Monthly Archives: December 2015

menu plan Monday

It’s beginning to look a lot like Menu Plan Monday

We had a nice/terrible/nice sandwich for Christmas this year. The morning was super. It was just the four of us, and we opened gifts and reveled until just before noon, when Rockford was struck down with a sudden, horrible pain. We took him to the emergency room, and a few hours later we came home with a diagnosis of a 3mm kidney stone. We went ahead with our plan to have family and friends over for dinner, and the evening ended with more gifts and revelry.

We were originally going to be at Rockford’s sister’s house for a few days starting today, but we’re holding off on that until Rockford has expelled his unwanted guest. He hasn’t had any more pain since that initial bout, but he also definitely still has a kidney stone lurking in there somewhere. So our midweek plans are up in the air for now, and as such I only have a few meals planned for this week.

Tacos
My vegetarian sister-in-law will be joining us for dinner tonight, so I’m adding mushroom taco filling a la Rick Bayless to our taco options tonight.

Hungarian goulash
I used a birthday gift card to treat myself to some fancy paprika specifically for this dish. It’s Rockford’s mom’s recipe, and it’s one of my favorites.

Pizza
And it’s my night to choose the accompanying movie.

How have your holidays been? I hope they’ve been both lovely and free of medical intervention.

Looking for more culinary inspiration? Check out Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.com!

menu plan Monday

In which I make the lead-up to Christmas as stressful as possible

I try to do our Christmas shopping throughout the year, picking up gifts for people here and there as I see things they might like. For some reason I did exactly zero of that this year, and now I am suffering the consequences. By which I mean: I have quite a bit of shopping to do this week. Since I decided to load the entirety of this week’s stress allotment into Christmas-gift procurement, we’re having a week full of simple meals.

Monday: Breakfast for dinner
I still need to pick up some bacon for this.

Tuesday: Fish sandwiches and macaroni & cheese
Poppy requested fish sticks this week, and the store was having a buy-one, get-one sale on Gorton’s products. So I bought some sandwich-size planks for Rockford and myself.

Wednesday: Beef stew
This comes together very easily in the CrockPot.

Thursday: Pizza
Due to the paycheck schedule, I will be — to my great and everlasting chagrin — heading out into the commercial wilderness with all of the other last-minute shoppers. So we’ll order pizza for dinner.

Friday: Christmas Dinner
I’m making Homeroom mac & cheese, sweet potato casserole a la Boston Market and Martha Stewart’s Cranberry Trifle (maybe with some white chocolate added in) for our Friends & Family Christmas Dinner. There will also be smoked turkey, ham, spinach casserole, roasted veggies and possibly other treats.

Have a great week!

Need more meal-time inspiration? Check out OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday linkup!

Homeschool

Homeschooling while distracted

Between the anticipation for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and the excitement over our upcoming holiday break, we all struggled with our focus this week. By which I mean, I didn’t make notes about what we did this week. I do remember that these things happened, though:

Reading

Pete is reading a book about a rat, Poppy is working on a special reading project, and we’re still reading “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”

Grammar

The kids are just a few lessons away from finishing “Grammar Island.” I’ve been very impressed with how much the kids have learned and retained from the Michael Clay Thompson books, but I haven’t ordered the next level yet because they’re expensive.

Memorization

Pete and Poppy have been reviewing the presidents from Washington through Cleveland. They’re ready to move on, but we’ll probably do another week of review after the holiday break.

Have you seen the new “Star Wars” movie yet? What did you think? I thought it was a blast, and even my reluctant 10-year-old girl loved it. So much so that she’s been playing “Star Wars” with her brother all morning!

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!