stir-fry veggies
Friday Whole-wheat waffles Grilled chicken sandwiches (FZ), fruit & veggie tray
Saturday  Pancakes Hamburgers & hot dogs on grill, chips, fruit Dry-aged steaks, salad,grilled potatoes
Sunday Smoothies & cereal Pulled pork (FZ), coleslaw

Check out Menu Plan Monday @ orgjunkie.com for more meal ideas!

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Menu Plan Monday–Week of April 15

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Tricia

I don’t know what happened to my earlier post.  If you stopped by earlier to a ‘page not found’, I apologize.

Last week my menu got turned upside down.  I can’t pinpoint everything that went wrong but I did learn one lesson.  While I’m solo-parenting, my meals have to be nearly ready to go or I will opt for something requiring less work like frozen popcorn chicken or picking up fast-food on our way home from a day out.  So I spent this weekend doing some prep work–cooking & dicing a couple chicken breasts, making & rolling meatballs (which I froze), making barbecue sauce for the kids’ favorite barbecue chicken.

Monday
Popcorn chicken, salad, applesauce
Friend’s house for dinner

Tuesday
Leftovers or sandwiches
Chick-Fil-A Kids’ Night

Wednesday
Packed lunch (sandwiches, carrots, pretzels)
Crockpot marinara & meatballs (new recipe from Cook’s Country)

Thursday
Grilled pizzas
BBQ chicken sliders

Friday
BBQ chicken ranch spaghetti (from leftovers)
Hamburgers on the grill, potato packet, fruit & veggie tray

Saturday
Lime chicken burritos
Steaks on the grill, baked potatoes, salad

Sunday
Garlic chicken pasta salad
Margarita grilled chicken, plantains, salad

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A changing schedule

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Tricia

Soon enough, summer will be along.   A couple days breaking into the 90s has brought back memories of our early days in El Paso.  The heat.  Oh, the heat! When we moved here, I was often asked how the weather compared to Georgia (or Indiana, or Hawai’i).  The difference?  When you went outside in Georgia, you walked into a sauna.  In El Paso?  You just walked into one of those big standing ovens you see at the grocery store bakeries.

For a couple months now, I’ve shooed the kids outside in the morning to wear them before we started school.  As hints of long, hot summer days appear, I’m shooing the kids outside for longer mornings.  Our afternoons usually consist of just an hour or two of schoolwork and then outside playtime.  As the days get hotter, we will do longer afternoons of school and outside morning time.  Park days will come after breakfast rather than after naptime.  Breakfast will replace lunch and dinner as our outside meals.

Filling the rest of the long, hot days will have to come with trips to the library, indoor playdates, puzzles, books and lots of imagination, I suppose.  School will start back after a short summer break so, come fall and early spring, we can shorten the school days and be outside.

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Menu Plan Monday–Week of April 8

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Tricia

My meal of bacon tenderloin, green beans, corn yeast rolls has now made an appearance on the menu five times.  How many times have I made it?  O.  I was determined to make it this week when, Saturday morning, SoldierBoy asked me if I wanted to take the kids to Cattleman’s Steakhouse for dinner.  It has been on our to-do list since we moved to El Paso, so we decided to go for it.  We had so much fun!  The food was good, nothing amazing.  But its very much an experience.  After dinner, we headed outside where we looked around the animals, a movie set, saw some longhorn cows and llamas and then played an awesome playground that, by no means, would ever meet today’s safety standards (which is why it was so much fun!).  SoldierBoy & I couldn’t resist and headed onto it to play with the kids.  It was getting late, so we didn’t explore the rest of the ranch.  SoldierBoy’s parents are coming in June and we plan to take them and explore more then.

This week begins nearly two months of SoldierBoy gone for the weekdays playing, what else, soldier.  I planned out a two-week menu that I plan to rotate.  I have a tendency to get bored with such menus, so we will see how this goes.

The only breakfast I made last week were the orange smoothies.  A couple of tweaks and they were a hit.  I’ll try to take pictures this week so I can blog the recipe.

Breakfasts
Pancakes
Fresh orange smoothies
Maple oat scones (double to freeze)
Peanut butter baked oatmeal, apples
Berry smoothies

Lunches
Sunday–Wendy’s
Monday–Popcorn chicken, pineapple, pretzels
Tuesday–Salad, leftovers
Wednesday–Picnic after Bible study (peanut butter sandwiches, pretzels, apple wedges)
Thursday–Make-your-own-pizzas on the grill
Friday– Hamburgers on the grill, carrot & celery sticks
Saturday–Chicken teriyaki & rice (triple the sauce to freeze)

Dinners
Sunday–Cajun chicken, rice pilaf, green beans, pineapple
Monday–Taco “pizzas”, salad, pineapple
Tuesday–Chick-Fil-A kids’ night
Wednesday–Chicken satay
Thursday–Pancakes & bacon
Friday–Margarita grilled chicken burritos, chips & salsa
Saturday –Bacon-wrapped pork medallions, corn yeast rolls, green beans (I’m not giving up!)

Check out Menu Plan Monday @ orgjunkie.com for more meal ideas!

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Spring Cleaning Challenge & Perfectionism

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Tricia

Good enough IS good enough.

Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family.

These two mantras, courtesy of FlyLady, are two that I often repeat to myself, especially the second one.

I found FlyLady back when she was still a “baby” on the internet, 2001.  I never thought of myself as a perfectionist.  If you looked around my room as a teenager, my house as a new wife you’d see clutter, a mess.  I often spent too much time looking for a lost item or trying to organize clutter.  While I rarely ran late to appointments, school work was often done at the last minute.  Not because I had forgotten about it (usually) but I work well under pressure.  Any of that is hardly what I would have ever called a perfectionist.

Enter FlyLady.  I quickly realized I was…a FAILED perfectionist.  Because I knew I couldn’t achieve perfection, I just didn’t try.  Now, that doesn’t explain away everything about the way I function.  It did, though, give me some insight into my own behaviors.

Training myself that it IS okay if I wipe just the parts of the counters you can see and not move everything first or sweeping only part of the kitchen.  Its been hard.  But, oh what a blessing!  To myself (freedom) and to my family.

So what does that have to do with the Spring Cleaning Challenge?  My list.  Go read it.  I also added several things that aren’t on there.  It started out as four typed pages.  FOUR.  To accomplish in two weeks.  While I’m homeschooling, solo parenting for almost a week plus all those other life commitments that come up.   Perfectionism, anyone?

I had a mini-panic attack this morning wondering how I would get it all done.  Know what? Christine isn’t going to come check to make sure my list is completed by Saturday.  And no one is going to go around inspecting my house to ensure each item is perfect.  If I decide to take a few items off the list, no one is going to reprimand me.  Whatever I do and however I do it STILL blesses my family.  I don’t have to finish my list and I don’t have to do each item perfectly.  Good enough is good enough.

If your dishes aren’t rinsed before putting them in the dishwasher or all your kids’ clothes aren’t perfectly ironed (or ironed at all!) or if you didn’t move the couch when you were vacuuming, its okay.  Good enough is good enough.  You are still blessing your family.  Really.

I’m joining iDreamofClean and 9 other bloggers in the Spring Cleaning Challenge for a chance to win some incredible prizes!

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Spring Cleaning Challenge, Updated List

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Tricia

I don’t know about you but I am the type that stays really motivated with chores that can be completed easily (even if time-consuming) or chores that show big payoff (even if it took a long time to complete or was hard).  But when its chores like dusting a bookshelf or cleaning off a dresser top you know will be cluttered again within the week or a chore like unpacking the junk drawer box with things you need but don’t have a good home?  I’m terrible at that.  And that’s where I am with my Spring Cleaning List.  So much that is left are just…boring.  Or irritating! LOL

Still, I’m chugging along.  The list below is what is still left to do.  I’m going to italicize the items I’m committing to finishing by bedtime Wednesday.  My vacuum isn’t sucking up well, so SoldierBoy is going to work on it after he gets back this weekend.  So if I finish the italicized items, the remaining list is pretty manageable, minus the vacuuming.

Kids’ Bathroom
Wash shower curtains.
Straighten towel cabinet.
Towel hooks—paint, decorate, install.

Downstairs Half-Bathroom
Clean underneath sink.
Find a cup for toothbrushes & toothpastes.

Living Room
Find curtains and hang?
Install cord-hiders.

Kitchen
Go through plastic-wares cabinet (toss out items without mates, straighten).
Clean oven.

Dining Room
Hang picture.

Office/school area
Clean desk off entirely.  Replace only important items.
Wipe down desk, chair, monitor and computer stuff.
Clean off school shelves.
Move table and mop.
Move computer and mop.
Move entryway drawers and mop.
Clean out school tote.
Pull unwanted curriculum out to sell.
Clean off side table; decorate.

Master bedroom
Take books off bookshelf & dust.
Take remaining donation items out; donate.
Clean off dresser top.
Vacuum WELL.
Clean windows.

Boys’ bedroom
Vacuum WELL.
Put away miscellaneous items.
Sort out too-small baby clothes for donations. (In process)
Pack up winter clothes.

E’s bedroom
Rid closet of at least one box.
Vacuum WELL.
Go through toy storage and help her sort out unwanted items.
Clean under bed.
Wash bedding.

Master bedroom closet
Straighten my shelves.
Sort through clothes for donations.

I’m joining iDreamofClean and 9 other bloggers in the Spring Cleaning Challenge for a chance to win some incredible prizes! 

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