Meal Planning

Now that I am home all day meal planning is something I am hoping to get much better at.
Breakfast - is usually pretty easy and doesn't consist of much planning
Lunch - I watch another little girl during the day, so I have 4 kids here for lunch
After School Snack - the littles I have during the day eat about 15 minutes before the big kids get off the bus. Then when my oldest gets off the bus, so do the other 3 kids I watch after school.  So that's 8 kids for snack
Dinner - we are usually all (6 of us) home for dinner.

On the night that someone is not going to be home is when we usually have leftovers or save them for a busy weekend.

This weekend I went to a class on Clean Eating for Kids.  I am a picky eater myself and found many of the topics discussed very useful.  One of them was about meal planning.  I am going to try it this week for dinner and see how it goes.  This will be our menu for the week. 

Meatless Monday - Grilled Cheese
Taco Tuesday - Regular Tacos
Souper Duper Wednesday - Pizza Soup
Crockpot Thursday - Chicken and Stuffing
Fishy Friday - out of town for the weekend

My grocery list:
chicken
hamburger
lettuce
taco seasoning
milk
bread
eggs
cream cheese
butter
mayo
sugar

With a $50 budget this leaves me quite a bit of wiggle room. 

Back in the Swing

Day 1 Week 3 of being a SAHM.....

We are finally getting into a routine and I am LOVING being at home!  The lack of stress I feel this year so far is wonderful.  

Last year I was staying up until AT LEAST midnight or later.  For several reasons:

* just needing some 'me time' after the girls and Jason went to bed, 

*needing to get the dishes done - if not, they wouldn't get done in the morning and then they would be sitting there when I came home, we wouldn't have any dishes to make dinner, so we would go out to eat.  :(

*needing to get laundry washed, dried and folded

The last two weeks, I have been consistently going to bed between 10:30-11!!  I know that if those things don't get done before I go to bed they will be there in the morning and I have all day to get the, done.  That alone is a huge stress relief!

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Well, in the last couple weeks I have had people question me about my budget/financing and grocery shopping/meal planning.  I really want to get back to these postings to help show cooking for a family of 6 (small children) does not have to be expensive.  More posts to come!!