Another weeks worth of meals

Since some of you expressed interest in seeing what a "regular" weeks worth of meals is in our house, I went ahead and took pictures of this past week, a Very normal week for us.

I apologize for the pictures, I'm not a food photographer by any stretch of the imagination.  So, here we go...

  Last Wednesday we had sausage egg burritos and water.  Included in the burritos were sausage, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers, cheese, and sour cream for those who like it.  I also like to have lettuce but my lettuce plants died and I didn't have any on hand.  I used some sausage that was given to us but we didn't really like.  This was my way of using it up, it masks the taste quite well.

The kids like this meal, although the younger ones don't eat the tortillas, just the egg mix.

Thursday's meal was taco salad, cantaloupe, and water.  The tortilla chips are actually tostada shells crushed up, there wasn't enough left for another meal of tostada's so rather than throw them away we used them for this meal.

Friday was pizza, as always.  I forgot to take a picture of the pizza's but here's a picture of the leftover pieces.  (Yes, only 2 pieces were left from 2 extra large pizza's!  Our kids eat a LOT.)

Saturday was Smorgasbord Day!  In other words, leftovers!  Our leftovers included biscuits, taco salad, pizza, green beans, mac n' cheese, peaches, bananas, pasta salad and sausage egg burritos.  We ate almost all of this up except for the taco salad which was slimy.  We put that in a container to give to my mom to feed to her dogs, which is what we do with all our leftovers that are inedible (not much).

Sunday was Tea Time!  We had lemon muffins, tomato slices, peach slices, ants on a log (celery, peanut butter and raisins), and cookies.  Yum!  This is my favorite meal of the week!

Monday I tried a new recipe, Taco Pasta Salad.  It was not a hit.  Oh well.  I served watermelon with it and we finished up the last of the cookies from the tea yesterday.

Okay, so this meal looks a bit weird.  It is baked potatoes topped with taco meat, cheese, and sour cream.  Served with corn.  I had plans to also serve tomatoes and a fruit salad with this but had some discipline issues to work through right as I was making dinner soooo, this is what it ended up being.

Well, there you have it.  This is a normal week for us.  You might have noticed that we don't serve meat plain hardly ever, it's ususally a casserole of some sort.  I try to serve fruit and vegies with every meal, not always succesfully.  We drink water with nearly every meal.

If you missed my post on a different kind of weeks worth of meals, you can find it here.

Balloon Classic 2011!

To celebrate Labor Day we got up early (5:15) and headed over to see the annual Balloon Classic!  It was 6:45 by the time we got everyone ready to go and actually got to the park but we were still in time to see the balloons being filled and watch all of them go up!  The weather was perfect for it, hardly a breeze at all.  The kids had so much fun!

Our Anniversary!

This past week was our 8th anniversary!  To celebrate we had my parents watch the kids for the weekend while we spent some time together alone.  It was so nice!

The first day we spent our time just doing errands and generally enjoying our time together.  On Saturday we drove up to Monument to visit a dollhouse store, fun!  I was able to get a few mini's for my dollhouse too.  :-)

On Saturday night we went to Red Robin for dinner, Yum!

Then we headed over to our hotel for the night.  We stayed in a hotel at the north end of the springs.  Because we almost never get up to that part of town it felt like we were in another city!  :-)  We had so much fun at the hotel, they had a waterslide that we spent a lot of time on!  There was also a free breakfast, always so nice!

The dollhouse store was also a toy store.  Mark won this puzzle by completing a similar one at the store in under 5 minutes!

We stopped at Goodwill on our way to the hotel and picked up this 3D puzzle.  After the pool closed at 10 we came up to our room and worked on it till 2 in the morning to get it done!

We had such a wonderful time celebrating our anniversary!  We picked up the kids Sunday afternoon and it was great to get back into the swing of normal life.  I'm already looking forward to our anniversary trip next year!  :-) 

State Fair!

On Monday we headed down to the State Fair for the day!  We got there around 10 a.m. and didn't get home till after 1a.m.!  The kids had a blast!

We met Mark's brother and his family at the fair and spent the day together.  The kids always have so much fun with their cousins.  :-)

The first item of the day was watching the "hog races".  Those pigs were fast!  Here, the kids are waiting for the show to start.

Next up was all the animals and 4-H exhibits.  The kids always have fun looking at all the farm animals!  And the bean sandbox can't be beat!

While walking around we stopped to get this picture of the kids.  A few kids are missing, Elijah didn't want his picture taken, he was too busy exploring the cab of this monster tractor.  And Josiah, poor kid, had somehow been left behind at our last building.  So, we had to go back and get him.  He was still within sight of us so it's not as bad as it sounds.  :-)

And finally, the rest of the day was spent doing the carnival rides!  Fun, Fun, Fun!

By the end of the day everyone was exhausted.  Micah and Jeremiah crashed in the stroller by 9 p.m.  And the rest of the kids were asleep shortly after we loaded up and left.  We all slept in the next day and the kids are already asking about when they will get to go again! 

Weekend Fun!

What's going on here?  Are we moving?  Sorting through stuff?  Nope, going camping!

We were all sick last week but that didn't stop us from going on our first family camping trip ever!  The kids all had a wonderful time and didn't even mind the cold night too much!  We stayed for one night but next time we might try for a longer stay.  :-)

A weeks worth of meals

I thought some of you out there might be interested in knowing how I cook for our family. 

And I didn't have anything better to post about, but we don't need to mention that...

Anyway...

First off, a bit of background info. 
1.)  I have a Very limited grocery budget, $340.00 for the month for our family of 7.  This is all our family can afford right now.  However, thanks to the wonderful training from my mom when I was growing up, I'm able to make this work. 

2.)  We are not on any government assistance at all.  We have received benefits from WIC in the past, but I'm not comfortable with the amount of influence they want to have in our life and for that reason we have stopped receiving it.  But, I do occasionally visit a local food panty when a month is really tight.

3.)  Due to our budget restrictions, I don't buy organic, or even "all natural" unless those things come up on sale for a GREAT price.  I have had to come to grips with the fact that it is more important for my family to have enough to eat over not enough but organic.  Please understand that I am not saying that I have a problem with organic anything, it is simply not an option for us at this time.

All that said, here are the pictures of our weeks worth of meals.

Wednesday :  We decided to use some of the coupons that the kids earned from the summer reading program to go out for dinner.  There was only one problem with our plan, the restaurant that we chose to go to was no longer accepting the coupons even though they weren't expired!  "Note to self, call to confirm restaurant is accepting coupons before going!"  Our local Del Taco was having a special, 29 cent taco's, so we went there for dinner.  We don't normally go out to dinner so this was a GREAT treat!

Thursday:  Spaghetti, fruit salad (made with all the bits and pieces leftover from other meals), bread and butter, and a green salad.  And water to drink.  We drink water with almost all our meals.  No dessert, we are trying to cut back on the sweets.

Friday:  Pizza.  I didn't get a picture of this but you're not missing anything.  I didn't get to make my normal homemade pizza because we had company stop by right as I was getting ready to start the dough and by the time they left it was too late to make homemade pizza.  Thank goodness for Little Caesars $5 pizza!

Saturday:  I usually do a "smorgasbord" meal on Saturday, aka: leftovers!  This is a great way to make sure all the little odds and ends in the fridge get eaten up!  Also forgot to get a picture of this.  Obviously I'm not the best at planning out my blog posts!

Sunday:  On Sunday evenings we always have tea.  So, menu: tea, crackers, tomato slices, cucumber slices, and pizza bites.  Sometimes I will make scones but this was not one of those times.

Monday:  Cheese tortellini with spaghetti sauce, green salad, cantaloupe.  I'm sure you're seeing a pattern here...  We use up what we have on hand, it's one of the great secrets to making a budget work!

Tuesday:  A real winner, hot dogs and watermelon!  I spent most of the day shopping and by the time we got home at 6:15 I just wanted to get something on the table and get it over with.  Yet again, forgot to get a picture.

On second thought maybe I shouldn't post this after all.  It was quite an atypical week, I forgot to take pictures, I want to impress you all with how well we eat, etc., but... well, I guess I'll post this anyways.  :-)  

Hope you all enjoyed this little peak into our life, if you have any questions about anything feel free to leave a comment and I will try to get back with you!  :-)

Our Week in Pictures

We had a nice week, laid back and easy.  It wasn't quite as hot so it was much nicer for me.  I get awful headaches in the heat that make it hard to function.  We bought an air conditioner for the living room and that helps a lot.  :-)  Even though it was cooler the kids still had fun playing in the water.  Elijah figured out how to fill up water balloons and the kids spent many hours filling and throwing them this week.  Here, Elijah is watering my flowers in between balloons.

No, Josiah is not taller than Emmaline!  He is standing on the back step.  :-)

"These look like fun...!"

Even Micah got in on the action!

We celebrated my brothers birthday this week at my mom's house.  The whole family was together, even my sister was able to come!

My sister and her husband, such a cute couple!

And some pics of my brother opening his gifts.  Still haven't gotten the hang of night time shots, so sorry for the bad pics. :-(