Happy 4th of July, everybody! I hope today is a great one for you! We are ending our first full year living in South Florida today and it's been interesting to say the least.
The boys and I have all made some great friends in our homeschool community, including the family that lives in our neighborhood currently. We've almost finished up our first year of school - just 8 more weeks, as we finish our history and math curriculum up. Since it took us so long to find an Algebra one that was a good fit for Ethan, it extended our year some, but worked out in the long run, since we still have 2 units of our 10 unit history program left and are going to do a 7 week science unit study on weather with some friends during that time as well! As you can imagine, it's very hot in Florida, especially down near Miami, and that means a lot of indoor time anyway, so that's conducive to us doing school in the summer too.
We are taking September off for our "summer" break and starting the 2016-17 school year fresh on October 3rd. I already have an idea of what our lessons will be but no set schedule yet, and we don't have ALL of our curriculum or books yet. That will definitely be a late Aug/early Sept post. :)
The older boys are off playing with friends until they are hungry for lunch, and the little one (I won't be able to call him that much longer, he'll be 5 in SIX months!!) is washing the truck with Jason while I am in here actually writing! There's a good chance we will go to our town's fireworks show this evening after dinner, as all 3 kiddos want to watch them. I'm just dreading the heat and bugs...
It's the first Monday in July and the first week of us following the Feingold program. We attempted this for awhile, a very long time ago, maybe 9 years ago? The only thing was I didn't make us do Stage 1. We sort of skipped over it and when it got "too hard" and too expensive, without change (and lack of will power), we just stopped. Over the years, we've made many improvements in our diet, choosing different things, and slowly finding better alternatives. This seems like the next logical step, to try again, but fully jumping in, doing stage 1. Especially since some of the eliminated items were already off the menu - or mostly off the menu - around here.
To better help us stay on track, I planned out the next 2 weeks breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Our breakfasts will be on repeat until eternity (or something like that) and actually have more variety than usual! Our lunches will mostly be repeated, with changes for the leftover "this or that" depending on the previous day's dinner. Dinners will have some repeats, such as Taco Tuesday, pizza on either Friday or Saturday, and leftover buffet on Sundays and possibly one thrown in on a Wednesday here and there, since garbage pick-up is Mondays/Thursdays and we can clean the fridge out Sun and/or Wed night then.
Here's this week's menu plan. Sorry, no recipe links, but most meals are pretty easy. If you are knowledgeable about or are a member of Feingold, then all the meals are adapted for S1 and you know what that means :) *on that note, I totally screwed up this morning and made pancakes with S2 mix, because when we were at the store, I used the PDF and typed in the brand, saw it was approved and bought it, without noticing where in the book it was. I didn't double check and after making half the pancakes, happened to glance at the ingredients to see a S2 ingredient! Oops! Not a great start, but better than bisquick ;) and they were GF, and the kids AND hubby liked them!*
Monday:
Breakfast - Pancakes with maple syrup
Lunch - Beef and cream cheese roll-ups, chips/crackers, banana
Dinner - Cheeseburgers, baked mac and cheese, corn on the cob, watermelon
Tuesday:
Breakfast - Smoothie: banana, mango and pineapple with yogurt, oatmeal muffins
Lunch - Leftover mac and cheese, salad, watermelon
Dinner - Garlic grilled chicken, homemade fries, roasted broccoli
Wednesday:
Breakfast - Oatmeal, homemade pork sausage patties, pears
Lunch - Peanut butter & honey "sliders", canned pineapple, chips/crackers
Dinner - Tacos (tortillas, beef, crockpot refried beans,lettuce, onion, cheese, sour cream, olives), watermelon
Thursday:
Breakfast - Eggs, toast with butter, banana
Lunch - Leftover tacos or cheese quesadillas, watermelon, carrots
Dinner -Teriyaki chicken, twice baked potatoes, green beans
Friday:
Breakfast - Cereal, milk, pears
Lunch - Grilled cheese, chips/crackers, banana
Dinner - Pizza (pesto chicken, white cheese, mac & cheese), canned pineapple, salad
Saturday:
Breakfast - Waffles, syrup, canned pears
Lunch - Peanut butter and honey sandwiches, chips/crackers, carrots
Dinner - Hamburger patties w/gravy, rice w/butter, broccoli
Sunday:
Breakfast - Oatmeal muffins, sausage, yogurt
Lunch - Beef and cheese sandwich, banana, chips/crackers
Dinner - Leftover buffet
Find more menu plans here at I'm an Organizing Junkie.
Here's to a great week full of yummy food, lots of school getting done including our first Science co-op meeting, some outside time towards our 1000 hours outside total and a fun Thursday movie get-together!
