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.

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• 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!!

Keeping Up With...2021 Goals (Weekly Recap 2/22 - 2/28)

Last week was crazy busy and exhausting! I'm clearing still getting over it since I'm almost a week late in writing this update. We had so much going on last week that I was behind all week, then the weekend was jam packed so I never got to catch up. Thankfully this week is much slower and after this, I am caught up and ready to head into this weekend. I probably should have done this past weekend as a separate post but I decided not too so this is a long one!

The week started with AJ getting braces on Monday and us finding out that Daniel will eventually need them too. It has been a steep learning curve for all of us with the braces but we're figuring it out together. There are a lot of foods AJ can't eat, some of his favorites unfortunately, but thankfully we're finding some good replacements for him. He also has to remember to brush after every meal, use mouthwash at least once each day and use his water pick each day. I'm thankful we did this while he is still virtual for school so we can make these habits now! I'll be sure Daniel gets his on early in the summer when it's his turn.

School was fairly light this week, the boys had a few Zooms that cancelled and we didn't have some of the kids here on Thursday or Friday since I had a medical procedure on Thursday. We did have our favorite fundraiser for school this week, Marco's pizza box night where Zak designed a pizza box and when we bought our pizza, it came in his decorated box. He was super excited to get his bacon pizza in his box! I also had his spring parent teacher conference and his teacher thinks he's doing as well as possible for the year we're having. We were thrilled to learn on Friday this week that the kids are going back to school 4 days per week starting in a few weeks! I'm thankful to our school district for all they did to make this happen, and for giving the parents a choice to stay virtual or be in person. I'll be even more thankful when the kids return to school and I can return to the classroom as a substitute!

After the jam packed and emotional week, we had a full weekend. Saturday morning I worked and Zak had bowling. He bowled his highest game yet, an 89 without bumpers! The Saturday afternoon was Zak's Pinewood Derby for Scouts. His pack did a great job to get this together with all of the COVID restrictions and I'm thankful we were able to have the event this year. Zak designed and made his car almost all by himself this year. He had an idea for a certain design and even though people doubted it, he did it anyway and his car ended up coming in second place, just barely behind the first place car. He was beyond excited about how well his car did and we are very proud of him and his hard work!

We finished our weekend on Sunday with church from home in the morning, working around the house all day and then heading to the church to participate in a meal packing event with our church family. We helped pack 25,000 meals that will be sent to Hondorus to help the people there who are struggling after two hurricanes and COVID in the past year. It was a great event and we loved working with our friends to pack our meals. The boys really enjoy doing this as an act of service so I'm sure we'll be doing more of it in the future. This event also finished Zak's Duty to God requirement for Scouts and he is officially done earning his Bear badge! He'll continue to work on the electives so he can finish all of those over the next few months. I'm so proud of him and his dedication to Scouts!!

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 6 miles this week for a total of 61 miles so far this year. I'm very close to averaging 1 mile each day so I will need to pick it up to hit this goal. However as we move in to the warmer months it will get easier to get more miles in! I weighed in and my weight is very high right now, I'm super disappointed with how February went. Lots of stress and pity eating over here.
• Read 15 books for fun - I finished "Christmas Shopaholic" this week which is my 6th book of this year! I'm really proud of myself and how many books I have read already. This one was cute, a typical shopaholic book. I also started my next book on the books to read while I'm 40 list "The Goldfinch" which is super long and will take a while to finish. I may need to take a few breaks and read a few other books while reading it as well.
• Write Scripture(s) every day this year - I have done this all 59 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 am registered for one in March. I decided not to do a February one since I'm not teaching right now. Hopefully I can make it up later this year.

Working on Family:

• Play all 152 of our board games together (either just Adrian and I or as a family) - With all of our activities this weekend, we didn't have much time to play board games this weekend. And I was exhausted so I didn't want to learn anything new. We played 2 games this week for a total of 34 games so far this year. We played DC Deck Building and Doctor Eureka. We also played another game of Obsession with the expansion and I finally won! Actually I won all 3 games this weekend, maybe I play better exhausted. You can follow along on my thoughts on each game on this webpage. 
• Do 10 home improvement/reorganization projects - We did not have time to do any of these projects this weekend. We did make a plan for the next few weeks though. We will spend March finishing up the garage and play room and then prepping the kitchen for painting. We'll send Rocky to stay at daycare overnight one day over spring break and we will paint the kitchen. Then in April we will finish off everything else in the kitchen. This will hopefully get us back on track for this goal.
• Pay off all of our outstanding credit card debit and don't incur any additional debt - We paid off our Best Buy credit card last month which included the boys' new XBox and their laptops from this summer. This month we paid off our new couches, and are down to only one credit card left to pay off. We incurred some new debt this month since AJ got braces, but we hope to pay it off quicker than the 2 year payment plan we will be on.
• Watch 50 movies together and continue watching TV series together - This week we watched "The One and Only Ivan" and "The Wolverine" and have watched 8 movies so far this year. We enjoyed both movies, especially Ivan since we're all read the book. I lost interest in Wolverine, but the boys loved it! We also caught up on "WandaVision" and are waiting on new episodes each week now. I think we are going to watch the last few "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" next to finish those up.
• Celebrate a holiday every day this year - This past week we actually celebrated 8 holidays because we doubled up on Monday. We celebrated Margarita Day, Take Your Dog for a Walk Day, Banana Bread Day, Tortilla Chip Day, Chili Day, Tell A Fairy Tale Day, Pokemon Day and International Scouse 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 2/28 - 3/6)

Well I thought I did really great following last week's meal plan, then I looked and realized I bumped a meal from last week to this week. I couldn't figure out what happened at first, then realized that Monday was such a busy day that I decided to go out for dinner with friends instead of cooking. So that bumped most of our meals by a day and bumped the burgers and fries to this week. Everything I made last week was delicious and we have a fully stocked fridge of leftovers right now. I'm not sure why I didn't plan a day of leftovers this week (I usually do!) but I may need to bump a meal to next week so we can catch up on some of the food in the fridge. Here are a few photo highlights of last week's meals.

Thankfully this week is no where near as busy as last week was! We do have something most nights this week, but all of our afternoons are free so that gives me plenty of time to get things done and get dinner together. We also have nothing on the calendar this weekend and are looking forward to some time relaxing after a busy February! I have planned out all of our meals for March again, the same as I did for February. I liked how that worked because it really lessened my prep time each week. However it's hard when we have a change of plans, food craving or I see a fun recipe I want to make. I think for now I'm going to continue planning a month at a time and maybe reevaluate after the summer when we are hopefully back up to a more normal schedule of school and work. Adrian and I are committed to eating healthy (again!) and we're hoping to go 25 straight days this month, right up to my birthday weekend.

Here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday - Beef Stew to celebrate International Scouse Day

Monday -  Spinach & Asiago Burgers and French Fries in the Air Fryer (carryover from last week)
Tuesday - Taco Tuesday! Beef for the boys and I'm going to make this braised beef over a lime coleslaw for the adults

Wednesday - Sandwiches or Deli Salads to celebrate National Cold Cuts Day 
Thursday - Lemon Pork Chops and Potatoes

Friday - Chicken Parmesan with Zoodles

Saturday - Everything Bagel Chicken (hopefully in the air fryer using the rotisserie setting) with Butternut Squash Risotto in our instant pot

Water Flavor - Apple. I found a few apples that needed to be used up right away so I cut them up in to the water for this week. It will be nice to have a break from the orange water this week. 

Baking - I'm slowing down on my baking a bit since Adrian and I are trying to eat healthy again. I will be doing healthy muffins for us for breakfast so I may make these butternut squash muffins this week, but I may hold off until next week since we have cranberry applesauce muffins from last weekend already. I am making a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip bars for AJ this week since he's struggling with finding soft things to eat for breakfast with his braces on.