Family Matters

So, things are still hectic around here, ergo my blogging schedule has been hit or miss.
Last Saturday, we were three hours from home for Lily's OM tournament. Unfortunately, her team did not win in their category, and will not be going on to the World Finals in Iowa.
The other team from her school took first place and will be going on to compete again next month. We wish them the best of luck and are pulling for them!

In other news, my dad has just spent the last eleven days in the hospital, fighting off pneumonia. Naturally, while he was in there, they found lots of other things going on with him. He had an accident in 1992, and has been in a wheelchair for the last ten years or so. When he fell, he suffered nerve damage that has been gradually degenerating over time.
This past February, he fell and it looks like he tore his left rotator cuff. That was basically the one straw too many, and was what initially sent him to the ER last week in the first place. Today, he was released from the hospital and admitted to a long-term physical rehab center. They are going to help him lose weight, try to get his diabetes under control, and work on that shoulder every day.

We are really optimistic that this intensive physical therapy is going to benefit him, but it's going to take time - like, three months or so. Because my mother doesn't drive, I am going to be spending a lot of time on the highway. (We live about fifty miles from my parents' house.)

In an effort to try to adjust schedules and exert a bit of control over this new (albeit temporary) lifestyle, I have spent today doing a complete overhaul on the menu board. With the weather warming up, it was time to swap out recipes anyway, and tomorrow is grocery day, so it seemed like the right time to do it. For the foreseeable future, all of our meals are going to be thrown in the crock pot before I leave to be ready by dinner, or it will be items I can throw in the pressure cooker and have done in minutes. (I <3 my pressure cooker. It is my kitchen bff.) I am also making sure that these are recipes I can mix up, put in a zipper bag and freeze. No muss, no fuss, just a quick semi-defrost in the microwave, drop it in the crock pot and go about my business.

I am not sure that the blogsphere needs another "crapload of crockpot meals" post, but if anybody really wants to know what I chose, I suppose I can post it. Since the recipes are Pinterest finds from all over the internet, I might try to review them as we try them out. Time permitting, of course. 

Meal Planning 101

As a SAHM, meal prep is one of the most important things I do around the house. A little over 18 months ago, I worked out a way to organize my meal planning and grocery shopping, and it's been working out great. Now, if only I could get the rest of my life that organized!
Here's how I do my meal planning, one month at a time:

First, I got a magnetic, combination dry erase/cork board and used it to create a perpetual calendar.
You could pick one of these up at any office store, such as Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, etc. If it's Back-to-School time, you can also probably find them at Walmart or Target.
I used a yard stick and permanent markers in the colors of my kitchen to mark out a grid on the dry erase portion of the board.

Initially, I intended to write in meal choices with the dry erase marker, but I quickly found that didn't work as well as I had hoped. Dry erase marker ink contains alcohol, so it ended up ruining my permanent marker lines. Since the board was magnetic, I was able to print out a bunch of meal cards that are held onto the board via magnets. The cards are standard business card size (2"x3") that I typeset and printed using Microsoft Publisher. I printed mine out on standard 8.5"x11" white cardstock and cut them out by hand, but pre-perforated business card stock would make that even easier.

I try to keep the meal choices healthy, with familiar kid-friendly choices, as well as items to keep the adults interested. I switch up my meal choices four to six times a year for variety - usually on a seasonal basis. Fall and winter tend to be made up of casseroles and soups or stews, while spring and summer have lots of salads, and dishes that can be made in a skillet or the crockpot. Anything to avoid turning on the oven in southern summers! I also make sure to always include cards for when we might be "Out of Town" and for "Leftovers" as well as a couple of  "Try Something New" for any recipes I might be auditioning.
As for finding meal ideas to include, Tastespotting.com is my go-to site for new recipes. I also have a meal planning board on Pinterest for things that look interesting.

For the magnets, I got 1/2" round, self-adhesive magnets and a bag of assorted 3/4" buttons from the craft store. I attached the buttons to the magnets, but I didn't have enough red and blue buttons to match my kitchen, so I painted them with glitter nail polish to cover the wrong colors and to add a little pizzazz. ;-)

The numbers for the dates on my perpetual calendar are also magnetic. I used 1/4" adhesive magnet strips and attached them to numbers I printed out, then I cut the numbers apart into 1/4" squares. Having the numbers on magnets makes them easy to move around each month. I did the same thing for each of the month headings and days of the week, using inch wide magnetic tape and card stock. The months live on the side of the fridge when not in use.

To store the menu cards, I made small library card pockets out of printed cardstock. I drew my template freehand, but you can find them all over the internet with a quick google search. Standard card pockets will most likely be too big, so I would recommend reducing them to 80% or so.
I attached the card pockets to the unused cork section of the board with hot glue and they have held up really well for over a year and a half. The pockets are labeled behind the cards - chicken dishes, pork dishes, beef dishes, various (for meals that can be made with any meat), and vegetarian/fish for Meatless Mondays.

The cards go up on the board like so, and each week on Tuesday, I check the board and make my grocery list for Wednesday's shopping trip. Admittedly, the button magnets partially block what is on the cards. I could change the magnets, or rework the cards to avoid this, but to be honest, it doesn't bother me that much.
For the first six months or so, I used a pre-printed grocery list every week. It had every ingredient I might possibly need for every meal on the board, organized by the layout of the store. Each week instead of writing a list, I would just highlight what I needed on the pre-printed list. It worked out okay, until I swapped out the meals and had to completely rework the list. I also found that there were often things I needed that had not been put on the list in the first place.
Now, I just write that mess on notebook paper every Tuesday and I am good to go. ;-)
(I still organize my list by the layout of the store though. It just makes so much more sense than running back and forth because you forgot something!)

Please feel free to hit me up with meal planning questions you might have - I love to cook and share ideas!

The coaching continues

Back on March 1st our two teams for Odyssey of the Mind competed at the regional tournament.
Both of our teams placed at regionals and are now going on to the state competition in Charlotte, NC on April 5.
In an effort to get the kids ready to face tougher competition, we have been practicing with them 6 days a week. (I initially typed 67 days a week, but it only feels that way.)
I'm trying to do better about making regular blog entries, but honestly I haven't had anything interesting to talk about beyond OM - and let's face it, that's only interesting to me.

So if you are reading this, bear with me. I'm going to try to get back on track, I promise. I can't quit you, baby. Etc, etc.

Life as we know it

I have once more gotten slack with my blogging, and for that I apologize. My elder daughter is on her school's team for Odyssey of the Mind, so we have all been busily preparing for that. The competition is this weekend, and the kids are pretty excited. I have been acting as one of the parent coaches, and as we approach competition day, our whole family has been eating, sleeping and breathing OM.
We are hoping that the kids will be selected to go on to the next round of competition in Charlotte in April. If you would like to donate toward that trip, you can do so here, at our Go Fund Me page.
With any luck, we will be able to return to (what passes for) normal around here next week!

Scheduled Meandering and the OCD Traveler

     True facts, ladies and gentlemen - I am a pain in the ass to travel with.
     When I travel, I strive to be hyper organized and I tend to get really stressy and uptight when things don't go my way. Alternatively, my husband's vacation mindset tends to be "Hey, that looks interesting, let's go that way!"
     These drastically opposing vacation styles do not mesh well, trust me. Thankfully, in the almost fifteen years we have been married, we have managed to find a happy medium. I am allowed to make a flexible schedule, and he is allowed a certain amount of "free exploration".
     Naturally, when we travel by plane or train, I have us scheduled down to the minute. About a year after we were married, we won a trip to LA and nearly missed our flight because my husband doesn't understand the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey screwed up way that time works inside an airport. He spent years living that one down. 
     But, when we are on a family road trip with no time constraints, I am content to let him take over and we go where the day takes us. At least as long as we are in transit - once we arrive, the Schedule Monster tries to take over. "If we want to take the kids to this show/activity/event at X time, we need to leave the hotel by Y o'clock. We can stop at Z on the way, but we can only stay for 14 and a half minutes, any longer than that and we'll miss the beginning of show/activity/event. You know what? Let's just go straight to show/activity/event and we'll do the rest after."  And, heaven forbid something should cause us to end up being late for show/activity/event anyway, because then I am irate for the next three hours. Yay, OCD!
     I am currently sitting down to plan our trip for Spring Break. We were originally planning to go to Williamsburg, VA, but due to this winter's snowpocalypse, the husband lost three days of vacation time, and it looks like the children may lose three days of theirs as well. So we've cancelled Williamsburg in favor spending a three day weekend exploring some of what our home state has to offer. Inspired by Daughter The Elder and her interest in all places spooky, we're going to check out as many of the haunted, weird and creepy places we can find in NC.
     And I get to plan the itinerary! It's borderline perverse how happy this makes me.