Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 4/4 - 4/10)

I decided to take a week off from meal planning last week since I pretty much took the week off from cooking. Since it was spring break for the boys and the week between my birthday and Easter, plus we redid our kitchen this past weekend, we mostly had leftovers or take out. Adrian made pizza last Sunday for my birthday and I made tacos on Tuesday for all of us, but other than that, I didn't cook until Easter Sunday. We enjoyed Chipotle burritos and Jersey Mikes subs this past week in addition to a ton of leftovers. It was nice to take a break for a week, but my waistline is ready for healthier eating for sure! Here are a few picture highlights of our past 2 weeks in food:

I made a trip to Costco last week to stock up our meat freezer again so I am trying not to shop at all in April. We also have a ton of meals from the school lunches, nearly a whole freezer full, so we'll be having leftovers once per week (at least!) and I'll be trying to figure out creative ways to use up what we have. Adrian and I are back to healthy eating for most days of the next two months so I can try to lose as much weight as possible before having surgery at the end of May. Some of those lunches are very healthy, so I plan to bulk them up with a lot of vegetables. I'm hoping to do very little shopping the next few months and try to use up what we have before our huge vacation in July. Our CSA will also start again in May so we'll have a ton of fresh produce in the house all summer. I can't wait to cook with that again!!

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Easter Breakfast - Our traditional Polish breakfast with hard boiled eggs, kielbasa, bobka, farmer cheese, rye bread and butter. Delicious!!
Sunday - Easter Dinner - Pasta Alfredo and Garlic Bread with an ice cream sundae bar for dessert (we decided to go easy and do what the kids like too)
Monday - Chicken Marsala and Sweet Potato Fries
Tuesday - Tacos for the boys and Mango Salsa Chicken and Broccoli Rice Casserole for the adults
Wednesday - Leftovers
Thursday - Frozen Burritos from School baked with Enchilada Sauce and Cheese with Empanadas 
Friday - Pork Fried Rice and Frozen Egg Rolls
Saturday - Out to my brother's for a late Easter celebration! 

Water Flavor - I also took a week off from this to just make last week an easier week all around. This week I'm back to having orange water to use up the oranges from school lunches.

Baking - Last week I made a lemon chiffon cake (see picture above) to celebrate that holiday and it was delicious so I wanted to share that recipe here. I also baked bobka for our Easter breakfast so that will be the adults' breakfast for this week. I have some pumpkin I need to use up so I'm making pumpkin chocolate chip bars for the kids for breakfast as well. 

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 3/15 - 3/21)

This week marked the end of our year long virtual school adventure. While there are lots of things I will miss about having the boys at home, I'm thrilled for them that they get to head back into the classroom. And I am also thrilled to be heading back to work as a substitute teacher. I will miss all of our time together though, it was nice being in our little bubble and being so involved in what they were doing most days. I will say that I thought all along that I did not want to home school my little angels and I was 100% correct on that decision! Another step towards normal this week was Adrian getting his first dose of the vaccine and me scheduling mine. And I finally cut my COVID hair since I'll be heading back to work next week! 

Other than our normal school and work routine this week, we finished the week with a family trip to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. We went with AJ's Scout troop and had a great time walking around for about 3 hours. It started a little slow because we spent too much time in the history of flight room with the rest of the troop. But once we all split up and we headed for the back of the museum, we had a great time. We all loved seeing all of the old Air Force One planes that flew various presidents and also seeing the different space aircraft the Air Force has made. It was a very interesting morning and we would have liked to stay longer but we all got tired and hungry so we headed out after about 3 hours. We stopped for a quick drive thru lunch and then headed home to finish our Saturday with some board games and video games. 

Here's how I did on my goals this week.

Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I walked about 16.5 miles this week for a total of 106.5 miles so far this year. I've accomplished just over 1/4 of this goal and we're not yet 1/4 of the way thru the year so I'm very happy with my progress so far. I maintained for my weight which is OK since my eating wasn't the best.
• Read 15 books for fun - I took a break from "The Goldfinch" this week, and read about half of "How to Fight a Dragon's Fury" the final book in the How to Train Your Dragon series. I'm about 75% done with that book and should finish early next week. 
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 80 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For March I picked a plan focused on perseverance which feels appropriate for the season of life I'm in. 
• Attend 12 6 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I attended 1 jam in January and was registered for one in March however we had something else come up that day so I postponed it until April. I am probably leaving my Zumba classes paused until August so I adjusted this goal down to only 6 jams this year. I will do the one in April and then wait until I am back up and running teaching classes to attend any more.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We played 3 games this week for a total of 46 games so far this year. We played Escape with the boys and then played Floor Plan and Evolution as a couple. We also played Alhambra which we borrowed from CABS and neither of us were fans. We'll try it once more to see if it gets better, but thankful we can borrow to try before buying! You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage. 
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We didn't really have time to work on any of these projects this weekend. We are not planning to do a new project in April, but plan to finish up the play room and the garage.
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We shifted our big payment to our only remaining credit card balance this month. If everything goes according to plan, we will pay this off this year and be done with all of our credit card debt!
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - This week we watched "Yes Day" and "Mighty Ducks" bringing our total to 12 movies for the year. We all really liked both movies, they were very funny. We also finished season 1 of "Secrets of Sulphur Springs" which we all loved and can't wait for season 2!! We are excited for two new series starting soon, Falcon and the Winter Soldier this week and Mighty Ducks next week.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated National Peanut Lovers Day, National Panda Day, St Patrick's Day, Sloppy Joe Day, Chocolate Caramel Day, Ravioli Day and International Poetry Day. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay
  

Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 3/21 - 3/27)

We had another great week of following our meal plan and even though it was a busy week, I was able to keep up with all of the cooking. Everything was delicious again this week and we discovered something else the boys will eat, sloppy joes. Daniel didn't love them, but the other two boys said they were good and would eat them again. Adrian and I did not do a good job of sticking to our healthy eating plan this week, especially not me. I think the stress of a few things going on caught up with me and stress eating took over. I will try to reign it in a bit this week, but it's going to be a weird and stressful week here. Here are some of the highlights of our food last week.

After over a year, the boys and I are finally going back to school this week! Each boy will be going 4 days each week, with one day of virtual learning, for the next 9 weeks. I will also be back to subbing 4 or 5 days each week depending on what else is going on with our schedules. We go to school for a week and then have spring break for a week before finishing up the last 8 weeks of the school year. So this week is going to be our first time on a schedule in a long time, but then it leads into my birthday, spring break and Easter week. I am also taking each boy out to lunch on their own this week on their virtual day, and Adrian and I are going out to dinner on Friday. So while I will try to eat well some of the week, I know there will be a lot of celebrating and junk food over the next two weeks and that is OK with me.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Turkey Pot Pie (with the remaining leftover turkey from last week - so good!!)
Monday - Chicken Marsala and Broccoli Rice Casserole
Tuesday - Tacos and Chips and Dip for the holiday
Wednesday - Cheesesteaks and Salads for the holiday
Thursday - Waffles and Bacon for the holiday (was going to make waffles for breakfast but not with everyone going to school, too early! I bumped them to dinner)
Friday - OUT to Forty Duece and Cooper's Hawk for shakes, burgers and wine for my birthday!
Saturday - Paella for the holiday (and ice cream cake for dessert!)

Water Flavor - Again I'm having orange water. This was the last week for school lunch pick ups so I'll be using up the rest of the oranges and then figuring out a new fruit for the water. I have also thought about making some orange juice with all of the oranges to use in smoothies, but right now we have a lot of milk to use up so I'm using that in my smoothies.

Baking - I'm not doing any baking this week because we have some soda bread left over and lots of breakfast food from our school meals this week. We are getting an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery for my birthday on Saturday. While that's not baking, it's still a fun dessert/baked good that we will have this week. And I'm also making these Buffalo Chick Peas to have for lunch on the two days that I will be in the schools for lunch this week since I'm not sure if I'll have access to a microwave or not.

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 3/8 - 3/14)

This past week was a bit tougher than previous weeks, but we survived. It started out fun with us watching a few scenes from Hamilton since AJ is learning about the debates between Hamilton and Jefferson. But then it went downhill from there. Rocky was not feeling well so I had a long (and expensive!) vet appointment for her during the week. We had lots of schedule changes this week since the teachers in our district got their second vaccines and a large number had to call out on Thursday and Friday. There was a lot of bickering between the boys which then caused me to be cranky all week too. But thankfully it ended with a jam packed but fun weekend! And we are putting this week behind us and hoping for a great last week of virtual school this week!

The weekend was jam packed for us, which is why this is a little later than usual. It started with Adrian and Zak heading to bowling on Saturday, where Zak continued to improve and raised his average for the third week in a row. While they were there, I went out to breakfast with two dear friends. We had a great meal and lots of laughs!! Then I headed to church to work for a few hours and was pleasantly surprised to finish up almost an hour earlier than I expected. We finished Saturday with board games and relaxing watching TV. After changing the clocks Sunday morning, we watched church from home and then got ready to have my brother and his family over. We had a great afternoon with them, the kids played outside most of the time while the adults chatted. We feasted on turkey and sides and then had pie for dessert since it was Pi Day. I didn't get a lot done around the house, but it was an awesome weekend for sure!!

Here's how I did on my goals this week.

 Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I stayed focused this week on diet and exercising, the little bit of exercise that I am able to do. I was actually able to do a little bit of Zumba this week and push myself a bit. I walked about 12 miles this week for a total of 90 miles so far this year. And I lost another pound this week, so I'm down 6 pounds so far this year.
• Read 15 books for fun - I read another 5% of "The Goldfinch" this week, and am about 20% done the book. It is super long and will take me a while to finish. I returned it to the library and started reading "How to Fight a Dragon's Fury" the final book in the How to Train Your Dragon series. I'm about 25% done with that book.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 73 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For March I picked a plan focused on perseverance which feels appropriate for the season of life I'm in. 
• Attend 12 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I attended 1 jam in January and was registered for one in March however we had something else come up that day so I postponed it until April. I may still try to find one to jump in to in March, depending what the doctor says next week.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We played 4 games this week for a total of 43 games so far this year. We played Deception with the boys and then played Dominion, Everdell and Dungeon Roll as a couple. Everdell is one of our favorite games, we just bought a kickstarter to own the whole set of expansions for the game, can't wait to get those and start exploring them! You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage. 
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We decided on what the decor in the playroom will look like this weekend and split the work up between Adrian and I. We are hoping to get that done this coming weekend, as well as finish organizing the garage.
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We shifted our big payment to our only remaining credit card balance this month. If everything goes according to plan, we will pay this off this year and be done with all of our credit card debt!
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - This week we watched "X-Men: First Class" and "Rear Window" bringing our total to 10 for the year. This goal may be harder now that the boys are going back to school, but we'll still make our best effort to hit it. None of us liked "Rear Window" so we actually turned it off about halfway through, but I'm still counting it. We also started a new series "Secrets of Sulphur Springs" which we all love and pretty much binging it right now. We'll probably be done the first season next week.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we again celebrated 8 holidays because we doubled up on Monday. We celebrated International Women's Day, National Peanut Cluster Day, National Meatball Sub Day, Johnny Appleseed Day, Mario Day, Alfred Hitchcock Day, Donald Duck Day, and Pi Day. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay
  
  
  
  

Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 3/14 - 3/20)

We had another pretty good week of eating and sticking to our meal plan last week. I ran out of energy over the weekend, but I'm glad I forced myself to cook on Saturday because it was delicious and I stuck to my healthy eating all week. We had our first not great dinner in a long time this week, the sausage stuffed peppers were a swing and a miss for us. It's been a long time since we had a meal that we didn't really like so I'm not all that surprised that we finally hit one. It's always a risk to keep trying new recipes, we've just been super lucky that we've liked everything we've made for months! Here are a few of our food highlights this week.

This week starts with a family dinner so I'll probably eat more than normal on Sunday. Then I'll pull back and get back on my plan of counting calories and eating well until the 26th of this month. We are making some progress on the deep freeze in the basement and doing a great job of keeping up with stuff in our fridge. Too bad our freezer in the garage is now busting at the seams. Next month I will be figuring out how to use up all of the frozen things that we've gotten over the past 6 months from school lunches. I'm going to try to make a few healthier and have the kids eat some of them as well.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Roast Turkey with Cheddar Broccoli Rice, Air Fried Brussels Sprouts and Applesauce
Monday - Thai Peanut Chicken Lo Mein
Tuesday - Turkey Noodle Soup for the adults, Tacos for the kids
Wednesday - Kielbasa with Cabbage and Apples since we don't like corned beef
Thursday - Sloppy Joes (that's the holiday for the day)
Friday - Leftovers
Saturday - Ravioli (that's the holiday for the day)

Water Flavor - Orange. I still have a drawer full of oranges. I'm considering making orange juice out of some of them and using it in my smoothies when I'm not getting a gallon of milk for free each week. School lunches will stop after this week when the kids go back to school so I'll be getting creative to use up what we have.

Baking - I'm back to baking some this week. I'm making chocolate pie on Sunday for dessert to celebrate Pi Day. And I'm also making my first ever Irish Soda Bread for Saint Patrick's Day on Wednesday. I'm also buying an apple pie for Sunday (I don't do pies, not my forte) and green donuts for breakfast on Wednesday. 

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 3/1 - 3/7)

This week has been so much calmer than last week, thankfully! We are also thankful the weather seems to be turning and it was much nicer this week so we spent a lot of time outside this week. I spent the beginning of the week catching up on stuff that I didn't get done this weekend and resting after overdoing it all weekend. I'm thankful the boys have found their groove with school and need very little help from me to have a successful week! They all did a great job this week and Zak is very proud of himself for finishing his first research paper about zebras. It was a normal week for us, the first one in what feels like a very long time. Adrian and I both worked a lot this week, but that was OK since we didn't really have anything else going on this week. Then we had a typical weekend for us of playing board games all day Saturday and cleaning the house all day on Sunday. Not the most exciting week, but exactly what we needed right now.

Here's how I did on my goals this week.

 Working on Myself:

• Lose 50 pounds by exercising 5 days each week and walking at least 400 miles this year -  I really refocused this week on diet and exercising, the little bit of exercise that I am able to do. Adrian and I committed to eating well for the next 25 days and then we'll take the weekend off for my birthday. I walked about 17 miles this week for a total of 78 miles so far this year. And I lost 6 of the pounds I gained in February
• Read 15 books for fun - I read about 15% of "The Goldfinch" this week. It is super long and will take me a while to finish. I will read it for one more week and then it's due back so I'll take a break and read 1 or 2 other books and come back to it. 
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 66 days so far this year. I'm really enjoying this practice so far this year. For March I picked a plan focused on perseverance which feels appropriate for the season of life I'm in. 
• Attend 12 Zumba jam sessions to improve my teaching skills - I attended 1 jam in January and was registered for one in March however we had something else come up that day so I postponed it until April. I may still try to find one to jump in to in March, depending what the doctor says next week.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - We played 5 games this week for a total of 39 games so far this year. We played Code Names and Dixit with the boys and then played Dinosaur Island, Dungeon and Dungeon Petz as a couple. We technically borrowed Dinosaur Island but we both loved it so we traded 2 other games for it and will own it very soon. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage. 
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We finished up organizing and decluttering the game closet this weekend. We got rid of a bag of trash and about 15 games that the boys either outgrew or we would never play. It looks so much nicer, as you can see from the pictures below. We also planned out the rest of the month, including boarding Rocky for a night over spring break so we can paint the kitchen.

• 

  Before

  

  After

  
  
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We shifted our big payment to our only remaining credit card balance this month. If everything goes according to plan, we will pay this off this year and be done with all of our credit card debt!
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - This week we didn't watch any movies so we're still at 8 for the year. This goal may be harder now that the boys are going back to school, but we'll still make our best effort to hit it. We did watch a bunch of TV shows including finishing "WandaVision" which was fantastic. We also started a new series, "Green Eggs and Ham" on Doctor Suess' birthday when we realized we had seen all of the movies by him and would rather bing watch 3 episodes of this show.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This week we celebrated International Compliment Day, Read Across America Day, Cold Cut Day, Snack Day, Cheese Doodle Day, Oreo Day and Cereal Day. Below are a few picture highlights of our holidays. I'm also chronicling them on Facebook so if we aren't friends there, feel free to add me or follow along at #CelebrateEveryDay
  
  
  

Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan 3/7 - 3/13)

I had another awesome week of sticking to my meal plan last week and everything was delicious! Adrian and I refocused on eating healthy and we did a great job of limiting snacks all weeks. We are planning to do this for most of March and then take a few days off for my birthday and Easter. The worst part for me of healthy eating is all of the dishes we produce! But I did a great job of keeping up with those this week too, probably because we had very little going on this week. I'm hoping to keep this momentum going, especially since I saw big results on the scale this week!! Here are some of the picture highlights from the past week.

This week is another fairly light week, although not quite as light as last week. I have a ton of errands to run early in the week and we have something just about every night this week. But I'm back to having my leftovers day planned in to the schedule (yay!) and we have a few easy meals this week as well. As I was looking at the week I noticed that just about everyday is a one pot meal with no sides. The one exception is Tuesday and if I wanted, I could just have a meatball sub. But I'm planning to just have meatballs and zoodles with bread on the side to keep my calories down. I'm confident we can keep up with this plan, I just hope I can keep up with the dishes again, ha! 

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Deer Sausage and Leftover Risotto (from Saturday)
Monday - Taco Chicken Soup (with leftover chicken from Saturday)
Tuesday - Meatball Subs and Zoodles
Wednesday - Leftovers
Thursday - Shrimp Rice Bowls for the adults, Marco's Pizza for the kids
Friday - Sausage and Cream Cheese Stuffed Peppers
Saturday - Lemon Chicken, Potatoes and Carrots

Water Flavor - I'm back to orange this week. I still have a half full drawer of oranges to use up so I'll continue using them for now. We only have 2 more weeks of free lunches left, then the kids go back to school and can eat there so we won't get the pick up ones anymore. I'll eventually run out of oranges, ha!

Baking - I'm actually not doing any baking this week. We still have pumpkin bars from last week as well as a bunch of donuts and pastries from our school breakfasts. Plus we have a ton of cereal from them as well. So we'll just try to eat that stuff this week and I'll be back to baking next week for sure!!