Menu Plan Monday

Hi everyone, Happy Memorial Day.  My father served in the military many years ago.  My husband's family has a long history of service.  I am very thankful for all they have done for my country.  I am able to blog and exsist because they fought for us.

My menu plan may change this week.  Part of my family is helping with Tornado relief and I am not sure when they are coming back.  So I am only planning for part of my family.  Trying things that I think the ones who are out of town may not like. 

Please run over to Meal Plan Monday at Orgjunkie.  I find lots of ideas from all of these wonderful people. :)

Monday - Memorial Day - Dinner with Family

Tuesday - Captain Crunch Chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes

Wednesday - Left overs

Thursday - Crockpot Beef and Peppers

Friday - Taco Twist Bake

Saturday - Blackberry BBQ Dump Chicken, salad, kraft Mac n Cheese

Sunday - Melt in Your Mouth Meatloaf, Green Bean Casserole, Rosemary Potatoes

Sunday Confessional

Well this is the last time I will be using this header.  I have recently discovered that it is being used on another site.  I do not intentionally take things from others so even though I like my Sunday Confessional I will find another name.

I am sitting and watching the Joplin Memorial Service on CNN.  My confession....I miss my husband terribly.  He is there providing aid for those devestated by this tornado.  Friends and family homes have been leveled and some have nothing left.  A friend fit everything that could be salvaged from her house in her trunk. 

My confession:  It kills me not to be with my husband right now, but I have other kids who are coming home and I have responsibilites here. 

Stay Strong Joplin!

Saturday - Family Fun

Today part of my family is in Missouri helping with the Tornado clean up, I am at home and the others are having their visitation time with their other parents.  So todays family fun is basically me sitting by myself.  I am trying to get motivated to do something but it has been such an exhausting week.  I have laundry that has piled up and a hundred things that I need to get done to the house.  But I am thinking I need to take some time off.  We have been just going and going and going non stop since Sunday.  School ended yesterday as well, so it has been really busy here.  So I think I will have a nice long shower and relax a little today.  Maybe take myself out to lunch.  The possibilities are endless.  I hope everyone enjoys their day, and those who are in the midst of cleaning up, I hope that they are able to recover absolutely everything they can.

Friday - Supposed to be Taking Care of Me.

I am not sure how many people see my blog.  I look at the stats and I know that this blog is not visited very often.  I know part of that is because I am not a big promoter.  I started this blog simply so I would take a few minutes each day to write down some thoughts.  I thought if I put it out there to people it would hold me more accountable.  Some times it did, other times, well I just couldn't do it.

For the last week my air conditioner has been out.  Now normally not a big deal but it has been in the 90's here this week.  We still have the air conditioner downstairs, but there is nothing where we sleep.  That in itself would have probably given me a wonderful excuse to be gripy and in a possible bad mood.  But as I realized Sunday night that there was an air conditioning issue we also started getting text messages from facebook from our friends.  Their entire town was gone.  In the blink of an eye their lives were forever changed.  Suddenly the air conditioner didn't seem like a big deal anymore.





 photo from: dailymail.co.uk

 We rallied and raised items, contacted churches, groups, anyone that we thought could help us.  My daughter had already been involved with a tornado relief drive at her school to help those affected in our area last month, she switched gears and she went gang busters.  She did announcements at her school (She had a wonderful school counselor who helped her facilitate this), she went on the evening news and she spread her story.  We got calls from all over and they brought things.  We rented a uhaul trailer, collected donations and then off they went.

I haven't been really active on the blog lately.  I am not a writer by trade and my life sometimes seems beyond hectic, but I do try.  My family is re-evaluating several things in our life, and this is something I have to do.  Our diet is hit or miss, and sometimes we are passing ships.  Time is precious, so are your loved ones. 

If you do read this I beg you to help.  It doesn't have to be monetarily, you can donate old clothes, you can give blood, you can volunteer your time.  This can be a great family activity.  Getting everyone involved can bring your family closer.  Anything and everything helps, even if you can't help those who have been affected by the tornadoes you can still help locally.  Three people lost their lives in the Atlanta area last night.  Sometimes we have to help in our own backyard.  There are always ways and places to help.

Giving to others gives great joy to the soul. 

Menu Plan Monday

Monday - Potato Bar
Tuesday - Taco Twist Bake
Wednesday - TBD
Thursday - Ultimate Creamy Beef Stroganoff
Friday - Dinner Out
Saturday - Rueben Sandwiches
Sunday - TBD

We do not have our kids for most of the week and since it is a REALLY busy week at work I am not going to stress myself out with trying to plan everything.  We have award cermonies this week and the last day of school so it is a strange week.  I am looking forward to having more time next week since the kids will be here to help.

Have a great week everyone!

Please check out the links at Orgjunkie.com!  It helps me plan my menus when I have no idea what to do :)

Tuesday - Random Acts of Kindness / Gratitude

I understand how a small pebble can start a ripple.  I mentioned that I was going to have my children pick a service project for the family to participate in each month.  I sent a copy of the Pebble Tosser newsletter to my older children and one of my daughters ran with it. She approached her school administrators and is now helping organize a collection relief effort for the Tornado victims in our area.  When she went to school we were talking about a completely different project, by the time she got there, she had changed her mind and apparently was very passionate about Tornado Relief. 

 

I was in the car yesterday when I heard an ad for Kaiser Permanente.  Even the insurance companies are trying to get people to do good deeds.  It honestly does make some one feel good to do things for others.

 

Here is a link for Pebble Tossers again.  I hope to involve my children while they are young, so hopefully when they are adults they carry this on!

 

Menu Plan Monday

I am putting up the calendar again.  Since I am a day late and it is in Agenda mode, you will have to look back to get Monday's.  But just know it is a family recipe and it is not online (sorry).

Have a great day everyone!

Sunday confessional

Today, for the first time I am flogging from my Android.  Now I am a typist not really a tester but since we are outside I thought I would give it a try. My confession for the week.....can't really think of anything in particular, except right now I would love to be sitting on the couch, but it is a pretty day and my husband is pruning the roses and we are about to put in a plant he bought for me.  We have been on the hunt for a Carolina Sweet shrub.  I had one in my yard as a child and he searched and brought it home yesterday. 
He is a real sweetie :)
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!

Saturday - Family Fun

Well, it is Saturday.  Another long spring week has come to a close.  This is the first weekend it has been just the two of us.  We left this morning and ventured into the world.  We ate, we shopped and we just rode around and enjoyed the day.  I have such a good time with my husband, doing pretty much ordinary things.  We got home after our trip (yep exciting things like Staples, Grocery and Target) we came home and worked on our pond. (Our pond is in the picture below, although it was not taken today)  My wonderful husband is now cooking 1/2 chickens for our dinner.  It is one of the things he cooks that I just love.  It is one of my favorites.

PHOTO CREDIT: My Husband Please do not lift

Have a happy Saturday!

Thursday - Site of the Week (well now that Blogger is back up!)

I honestly have not had time to go to the grocery store this week much less surf the web for fun things. I think according to google reader, I have 116 unread blog entries and that was after I marked everything as read a few days ago.

I have been spending a lot of time looking at coupon sites lately. I was looking at coupon mom and liked the idea of using free coupons for charity items. So I took the two coupons from this past Sundays paper that are supposed to be free and I am planning to go to the store tomorrow and get these free items and start a box for a shelter program.

Then I started checking other blogs and websites, and I found something interesting.....people are really angry about these extreme couponers. I just switched over to a binder from my little coupon caddy on Mother's Day. I still haven't entered all of my coupons into my coupon program on the ipad, nor have I organized them all. It has been a REALLY busy week. I only clip coupons on things we use. I do not get extreme amounts of items (even though there are six of us) because I do not have anywhere to put it (I mean I could put it in the basement, but then I will forget and what is the point of that......)I do not want my child to have 4000 rolls of toilet paper under his bed, and I have no desire to have a shelf of canned goods in my bedroom. My bedroom has enough clutter in it without adding food.





So I expect to save around 100.00 a month through my watching sales and clipping coupons. I do it while I watch tv. I do not go out of my way to empty the shelf (ok last week gatorade was on sale and I bought 15, but they had tons!). I am glad they have found a way to spend very little money on groceries, but how many papers do they have to buy? How many hours do they take out of their day to do this? Right now this is something I enjoy, if it becomes too much like work then I will find it more trouble than it is worth.





There are two sites that I went to this week that I found interesting....

http://www.couponmom.com/ I visited this site several years ago and decided that the way she did couponing was not for me. I think I might be changing my mind. Not for my family but to use for charity. She has great lists and it seemed a bit confusing to me at first but I downloaded her ebooks and it became a bit clearer. Now I have a section for cut coupons in my binder and full circulars.





The next web site I visited was http://thekrazycouponlady.com/. I ended up on her site because of the charity ideas. She does a great job on her blog showing you pictures of what she does. She was on extreme couponing but I did not see that episode.





Finally, I love facebook, I can catch up in just a few mintues on most of the blogs that I subscribe to in my reader and I get to see what my friends are up to. So I saw a post this morning from Pebbletossers.org for the food drive this weekend. http://www.helpstampouthunger.com/ I will be cleaning out my pantry either tomorrow night or Saturday morning and getting rid of all those things that are still in date but my family won't touch. It will feel good to declutter my pantry while helping others in the process.

Well I hope that this week starts winding down for us, and all of you too!

Tuesday - Gratitude

I have missed my menu plan Monday post because I have not done one this week.  So today is gratitude.  I am grateful that things are shaping up and I am starting to feel less stress.  School will be out in a matter of weeks and I will be spending a lot of time working from home so I can supervise the kids.  It can be stressful but we are going to try and make plans.

  I have assigned each child a month that they will be in charge of selecting the family community service project.  We will be starting this in June.  Wish us luck!

It is important to teach our children about giving back, they never know when they might be in the position of being the recipient of some else's kindness.

Sunday Confessional

It is Mother's Day.  I have been very lax lately about writing in my blog.  Life has gotten really busy and I have to slow down and keep up with the goals I set for myself earlier this year.  I decided that today I am going to do the thing that I have been doing for a while.  My confession..... I have been very lazy.

I sit and spend lots of time planning menus.  And then unfortunately I have not been very good at following through on some goals I set out for myself this year.  This blog, being one of them. 

I am going to TRY to spend this week focusing on follow through.  At work, and at home.  Since it is Mother's Day, I am just writing a short note.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there. 

Friday - Taking Care of Me (sort of)

It has been a weird couple of weeks for our household. Spring break, getting back into the swing of things, state testing for all the kiddos and just a very hectic schedule at work. 

About two weeks ago I got a new phone.  An android.  Now I have been a fan of google for a long time.  I use google apps, google health, love their new recipe search and probably a million other things (like blogger...lol).  So I have been trying to figure out what works best for me, apps on my ipad or apps on my android.  Now I have an OLD ipad (yes I got it in September and it is already outdated) and it does not have a camera.  Most of the grocery list programs have those new scanners which I love and hate.  Even with my phone it is near impossible to get it to scan something.  I do not have 20 minutes to put mac and cheese into my phone.  Still all in all it is a nice feature.  I have an app on my ipad that I love for my coupons, but lets face it, the ipad is big and sometimes it is nice to carry it on your hip.  So I have downloaded every free list and grocery program that I have come across so far for my andriod.

So, this weekend is mother's day.  I am going to organize my coupons, write on my blog and relax.  Just take care of myself a little.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Monday - Menu Plan Monday

I thought I would try a new way to post my menu.  When I try to post it from the program I use plantoeat.com it gives me all kinds of errors.  Please let me know how you like this.  You should be able to get to the links from this calendar.