Meal Planning Mama

I love meal planning, though I frequently fall off the wagon when it comes to actually doing it week after week. I'm not sure why. I love planning and shopping and having the stress and hassle of figuring things out each day for each meal being lifted off my shoulders. After a little thought of what I should do about this problem, I decided to do a little experiment this month. I am starting a week into the month. Better late than never, right? In case your interested in streamlining your meal planning schedule in the near future.

The Month of June Breakfast Menu:

Muffin Monday: Apple, Blueberry, Bran

Tasty Cobble Tuesday: Apple, Blueberry, Blueberry/Rhubarb

Wacky Egg Wednesday: Egg Sandwiches, Egg Casserole, Egg Burritos, Scrambled

Tasty Toasted Pancake Thursday: Whole Wheat, Blueberry, Chocolate Chip

French Toast Friday: French toast casserole, and just reg. french toast

Sausage Saturday: Biscuits, & Sausage gravy

Cereal Sunday: Cereal or Oatmeal

 The Month of June Lunch Menu: 

(except VBS week we eat at church)

Monday: Grill Cheese or BLT Sandwiches, pretzels, french fries, fruit

Tuesday: Chicken & Rice, veggie, butter bread

Wednesday: PB&J Sand., grapes or bananas, chips

Thursday: Spaghetti, garlic bread, veggie

Friday: Tator Tot Casserole, veggie, butter bread

Saturday: Bologna Sand., raspberries from the garden, yogurt with granola

Sunday: Burrito Casserole

The Month of June Supper Menu:

Meatloaf Monday: potatoes from the garden, a veggie and rolls

Taco Tuesday: brown rice, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes, refried beans

Wacky Wednesday: Leftovers

Tasty Treat Thursday: Eating from the GARDEN!

Fun Friday: Homemade Pizza

Soup Saturday: Chili, Potato, Hamb./Veggie

Scrounge Sunday: Leftovers or our traditional popcorn supper

I'm hoping that by sticking to a very simple, quick, and easy menu that it makes this whole plan very stress free for this busy month. It also should help to streamline my monthly shopping trip. If you have struggled with consistent meal planning or never tried it before, maybe you should give this method a try and then let me know what you think. Happy Planning!

Lots of Time to Have FUN!

We are having a great time enjoying our summer so far. There is something so wonderful about tossing out the normal everyday schedule and obligations of life...at least for a season. 

Here are a few things we have been doing to pass the time.....

Eating fresh foods from the garden for lunch!

             We headed to the YMCA to use a FREE family day pass. It was HOT outside so we went to play some basketball,  had an intense game of freeze tag, ran a mile, and then went swimming.

 

 

 

 

               We have had the opportunity to go swimming and meet some new friends and staying cool!

 

 Caleb broke out a kite the other day...The perfect weather for such an occasion. 

(Even is it was his sister's kite.)

Bloomin' Beauties

Here is a little picture run down of what is blooming right now for my little honeybee friends

 

This is my latest blooming iris this year. Little dainty and light pink.

 

 

The peach & hot pink little tea roses are just darling

 I love the bright and cheery yellow color of this wonderful Tickseed.

 I have coral bells in pink and red. The hummingbirds adore them! 

I have three little hummingbird friends who have been visiting my flowers, and my feeder.

 This is Catmint, it's one of my favorite perennials.

 The honeybees LOVE these beauties, I can't blame them.

Honey Bee Update

My adventure in Bee Keeping has been such a JOY! I've enjoyed every single thing about learning about a hobby that I knew NOTHING about until this year. Now that I have brushed the surface in my research, I am so fascinated. I get so giddy excited when I spy a honeybee here on the property while she is working (Only females are the worker bees, Did you know that?). The kids are the same way..first they see a honeybee, then they squeal with excitement, then they yell "Mom I see one of our honeybees!!" Seriously it's so gratifying to see them get to excited about such little things. 

 

So this post is to bring you all up to speed on what I've been up to while visiting the hive over the past month. In these first pictures you will see the children devouring whole comb raw honey!! They were SO EXCITED, THRILLED, OUT-OF-CONTROL CRAZY HAPPY people when they heard me announce I had some honey for them (of course I was included in all those reactions as well.) Here is the little story on how we got honey already: It was time for me to add on the second deep (brood) box to the hive and apparently no one told my bees the "rules" of building comb. They built the comb up above the frames, making it impossible to add the second box. So after consulting someone who actually knows what they are doing, I smoked them down into the hive, scraped off the extra comb (which was filled with honey!) and brought it in to share. 

My plan was to take some picture of their comb building extraordinaire, and I was thrilled upon discovering we would actually get to try some honey. I took my camera out and was prepared to capture this all on my camera. I turned on my camera, got it all focused (remember I'm all suited up with gloves and all), with the perfect shot ready...then I read "NO MEMORY CARD" on my screen. Yep...tis' true.

 

 

 

 Fast forward a couple weeks, I wanted to check the hives for eggs, capped brood, and emerging bees. I really wasn't positive that I would know what I was looking at, but I thought I would at least try. I was so happy that I could actually see all the things I was looking for in each hive! My queens are doing their job. This information was thrilling! I know the picture is horrible....but I was trying to hurry. You can see they had one again built the comb up a bit above the frames. The first time is was extreme.

 Again the quality of picture is so terrible! I was a little anxious about trying to make out each item I was looking for, not lose the queen, make the bees mad, etc. I just wanted you to get a very general look at what the frame looked like. This entire frame was all capped over with brood (new bees) and honey.

 Fast forward a couple more weeks, I was now told I'm ready to add my honey supers!  This is the honey the bees make that is mine to keep. Up until now they have been solely making honey that they will eat on during the winter months. Both of my lower deeps are not 100% full, but both of them are at about 70%. Even though I just installed the package this Spring the dry weather, and with the honey flow being so great, I was told my hives being very diligent I just might get some HONEY THIS YEAR! I also have discontinued feeding them their sugar water mixture for those same reasons I list I listed above. I am hoping that since more and more flowers are blooming, and things in the garden are flowering, that the bees will have plenty of things to pollinate and keep them nice and busy making honey!

I'm linking up to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop this week...go check it out!

Sunday School Fiesta....

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of hosting a gathering that consisted of three Sunday School classes. Every family brought their own chili mix, then we combined them into one yummy mixture!

 Attendance was 60-70 people....with almost 40 of them being children! It was great FUN!

 We beat the heat by hanging out in the shade, and playing a corn hole tournament...with prizes!

 Their was some trampoline jumping, zip-lining, barn visiting, garden talking, chalk drawing, sword fighting, and all around fantastic fellowship that took place. THANKS to all who could come!

Snuggle Buddies

I think I might have mentioned before that we have the best puppy ever! I think that these pictures might prove that theory. Jasper meet Peter...Peter meet Jasper...

 I think Jasper might be the most laid back puppy I know (Peter was so calm as well).

 It was so adorable, Jasper kept giving Peter a bath. Then he would snuggle up to him like this!

 Enough cuteness to make your heart melt, right?

Peter loves to be held like a baby (Rusty, our other bunny, not so much)....and the kids are happy to accommodate him.

Making Hay....

 This Spring we decided to let our pasture, which is currently not being used, grow up and now it's time to bale it! This was our first time to bale hay as a family....and boy did we have fun!

Julia got to ride with daddy on the tractor...she rather enjoyed it!

 I think even Jasper enjoy the whole baling hay experience....Do you see the smile on his face?

 My husband has made a lot of hay in his days, but never with 4 children on the wagon helping him.

 Our first wagon! You can almost smell that wonderful "hay making" smell can't you?

I can't really think of any better way of making such great memories with our kids than working together as a family.

 Not sure what they are talking about all the way up there, but they are having a lot of fun doing it.

 

 Now it's time to put it away!

 When all is said and done, we made 170 bales of grassy goodness.

Happy 11th Birthday Lance!

This past weekend we celebrated Lance's 11th BIRTHDAY! As we are quickly approaching the teen years, I couldn't imagine a better example to the rest of the kids.

 You LOVE to read! So much so, that your birthday wish list includde 75-80% of books you wanted.

  Your responsible, your logical, you cautious when you need to be, very mature, compassionate, extremely hard-working, helpful without even being asked.

You are all boy: you love trapping coon, shooting guns, air-softing whenever you get the chance, you love getting in a full day of "man's work".

We love you to pieces and are so very  thankful for the gift you have been to us. LOVE, Mom & Dad

Who Walking Who?

We have been working with our 4-H animals lately, and I thought you might like a little peek into how that works and what it looks like.
Step ONE: We play "Who Walking Who"! Ohhh you've never heard of  that game?
 Let me explain it to ya', that's where all the kids and the animals they are "walking" get tangled up in each other and giggle a whole bunch.

Also part of that game is animal interferance....Jasper thinks it is a great idea to kiss the animals while they are "walking".

Sometimes "walking" is more like "pushing"......

Sometimes that "walking" is more like cuddling....

Ohhh and occasionally "walking" looks like real walking!

No matter how we do it these two seem to have a lot of fun "helping"!

These photos are from several weeks ago, and I am happy to report that animals and children alike seem to have come to more of an understanding of what walking really looks like. I can't believe fair time is only about 6 weeks away!