Menu Planning: Week of 9/23

This week's menu is going to be:

Monday 9/23
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: applesauce
D: chicken enchiladas, rice, refried beans

Tuesday 9/24
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: yogurt and fruit
D:pizza casserole (in the crockpot), fruit

Wednesday 9/25
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: cookies and milk
D: brunch for dinner, fruit

Thursday 9/26
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: jello
D: chicken nuggets, french fries, fruit

Friday 9/27
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: popcorn
D: pizza

Saturday 9/28
B: cold cereal, fruit
L: hoagie sandwiches
S: popcorn
D: chili with cinnamon rolls

Sunday 9/15
B/L: Brunch food - waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, fruit
S: at Grandma and Grandpa's
D: at Grandma and Grandpa's / leftovers

Menu Planning: Week of 9/16

This week's menu is going to be:

Monday 9/16
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: applesauce
D: sausage, egg and cheese casserole, fruit

Tuesday 9/17
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: yogurt and fruit
D: reuben sandwiches, fruit

Wednesday 9/18
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: cookies and milk
D: runza casserole, fruit

Thursday 9/19
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: jello
D: slow-cooker beef stew, fruit

Friday 9/20
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: popcorn
D: pizza

Saturday 9/21
B: cold cereal, fruit
L: ramen noodles (I have to include this for at least one meal a month for Oralee who LOVES the stuff)
S: popcorn
D: ham and bean soup

Sunday 9/22
B/L: Brunch food - waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, fruit
S: at Grandma and Grandpa's
D: at Grandma and Grandpa's / Hubby and I date night

Menu Planning: Week of 9/9

This week's menu is going to be:

Monday 9/9
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: applesauce
D: tacos, beans and rice

Tuesday 9/10
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: yogurt and fruit
D: lasagna, green beans, fruit

Wednesday 9/11
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: cookies and milk
D: shepherd's pie, fruit

Thursday 9/12
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: jello
D: beef noodle casserole, peas, fruit

Friday 9/13
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers
S: popcorn
D: pizza

Saturday 9/14
B: cold cereal, fruit
L: grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup
S: popcorn
D: chicken noodle soup

Sunday 9/15
B/L: Brunch food - waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, fruit
S: at Grandma and Grandpa's
D: at Grandma and Grandpa's / leftovers

Payroll...almost complete

Hubby had the day off today and asked me if I would take the kids to school for him. He usually does both sets of school drop offs in the morning and quite often, he does the school pick ups in the afternoon as well. But today, I took the kids to school. Then, I came home and went back to bed. I planned to miss my first class of the day at 11:00am because I turned in the assignment that was due for today over a week ago and it was just a work day in the classroom.

My friend, Melma, often joins me out at the college after that first class, so I called and left her a message, asking her to swing by my house on her way out to the college around noon. Then I fell back to sleep.

About an hour later (and two hours before I was expecting Melma to come over) Hubby came into the bedroom to tell me that Melma was here. I grumbled about getting up and may have said something about people actually listening to their messages yada yada. Well, after I got out to the living room and told Melma that I had left her a message about what time to come over, she informed me that she didn't yet know how to check her voicemail on her new phone. She just switched from an iphone to an android last week. So I showed her how to and she then got my message.

While she was here, I did the prep work for tonight's dinner and got it into the crockpot and divided up a 10lb. roll of ground beef that I got for a great price on sale (93/7 for 2.98/lb). After I was done with that, we left for the college, grabbing food on our way.

We spent the next nearly eight hours working on our end-of-the-quarter payroll project. I love this project. I had messed up on one part so I ended up spending a bunch of time trying to make all of the changes necessary for that one. I still ended up missing a few of the changes. But I did get to the point where I am ready to just work on the year-end forms for this project. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

However, I really really love doing this. It is such a blast! Like ridiculously fun for me. The girl who sits in front of us, Shy, doesn't seem as enthused with the whole project as I am though. Poor dear. :) She and I had a great discussion about meals and menu planning. She actually plans her menus TWO months a time. I am in awe. I struggle at times to just do a month at a time. She is newly engaged and yeah, she just has the domestic thing down! I think she may come over sometime to work on payroll with Melma and I. Or maybe we could meet somewhere else, since my house is quite often, rather insane. Particularly in the evening.

I am feeling more and more confident about my college major. I love doing accounting work!

Shy asked me today what I was going to do when I am done with my major, if I was going to go to work full-time. Probably because we were also talking about Paytin at that point. And I really don't know. I mean, I guess that is the reason that I am going to school - to be able to get a solid career. But at the same time, I only want to work while the kids are in school. Or as close as possible to that time frame. I'll have to look into the job options more as I get closer to finishing my schooling - which should be sometime in the middle of next year.

I just cannot wait until next quarter! I only have one in-person class and it is two nights a week from 7:30-9:30. It will allow me to be home during the day to take care of Paytin, in the afternoons to get the kids from school, oversee homework and chores, make and clean up dinner and then get the kids TO their evening activities. Someone else (probably Hubby) will have to be in charge of getting them home from said activities, but I know he can do it just fine. Then he will have them all in bed and hopefully asleep by the time I get home around ten at night. If there is one thing that he is really motivated to do when it comes to the house/kids, it is to get them to bed. So, it really does seem like the perfect situation!

But it has been a long day. A very long day. And I am beat. The kitchen still needs cleaning, the laundry still needs folding and hanging and putting away. I am not sure that I'm going to be the one to make it happen though. At least, not tonight. I'm ready for bedtime!

Paytin

Hubby and I are not having any more children. He made that decision just a few months after I had Jeriah. It's been a solid five and a half years since he has had his vasectomy, so it comes at no surprise to him or anyone else who knows us, just how excited I get every time I get to watch little Paytin.

As of today, she is now 43 days old and just a doll. I could just hold her for hours! I so badly miss this newborn baby stage. Of course, that being said, she is a much easier baby than any of mine were. With Cephas, I was high-strung and very sick shortly after he was born. With Jeriah, he had torticollis and I had an emergency appendectomy a month after he was born. He also had really bad GERD but it took us months to determine that is what his issue was. With Oralee, she was a pretty easy baby but Hubby and I were going through some major marital issues and I was just EXHAUSTED! With Jeriah, it was good but he had MSPI and was intolerant to nearly everything under the sun and it took up so much time and energy trying to figure out all that was going on with him. Everything I ate made him cry. It was so hard.

Comparatively speaking, Paytin is a breeze. She burps and then pukes everything up if you don't burp her after each and every ounce of formula that she eats. She has even settled in to a regular schedule here. She arrives at nine o'clock and is awake and alert. She usually needs one or two diaper changes by ten o'clock, then she'll doze for about half an hour, decide she is hungry, wake up and eat a bottle, then she'll get a new diaper and fall back asleep for real between eleven and eleven-thirty. Most of the time, she'll sleep through until one or two. Her dad picks her up just after two, so I almost feel bad for charging him for babysitting, but I still do. It's not much money, but it does help with small extra things. I am even able to get stuff around the house or homework done. My friend, Melma, comes over around twelve-thirty and we do homework while Paytin sleeps. It's such a perfect scenario!

I seriously love my baby snuggles time! I know that there are no more babies in the picture for Hubby and I, but sometimes it really makes me sad. Especially when at least ten of our friends have had babies just this summer alone! Watching Paytin is great though. I get my "baby fix" without actually having to have a baby and all that goes with it.

Only another fifteen years until Cephas is allowed to have children. He'll be almost twenty-eight. I think that's a good age for him to have kids. Probably will happen before that, when he is like twenty-three or twenty-four, but still that's only ten years away. I am going to be the grandma who loves to have her grandkids/grandbabies over!

Okay, that got really weird. Apparently, stream of conscious typing gets a little bit weird when I'm tired. It's 1:30 in the morning, but I'm going to set this to post around 8:30 in the morning instead. For now, though, I hope you are having as much fun today as I am going to have!

Labor Day

Today was an odd kind of day. I had planned to get up and spend much of the day doing homework, but ended up sleeping in. I have had hay fever this past week like nobody's business and it has been turning my world upside down.

I ended up staying in bed until around ten o'clock this morning, then I got up and started working on some homework. Truthfully, with all that has happened in our house in the last month and some medical issues I have been dealing with, I think I may end up failing this class if I am not able to drop it. I am going to talk to the instructor tomorrow about it and ask if I can drop it. I am guessing that I will need to have her permission to do so, since it is so late in the quarter. I just need to figure out what it is that I need to do for this class. I did get a full week's worth of work done. Problem is that I need to get four more week's worth done before Wednesday to get caught up. I don't think that is going to happen, but I'm going to try before I make my decision.

Hubby and I went down to get the kids from his parents around three in the afternoon. Oralee has learned how to ride her bike without training wheels finally. She's seven and has been terrified of riding without training wheels. We were certain that Jeriah was going to ride without them first. But Grandma said that Oralee was watching Angel tootle (yes, that's the word she used) around on the bike without needing the extra support and Oralee decided that if Angel (who is two years younger than her) could do it so easily, then she could too. She was determined to do it and now she can!

This is Oralee with the bike we bought her for her sixth birthday. We will be taking the training wheels off and she'll be ready to go!

Jeriah is the last one to learn how to ride a bike unsupported. If he is willing to ride on the tandem bike attachment, family bike rides are now an option. They just haven't been for a little bit now because the Jeriah and Oralee weigh too much together to be pulled in the bike trailer - not to mention, that they are cramped as can be in there!

When we got home, we had the kids do their chores and Hubby made supper while I worked on our month's menu and this week's grocery list. After dinner, I was hit HARD with a migraine. The kind of migraine where you don't even want to move. Thankfully, the kids are pretty much able to get themselves ready for bed and with Hubby's encouragement, they did what they were supposed to do.

Once all five of the kids were in bed and my migraine had subsided enough for me to function, I left for the grocery store. I picked up some fast food and a shake for Hubby on the way home but had to have Hubby bring all of the groceries in because I was having this horrible post-migraine shakey pukey feeling that is incredibly uncomfortable and scary to me.

He brought the groceries in and put the cold stuff away. The non-cold items are still sitting around in bags but I'll get to them first thing tomorrow morning. Well, maybe not first thing, but early on in the morning.

I have Paytin tomorrow morning so I need to make sure that the living room and den areas are really neat and tidy first. It just makes me feel better if those two rooms are at least tidy before her dad drops her off. Once she is here and napping, then I can get to work on the kitchen and putting the groceries away and folding the laundry and all that jazz.

Overall though, it's been a pretty decent day. I got a lot of stuff done today, despite feeling like I hadn't accomplished really anything at all.

Menu Planning: Week of 9/2

This week's menu got off to a late start, due to a busy weekend. But better late than never, right?

The kids were at Grandma and Grandpa's house today for breakfast and lunch so that just left dinner at home for us for today. I hadn't gone grocery shopping yet, so we went with staples that we had already on hand. (I have since gone grocery shopping for all but the chicken I need for tomorrow's meal.)

Monday 9/2
B: at Grandma and Grandpa's house
L: at Grandma and Grandpa's house
S: applesauce
D: spaghetti

Tuesday 9/3
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / egg salad sandwich, fruit
S: fruit and yogurt
D: chicken cordon bleu (in the crockpot), mixed veggies and fruit

Wednesday 9/4
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers, fruit
S: PB toast
D: beef stroganoff (in the crockpot), egg noodles, fruit

Thursday 9/5
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers, fruit
S: applesauce
D: tuna noodle casserole, peas, fruit

Friday 9/6
B: at school / cold cereal, fruit
L: at school / leftovers, fruit
S: popcorn
D: pizza

Saturday 9/7
B: cold cereal, fruit
L: macaroni and cheese with tuna, mixed veggies, fruit
S: popcorn
D: chili with cinnamon rolls

Sunday 9/8
B/L: Brunch food - waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage
S: at Grandma and Grandpa's house
D: at Grandma and Grandpa's house (Hubby and I date night)

I will add in recipes later on.