Vacation Prep



Do you ever sit and think about when you planned a vacation, how it all seemed so far away and then when you are actually there it seems to have flown by? Perspective seems to be everything not only with vacations but with life too. We started school this week but of course have been overwhelmed with the thought of our vacation that there it is really easy to distract everyone! We keep getting shipments in the mail whether it be from Disney World, Disney Cruise Lines, The Disney Store or other random purchases we have made to prep that it's easy to get off track!

How far in advance do you begin packing? Our Disney Store order arrived (part 1 of 2) and I really wanted to begin right away but I knew that suitcases would just get in the way of our daily lives. We packed about a month early for our winter in Mexico and well let's just say it got aggravating to see things laying around all the time! I felt that it was necessary so that we would have all that we need but of course we ended up with WAY TOO MUCH!! I am hoping to avoid that this time around as we are driving AND we are now driving a rental that is MUCH smaller than our regular car...why? Oh because the engine blew on our vehicle and it will take them about 30 days to put in a new one...YUP, when it's vacation time for our family something drastic always happens. It also happens to be the week that our property taxes are due and that happens to be ON our anniversary! Can we have an anniversary dinner at McDonald's please? Oh well, we are thankful no one was hurt and that the Lord has provided us with all that we need, it could be worse!

One way we love to countdown our vacation is with a simple paper chain. The entire family gets involved in making the paper chain and then the top of our countdown becomes a window or door decoration on the trip too! With each day we take off a paper strip and pull one question from our Disney Trivia game and ask it out loud. This helps us prepare for the DCL trivia game onboard and also to have fun every day when pulling off the link for the day.

I have been hitting up Disney Outlets and used video places (they sometimes sell Disney pins) to fill up their lanyards with pins to trade! I love spending next to nothing on pins and they get ones they really want and have fun doing it! It's an activity that can be enjoyed in the parks and on the ship. The kids also have their own itineraries and money put on a gift card for them.

I've also kept busy making door and window décor for our resort and cruise stays. Getting the kids involved in one activity a week, 1 Disney Family Movie a week, 1 package arrival a week takes car of almost half the week and easily helps it fly by. We also like to spend 1 day of the weekend chatting about things we like to do where we want to go first and sometimes opinions change and others they stay the same. Needless to say the planning all goes by in a whirlwind.

 We also like to buy books that pertain to our vacation destination once every other month or so to help with planning but mainly to look at all there is to do! We are Members of B&N and that gives us 20% off coupons that come in the mail every other month or so and then add it to the 10% members discount we get daily and it's well worth it! We always know when a coupon comes in it's time to buy a vacation book!

My daughter and I are having a blast making bows for our MagicBands that can easily be made into hair bows on the days we do not have them on the bands. We are also cute bag obsessed! This is a lunch cooler that we have decided to carry around as a purse! LOL

Even when we are not planning for Disney, it's always on my mind! Here I am at my book club and ready to talk Disney with anyone that eyes my purse! The Disney Dooneys are my biggest weakness!

The planning binder is a MUST for our Disney trips. We change out the cover sheet for each vacation and each page inside can easily be accessed for additional information. We use highlighters and different colored pens and inside is a folder that holds any documents we get from Disney. I will be doing a Disney Binder post in the future where I will just go through this binder. One thing we love about our cover sheet is that it has the vacation year on the bottom and destination at the top but the center is plain and this is done with a purpose. When it's time to go, we ditch the binder and put all the sheets inside the pockets of our passporter on the coordinating days and then we pull out the cover sheet, laminate it and use a magnetic clip to turn it into our dry-erase board on our resort room doors or cruise line door! It's so much fun to read all the messages from people.

Just a hint of our planning madness, but it sure is fun! With our Transatlantic cruise next year, I hope to document our entire planning process with a once a week post, but we will see as I have already booked the trip and we have been getting things in the mail for some time now. Having 2 trips booked at one time is crazy! Enjoy every minute my friends, time certainly flies when you are having fun!



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Menu Planning...

It's Menu Plan time, I had to push it back a day, due to our celebrations! One thing my kids absolutely adore is fruit, a favorite is our fruit rainbow and I fill the cups with yogurt and they become the white clouds and the kids dip their fruit in the yogurt. 

Google is an AWESOME resource for checking out different menu plan templates that work for your family. Just pop over and do a google image search. This is the one I have been using recently. Now, on with the men!
Monday ~ Out to dinner for birthday!!

Tuesday ~ Crock Pot Pork Chops with green beans and corn, served with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes with salt & lime.

Wednesday ~ Bean & Cheese Gorditas with Mexican Rice served with garden salad and lime wedge dressing.

Thursday ~ Buffalo Chicken bites with carrot and celery slives and served with vegetable soup

Friday ~ Potato, Broccoli & Cheese soup served with homemade bread and baby greens salad.

Saturday ~ Out with my grandfather for his birthday celebration

Sunday ~ Out with friends for our birthdays

OUCH, that's a lot of eating out! I just happen to be friends with people who all have birthday surrounding me and they all want to go out to dinner...so it is only once a year ;)

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Menu Plan Monday

How did this past weekend treat you all? We enjoyed it on  little sleep and made up for that with a lot of laughs and fun! Cross Country for the kids began this weekend, along with Archery and the continuation of Robotics. Sprinkle in a little family fun and it makes for a pretty awesome weekend. I live and die by my planner, which has each minute of the day planned out but my husband has zero toleranced for doing one of his onw, this huge calendar in the kitchen works for him and the kids and keeps us all on task. They know the times of everything by heart, it's just a matter of what happens on what day. Of course I took this photo on Friday and since then we have added 4 more events to this week and next. It can get crazy but it works for us!

 I love to have healthy snacks for the kids, to keep their energy going, so I always have fruits and veggies ready to be eaten throughout the kitchen. Keeping bowls on counters and jars, bags and containers in the fridge make everything portable. It's all washed and many are cut and ready to go. I also keep fun cutters in their own drawer so that the kids can dice up their own fruits and veggies with crinkle cuts or slices,choppers or even cookie cutters. Making food fun always seems to make them eat it more! 

On to the Menu Plan!

Monday ~ Sandwich Bar Car Picnic with Sliced Veggies
What?! We have study group at the library, followed by crochet class and straight to cross country and then we have only 20 minutes to get from there to our 4H meeting. It's a crazy day, but if we want to do it, we have to eat our dinner on the road and at least we are together, right?! I have an assortment of lunch meats and egg salad (no mayo, alternate with avocado instead) along with tortilla chips, rolls and lettuce, sprouts, tomato slices and even pickles for everyone to choose what they want. I also have carrot sticks, celery sticks and cucumber and pepper slices with hummus and bottled water. For dessert everyone gets a clementine and a chocolate chip cookie. Nothing fancy but it works!

Tuesday ~ Crock Pot Chicken Noodle and Veggie Soup and Cucumber SaladTomorrow we are gone all afternoon with classes and then finishing up at the library with the kids reading to therapy dogs and then we rush home to eat within the time frame of 1 hour before my daughters Little Flower Girls Club comes over for their meeting. Because that is such a small timeframe, we need to have a slowcooker meal ready to go! The soup is also perfect because any of the sliced veggies we have leftover from yesterday's dinner-on-the-go, can just be tossed in!

Wednesday ~ Buffalo Chicken Burgers with Potato Wedges & Mixed Greens Salad

I am home all day Wednesday and looking forward to NOT leaving my home...at all!

Thursday ~ Chopped Salad with Chicken Breast served with Broccoli & Cheese SoupI will be slow cooking the soup all day and then just throwing together the salad, my husband walks in the door at 5:15 and we have 45 minutes to eat and get to their LEGO young engineers class!

Friday ~ Potato, Spinach & Cauliflower Curry over Jasmine Rice with a simple garden saladLent means no meat on Friday and I have been dying to make this! Win-Win!
We have to make this a fast one though, as we have a homeschool History class in the morning and head straight over to a roller skating gym class until 3:30. That gives me 2 hours to have this plated and eaten before archery! 

Enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Meal Plan Monday

My meal plan is running a bit late this week and has been missing for 2 weeks because I have just been going crazy with life. I'm lucky enough that I have content ready for blog posts that I can churn them out and schedule them to post, but my meal plans are done on shopping day and I just never have time to type them up but i'm working on it!

Prepping a stirfry overnight so it's ready to just toss in a wok

As I have shared before, I always know what I am cooking when I go grocery shopping, this keeps my shopping inexpensive and no impulse buys allowed (all that savings is vacation money!!) at any time. I create my menu based on ads from local places as well as what I have in the freezer, fridge, pantry and basement freezer and then online ads from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, as we don't have these in town. 

Making wonton soup was so easy and fun, next time we will make our own wonton wrappers

The MINUTE the bags come into the kitchen, we begin our routine. The kids begin washing produce, putting away pantry supplies and I begin to chop and dice everything that needs to be put away. This keeps our produce from spoiling or going unnoticed. Leave a watermelon whole and it may go moldy, cut it up and suddenly it's everyone's favorite fruit! It's a chore, but it's well worth it to my bottom line. It also makes dinner so easy when I am just throwing it in the wok or in a crockpot. No chopping or dicing required! It also keeps your produce fresher for longer periods of time. 

Ceviche is always a fun lunch staple, so quick and easy

Now it's time for the menu!
As always, most of my recipes can be found HERE!
Monday- Beef Roast over cauliflower rice with fresh green beans
Salad- Romaine & Escarole with Tomato Slices and Lime juice

Tuesday- Loaded Baked Potato Soup
Salad- Spinach Southwest with Corn

Wednesday- Shrimp & Avocado Ceviche with Guacamole
Salad- Tomato & Cucumber slices with chile, salt & lime

Thursday- Chicken Gyros served in Lettuce Leaves instead of pita
Salad-Greek

Friday- Out to dinner with friends moving out of state :(
Saturday - Out to dinner for Valentine's Day

Sunday - Italian Wedding soup with homemade french bread
Salad- Traditional Garden Salad bar with choose your own dressing

Eat well and enjoy every minute my friends!

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Menu Plan Monday

It's the time again! Another Monday is here and it's time to plan out our menu. What are you sampling this week? Share your links in the comments please!

Monday: Out with friends

Tuesday: Beef Roast with Cauliflower Mashed fauxtatoes & Lettuce Leaf Salad (1 leaf of lettuce with diced tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, corn & vidalia onions on top)

Wednesday: Homemade Shrimp Wonton Soup with Chinese Chopped salad and lime juice

Thursday: Pork & Broccolini Stir fry served over Rice with Bow Tie & Spinach Salad

Friday: Turkey Taco Lettuce Wraps served with grape tomato and cucumber skewers 

Saturday: Homemade Ramen Soup served with Southwestern Chopped Salad

Sunday: Rosemary Chicken Breasts w/ Roasted Carrots & Green Beans & Cucumber/Onion Salad

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Menu Plan Monday...

I have 20 minutes until midnight, it still counts as Monday then right?!
Monday: Chicken Pot Pie with a garden salad & fresh brewed mint tea
Tuesday: Veggie Burrito Bowls served with Cucumber Slices sprinkled with lime, salt & spice
Wednesday: Parmesan crusted Pork Chops with Mashed potatoes and Corn. Served with Ceasar Sald
Thursday: Lettuce Wrap Bar (veggie selection, laughing cow, chicken, shrimp) served w/ miso soup.
Friday: Out to eat for our weekend in Wisonsin, but left pizza coupons for our house sitter! 

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Menu Plan Monday

Well it's technically still Monday! I know this is late, but I had to rant about the library earlier today! One comment I want to share about my menu planning is that whatever I prep for dinner, is what I have out that day for snacking and then I add a little of whatever fruit I have on hand as well. They get their fruit and veggie servings throughout the day and I don't have any produce go bad! Win-win! I also mentioned before that I wash and chop up all my produce the minute it comes into my house and that makes it easy to toss a salad or snack on healthy items 24-7! It also makes it easy to throw some containers in a cooler on our way out the door whenever we head out on an adventure!
Our Menu:
Monday- (B) Cereal with Kiwi Slices
(L) Leftover Chicken Soup with crackers
(D) Open faced black bean burgers with garden salad

Tuesday -(B) Pancakes & Strawberries
(L) DIY Wraps with snap peas & veggies
(D) Slow Cooker Chicken Marsala with Tomato & Basil Salad

Wednesday-(B) Fruit & Yogurt Parfaits with Granola
(L) Cheese & Crackers w/ Misc. Veggies
(D) Black Bean & Cilantro-Lime Rice Bowls with Garden Salad

Thursday-(B) Cereal with melon salad
(L) Egg Salad with Celery & Carrot sticks
(D) Spinach Stuffed Shells served with Italian Chopped Salad

Friday-(B) Diced Ham & Eggs with Orange Slices
(L) Turkey Lettuce Wraps with Pretzels and Grapes
(D) Pizza with Friends

Saturday - (B) Fruit Bar with Yogurt
(L) Sandwiches & Veggies with whole fruit on the go
(D) Green Pepper & Cheese Gorditas with Pico De Gallo

Sunday -(B) Waffles and Bananas
(L) Out with friends after Mass
(D) Parmesan and Herb breaded chicken strips with Spinach & Romaine Salad

Enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Menu Plan Monday

Cilantro lime Shrimp Ceviche

It's Menu Plan Monday! What's for dinner at your house? Please share!!

Monday: Meatloaf & Baked Potatoes

Tuesday: Garden Salad & Chicken Noodle Soup

Wednesday: Black Beans & Cilantro Lime Rice Bowls

Thursday:  Appetizer Night (mozzarella sticks, hummus & veggies, chips & pico de gallo & Green Bean Fries)

Friday: Out with friends

Saturday: Build Your Own Pizza bar

Sunday: Out with family

Happy Monday my friends and remember to enjoy every minute!

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Menu Plan...Tuesday!

Yikes, Monday flew by far too fast & I didn't have enough time to get our menu plan posted. Here it is, once again including breakfasts & lunches as per the request I got!

MONDAY:

B- Cereal with Bananas with Toast & Jam

L-Peanut Butter & Jelly with Apple Slices

D- Grilled Brats with Baked Potatoes & Garden Salad

TUESDAY:

B- Blueberry Pancakes with Sausage

L-Turkey & Tomato Wraps with Cucumber Slices and Laughing Cow

D- Ham & Cheese Tortas with Chips & Salsa

WEDNESDAY:

B: Fruit Salad & Croissants

L: Cheese Quesadillas with Beans

D: Smoked Sausage, Green Beans & Potatoes

THURSDAY:

B: Scrambled Eggs & Bacon

L: Tomato Soup & Veggie Plate from Garden

D: Grilled Chicken Salad

FRIDAY - SUNDAY:
Out of town for the Holiday but leaving plenty of fresh veggies and food in the fridge for the house sitters! Hahaha!!!

Have a delightful day my friends!!!

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Menu Plan Monday

Monday already? Honestly, how does this day sneak up on me every.single.week? Am I the only one that seems to feel this way? Crazy. Well, it's time to post my menu! I have had requests to post our breakfast and lunches as well. I will go ahead and have what I have on the schedule but as I am sure many of you know, with kids...well things change if a class goes too long or a play date goes into overtime!

Monday:

B- Cereal with Raisin Toast (First days back from the weekends are too hectic to cook)

L- Turkey & Tomato Wraps with Carrot & Celery sticks and hummus

D- Grilled Chicken over Garden Veggie Salad served with Tomato Soup

Tuesday:

B- Egg, Ham & Cheese English Muffins with Watermelon Slices

L- Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches served with Cuties

D- Grilled Shrimp over Fetuccini Alfredo

Wednesday:

B-Pigs in a Blanket with Cantaloupe

L-Ham and Cheese wraps with tortilla chips &  salsa

D- Taco Night!!

Thursday:

B: Cereal with Whole Wheat Toast

L- Summer Sausage & Cheese Curds with Veggie Platter and dip

D- Baked Potato Night with Garden Fresh Salad

Friday:

B- Waffles with fresh strawberry toppings and yogurt

L- Picnic Lunch packed for field trip!

D-  Dinner & A Movie out with the family!

Saturday: 

B: 3 cheese omelettes served with roasted potatoes

L & D will be on the grill as we begin to destroy our kitchen for a mini remodel

Sunday:

B: Chorizo & Eggs with Beans

L: Sandwiches and Chips

D: Grille Shrimp Skewers served with garden salad

Have a great week my friends!!

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Menu Plan Monday!

Happy Monday my friends!! I hope your weekend was absolutely delightful! We had so much fun with an old friend of mine from college in Chicago and then spent Sunday in the suburbs at a fun French Market! Madeline story times, traipsing through a rose garden, shopping for wonderful wares and then enjoying crepes in the shade of the 'Eiffel tower'. I love the warmer months in the Midwest as it allows for so many activities! 

Monday brings our Menu Plan!

Monday: Tickets to a baseball game! We're eating at the ballpark!

Tuesday: Pizza Wheels with Garden Picked Salad

Wednesday: Grilled Portabella Burgers with Caprese Salad

Thursday-Sunday (Out of town but we left a full fridge for our house sitters!)

A short week of meals for sure but delicious fun none-the-less! I hope you all take the time to realize just how much you truly have. Enjoy every minute!

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Menu Plan Monday

I love having my menu planned bright and early and yet our weather has been so crazy lately, that I keep swapping out meals at the last minute. Do you plan your menu by the weather as well?

The weather is back down into the low 70's with a definite chill in the air, this called for a slight change to this week's menu that I just finished up.

We plan on spending plenty of time at the fire pit in the evenings with smore's and good family time! Add Peeps to your Smore's menu and you will find a new favorite! Vary up the chocolate selections too!

Monday: Cilantro Lime Chicken & Avocado Soup served with a garden salad

Tuesday: Spaghetti in Mushroom & Sauce served with a caprese salad

Wednesday: Steak Tacos served with Pinto Beans

Thursday: Rosemary Chicken over Steamed Rice and Veggies served with garden salad.

Friday: Sandwiches and Popcorn! We are going to Movie night in the park and packing a picnic dinner.

Our herb garden is thriving, so you will find a lot of herbs in my meals right now!

Enjoy the day and the rest of the week my friends!

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