Freezer "Cooking" Friday- Peanut Butter Sandwiches

 We are busy family of 5 and always on the go. In an effort to avoid the drive-thru for the safety of our pocket books and our health, I present to you a quick make ahead.....

Peanut Butter & Honey Sandwiches for the freezer.  Yep, this is the extent of my freezer cooking today. Pretty awesome, right?
These along with my lazy mornings smoothie cups are easy to grab as you go out the door.  
I have a great cooler bag that I picked up at Target a couple years ago. It is perfect for taking little lunch things like this and sticking in the van when we are on our way somewhere. The best part of it is that I can fit our whole families lunch in one bag (usually), and it fits in between the driver and passenger seats.

At this point you're probably thinking it is crazy to make something so simple ahead of time. Those of you thinking this probably only have one or two kids... Trust me this really is a time saver.

Other things we sometimes like to pack are:
Non-messy fruit, like bananas & apples
Chunks of cheese
String cheese
Garden veggies, like peas, peppers & cherry tomatoes (but not for the little boy in the backseat, because he doesn't care for tomatoes & uses them as squirters).

What types of things do you pack for family lunches/dinners on the go? Do you have any tips to share? If so, post them in the comment section.

Ps. Peanut butter sandwiches freeze very well. But if you are going to do a peanut butter and jelly make sure you put peanut butter on both pieces of bread, then the jelly in the middle. If you don't the jelly will crystallize against the bread and you'll get a soggy mess as it thaws.

A Passing Shadow

A friend's husband posted this picture on Facebook:

 

 

 As I read it, it was all too familiar.  It is what I've been thinking to myself lately.  
I've noticed I've been spending more and more time on my smartphone and my Bible actually had dust on it. I am SO ashamed by that.  
I have a Bible app on the home screen of my phone but yet I still go to Facebook and Pinterest and very rarely open up that Bible app.
So I was thinking I'm a busy mother of 3 and I do not have the time to sit down with my Bible and read it.
God knows my heart and he also knows I'm trying to take a shortcut or get out of something because it doesn't sound appealing to me.
So this morning God used my 8 month old to get me up at 4:30 in the morning!
My baby girl never wakes up in the middle of the night so I knew when she did that it was God urging me to do the things that I should have been doing all along.

I took care of the baby and put her back down for bed. Then I did the dishes, a couple loads of laundry, I wiped off the kitchen counters and cleared the table from clutter that was left the night before. When all that was done I still had 40 minutes until my husband's alarm was to ring.
I knew that if I was taking all that time to clean the house that I could have been doing during the day then surely I needed to crack open my Bible and spend some time in the word.
I found Psalm 144:4. 

 

 In this I learned that life is short. And the saying life is short, is not just a saying at all. Life really is short.  I want to make my days count.  Don't you?

Of course it feels great to know what's going on with my "friends" because I see it on Facebook (Let's get real, we aren't really all friends, are we?  Some of you, although nice to my face, are surely opposite behind my back, because I see you do it to your other friends.  I'm not foolish enough to think I am exempt from your nitpicking and negativity.) .  I don't think I was popular in school, so having a tool like Facebook helps me to feel in the loop.  That sneaky thing.  Facebook is fun, but it sure leaves a whole lot out. 

I feel inspired by searching pins and I feel accomplished when I finish projects from Pinterest.
But ya know what?  When the day comes when I get to meet Jesus, I really think He could care less about how many Pinterest projects I did, or if I knew what was going on with everyone else's life.  But what does all that matter, if I didn't take the time to save my own life?  Right now today, I can tell you, I am saved.  I think I am ready to go to  Heaven when He calls me.  But will He want me? I want to live a more upright life so that I KNOW He will be delighted with me. 

 

I am going to challenge myself to spend less time on the internet and more time in my Bible.  Less time searching pins, and more time searching the hearts of my children to firmly place Jesus within them.  When I'm gone, I'm gone.  I don't know when that day will be.  But when it is, I want to know I've done my best to prepare myself, and my family for what's next.  Heaven.

 

Are you saved?

Lazy morning smoothie

I love breakfast. Typically when you think of breakfast you probably start thinking about bacon, eggs, toast & cereal.
The problem is:
I'm not a huge fan of bacon.

We have a little boy who doesn't care for eggs.  So even though we do have them a few times a week and he just has to eat them when we do, the other days I try to make things I know he would like too.

It's hard to find bread here that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it (or we have to pay a weeks worth of wages to feed our family of 5 organic bread)... So even toast isn't a  very healthy option.  My homemade bread doesn't toast well.

And don't even get me started on cereal! Seriously what is that crap? 
Trust me you don't want to know, but you really need to do your research and find out. Even healthy looking cereal can be deceiving. Don't get me wrong I eat the stuff too on occasion.  But you do not want to make these regular staples in your diet.
The food you put in your body has to do with how you look, yes.  But also how you act, how long you'll live and how well you will live. The food we are eating is causing birth defects, fertility problems, cancer, diabetes and so much more.  Get educated.

* steps down from soap box *

Alright so you came here to learn about this easy smoothie right?
This is a terribly lazy way to make an alright breakfast. We don't normally buy orange juice but we had some leftover from a breakfast my husband served a couple weeks ago. I also try not to buy yogurt.  I like to make my own... Well that's not entirely true, I don't like to make my own... It's just much cheaper & healthier. 
I would call this baby steps to healthy eating.  Because there's so much more you can do with this recipe to make it even healthier.

I used:
Two Momma bear sized handfuls of frozen strawberries
Two scoops of frozen blueberries, because using your hands for these would make a mess.
One frozen banana
About a cup of yogurt
Enough OJ to make it smooth.

And then you just blend it together. The kids and I each had a glass for breakfast and I froze the rest in little mason jars to have as a treat when the man of the house gets home.

Love mason jars, & I love that man.  Do you do anything special for when your guy gets home?  Maybe I'll do a post about that next week.  I'll also do a post about the frozen Gogurt in our freezer, and why we aren't eating it. 

Thoughtful Thursday's

Through our summer homeschooling journey we have started a new tradition called Thoughtful Thursdays.
Last Thursday we went to Chuck E Cheese.  We played and had a wonderful time. In the end we had almost 300 tickets between the four of us. We gave the tickets to someone else, rather than spending it on ourselves.
Our 10 year old girl threw a fit and walked out of there with her head down & tears in her eyes. Surprisingly the 5 year old boy was just fine with giving away the tickets.
Although it was embarrassing to see her upset and it would have been easier to just keep the tickets and let her pick something out, it was a teachable moment and I'm happy with how we handled it.

Folks, consistency is key when you're raising little people.

What I really want to share with you are two snapshots from my children's thankful journals.  It blesses my heart so much to see the things that they are thankful for and I hope that it blesses you too.

Ps.  Our rule with the thankful journals is that spelling and punctuation do not count.  You just need to pour your heart out and thank God for what you have.  That being said... I'm sure number 80 is supposed to say tattoos.  As in temporary tattoos.  The kids love those things!

Week 2 Preparation & Execution.

Sunday night, after the two youngest fell asleep, I was semi-frantically putting together our 2nd week of homeschool.

Thankfully I kind of had a plan already in place (I jot down ideas on my phone when they come to me).  So all I needed to do was pull all the papers into one place and load the work boxes.

When the morning came, I scrambled eggs while the kids worked on their thankful journals.  This worked out well for the girl, but not for the boy.  He needed me to sit with him while he fidgeted with his pen and scribbled a word or two. Smile.  He still needs his momma.

The kids then just worked through their drawers and let me know if they needed help.  

I sat with the boy most of the day.  He was learning new work sheets and needed lots of help.   The rest of the week should go smoother now that he has gotten a sample of what it will be like.