Lunchbox Roundup!!

As some of you may know, my newest project is starting a Healthy Cold Lunch Club at my kids school. Right now we have 15 kids signed up for this project and this is how it works:

Each family takes one day of the week and makes lunch for their child, and 4 other children. Then, the rest of the week, someone else is making lunch for their child. Since I have three kids in the club, I am in charge of making 15 lunches for Thursdays. While this might sound like a lot when you say it for the first time, I have just had to change my way of thinking. I normally make 15 lunches each week anyways, now I make them all at once. Another plus from this is that I can buy food in bulk, knowing that I will use it all up before is spoils (and my kids don't have to eat the SAME fruit salad 5 days in a row). I am looking forward to seeing what kinds of things the other families send for lunch (and seeing if my kids like them). I think they will get a wider variety of items, and hopefully, they will find new foods that they like.

So, as I was planning out what I was going to make for my turn, I found some great websites that I thought I would share with everyone else.

I love this website  because they show pictures of all kinds of delicious lunches. Just browsing through the photos gave me some great ideas and when you click on a picture, it tells you exactly what the lunch items are.

This is another one of my favorite blogs  
This mom has a challenge (along with menus) to get you to feed your family "Real Food" for 100 days. This website was a great resource when I was working on getting my family into a healthier way of eating. The school lunch roundup (see link above) has some great ideas!!

This site has some more great ideas (and some really cute Bento-style lunch boxes). They also divide the lunch ideas up by season-which is nice if you are trying to use fruits and vegetables right for a certain time of year.




So-to go along with these great lunch ideas-I wanted to find some cute, printable lunchbox notes that I could throw in my lunches. Here are some great sites:

 Great for the boys

Super Cute Hand Written Notes 

8 sheets of printables 5 Sheets of printables

 Jokes  

A Few Organization Tips for School

So one of my first posts was about how we save time (and avoid arguments in the morning)...my kids sleep in their clothes during their school year. I'm not going to go into all that...but if you struggle with getting your kids ready in the morning (and they don't sweat profusely at night), try it once and see what you think.

Here are a few other things that we do at our house to save time and sanity:

1. Every Sunday, I fill a sweater holder with school clothes for the week. This sweater holder is kept in the front closet on the main floor of our house. It has 5 pockets (one for each day of the week), and I place a pile of outfits in each slot (one outfit for each kid...including tights, underwear, matching hair clips, etc). This saves a lot of rushing around in our house at night. Instead of digging through their dressers or baskets of clean clothes, I just go to the closet and grab the pile of clothes for the next day. They actually make an organizer just for this purpose...but I just stick with the cheap version.

2. We have a white board with the days of the week on it to organize our schedule. This is mostly for my husband (even though I put our schedule on our phones through Google Calendar...he doesn't look at it). Now that my kids are older, they sometimes look at it too. Once again, on Sunday night, I sit down and write down all the activities for the week on this board. I include the days I work and the days I'm off, Joe's hours, any special days at school (dress down day, Katie's day to take snack), and after-school and evening activities. This is much easier then trying to read each school calendar every day. With once quick glance, I can see just what I need to do to get ready for the next day. 

3. I have a whiteboard by the front door for any important messages for that day. Since Joe and I work most mornings, my mom or Joe's mom end up taking the kids to school many days a week. This is the perfect place to write down any special messages for them because they see it as they walk about the door (ie: don't forget Katie's snack in the fridge, please make sure the boys are wearing their scout shirts, etc). We have also taken to writing little inspiration quotes on it (our favorite bible verse...or I love you Mom-from one of my kids).

4. Each child has their own hook by the front door for their backpack, coat, hat, etc. When they get home from school, it is their job to hang their stuff up by the front door so they can find it in the morning. Once again, this makes it much easier for my mom or mother-in-law to get them out the door in the morning. I like these hangers from Target because they have several hooks for each kid.

5. We have a drawer of school supplies ready for after school homework time. In this drawer are markers, glue sticks, crayons, colored pencils, sharpened pencils, pens, loose leaf paper, etc. Anything the kids might need as they sit at the dining room table while doing homework. I also keep a checkbook in this drawer so I can write out checks for field trips, school milk, etc... and put these things directly in their backpacks as we are going through their folders. The longer I wait to do these things, the less likely I will remember to do them!!

6. All important schedules and papers are hung on the refrigerator using our paint stick/clothespin holders. Each school has it's own paint stick and this makes it really easy to find the papers I am looking for. These are very easy to make. We just painted a free paint stick we got from Home Depot. Then we super-glued clothespins to the front and several strong magnets to the back. 

7. Each child has their own Rubbermaid tote in the basement for keepsakes. As we are sorting out the items in their backpack at the end of the day, I make a pile of the artwork or papers I want to keep for them. Then I set them by the basement steps. The next time I go into the basement, I throw these papers into their bin. Once a year I go through their bin to throw away anything they don't really need to keep (Katie often has a wide variety of "artwork" that she wants  to keep...including random paperclips or scraps of paper). When they eventually move out-they will take this bin with them and can do with it as they want. 

8. I put each of my kids spelling lists into my phone at the beginning of the week. There are many moments throughout the week when we are sitting around waiting for things (waiting for swim lessons, waiting for the gate at school to open). Instead of carrying around three spelling lists in paper form, I take a picture with my phone of each list when it comes home and then I have it with me at all times. I can pull them out anytime (sometimes I have them quiz each other in the car on the way to or from school), and we get more practice this way then if we simply practice at home during homework time. 

Only 16 More Days Until School Starts (or...will I go completely insane before August 29th??!!)

I LOVE my children! Anyone who knows me will know that this is true. Yet any mother will also tell you that August is the LONGEST month of the year. The kids have been out of school for 2 months. We have made the rounds in town, repeatedly visiting the library, pool, beach, chuck e cheese, Kids Coulee, the bowling alley, the movie theater, etc, etc.... We have played baseball, golf, Frisbee golf, gone fishing, practiced archery, etc, etc... I am so tired...tired of making lunch for them every day, tired of telling them "No...you can't play Wii all day", tired of listening to whining (sometimes I just go outside and sit on my front steps so my ears can have a rest).

My husband doesn't understand this because he gets to leave the house for 12 hours EVERY DAY!! Even on the days that I work (6-10am), I often get home and my kids are still asleep. That means I have to make sure they get dressed, eat breakfast, pick up,  eat lunch, play nicely together, don't fry their brains out on screens of every kind, and make dinner (all before he gets home). I recently read a hilarious story that goes along with this picture

A man came home from work and found his three children outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard.The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.

Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.  

He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls.

As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?' She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?' 'Yes,' was his incredulous reply. She answered, 'Well, today I didn't do it.'

I would totally love to do this someday...except that I have tried that approach...and it DOESN'T work. My husband doesn't care if the house is dirty. He will eat off a dirty plate if there are no clean ones in the dishwasher. I'm pretty sure he would wear the same black pants to work every day for two weeks if I didn't wash them (don't get me wrong...he helps a lot around the house...but we have a different idea of what a "clean" house looks like). Sometimes I leave little "tests" around the house for him (just to entertain myself...I know that he will fail them...after 11 years of marriage I know that I can't change him). I once left a cup of chocolate milk (half full from one of the kids) on the landing to our steps for 8 days. EIGHT DAYS!! He had to walk by that cup EVERY DAY at least FOUR times. Did it ever occur to him to pick it up and take it downstairs??!! Of course not. It reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond. I'm sure you have all had similar stand-offs in your house.

So, as this summer winds down, I am trying to enjoy the time I have with my kids. I am organizing their clothes, buying school supplies and school shoes, and sometimes...I am sitting on my front step with a nice, cold beer at 3:00 in the afternoon!!