OYOL Week 10

This week for OYOL we're doing Menu Planning.  Oh, how I needed this!  I've been thinking and thinking about this all week because I certainly TRY to do this, but it just hasn't been working for me.  What I've been trying to do is sit down on Wednesday (before my shopping trip Thursday) and plan out for the week.  I have tried doing just dinner as well as doing all meals (including snacks) to try to keep us out of ruts, but nothing seemed to click.  I can do all the planning, get all the food and yet somehow something always happens to distract me.  Either my day goes crazy and we end up eating out, or we don't feel like eating what's on the schedule and we end up eating out, or Kent wants to do something nice and knows cooking is a huge job for me so we end up eating out (noticing a pattern here???).  So, obviously this isn't working and I need to come up with another way to go at this.

So here are the truths that I have to work around:

1.  Kent is super picky.... all casseroles/mixed foods are out, he won't touch them.  Oh, and he doesn't do leftovers very well.

2.  Abigail is picky but doesn't want the same things day after day ... she will eat jelly sandwiches for 4 days straight and then refuse to touch them for a few weeks.

3.  Nathan is still testing new foods for allergic reactions and is also picky ... sigh, what did I do to get all these picky people in my life?? :) Good thing I love them so much!

4.  Cooking is fun from time to time, but not one of my favorite chores (yes, I consider it on the level of mopping, something I HAVE to do) and when I'm doing it for people who are soooo picky it loses even more of it's appeal.

5.  When ever I go into the kitchen to attempt a meal, I have two little locusts swarming me the entire time. One trying to help and wanting to get a lick from everything (My fault, lol, I've let her bake too much...baking I enjoy!) and the other screaming for reasons only known to him.

Soooo, where does that leave us???  I don't know for sure, but I have two ideas that I'm playing with and will probably end up combining.  First is the once a month cooking.  I really like the idea of having everything cooked up at once and minimizing the amount of day-to-day cooking I have to do.  I found this website, Once a Month Mom, that really gives some good info on it.  The other is the idea that was posted on Brenda's Week 10 post by Reagen which is the "30 Meals Plan".  Basically you keep the ingredients on hand for your 30 go-to recipes.  Your 30 includes only those that your family loves so it's a guaranteed winner.  I'm going to start going through meals a few at a time to try to find things that everyone will eat (though, the toddler picky stage where they randomly stop eating things may make this difficult) and try to stick to ones that freeze well.  Kent said he would eat BBQ that has been in the freezer, so that's one of the first that I'll be attempting.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes :).

Oh, and for added fun, I forgot to mention that I'm trying to keep all of this relatively healthy so I don't begin to put back on the weight that I've lost so far.  Just don't tell Kent, because whenever my fried meat and potatoes man hears "healthy", he gets a little nervous :).

General Updates :)

I'm having a hard time getting around to blogging lately.  It's been on my to-do list the last 3-4 days or so, but I just keep putting it off.  Too many other things have been grabbing my attention when I sit down at the computer.  Oh well, I refuse, refuse to make myself feel bad about it.  This isn't meant to be a professional blog, all spiffy and nice, it's really just for me and who ever else may find something interesting here.  I have no agenda here, not really even a purpose other than a place to work through my thoughts and projects.  In someways this is an online journal, but really I don't even do the super personal thoughts that go into my infrequent journalling here.  Oh well, again I refuse to feel bad about this.

Anyway, here's a few of the projects that have been keeping me so busy lately:

~OYOL: Obvious one, as this has been the majority of my posting lately.  This week is about menu planning which I am TERRIBLE at so I've been doing a lot of researching into better ways to do it.  I'll give more details on it in my next post.

~Wardrobe: I mentioned a few weeks ago that I've been working on revamping my entire wardrobe and I still have a lot of work to do.  Thankfully I'm finally getting some of the lessons I'm learning down, so I'm starting to see some nice outfits come together.  It's hard for me to do, though, because I have to do it in bits and pieces to accommodate our budget and I have yet to do what I'm supposed to in sitting down and making a shopping list to keep with me.  :) Ideally this would keep me on track, I just haven't done it.  Maybe I'll post some more of my journey with this and put up some pictures to help me keep track of the outfits I like and don't like.  An online style file instead of a paper one.  Maybe :).

~Project 52 Dates: Another one from my friend Jackie.  The lady who put this together did this last year and the challenge is done, but it still doesn't make the premise any less important.  The idea is to do a weekly (mostly) at-home date, just to help keep you in touch with your spouse.   You are supposed to take turns planning the dates, but since Kent is super busy I told him I would do it for the time being.  Our first one is tomorrow night :).  

~Potty Training: Abigail is doing pretty well with it, but it's only been three weeks and so we still need to stay on top of her.  She doesn't have big accidents, but she normally will wait until she pees just a bit in her underwear and THEN tells us she needs to go.  It's frustrating, but I'm trying to stay patient with her.  I'm hoping she will get better about it as time goes on.  Until then, I just have to keep reminding her to go about every two hours.  She also wants to wear underwear at night, but just can't make it, poor thing.  We tried for about four nights straight and had accidents ever night before Kent pulled the plug on that one.  She really doesn't want to wear a diaper, but Kent doesn't want to go in and wake her just to go potty, so I really don't know what to do.  My laundry load has been much easier, though, since putting her back in diapers at night!  So there is an upside!

~Exercise:  A few friends of mine and I have put together a fun challenge to compete against each other to eat right and exercise.  It's been a lot of fun and it has definitely gotten me going again :).  I love to compete, so it has really worked out well, but I've been doing Jillian Michael's 30 Shred and it's been kicking my butt!  I love that I'm getting stronger and I'm seeing a difference from when I started, but I totally get worn out and crash at night now.

~Morning Routine:  Along with the general daily routine that we've been setting up through OYOL, I've been working through the Maximize Your Morning Book from Inspired to Action.  My one big focus has been to get my rear end up and moving in the mornings.  I have been entirely too lazy lately about getting up and having my quiet time with God before the kiddos roll out, so my goal last week was to get up at 6 and then this week I moved it back 5 mins.  I plan to keep adding time (slooooowly, I am not by nature a morning person), but this weekend's time change may stall that process for a while.

Umm, I think that's about it, haha!  I know that's like 2 weeks of updates in one post, but I had been putting this off for a while.  I might try to start updating things a bit more regularly, but as always: no promises ;). 

Southern Savers

I figured it was about time to try to add more to my links.  My goal originally was to put all my favorite helpful websites there, but as you can see I've been slacking off.  Well, here's a VERY popular new one.  I don't remember who first got me to go to the Southern Saver website, but it is now a page I visit every day, sometimes more than once :).  It is my one stop shop for all things bargain.  The lady who runs the site, Jenny, posts on pretty much any and every deal that she is alerted to, but her focus is on couponing at grocery stores and drug stores.  She can help you save so much on your grocery bill, it's truly unbelievable.  I've found that it does take some effort to get things straightened to be able to truly save half or more, but when you save that much, it's sooo worth it.  :) I love it!