Menu planning July 28th - August 3rd

Monday
Breakfast: cereal, fruit
Lunch: PB&J sandwiches, veggies and chips
Dinner: Bacon and cheese Chicken - Crockpot and broccoli

Tuesday
B: Muffin, Yogurt, Fruit
L: Hotdog
D: Meatloaf w/mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, veggie


Wednesday
B: Toad in a hole, Fruit
L: Chicken rings, Fries
D: Italian pork chops - crock pot


Thursday
B: french toast, fruit
L: Mac n cheese, Veggies and ranch dipping sauce
D: Oregano chicken, Rice, veggie

Friday
B: cereal, yogurt
L: Grilled cheese quesadillas
D: Pasta and meatballs, garlic bread,salad

Saturday:
B: Breakfast casserole, Toast, Fruit
L: BLT Sammie
D: Turkey burgers, Homemade fries

Sunday:
B: Pancakes, fruit
L: Pizza bread, Salad
D: Stuffed peppers, Mashed potatoes

For more great menu ideas, head on over to I'm an Organizing Junkie for Menu Planning Mondays.


Have a wonderful week
Fran

OAMC

I am FINALLY going to try doing Once A Month Cooking. With the assistance and guidance of my new friend Lisa H. She has done the OAMC several time so she is somewhat of a master at it. Right now we are in the stage of deciding what recipes to make. I am shocked at how many recipes there are out there for this type of cooking.

I found a great website that has wonderful recipes recipezaar.com check it out. You can complile tons of recipes into your own cookbook. Most recipes have nutritional value and you can change the serving sizes and it adjusts the ingredients. Oh and the best part of all, it compiles your grocery list for you....how great and easy is that.

So here are the OAMC recipes on our list so far for our August 10 cooking fest.

Chicken
-Chicken Rolls ups with ham and cheese
-chicken fried rice
-Heavenly chicken
-Chicken fingers

Beef
-Dump Swiss Steak
-Meat loaf
-Sloppy Joes
-zippy chili


Pork
-Asian pork tenderloin
-Smoked Sausage skillet

Side dishes
-mashed potatoes
-garlic seasoned green beans

breakfast
-egg casserole
-french toast
-pancakes

Wish us luck and I will post some of the recipes later.

Blessings,
Fran

Our Disney World adventure 2008 part 1

One of my favorite places to vacation is Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It is such a magical place. I love it so much that John and I even went their for our honeymoon. A few months ago, my mom, who has never been to WDW, asked me what is so magical about Disney. And I just could not put it into words, I told her she would just have to see herself. And I really hope she can experiance it at least one time in her life, hopefully with all her grandchildren.

With that said, when John and I had our twin boys, I said to him that I wanted to take our boys to WDW in 2008 which is the year that they would turn 5. I always thought that was a great age to start taking kids to WDW. He looked at me kinda funny and said sure, whatever you think. He was probably thinking, this chicka is nuts already planning our boys first Disney trip and they are only 3 months old...lol If you ask my mom, she will tell you that I had their Kindergarten outfits picked out the day they were born too...that is how I like things, planned out and organized.

Well fast forward to May 2007 and I get a call from John's sister, Jaime and she asks us if we would be interested in joining the entire family (all 14 of us)and going to Disney May 2008 and I said of course we would be interested in going, that is what I was planning all along. It sure is funny how things work out. I thought, at the time, the more the merrier. It would be a great time for all 6 kids on John's side of the family to experiance WDW together.

So for that entire year, we were showing the boys pictures and videos on youtube of Disney and talking about it very often. As you can see I am a bit obsessed with WDW. Right around the end of last year, I started checking for airfare and resort rates, looking into messageboards and websites to learn as much as I could learn about taking two 4 year olds to Disney. We finally booked our airfare and WDW resort in January. It was official, we REALLY were going to Disney for the first time as a family of four. WOW, we were so excited, John too. He and I would sit in front of my new laptop (my Christmas gift from Johnny) and look at pics and plan our itinerary for hours. It was so much fun.

As I said before I am somewhat Disney obsessed. So I started my planning and making reservations for character meals, printed letters from Mickey and Donald Duck and mailed them to our boys and finalized our daily itinerary so we would make sure we got to each of the theme parks while we were there for the week.

PART 2 COMING SOON!!!

Weekly menu for July 21-27

I know this sounds silly, but I love menu planning for my family. It keeps me motivated to cook myself instead of ordering out (which we still do on occasion) for dinner.
So my precious family eats healthy.


Monday
Breakfast: cereal
Lunch: PB&J sandwiches with my homemade mango raspberry jam
Dinner: Turkey burgers, homemade fries, green beans

Tuesday
B: french toast with berries
L: mac n cheese, pears
D: chicken fajitas, roasted Brussels sprouts and white rice

Wednesday
B: pancakes with apples
L: ham sandwiches, pears
D: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, broccoli

Thursday
B: french toast, pears
L:
D: Pasta with red sauce, salad, garlic bread

Friday
B: cereal, fruit
L:
D: ground turkey tacos, chips and salsa

Saturday:
B: eggs, bacon, toast and fruit
L:
D:

Sunday:
B:
L:
D: pot roast with potatoes and veggies

For more great menu ideas, head on over to I'm an Organizing Junkie for Menu Planning Mondays.


Have a wonderful week
Fran

Peace, Love and Joy

Written on July 08, 2008 posted on July 16th
These past weeks have been a bit challenging. I am trying to live my life the way God wants me to. I want to be a good person, wife, and mommy.

I am Trying to be
peaceful,
loving,
patient,
kind (the Holy Spirit is trying very hard to guide me to be kind in my life)
grateful

Another thing I am trying to implement in our lives is refraining from purchasing items we don't need. Our boys have been conditioned (by us, as parents) to want something everytime we go into a store. And its time this habit has stopped. Spending money on frivolous items needs to stop. I have been staying out of stores to avoid the temptation of buying unneeded items. It has been going pretty well. When the boys ask if they can have something, I just tell them No, we are saving our money in the bank. It has worked pretty good so far.

Yet another thing I am working on is being consistent with the discipline of our boys. It has been a little rocky of a start. They aren't really enjoying it, but are starting to accept it. I really believe that being consistent makes a HUGE difference. I think its going to take some more time, but once they can anticipate what the consequence is, they might just stop and not do the bad behavior or action.

So, needless to say, we are working on our lives, to better ourselves.

Have a blessed day,
Fran

Welcome to my blog

Ohhh....this is so much fun, starting a blog. I never thought I would write one, but here I am. I am not going to be known for using correct grammar and spelling every word correct. I am know for run-on sentences that keep going and going and going ;) ENJOY!!!

So lets get started....

Well...I am married to a wonderful man, John (AKA Bunz) more on that later. We got married March 26, 2000 in VEGAS! We had a beautiful wedding ceremony and reception at the Monte Carlo resort. Most of our friends and family came out to share our special day... could ya blame them, they got a vacation out of it...lol

We lived in Naperville for the first year of our marriage. And we decided, we wanted to move out to the boonies. We love it out here. It is so quiet and peaceful, a perfect place to raise our twin boys.

We had "the boys" Justin and Jason in August 2003. They are our world. Yes, our lives revolve around them...sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. They were born premature at 30 weeks. My precious little (very little) boys weighed in at just over 3 pounds each and 16 inches long. It was a very emotional time.

I also have 3 great sisters, a niece and two nephews they are so important to me. We have such a blast when we are all together. Johns family is amazing, its a world-win of fun when we are all together. We are blessed to have so many kids in the family. There are 6 kids under the age of 6.

Blessings,
Fran