a year of meal planning

If you would have told me about a year and a half ago that I could successfully meal plan for an entire 12 months, I would have never believed you.  There was a time that meal planning was slotted in my 'really ambitious' goal for myself.  But last January, I was determined to put one oven mitt in front of the other each week, and I made it bit by bit through the whole year planning our family's meals - and haven't stopped since!

I have no big secret or science to how I did it, it was really all about making it a habit.  I am so relieved that I am in this place now that meal planning is just something that I do.  It has changed and grown over the course of the year and is still evolving into what works the best for us.

This post is written in hopes to inspire or assist other Mums who look at meal planning as the daunting and scary mountain that I used to view it as.

How I got started:
1. weekly meal plans:  since I never used to meal plan at all, it was all about starting out slow.  I started by picking a day each week (Tuesday because that's when the grocery ads come) and planning out next weeks' meals based off of meat sales.  I planned one week at a clip and wrote it down (in pink or red pen) on each weekday for the following week.

2. Pinterest:  One of the big obstacles for me for meal planning has always been getting bored.  Sometimes, I just feel like if I have to eat another grilled chicken breast, I'm going to lose my mind.  Hah!  Enter from stage Left, Pinterest who provides 4528 recipes for chicken.  Seriously.  When my meal planning/eating boredom strikes, I start pin-searching new recipes and suddenly I'm energized with newness again.

3. Learning what my family likes:  It has been a year of learning about my families eating habits through meal planning.  I know the kids love spaghetti best of all, but that also has translated into watching them joyously eat other spaghetti like food (meatball sandwiches, pierogies & sauce, chicken parm). We have found by accident that the kids both like eating salad with dinner too (woohoo for veggies!) and our families #1 favorite side is steamed broccoli with corn on the cob a close second.  We are definitely meat-eaters over here and if I make a meat-less meal, there is mass confusion and a need for a protein fix asap (we go through eggs over here like no one's business).

deer meat sandwich!

How I stuck with it:
1. bi-weekly meal plans:  after getting comfortable with weekly planning, I bumped it up to planning two weeks at a time.  It freed up every other Tuesday, but also we started seeing more grocery bill savings since we were really only make a big trip every other week to the grocery store.

2. the slow-cooker:  we have a slow-cooker cooked meal probably 2-3 times a week.  I love slow cooking, its so easy and done when it's time to eat.  See Pinterest for approximately 8979 recipes on different things to cook in the slow cooker ranging from full meals to soup to desserts.  It's seriously the best invention ever.

3. adding breakfast & sweets to the planning:  I also started to incorporate a planned 'real breakfast' two times and a weekly dessert after getting more comfortable with dinners.  it allowed me to feel accomplished that the kids and I were eating anything other than toast/oatmeal for breakfast and the sweets were like a little love-pick-me-up through the week.  Plus, it's easy to get the kids in on helping to bake and provided a fun afternoon activity for us weekly to bake cookies for our family.

My top 3 benefits from meal planning:
1. less stress:  there is an amazing sense of calm that comes with simply knowing what your family will be eating come dinnertime.  So much happens during the day and by dinnertime I am generally too tired and brain-fried to attempt to assemble a meal with what I think may be available in the fridge & freezer.  Just having the meal written down in my planner to glance at the night before or the day of has made all the difference in my stress level come 5:30/6p each night.

2. money saved:  Since meal planning, we have found that we have saved money for a variety of reasons.  First, if something is already planned, I am less likely to tell B to just bring something home because I'm too tired to cook or clean up afterwards.  I mean, it's already setting out or slow-cooking, so we're good.  Also, we're not impulse buying at the grocery store because we only need the things on the list - and we're going to the grocery store fewer times during the month.  Granted, we still buy random stuff (hello Pringles), but it is at an extremely less often rate than pre-meal planning.

3. confidence:  through planning and preparing meals for my family, I have increased my self-confidence in what I am capable of in the kitchen.  I have found that I am trying out new flavors for foods that I may not have been brave enough to try before, and also not afraid of suddenly realizing I'm out of a particular ingredient (there are tons of info on substitutes for everything.  My fave:  applesauce in place of eggs).  There are meals now in my repertoire that I think, 'hmm, I wonder if this dinner will be something the kids will think of as one of Mum's meals when they move away.' I am a different home chef than I was a year ago and that makes me feel powerful.

Grey helping with mardi gras themed chocolate covered pretzels

Where I am today:
1. Monthly meal plans:  this year, I've been trying out planning out the whole month of meal planning at one time.  This is in an attempt to only do one big grocery trip (supplemented by the milk/eggs/bread sort trips occasionally) and really learn to start digging and using the stocked items we have in the pantry.

2. Planning 5 days a week:  This seems to work best for us, I plan 5 dinners a week for the 5 weekdays.  Most often, one day will be covered by left overs and then that will bump a planned meal to the weekend, or we'll eat dinner at one of our parent's houses, or have frozen pizza or something unplanned.  Of course, we occasionally eat out too, so all 7 nights are covered with little stress even when I only plan for 5 nights a week.

3.  Lunch:  since the kids and I are home everyday, lunch isn't ever planned outright but rather usually consists of leftovers from last night or bento-style lunches for them (salad or a sandwich for me).  Even though its the most obvious chart on the planet - somehow this little thing has really helped me when whipping up lunch for the kids:

So, that's how I overcame something that seemed so scary but also so necessary for my sanity as a Mum.  It is with relief and pride that I now can include myself as a meal-planning Mum:)

And for some meal-planning inspiration - here have been some of our favorites over the past year -

Our top 10 favorite new-to-us recipes
(that we've discovered and made multiple times over the past year):
Korean Beef (with ground beef)
Cheesy Vegetable Chowder  - like broccoli and cheese with more veggies
Slow Cooker Kielbasa and Cabbage
Meatball Sub Casserole
Quick Baked Potatoes - this has essential become my fallback potato recipe; so good, so easy.
Slow Cooker Brown Sugar & Garlic Chicken
American Goulash
Crockpot Meatballs
Grilled Country Style Pork Ribs
Slow Cooker Three Envelope Pot Roast


And how about top 5 desserts too:
Iced Oatmeal Cookies - the entire family went bonkers for these.  Brandon ate four at a time.
No bake energy bites
Thumbprint Jelly Cookies
Monster cookies -our go-to cookie recipe
Homemade Granola Bars - we add m&ms and chocolate chips to ours


And because breakfast can get so boring,
how about these top 3 favorite 'real' breakfasts:
Blueberry Banana Bread
Hootenany
Breakfast Enchiladas

10 Real Physical Dangers of Raising Toddlers

Everyone knows that the biggest danger of parenting any child is a broken heart.  Like smashed into smithereens broken heart.  And for lots of things.  Seeing your child in pain, listening to them cry it out, hearing them whisper "I love you" as their heavy sleepy eyes close.  Oh my, there's just so much that breaks and tears and shreds and stabs a parent's heart.

But not many people talk about the other kinds of pain that come with parenting kids, mainly toddlers.  These little beings that spend their day blurring the line between the distinction of human child and animal.  They have little control over their limbs, almost no depth perception, but somehow can orchestrate a mess that even if you were trying your very best, you as a grown adult with knowledge of trajectory and science, could not replicate to be as catastrophic.

So here's my top 10 of the physical pains we've endured as raising our toddlers.  The nose bleeds, the fat lips, and the bruises in the shape of a tiny mandible all included below.

1. Hair-pulling
It starts out in infancy out of sweet, precious curiosity.  It continues from there but with less wonder and more out of sheer disregard for anyone else's body.  I've had hair pulled by hands, teeth, and stepped on by feet.  And this is not just localized to head hair.  We have our arm hair pulled both by accident and on purpose.  My husband has also suffered through leg and chest hair pulling as well.

2. Biting
We've both been bit by accident when putting food into our little one's mouths, as they didn't realize (or care) if our fingers were out of the way before they chomped down.  Then as our daughter grew, we discovered she was a 'biter,' and would target shoulders when she didn't get her way.  Our poor son was once bit so hard on the stomach (after a disagreement with his little sis) that it immediately bruised a deep color of purple.  Thankfully she's seemed to grow out of it and now only grinds her teeth like an angry lioness at the first sign of conflict as a reminder to us all of the danger we could be in.

3. Stomach pummeling
This is Hollywood's go-to move for child on parent abuse.  You know the image; parents peacefully asleep while children sneak in and go full WWE on their parent's unprotected midsections.  It looks so idyllic, doesn't it?  This sort of stomach pummeling doesn't only happen in the morning before waking - it also happens anytime you find yourself in the horizontal position.  They'll sneak up on your unsuspecting relaxed pose, stand on the couch armrest, and take a flying leap directly landing on your gut (or worse - see #10).

4. Book corners to the face
This is a phenomenon that I can't explain.  The accuracy in which picture book corners with hard covers have barreled into my face is mind-blowing.  I am thrilled my children love listening to stories, but in the sheer delight of hearing another story, these books are strongly suggested with a shove in our direction with horrifying speed.  Somehow after a book corner makes contact with my face, I'm ashamed to say, my character voices just aren't up to par.

5. Head butts to the lip
In their defense, this is almost always by accident, but goodness does it hurt.  The forcefully thrown back head usually occurs from a child's extreme happiness or excitement, in which they throw their head back with joyful giggling only to make a direct contact with your unsuspecting face.  The vast array of strange unfunny things that cause a child to do this is wide and diverse - which gives it the constant element of surprise.

6. Disease
Our flu season lasts from October to April in our house.  We spend these months with tissues and hankies within constant reach.  If one of us catches something, the rest are sitting ducks.  We like to try to timeline our sicknesses; like Mum is 4 days in while our youngest is a day behind, our son just got it, and well, sorry Dad, you're the next in line.'

7. Shoulder dislocation (or at least soreness)
There is a scientific equation that I've discovered since becoming parent.  It's goes something along the lines of:  item that child is holding in backseat will always be dropped thus being the catalyst to insistent whining until said item is retrieved.  This requires a parenting move where the parent (driving a moving vehicle!) then rotates their shoulder to an unpleasant position to flail about aimlessly on the backseat floor to attempt to retrieve the fallen item.

8. Assault by feet
First, there's the kicking; during the diaper change, or when trying to remove themselves from a hug they've deemed too long, and the ever popular no warning direct kick to the shin in a drive-by sprint around the room.  There's also the stomping on various body parts by accident or entirely on purpose depending on their mood.

9. Lower back pain
It's the up-down-up-down-up-down-hold you motion throughout the day.  It's the two kids on your lap while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the fourth time in a row.  It's the sitting next to the toddler bed for 45 minutes rubbing their back when they're sick.  The kneeling and reaching at the edge of the bath tub.  It's the always needing more yoga and more time at the chiropractor.

10. Crotch shots
The problem with an adult crotch is that it is almost exactly eye level to a growing toddler.  It's like an impossibly easy target for punching from a child's point of view.  It also always warrants a dramatic response which makes it even more hilarious.  There's the standing assault, but also the flying from across the bed/room/couch to land with dangerous accuracy directly in the nether-regions.  It's like a pain magnet; look no farther than every.single.episode of America's Funniest Videos; without fail there are videos of children punching their Dads in the crotch.

Somehow though, as is the great paradox of parenthood, none of this pain or suffering ever amounts to much of anything.  It is all swept under the rug with the bat of an impossibly long eyelash or the surprise kiss of a tiny, sweet face.  Like all parents, I'd choose the beatings every time over the alternative of not living with these wild, maniacal, perfect, toddler ninjas.

thank YOU thursday: our Ninna

Dear Nin, 

By all accounts we really should be classified as a successful modern-day platonic arranged marriage.  

I don't know if we would have met and became friends on our own otherwise (which would have been an awful shame), but considering our age difference, interests, and locale - the stars did not seem aligned.  Even when you were going to college in my hometown, it was during the brief time that I didn't live here.  How would we have found each other?

But instead, one day in May of 2008, B and I met up with our visibly nervous best friend because he wanted to introduce us to his girlfriend.  After hanging out at his parents' house for a little while, we headed out while B and I shared confused glances in the car ride over; this chick must be pretty important for our normally stoic friend to be fumbling around with sweaty palms.

And then we met you.

And it was clear why our best friend was so nervous; you were the one.  And since our husbands are so confusingly the same person half the time; it was also obvious that it would need to be the start of our arranged marriage together:  the wives.  Their friendship is the lifetime sort, so ours would inevitably be too.  It was sort of a big deal that we hit it off.

The reason I think you and I have done so well together is because we never tried to be anything that we aren't naturally.  We grew to learn more about each other, and then respect each other, and above all be there for each other.

I hand my kids off to you without instructions and know unequivocally that they're in good hands.  You know where I keep all my dishes and hide the good snacks at our house.  We've planned parties together; endured hunting & fishing seasons; found fun things to do during golf outings; shared favorite books, appetizers, and drinks; and spent every news year together since we've met.  There's no friend jealousy or hard feelings about unanswered texts - we just get each other.  We're more than friends; more like chosen family.

And after five years of growing friendship, love, and respect (seriously we're married) - we took it to the next level.  Business partners; where the same well-oiled machine type interaction continues. I do the writing and you take care of the numbers.  If I forget something, you don't.  We work well together in business because we trust and respect each other.

It may not have started as a friendship that grew out of wild nights making foggy memories together (although we do share those, hah!) but our relationship is one of my most valued.

Just in case you don't know (but I'm pretty sure you do), Nin, you're like my right hand woman.  I'm so grateful to have you in this life of camo and husband reindeer games and navigation of a publishing company.

thank you for all of it, Nin.
seriously I love you like a sister wife,
tab