School Food

My kids don't eat the "hot lunch" that the school serves very often. For one thing, it is frequently gross. And R eats so slowly that if he had to spend time waiting in line, he'd never get a bite of food in his mouth (they only get 20 minutes and that includes line time!)

Anyway--N will eat there for chicken nuggets and pizza days. That's it. I'm fine with it, because I think I spend less money that way. I know how much they eat, so I try not too put too much food in the lunch box at a time (one of the "individual serving" bags of chips will actually divide into 2 lunches for R.)

Toward the end of last year I created a new system for myself. We are often insanely busy in the evenings with sports practices and such, and then to come in and need to feed them dinner, and THEN remember that I have to fix lunches was about to send me off the deep end.

I got paper bags and wrote their names and each day of the week. On Sunday evening, I prepare the lunches, minus sandwiches, and put them in the bags. Then, each evening I just have to take the bag out of the fridge, make a sandwich and put it all in the lunchbox and save the bag for the next week. I love the system--in general, I love systems--but it is definitely taking time to get back into the swing.

Today I made next week's lunches. Keep in mind that "lunches" includes 5 lunches for R, 5 for N, 3 for J, plus 3 "significant snacks" for R. He has lunch late so they have a big snack in the morning. I also put an extra small snack in N's lunch box for him to grab in the morning.

So--all together 15 meals, 5 big snacks, and 5 small snacks. Good grief. It is a lot of food!!! I do love the way the counter looks when they are all put together!