The First Week of School - Menu Planning

I cannot believe that the first week of school is next week!  Where did the summer go! 

This year we have a lot of firsts happening.  It will be Juliet's first year of school and both Ainsley and Juliet's first year of full-day school.  This means, that I have to put together snacks and lunch for the girls everyday. 

I don't know about you, but I remember hating lunches at school.  They were always so boring.  There are only so many times that you can eat a sandwich before you never want to eat one again.  Also, here in Toronto, all our schools are peanut free so there goes the staple of peanut butter to mix things up.  I am determined to provide a variety of yummy and not monotonous lunches for the girls this year.  The first step: Menu Planning.

I have always been a menu planner.  Last year during the school year, I would plan loosely for breakfast and lunch and then I would always make a clear plan for dinner.  When I mean loosely, I would jot down lunches where we were going out and then make sure I had staples on hand such as mini pizzas, Kraft dinner, hot dogs and sandwich ingredients.  This year I am taking it to a new level.  I want to make sure that I am packing healthy and delicious lunches and snacks. 

I sat down on Thursday and created next week's plan.  I did all my shopping on Friday  so I was ready to go for this week.  I find that planning ahead makes things so much easier.  I have on hand all the healthy food I need and I don't have to think about what's for lunch this week (or dinner or snacks).

Here is the plan:






Glow Baby Organized Family Menu Planner

Glow Baby Organized Family Menu Planner

 

As you can see, all meals are planned and to the right is my shopping list.  This way I can make sure that I am mixing things up regularly and if I'm really stuck one week, I can go back to a previous week and pull from them. 

 

I hope everyone has a great first day of school.  At least I know my girls will like their lunches :).

 

 



 



Back-to-school and the exotic germs it brings

Okay, so maybe we don't get exotic illnesses here in Canada. However, I got an email today from my daughters' nursery school informing us that one of the children has Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. Now, I have heard of this virus, really only in passing. I have never seen a child with it or have had it myself. So for me, it is exotic.

When I was in school the only illness that freaked me out wasn't even an illness. It was lice. I had it when I was six and still remember staying up all night having the nits picked out of my hair. I know my mom was traumatized by this as she never let us share any clothes, hair things, pillows etc. again. During Ainsley's first year at nursery school there was an outbreak of panic at the thought of lice in our home. Luckily we avoided it.

Today's email sent that same panic coursing through me. And this time I had no past experience to draw upon. I turned to my parent friends to ask what to look for, how sick my poor kids could get and treatment information. It turns out, this virus is really only exotic to me. Turns out it is fairly common in nursery schools and since it is extremely contagious, small epidemics will break out in classrooms.

So right now I am on the look out for the symptoms of HFMD and am watching my girls a lot more closely than I usually do. If they do get it, I hope it's mild and quick and that the bounce back quickly.