I Just Have to Share

One of the things that keeps me organized is having a menu/meal plan for the week. I just have to have a plan. I'm so not one of those open the fridge at 5pm to see what I can come up with for dinner. That said one of my least favorite weekly chores is coming up with said plan. And I bet I'm not alone. It's just time consuming to flip through cookbooks and search websites for kid-friendly, fairly easy (I'm no chef) and healthy recipes. And for some reason my family just won't eat the same 7 meals each week. I was recently tweeting about my annoyance with this Sunday chore and one of my tweeps (thankyouverymuch @knoxsarah) suggested I check out e-mealz.com. So, since I was on the 'net anyways I clicked on over. And what did I find? The holy grail of menu planning my friends!! One click and I was in love!!

Let me tell you about this FABULOUS FABULOUS website. You pick a meal plan based on your family's needs - they have general family, couples, low fat, low carb, gluten free, Weight Watchers - old and new points menus to chose from WITH corresponding grocery stores. For example, I chose Weight Watchers new points program Walmart. I click on my menu and viola: a weeks worth of food and a shopping list customized for Walmart right on my screen. People, it's freaking genius! Now, the only catch is that you do have to pay for it - I had a coupon and paid $12.50 for a 3 month subscription. I tell you though - it's Worth. Every. Penny. The plan shows 7 meals and they are designed to feed 6 people - for us that's perfect. I think 7 meals is a bit too many - I do like to go out at least once during the week so I do between 5 and 6 meals depending on what's going on.

So..if you are like me and like having a meal plan but find the planning process draining then check it out. You can click right here. What are you waiting for?

Sick Day

It was bound to happen sooner or later. We haven't had it in awhile. The stomach bug hit our house. It started with Julia on Monday night. Thankfully it moved fast through her. After 48 hours of no one else getting sick I thought we were in the clear. Wrong, so wrong I was. I was sitting at dinner last night when I got The Text. The one that all mommies dread. It went something like this: Emma threw up twice. Ugh. Immediately my thought is "crap, she can't go to school tomorrow" (you see I've had them home for FIVE weeks...they JUST went back to school on Monday). I love my children DEARLY but there has been A LOT of togetherness lately. So I get home and Paul says he's not feeling so great. Emma's comfortable and resting. Great. We go to bed and awaken at 1am with Lily: "mom...I just threw up all over my bathroom floor." She proceeded to be up seemingly every hour getting sick. Poor thing. About 5am Paul tells me he's been sick all night. Stomach Bug Tally: 4 total. Then this morning when I went to get Jacob up I realized that he too had succumbed to the bug. Final tally today: 5.

I'm the lone survivor and praying, hoping, wishing it remains that way! Thankfully the bug seems to be passing quickly. 2 of the kids today are much better and Lily has been able to keep food down today. I've been busying cleaning and Lysoling the house!

Four Years Ago

Four years ago we lived in MA. It was the middle of winter. Paul was working an hour away from our house. I was 40 weeks pregnant with our 3rd child. I had begged and begged my OB to schedule an induction but it just never worked out. Thankfully my mom made the trip up 2 days before. I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. I debated waking Paul up but decided to wait a little bit. Finally I decided it was time to to start timing the contractions. All of a sudden I heard (felt?) a POP. I got up...figured out it was my water breaking...and ran to the bathroom. I screamed at Paul to call the doctor. He was sleepy and couldn't get the numbers right - I had to yell the number like 3 times. I get myself together as he gathers a couple towels for the car. We got to the hospital about sometime after 3am. I walked into the ER and begged to please, please call for an epidural. I was already in a ton of pain. I got up to room, they assessed that yes, I was in active labor and they went to work getting my IV in, etc. All the while I'm begging for the epidural. Finally it came. And about 20 minutes later I was fully dilated and it was time. And at 4:31am a beautiful, healthy 7lbs, 6oz baby girl was born.

It's hard to believe that 4 years have passed since Julia Claire entered our family. We've moved twice, had job changes and another baby. She is such a sweet, sweet girl. I could not love her more. I'm so thankful we get to be her parents and have her in our family. Happy Birthday Juju...we love you!!

Meeting the Fiance!

My BFF, Erin, got engaged in October but since she lives in Ohio (boo hoo) we haven't had the chance to meet her new main squeeze. I've heard tons about him and we're Facebook friends, but I haven't met him in real life yet. She works in retail so it's not so easy for her to pick up and come down here and with me having 4 kids it's not so easy for us to pick up and head to Ohio. Anyways...we finally got the chance this weekend for her to bring him down. We haven't seen much of Auntie lately so the kids were beyond excited to have her come. They arrived around dinner time on Friday and we had a nice evening at home just catching up and getting to know Tom. He's super nice and they really seem to care a lot about one another.

Saturday Erin and I were anxious to dive into some wedding planning but first we humored the guys and went to lunch at The Pit (a BBQ restaurant in Raleigh that was apparently featured on one of those food shows). After lunch we dropped off the guys and headed to David's Bridal to start peeking around at Flower Girl dresses. The girls had a big time trying on every flower girl dress at Davids. I think she got some good ideas and some ideas on colors. We spent some time at home browsing dresses and other ideas on the 'net. She has a ton of great ideas and wow have things changed in 11 years!

It was a nice weekend and as always was great to visit with Auntie. It's going to be an interesting and fun time as she's planning the wedding!!

Sunday Funny

I have been a very bad blogger lately! I just haven't had time to sit down and write. I'm going to try to get better - if I don't write down what we do or the funny things the kids do/say I'll never remember them in 10 years. Heck, let's be honest - 10 minutes is about as long as my memory lasts these days! Anyway, not too much going on...big kids are tracked out of school. Two more weeks until they go back. Paul's been traveling a TON for work. So basically my days involve saying things like this about 500 times: "keep your hands to yourself" "use your inside voice" "why are you shouting" "are you tattling?" "don't stand on the train table" "did you wash your hands" "it's not my so no I don't know where it is" "don't touch anyone for the rest of the day" While trying not to lose it before bedtime. Solo parenting is not for the weak. Lemme tell you.

Julia's been really cracking me up lately. Her new thing is to call Paul "old man" and "old dude." It cracks me up every single she says it. It all started the other night when we were waiting to pick up a pizza. So what happened was (I totally love ANY story that begins with those words) We had been out with the kids and asked them what they wanted for dinner. Lily suggested pizza and surprisingly everyone agreed. We happened to be right by a Dominos so we stopped by to see if they had any pizza ready. They didn't and the kids were starving but we decided to order one since they said only 8 minutes until it would be ready. So Paul goes in to order and comes back to sit in the van with us while waiting. The kids were somewhat quiet and watching a movie. All of sudden my 3 year old shouts from the back "get me some pizza you old man." Cracked me up. Like to the point of tears rolling down my face cracked me up. You have to sort of know my 3 year old to totally appreciate how funny it was but oh my goodness it was funny. Paul laughed too. A lot. Apparently she loved that we laughed so hard because she has not stopped calling him "you old man" and has also added "you old dude" to the mix. This afternoon we were Skyping with him and she said "what are you doing you old dude." I laughed again. Which made her laugh and Paul laugh. So funny that little girl..so funny.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!! I hope you all have had a wonderful vacation. I take it by the number of status updates on Facebook lamenting the fact that holiday vacation week is over that you have! Our New Years was very quiet, uneventful and very good. We've been down a kid all week as Lily was spending part of her winter vacation at Camp Gagi (having no fun at all. Ha..seriously, kid's been so spoiled I'm not sure she'll ever want to come home). So we had a family movie night with the kids that were at home then Paul and I watched a grown up movie...played Angry Birds on our phones...flipped back and forth between New Year's shows..watched the ball drop and went to sleep at approximately 12:02. We are officially SO OLD.

All in all 2010 was a good year for us - it had it's moments like when Paul almost became unemployed but ended up just fine - I certainly can't complain. But I'm excited to have a new year upon us. We have lots of adventures coming up this year like a vacation for just Paul and I and my best friends's wedding!! This year will also be the year that Jacob turns 3 and I will, for the first time in 8 years that I don't have a toddler. I also so hope that we end this year diaper free (I can dream).

I hope that your New Year has started well and that you will have much joy, peace and happiness in 2011! Here's to another year!