Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

That Time I Didn’t Buy Any Produce at Costco

by 3 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

What?? I didn’t buy any produce at Costco? How did that happen?

I guess I didn’t need any that day. This is bizarre because I have a terrible time keeping up with fresh produce at our house. We eat fresh greens like crazy (well, we drink them, actually) and we go through fresh veggies and fruit by the ton.

Bananas, berries, grapes, apples, pears, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, salad mixes, spinach, spring mix, kiwi, melon, broccoli, potatoes, oranges  – I always get so much produce that I could almost fill an entire Costco cart with produce every time I go. But then there was…

That Time I Didn’t Buy Any Produce at Costco

Last week, I went into Costco, loaded an orange flat cart with items, and not one of those items was from the fresh produce section. Did I just get a couple of items that day? HAHAHA. No, I wish. My cart looked like this, and I got what I went in for and then some.

I mainly went in for cases of diapers, toilet paper, and other non-food items. But then I kept finding food staples on sale because so much is discounted right now during Back-to-School season. Knowing that I didn’t need most of those items now, but that I could buy them at a discount and freeze them for later – I kept piling up more onto my cart.

Did this make me go over my grocery budget this month? Oh yes it did. But will it save me in the long run? Absolutely it will. Plus, it feels really good to be so stocked up right now. This frees me to focus more on helping our kids as they transition into our new school routine. (Our kids’ past trauma makes every transition more intense. Gimme that frozen pizza.)

So hooray. I’m all stocked up!

Except for the produce.

I already had a lot of fresh produce at our house at the time of this particular shopping trip, so I didn’t think twice. Until two days later when – well of course. We’ve eaten up almost all of our fresh produce. (We do have a beautiful abundance of wonderful tomatoes and squash from friends’ and neighbors’ gardens!)

Looks like I’ll be heading back soon, making my August grocery bill even larger. As of today, I’ve hit a whopping $1553 for the month. (This is the grocery budget we shoot for with 11 people at our house.) I’ve gone way over, but there are other months I’ve been under, so it all evens out. Also? We need to eat. I have to buy food. And I strive to be wise with every purchase. :)

Stay tuned for our final August budget number – and to see what my next cart full of produce looks like!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: August 20-26, 2023

by 5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Our big family food and fun this week revolved around our new school routine and extremely hot temperatures.

First, let’s all be blessed to see these two amazing brothers in the matching outfits I found on clearance at Sam’s. Sweet score!

And now onto the food and fun!

Big Family Food and Fun: August 20-26, 2023

Now, if you recall, last week I forgot to plug in the crockpot when I made dinner to leave for Asa, Eva, Elias, and Malachi to feed all the littles when Matt and I went out for our anniversary. So this week, while making a big Sunday Lunch for guests, I was very intentional about plugging in not one but three crock pots. There, my job is done. Lunch will be perfect. I sent this picture to Eva to show that I’d learned from my mistake.

But alas, when we arrived home from church to finish lunch prep, there sat my smallest crock pot. It had been plugged in. But had its owner turned it on? No she had not.

Well shucks. Can’t win ’em all I guess. Lunch that day was a big Nacho Bar, and the cold crock pot was fully cooked taco meat that was supposed to be warm by the time we got home. Nothing a skillet can’t fix in five minutes, right?!

I forgot to take pictures of our fully set out Nacho Bar with it’s chicken, beef, cheese, tomatoes, cilantro, salsa, sour cream, spinach, and chips. It was a tasty lunch! And here’s a picture of the mess after lunch.

Humidity and temps were high that day (and all week) so dinner that night was leftover burgers from last week, rewarmed on the stove plus bowls of cottage cheese with pineapple.

We ate outside, not because the weather was pleasant, but because the kids were all wet. Matt had set up our little pools and a sprinkler for them. We let them all just get wet in their clothes instead of changing to swimsuits. My laundry pile is big enough as it is. :)

Monday morning I made a griddle full of Eggs in a Nest. These are a favorite of our kids! Except for this particular day, two of my kids declared that they didn’t like them. Ugh. I guess these don’t taste good on Mondays?? (Meanwhile, Kiya ate three of them. No one can predict who will eat what.)

I made Beanie Weanies and packed it in Brayden and Kiya’s thermoses for lunch. I left the remainder of the mixture in the pan to rewarm for the four littles at home for lunch.

For dinner that night, I made simple quesadillas with leftover chicken, cheese, and spinach.

We ate them with grapes and we ate in shifts. Everyone was hot and tired after a big, hot day at school. I finished making the quesadillas but then I needed to feed the baby so I just threw food out on the table and let everyone come eat as they realized it was ready. :)

After everyone ate, Matt got the sprinkler set up again so everyone could cool down.

After they played for a while, I brought out some Go-gurts I had frozen. Now, not only were the kids wet and covered in dirt and grass, they were also sticky. Meh, no biggie. We hosed them all down before heading in for the night. :)

Tuesday morning, we ate yogurt and granola before school. After we delivered Brayden and Kiya to the school door, Matt and I walked back with the five littlest and made a plan to find some kind of air conditioned play place so that we could get the kids out of the house. It was 106 degrees that day, but we were going stir crazy. I packed a snack of animal crackers, cheese sticks, and grapes and we loaded up and headed out.

We checked out a fun play place at a church north of town. It’s open to the public all day long. Very cool!

The kids loved running around and playing! Then we sat them down to “snack” on what sort of become their lunch. (Keith and Anna’s bus picks them up for preschool a little after noon, so we feed them early.)

Once we were home and got Keith and Anna sent off to school, Acacia, Josie, and BabyBoy#11 played in the living room while Matt and I dug into the fridge for leftovers for our own lunch. We’ve been given lots of lovely fresh garden produce from church friends and neighbors, and the tomatoes right now are amazing! I warmed up a leftover burger from last week and cut it up with a fresh tomato. Of course we also had our smoothies. ;)

The thought of cooking was not pleasant since it was 106 that day, so I made Chicken Salad Sandwiches with spinach. I cut up a cold watermelon and that was a very refreshing side dish!

After we ate, we took the kids for a surprise treat. We needed another indoor, air-conditioned outing so we found a McDonald’s with an actual Play Place (remember how we tried this before and got let down?!).

We especially loved the cool interactive light table!

Matt downloaded the McD’s app to see what deals we could get. He paid for two cups of ice cream to share and got a free large fry. The kids LOVED this! This amount was perfect for our littles to share, and I think he spent about $5 for everything. And phew, we made it through another hot night with the kids.

Wednesday morning I made eggs, sausage, and toasted buttered bagels for breakfast. Matt headed to York to work on our properties and Elias became my side-kick for the day.

We got Brayden and Kiya to school. Then while Elias stayed in the house with BabyBoy#11, I (bravely or ridiculously?!) took all four of the others outside to “help” me wash our van. It needed a good scrub and getting wet on this super hot day sounded like a good idea.

Keith (age 4) was put in charge of the hose. The girls got washrags to help me scrub. It actually all went quite well for about half and hour. We were all drenched (thank you, Keith) and the van wasn’t perfect but looked better than it did. So we decided it was a win.

We hosed everyone off, changed into dry clothes, drank lots of water, and ate leftover quesadillas cold out of the fridge. Then we put on shoes and went to the library to play with their learning toys. Why did we do this? Air. Conditioning. Plus toys that are different from the toys at our house.

BabyBoy#11 isn’t yet sitting up but this was a good spot to practice.

Three out of five kids melted down before we got all the toys picked up at the library. “Librarian Diane” was absolutely beautiful in how she came and helped. She magically got all three little girls on board to help her pick up blocks while Elias and I dealt unsuccessfully with Keith who was beyond tired. We made it home and tucked all five in for naps. (Preschool was canceled because of the extreme heat. Good timing as these kids needed make-up naps after their big transition into school.)

Dinner that night was straight from the freezer because Mama was tired. I threw nuggets and fries into the air fryer and made a blender full of these smoothies so the kids could drink some spinach with their processed food. ;)

For breakfast Thursday morning, I made this recipe for Chewy Granola Bars x5. These were a huge hit (though we had to eat them in bowls with spoons because I didn’t make them in time to refrigerate/harden them).

Later in the day, after the bars had been in the fridge for several hours, I cut and transferred them to a Pyrex dish for easy-to-grab breakfasts and snacks.

We spent a good part of our morning with one of our Early Development specialists. Our littlest kids, ages 0-3, are serviced by this team for early intervention so that we can get ahead of some of their extra needs. This has been such a gift for our family. Today Keith, Anna, Acacia, and Josie all hovered around the specialist, Bridgette, who had captured their attention with a game. I snuck this picture of them all because they were all being so sweet and fun!

Right after this meeting ended, I had to run off to the elementary school for yet another meeting for another of our kids. As much as we loved our homeschooling years and are prayerfully open to homeschooling again if God leads us to do it, we are so very thankful for all of the necessary resources that the public schools offer for our family to meet our needs right now. We were so cared for in York and we are now being very well cared for in Lincoln.

I got home in time for lunch, frying leftover baked potatoes and serving it with Sunday’s leftover nacho dip and taco meat. I also got out grapes for the kids to squish all over everything eat to their hearts’ content.

The kids are all home from school by 4:00 or a little after, and we sit at the table to get homework done right away so we can get it over with. :/

I’ve found that everyone is super hungry by 4:30 and snacks aren’t going to cut it. So at this point, I’m making very early dinners and then giving everyone a small snack around 6:30 before we start getting ready for bed.

That night I had planned to make a simple meal of this 3-Cheese Spaghetti. But while looking in my freezer for parmesan cheese to go with the recipe, I came across a package of shrimp. Ah, that would be good with the noodles! So I turned the 3-Cheese Spaghetti over to Elias and I made Garlic Butter Shrimp, which was a pretty exciting addition to our meal! I grabbed out bacon crumbles for people to stir into their cheesy spaghetti if they preferred that instead of shrimp, plus made buttered peas and got out watermelon.

Dinner was over by 5:00, haha, so while I worked on dishes, I sent Brayden out to set up the sprinkler for everyone. Today was supposed to be the last of the 106 degree weather, and we knew water was the only way to make it through.

I had corn on the cob in the fridge that we’d bought over the weekend at the farmer’s market and I was concerned that it would go bad if we didn’t get it prepped to eat soon. So after they’d played in the water for a while and cooled off, I took the corn out and had everyone help me get it shucked.

Not understanding that the corn needed to be cooked, Josie and Acacia got excited and helped themselves. ;)

The kids went back to their water play, a neighbor stopped by for a visit, and I somehow managed to give Brayden a much-needed hair cut before we headed in for the night.

Friday morning we had cereal and some of the  Chewy Granola Bars I had made the day before. Brayden had to be at school early because he gets to take part in a Ukulele Ensemble – so fun! Lunch was PB&J, which I always forget to add to our menu and always wonder why I don’t make them more often. But then again, the girls get super messy when eating them so…

Dinner was extra fun because some dear friends came and joined us for the evening. We made the corn on the cob plus a big pot of Stir Fry. (We’ve been so blessed with friends sharing their garden produce with us!)

We’d picked up a cantaloupe at the Farmer’s Market and it was extra sweet.

Breakfast on Saturday morning was French Toast made like this – always a hit!

The temps had finally cooled down, so I took advantage by doing some much-needed (or much-wanted, ha) baking. I thawed all the bananas I’d stashed in our freezer and made this Banana Bread/Muffin recipe x4. I also baked a quadruple batch of these Brownies to share at a church fellowship lunch.

We had big plans for an outing that morning, but the plans got derailed by some immediate issues Matt needed to work on at our Castle. It’s such a fabulous place, but it is a historic home, so the age of the house brings with it some issues. Good thing Matt’s so handy!

The change of plans did not set well with our kids, so while Matt was dealing with house issues, I was dealing with behavior issues. Blech. I’m so thankful for God’s provision for us. I have to rely on Him constantly.

Three hours of exhaustion later, and an hour later than planned, we were able to load up and get out the door. Matt and I were both a bit frazzled, but the outing needed to happen so that the kids had a change of scenery. We went to a super cool “Wordstock” literacy event at a park – everything revolved around reading and books.

There were games on the lawn, and of course, everyone got to take home a new book.

They also all got a balloon. Somehow we managed to get all the balloons home without one blowing away or popping?!?!

I had cooked – wait – I had burned some hotdogs in a big pot before we left (who burns hotdogs??). It sort of worked to hide the black parts by putting them burnt-side down. ;)

We ate them at the park after enjoying Wordstock.

Naptime/Rest time was a welcome event for the parents after a morning with extra needs. :) That afternoon, Matt and I worked together to finish that morning’s house issue project while the kids rested and napped.

Oh, but were they napping??? Or were they just dangerously quiet?

Ah, the face of “innocence.”

I used a pizza kit I had picked up at Costco, along with some sausage I had browned to make pizza that night.

I had browned three pounds of sausage, because why just cook what you need for one meal when you can dirty the same amount of dishes and get extra food cooked for the future?

We bathed the three little girls (Anna’s marker turned the water blue), jammied them up, then took a walk to the Sunken Gardens before bedtime.

We got everyone to bed (after making sure all the markers and pens were properly hidden from toddlers and preschoolers). What a week! God is good and faithful. Hope your week was a good one!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: August 13-19, 2023

by 5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

The kids headed back to school this week so our Big Family Food and Fun needed to be extra nourishing (and easy) as we settled into a new routine. Here’s what we ate all week…

Big Family Food and Fun August 13-19, 2023

Sunday was our anniversary so Matt and I worked it out with Asa, Eva, Elias, and Malachi to stay with all the kids so that we could have a few hours to ourselves. It had been way too long since we’d been able to go out on a date!

Before we headed out, we warmed up leftovers for all of us to eat for lunch after church.

Then I threw two big packs of hotdogs into the crock pot to heat up during the afternoon so that all anyone would have to do at dinner time was to fix plates. This was a GREAT IDEA except that apparently I was a bit too eager to head out the door and forgot one very important step.

Elias sent me this photo when they discovered an unplugged crock pot at dinner time. Ooooooops. Sorry guys.

It was just hotdogs, so they just transferred them to a pot to heat them and dinner was saved.

Meanwhile, Matt and I had discovered a really cool park and had spent a few hours walking its trails and having actual uninterrupted conversations – woot! We decided we MUST bring the family back to this park because it was perfect for all ages (playground, disc golf, biking trails, basketball, and on and on!)

At dinnertime, Matt wasn’t super hungry – and I was hungry but can’t eat a large portion – so we split a burger and fries at Five Guys. Happy Anniversary to us!

Monday morning was Brayden and Kiya’s first day of school so I made them scrambled eggs with spinach to get them off to a good start.

Here’s to fourth grade and second grade!

That morning after dropping off those two, while wrangling the littlest five, we met for two hours with teams of preschool classroom teachers, special ed teachers, and educational specialists working through IEPs our two of our kids. It was long and intense, but necessary.

Afterward, I made five boxes of mac and cheese so that we could enjoy it for lunch and then have leftovers to pack in school lunches. Remember my trick? I stir the littlest kids’ mac and cheese into bowls of frozen peas so that it cools off their noodles and gives them an automatic veggie too.

Brayden and Kiya had an early-out that day so after hearing all about their first day of school we laid them down for an hour of rest time in an effort to keep them from becoming overtired as they transitioned to a new school routine.

That evening we met up with Asa/Eva and Justus/Kelsey at the park that Matt and I had discovered the day before. I baked two bags of chicken strips before heading out and packed up a variety of dips to enjoy with them. I also packed several bags of salad that we made at the park like this. I LOVE this trick.

And I packed buns, clementines, strawberries, a variety of drinks, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars.

This ended up being such a fun meal!!! Some of us ate chicken with dips like regular chicken strips. Some of us used the buns to make chicken sandwiches. Some of us chopped the chicken into our salad. Everyone had fun making their plate in whatever way sounded good. If you haven’t tried this make-a-salad-at-a-picnic trick, do it. It’s effortless and fun!

It’s almost impossible to get everyone in one picture but here’s 11 of our 15. :)

The best part of the evening was that we were able to let our 3, 4, 7, and 9 year-olds ride their bikes on one of the trails that was a simple loop around the playground. THEY LOVED THIS SO MUCH and their smiles were huge the entire time. Meanwhile, we put the littlest three babes into the strollers for a walk on the trails. The weather was perfect and the night was magical. We praise God for moments like these.

For breakfast Tuesday morning I made a big pot of Warm Vanilla Soother. I hadn’t made this since last winter so it was a fun treat for the kids and filled their bellies well before school.

I threw some ham into a skillet to warm up to go with it.

Meanwhile, since we didn’t have to leave for school until a little after 8:30, I mixed up these “Hidden Spinach” Cupcakes to bake while the kids ate.

Then I blended up these smoothies for Matt and me. (I do this every other day forever and ever amen, but I don’t always take pictures to show you because I don’t want to bore you with my boring smoothie of boredom. I do actually think it tastes good and it helps keep us healthy so…) :)

Matt and Elias headed to York to work on our properties that day so Malachi and I loaded the kids into strollers and walked the kids to school.

Everyone was happy to play outside for a while when we got home.

Then we set out bananas and a random selection of muffins and breads leftover from last week for them to enjoy for a breakfast picnic in our backyard.

Midway through the morning the kids were “all starting to eat each other” which is my way of saying that everyone was getting grumpy and no one was having fun anymore. This happens every day around 10:30am. So we gathered picnic food, loaded everyone up, and headed to a park nearby to play in the sand.

Keith made “the biggest pile ever” in the sand with his excavator.

Malachi pushed his sisters (<— a precious phrase I’m still not used to) on the swings and I hung out with BabyBoy#11.

We made our way to a picnic table, and of course, by the time we got all five kids over there, Keith and Anna had to go pee. And of course, the bathrooms were all the way on the other side of the park, ha. Malachi started handing out lunch while I took kids to go potty. (Dare I mention that the reason Anna is wearing a jacket in the heat is because when we got to the park and took her jacket off so she could play, we realized she’d never put a shirt on that morning. Oy. This is better than the time we were at the zoo play-place and realized she had failed to put on undies. Good grief.)

Anyhoo, lunch was leftover hotdogs I’d warmed up before we left plus applesauce pouches, yogurt, juice, and a spinach cupcake from the batch I’d baked that morning.

For dinner that night I mixed up a big bowl of Tuna Salad for sandwiches. I had found fresh pineapple on sale, and I knew Brayden would be so excited about it! I finally managed to get them cut up that night. :)

I put fruit in bowls for the kids then took a tray of sandwiches outside for them to eat while they played. (We were watching for Daddy and Elias to get home after working in York all day.)

Since it had just been Malachi and me at home all day with the kids, I got very behind on everything. Here’s what the kitchen looked like at bedtime, and I was too tired to do anything about it.

I did take the time to baggie up the Cupcakes I’d made earlier so that I could freeze them for school lunches. Then I went to bed. :)

I woke up refreshed on Wednesday and made Eggs in a Nest for the kids (in my dirty kitchen).

We got the big kids off to school then Matt and I loaded the littlest five into the van to meet Mandy, someone from our Heavenly Homemakers community. She was kind enough to hand down some baby items we needed for BabyBoy#11. It was great to meet you, Mandy and we appreciate your gifts so much!

Since we were on the north side of town, we headed to Menards to get some things Matt needed for our house. Three kids in one cart, two kids in another, here we go…

Ah, but wait. We got inside and found these amazing carts. PERFECTION!!! We unloaded and reloaded kids into these —>

Menards wins the prize for having these for the kids!

After Menards, we loaded back up and headed to Sam’s. Matt stayed in the van and handed out snacks to the kids while I hurried through the store to get what we needed. Total grocery spending so far in August: $1150. Yep, I’ll be going over budget this month. No worries. We need to eat and we’ve shared food with lots of guests. Plus I went under budget for several months in a row before we moved so I guess I’m just making up for it now. :)

Lunch was leftovers that day. Then I finally had a few minutes to get some dishes done!!!

After lunch, I loaded up a couple of the kids for a doctor appointment while Matt put the littlest kids down for a nap. Once I got home, I made an early dinner of burgers on our smoker. We ate then headed to the zoo to ride the train.

It was a lovely evening and someone was sweet enough to take a picture of all of us on the train car.

We met back up with Daddy and BabyBoy#11 then headed to see the birds in the Aviary. It’s not always open so it was a treat to be able to walk through! Then we found some benches to sit and eat bags of popcorn Matt had made for everyone along with cold juice pouches I’d packed. We headed home in time to get to bed for the night!

The next morning I warmed up the Hashbrown and Egg Nests I had made last week and frozen for an easy breakfast. We ate them with yogurt and granola.

As always, I was feeling like I needed to get ahead on food in some way and I had in mind to bake muffins. But it got hot early in the day so I made two no-bake breakfast/snack foods instead. BabyBoy#11 was napping and Matt had the four other littlest outside so I was able to make Peanut Butter Honey Rice Krispie Bars and No-Bake Cookie Cups. <—They turned out weird because of all things, I ran out of coconut oil. But they were still good.

Again, trying to get ahead so that I’m not constantly scrambling, while the kids ate an early lunch I worked on dinner prep. Keith saw me peeling carrots and wanted a turn. I couldn’t turn him down. (So much for using his carrot for dinner though. He finished peeling it then promptly ate the entire thing.) :)

We threw all the kids into the tub to get cleaned up for Keith and Anna’s first day of pre-school!

And then there were only three babies at home for the rest of the afternoon, whoa!!!!

Before their naps, I got dinner finished up so that I could try to work all afternoon. I smoked chicken legs and put them into a crock pot to stay warm. I also washed potatoes and put them into the crock pot for Mashed Potatoes. I baked a big pan of brownies for a special treat to celebrate everyone’s big day (Keith and Anna’s first day; Brayden and Kiya’s first full day of school). When the babies went down for a nap, I got myself a cup of coffee and a brownie and enjoyed the bit of silence. :)

When Brayden and Kiya got home, we sat at the table to do their homework and watch for Keith and Anna’s bus. They hopped off the bus with excitement. Then Anna, who is used to an afternoon nap, decided that she had held herself up as long as she possibly could. Thank you and goodnight.

I’m so glad I planned the evening the way I had. Dinner was almost ready from earlier prep, and kids were tired and hungry. I had stir-fried the already-prepped veggies and mashed the potatoes that were in the crock pot. We enjoyed a fantastic meal with brownies and ice cream to top it off before heading in for an early bedtime.

Is it Friday yet?

Friday morning for breakfast we enjoyed the Peanut Butter Honey Rice Krispie Bars and No-Bake Cookie Cups I had made the day before. Lunch was leftovers again before sending Keith and Anna onto the bus for Day 2 of Pre-School. We had big plans to do nothing that night after our full week of transitioning back into a school routine. This included “take advantage of the 50% off pizza deal” plus “use the rest of the gift card” we’d been given so just like that, I had the night off. :)

Strangely enough, knowing that I didn’t have to worry about dinner prep made me want to take advantage of the extra time I’d just been given. With school starting and needing to keep up with several new schedules, getting ahead a little bit sounded marvelous to me.

So I took advantage of the night off from cooking to do a little bit of cooking. (It all made sense to me, and now I feel better.)

I made a batch of these Orange Muffins (I left out the poppyseeds because while they are fun, what exactly is their purpose??)

I thawed some cooked meat our friend Phyllis had gifted us with when she came to visit last week and used it to make some meals for next week. It was SO NICE to simply stir the prepped meat into casseroles! I made an extra large Pork and Hashbrown Casserole to bake for an upcoming Sunday Lunch. (I used this recipe, subbing cooked pork for the ham.)

I then stirred some of the cooked chicken she gave us into a container with black beans, corn, Rotel, cheese, and sour cream. I’ll bake this and we’ll enjoy it as a chip dip!

It felt so good to have these extra dishes completed and put into the fridge or freezer for upcoming meals! Then Elias arrived home with our pizzas. The kids (and their parents) were so excited about this treat! We grabbed paper plates and enjoyed our pizza outside in the shade.

Then Matt set up a movie in the living room so everyone could have fun but REST in the evening after our full week. Notice how well the toddlers “rest” while watching a movie…

Meanwhile, I took advantage of everyone being in the living room with Daddy (even BabyBoy#11 was hanging out and playing on his mat for a good long while) and I got to the bottom of some laundry baskets!! Woot! This is a very big deal and it rarely happens.

Saturday morning, we relaxed and ate “whatever the kids wanted” which was their choice of Peanut Butter Honey Rice Krispie Bars, No-Bake Cookie Cups, and Orange Muffins (<— I’d frozen half of what I’d baked for another time). Plus they chose a fruit to go with their breakfast – bananas and blueberries.

We did some cleaning that morning – Brayden and Kiya are getting pretty good at sweeping effectively. And the dining room needed a sweep and a mop very badly! Mid-morning, we loaded up and went to the Farmer’s Market to walk around. We got some sweet corn and a cantaloupe, but that’s all because the heat was making the kids grumpy. We stopped to feed BabyBoy#11 and Matt handed out animal crackers to the preschoolers and toddlers before we headed back to our van.

Brayden, Kiya, and Keith found some benches to play on while the baby ate. They can start a game of make-believe on the spot!

By the time we got home it was already super hot, so I made these smoothies to cool everyone off and to load them up with spinach. :) Everyone guzzled their smoothie down and some even asked for seconds. It was a perfect choice for this hot day.

Meanwhile I warmed up some shredded pork Phyllis had provided (some of the meat I referred to earlier in this post), poured barbecue sauce on top, then turned them into Barbecue Pork Melts in our air fryer. So delicious!

After naps and rest time, that evening we loaded up and went to cool off at our favorite Splash Park. I packed a cold dinner for us to eat there between splashes. We ate crackers, cheese, turkey and ham roll-ups, a bag of picnic salad, applesauce, and juice.

It was miserably hot that evening and all of the available picnic tables were in direct sun, so no one ate much. The cold water of the splash pads was a big hit though, so for the kids’ sake we were glad we’d made the trek out there.

We made our way home and got all the kids through a shower before bedtime. This upcoming week is supposed to be very hot so Matt and I are going to have to get creative in keeping everyone busy without letting us all melt. Stay tuned!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

What I Buy at Costco to Pack in School Lunches

by 3 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

I realized that there are many items I buy at Costco to pack in school lunches for my kids. These are great money savers, so I wanted to share!

Does it actually save money to pack a lunch?

Last year, if you recall, I did a price breakdown on many of the lunches I pack for my kids to see if it actually saves money to send lunch in a lunchbox vs. buying lunch at school. (It does, in fact, save money.)

But more than that, I found that if my kids eat school lunch, they don’t make good choices (I wouldn’t have either at their age!). They tend to eat the cookie first and not much else because they either run out of time because they were distracted or because they didn’t like the main dish offered. Veggies never happened at school – not because they weren’t offered but because Mom wasn’t there to make them eat them.

Packing lunches for our kids ensures that they eat better, they eat more, and at the end of the day I can talk with them about what they enjoyed and what they would like done differently next time.

What I Buy at Costco to Pack in School Lunches

We only pack sandwiches and chips for a Fun Friday lunch. The other four days of the week, we like to pack a different variety of foods they like. Some lunches are hot, some are cold, and both work very well!

Here’s a big run down at food we get at Costco that works great as we pack school lunches!

Fruits and Veggies

Costco’s Organic Gala apples are the perfect size for a school lunch, plus they are high quality and always priced wonderfully per pound. Their grapes make a great side dish, and I simply buy whichever variety is priced the lowest at that time. Clementines pack well and are easy to peel. I pack fresh Costco pears and bananas occasionally, but those are tricky because they tend to get squished in the lunch box. ;)

When GoGo Squeeze are on sale, I stock up! These are great to throw into a school lunch because they don’t even require a spoon. ;) I get applesauce cups also, and every once in a while I put a GoGo Squeez yogurt into a lunch (that’s usually a special treat that I include in a Fun Friday Lunch).

Peach Cups and Mandarin Orange Cups in 100% juice are great to send with the kids for fruit variety and because we often run low on fresh fruit at home (I buy a ton but we eat a ton, so I struggle to keep up!). Having these cups on the shelf is super convenient and great for lunch boxes. They really like Pear Cups also, but it is hit and miss on finding those.

Baby carrots and cucumbers are great lunchbox options. Brayden discovered this summer that he LOVES cucumbers. :) Kiya isn’t a fan of cucumbers but she does like baby carrots dipped in peanut butter. :)

I’ve found that it’s worth it to splurge on Costco’s Avocado Cups and Guacamole Cups as they pack well and are fun to eat with tortilla chips.

And speaking of tortilla chips…

These huge bags from Costco are our favorite. They are a great price and go a long way, even for our large family.

Often I’ll pack a little baggie of these chips to go with any of these dips I’ve made and put into small containers:

  1. Simple Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip
  2. Cream Cheese Salsa Dip
  3. Bacon Ranch Chip Dip
  4. French Onion Dip
  5. Bacon Tomato Dip
  6. Black Bean Salsa
  7. Healthier Cheese Dip 
  8. Nacho Cheese Pretzel Dip
  9. Easy Guacomole

From the cheese aisle

Big packs of cheese sticks come in handy as something easy to throw into a lunch box to help fill the kids’ bellies. Plus I like to get big packs of sliced Colby jack cheese to use on Friday’s sandwiches or to enjoy with crackers.

Lunchmeat

These Kirkland brand varieties of ham and turkey are our favorite. We don’t just use them on sandwiches for our lunchboxes. Often we’ll roll them up and put them into a bag to eat as-is.

These Cheese and Cracker 12-Packs are a bit of a splurge, but I like to keep them on hand anyway because they are a great lunchbox item that I can fall back on if I don’t have much time to put together anything else. And yep, even though they are a convenience item, the overall cost is still lower than paying for a school lunch.

Mac and Cheese

For a hot lunch option, I buy cases of mac and cheese at Costco. Typically, if I’m making mac and cheese for lunch for the littles, I’ll make extra to warm up and put in a thermos the next day for the elementary-aged kids. It’s perfect! (See how I send hot lunches to school here.)

Costco Frozen Pizza

Remember how I figured out that buying Costco Frozen Pizza is a great frugal meal option? They are also a great school lunchbox option! I’ll bake one, let it cool, cut it, and baggie it up to throw into the kids’ lunchboxes. So easy and they love it!

Packaged Treats

It costs less to bake homemade muffins (40+ recipes here) and other baked goods (huge list of recipes here) to send in a school lunch. But Costco offers big boxes of pre-made treats like this that are nice to add to a lunch box. We like their 100% fruit strips, Nature’s Bakery brand items, and Bobo’s muffins.

What do you like to buy at Costco to pack in school lunches?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: August 6-12, 2023

by 5 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

It was our last week before school starts and we made the most of it!

It all began last Sunday

Getting everyone off to church (or anywhere) is quite a production. But the there’s this sweetness as we were brushing hair and putting on dresses…

We are so blessed to begin each week by hosting whoever God brings to our home for Sunday lunch. Now that we are more settled after our move, we are able to prepare a big meal and fill the house. There were 26 of us this particular Sunday. Our kitchen was full, our dining room spilled over into our living room, and I felt so cared for by God that He would give us this gift.

Big Family Food and Fun

I had made brunch foods for this Sunday Lunch: This Egg Casserole (multiplied to include 36 eggs and 3-pounds of sausage), Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Muffins, Raspberry Oatmeal Bars (made with blueberry jelly instead because that’s what I had in the fridge), strawberries, grapes, and raw veggies.

Remember how I said that I’ve decided to save money by skipping the butter in my Stick of Butter Rice?? (<— it tastes the same with or without it, so…) Well, look how much butter it takes to make this small pan of Raspberry Oatmeal Bars. Hahaha, I will never skimp on the butter in this one, and it’s WORTH IT. These are incredible. Because of the butter. :)

So many dear friends joined us for our Sunday meal, and our friend Cindy brought her delicious Mac and Cheese and Cowboy Caviar (similar to this recipe) with chips to share with everyone.

 

 

We rested in the afternoon after our guests left, and for dinner that evening I made this Creamy Mac and Cheese. Then I warmed up leftover taco meat and opened a can of tuna. What??? Ah, but I had a method to my madness. Whoever wanted to add tuna to their mac and cheese turned their meal into Tuna Casserole. But whoever added taco meat to their mac and cheese turned their meal into Cheeseburger Mac. We ate this with buttered peas and watermelon.

That night the weather was beautiful so we headed out for a walk. We heard live music nearby so we decided to follow our ears to see where they took us!

How fun! There was a church nearby who was hosting a free event for the community. There was live music, a lady making balloon creations for the kids, and Kona Ice. We enjoyed the music and had fun with our balloon creations.

Monday morning I had to take two of our girls to an appointment so I threw bananas, yogurt tubes, and leftover bars onto the table for breakfast.

Late morning Elias made three frozen Costco pizzas and we loaded all the kids into the van to eat at the zoo. (Matt had gone to York for the day.)

We enjoyed our pizza along with peach cups and juice, then we let the kids play in a big play area next to the spider monkeys before heading home for naps.

That night we joined two of our neighbor families for a super fun meal of hotdogs and smores.

Ah, and water balloons!!

We are so very thankful that God provided us with such a wonderful neighborhood full of wonderful people to do life with. We all need this.

In York on Monday, Matt got 10 dozen eggs from our neighbors. It feels good to be stocked up again!

Tuesday morning I mixed up a double recipe of Bran Muffins. Plus I made a double batch of Applesauce Bread and “baked” them in my crock pots. It sort of worked. The outside became a bit overdone while we waited for the middle to finish baking. Then it fell apart as I was taking it out of the crocks. But it still tasted good!

I packed crumbly pieces into a container to take to the zoo for another picnic.

Malachi hadn’t been to the zoo with us yet since so much of the summer he had been away for work and camps. So we were all excited to show him all we’d discovered all summer. We decided that our extra zoo fun for today would be to feed the giraffes.

On our way to have lunch with the flamingos (we love flamingos, plus there’s a perfect picnic table right by them!), we stopped to show Malachi the penguins.

It was well past lunchtime by then and Acacia decided she couldn’t wait. Before I realized it, she had pulled out the Apple Bread – and spilled all of it onto the cement. Then of course all the little girls rushed over to eat off the ground. Yuck. I hated to waste it but we scooped it up into the trash and decided to make our way to the table to actually feed everyone finally.

Lunch that day was crackers with cheese, turkey, and ham plus applesauce or peach cups, dried blueberries, and juice. But no apple bread, ha.

For dinner that night, a new friend joined us and we ate Costco’s tortelloni with sauce and steamed broccoli.

Wednesday morning we ate more of the Bran Muffins, which I cut in half, buttered, and warmed in the air fryer. They are so good this way!

For lunch I made Hashbrown and Egg Nests with ham included. These went over very well!! I made extras on purpose so we could warm them up for quick breakfasts next week before school.

Matt was in York again that day, so Malachi went with me to the mall so the kids could run off some energy in the play area there before naptime.

Justus and Kelsey joined us for dinner that night. I smoked two pork loin, warmed up leftover green beans and broccoli, stir fried some squash and zucchini, and made several boxes of mac and cheese.

I had also baked a cake that afternoon – and of course I had snuck in a bunch of spinach. This was a fun treat for dessert!

Our dear friend Phyllis came to visit us Thursday morning. We showed her around the Castle, took her on a walk to show her the Sunken Gardens, then came home and made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

The way she pours love into our kid is priceless.

By the way, being able to make make grilled cheese or pancakes on this amazing griddle built into our stove is sooooo nice! Also, I used Havarti cheese slices from Costco. WOW. That cheese is a game changer for sandwiches.

Meanwhile, would you believe? Our friend Barbara had read in an email I sent out earlier in the week about our Great Apple Bread Spill at the zoo. She secretly made us a large loaf to replace what we lost and her hubby dropped it off that morning while we were gone. What precious friends. I told our kids: remember this, guys. We can offer special gifts of love to others too. :) :) :)

After we got the kids down for naps and rest time, I ran out the door to get groceries and a few last minute needed school clothes items. I got a lot of produce at Costco (plus jeans for the kids that I found marked down!).

Then I went to Aldi to get yogurt, milk, buns, and rolls.

When I got home, we worked together to unload groceries (which sounds much sweeter than it actually was – after I’ve been gone the kids usually go a little crazy when I get back, oy). Matt had baked frozen pizzas and I made smoothies to go with it so we could have a quick dinner (which sounds much sweeter than it was because the little girls spilled their smoothies and turned dinner into a huge mess, oy).

We cleaned up and rushed out the door for a Walk to School Night so the kids could meet their teachers and see their classrooms. It had been an extra crazy hour of putting away groceries and feeding everyone (and cleaning up smoothie spills) so we were VERY happy that right before we left, Kelsey texted to see if we wanted her help getting to the school that night. YES PLEASE.

Getting ready for company

Friday morning we enjoyed Barbara’s Apple Bread before getting our house ready for our first overnight guests at the Castle!

The family we were getting ready to host is a family of 8, so all of our meals were about to become extra large! I got out this huge bag of chicken thighs and dumped marinade right into the bag so I could smoke it that night for our dinner.

I also baked a double batch of Chocolate Chip Muffins for Saturday’s breakfast.

And made a huge pan of brownies. :)

When the kids started to get squirrely, we packed a picnic, put on their swimsuits, and headed to the splash park.

I had air fried a big box of Taquitos (from Sam’s) for our picnic that day. It worked great! We ate them with clementines, yogurt, and cookies.

During naptime, our friends arrived!!!!! This family is incredibly dear to us. Since the girls were napping, we wasted no time getting out cards to play our mutually favorite game of Nertz. I was ridiculously rusty as I haven’t played in years. So I got a terrible score but it sure was fun!

We smoked the marinated chicken at dinnertime, cut up watermelon and brownies…

….made steamed green beans, buttered corn, and oh yeah. I had washed and thrown a bunch of potatoes into a crock pot before leaving for the Splash Park so that they could bake and be ready for dinner.

Our table was full and it was perfect.

After dinner, we took our friends on a walk to the Sunken Gardens so they could enjoy the beauty with us.

We are a large parade when just our family goes, but adding the Brocks must have been quite a show as we walked from our house to the garden. There were 19 of us out with our strollers, wagon, and kids/adults on foot. :)

We had popsicles when we got back because we had earned them. :) Then we got all the kids showered and to bed, quite the ordeal!!

When I woke up the next morning I was planning in my head how I would take advantage of the extra hands available to give my kitchen floor a much-needed sweep and mop. But look what I woke up to!!!! A beautifully clean kitchen with scrubbed floors. SO SWEET. Thank you, Brocks!!

I set out a breakfast buffet of sausage, bacon, muffins, bread, fruit, Cream Cheese Fruit Dip, and yogurt. It was simple and good.

After breakfast, we packed a sub sandwich lunch and headed out to the zoo for a few hours.

Here are 17 of us (Kelsey joined us too but was the one taking the picture). :)

We found our favorite picnic tables by the flamingos to enjoy our sandwiches, chips, fruit, juice, and brownies. We were our own zoo at the zoo, but it was so great to be together.

We made it home by 1:45 and got the four littlest down for naps. The rest of us cleaned up and got ready to go to a wedding – and from that point on, I got no pictures. Boo. The wedding was for our long-time friend Jacob and his bride Sarah, and it was beautiful.

TODAY is mine and Matt’s 29th anniversary. :) I love going to weddings as a reminder of where we came from, so the timing is perfect. Here’s to a brand new week and a Christ-focused new year of our marriage!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: July 30-August 5, 2023

by 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

What does our Big Family Food and Fun look like as July ends and August begins?

Before we dive into the week, here are a few more photos that Kelsey took during last week’s surprise birthday party. She was intentional about getting pictures with me in them, since I am usually taking the pictures and therefore not in them. :)

Friends kept showing up to surprise me all day long. Amazing!

The chip and dip buffet:

I had a hard time winding down that night! What a fantastic day!

Big Family Food and Fun: July 30-August 5, 2023

And now for the new week!

Sunday for lunch I tried Pizza Chicken in the crock pot (usually I make it in the oven). It sort of worked??!? I made 8-pounds of chicken thighs at once, so the middle chicken pieces didn’t get thoroughly cooked while we were at church. We ate what was ready and I finished cooking the under-done pieces in a skillet while we ate the rest. We had green beans, corn, bread/butter, and No-Bake Cookies with our Pizza Chicken.

Sunday evening we were invited to swim at our friends’ house and have dinner with them. We had THE BEST TIME!!!!

There were plenty of adults and teens to help with our littles so they got to have fun in the pool too. Then we ate a delicious feast of Sloppy Joes on homemade slider buns, baked beans, grapes, cucumbers, watermelon, salad, pickles, chips, and Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats. We felt so spoiled!


Monday morning we enjoyed Pumpkin Bread and Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread – both made by friends who gifted them to us. So good!

Here’s how Josie felt about it her chocolate bread breakfast. ;)

We needed to go to the bank to both set up an account and to get some paperwork signed/notarized. So  we figured out a way to do it without taking seven babies into the bank, yikes! I packed grapes, animal crackers, and water or juice for everyone and we headed out.

First we stopped at a park to wear them out a little bit. Then we loaded them back into the van and headed to the bank where I stayed with them and handed out snacks while Matt went in to get our account set up. After wayyyyyy to long (it couldn’t be helped), Matt came out and stayed with the kids while I ran in to do my part. We are thankful that the bank people worked with us and that we could get this necessary business done!

Meanwhile, it was past lunchtime because the bank needs took much longer than we anticipated. So I texted Malachi to throw Chicken Strips into the air fryer so we’d have food right away when we got home. At 12:50, we finally made it back and gave them chicken and canned fruit while I warmed up peas to complete the meal. Naptime didn’t happen until almost 2:00 that day but we sure were thankful to finally have our bank account set up and paperwork taken care of!

Dinner that night was Breakfast – pancakes, scrambled cheese eggs, sausage, bacon, blueberries, and applesauce. This is one of our favorite meals! And having a griddle on my stove is INCREDIBLE. I cranked out a huge amount of pancakes in a very short amount of time. Amazing!

The weather was beautiful that evening so we took another walk to the Sunken Gardens before bedtime.

We finished the Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread on Tuesday morning, plus I got out our apple-peeler-corer-slicer and made apple spirals for the kids. (This is actually faster than slicing them and the kids love it!) They ate the apples with our favorite “caramel cheese” so breakfast seemed like a real treat!

Matt kept all the kids occupied outside of the kitchen after breakfast because after eating chocolate bread – I desperately needed to sweep and mop. Then we packed a lunch and headed to the zoo for our morning outing. I used the rest of our leftover smoked chicken from last week to make Chicken-Ranch-Spinach Melts.

We weren’t sure how this would work since these are hot sandwiches. But I packed our cold side dishes and drinks in one cooler with ice. Then I packed the hot sandwiches in a separate insulated lunch bag. I toasted the sandwiches in our air fryer at 10:30 and at noon when we ate at the park, the sandwiches were still hot. Amazing! Now we know!

Flamingos are our favorite. Watch the video here to learn why.

Each time we go to the zoo (we have a membership and we live six blocks away so we can go as often as we are able), we choose something different to “feature” for the kids so that every trip is special. This time it was the Dino Dig. We chose a table by the digging area so that the kids could play and then eat when they were ready. The hot sandwiches were a hit, plus we had applesauce, chips and salsa, and juice.

We headed home and put littles down for a nap then I headed to Costco. I underestimated how long my shopping would take – and how many carts I would fill. Phew. Every time I’m buying food or clothes I’m struck by the reality of how many kids I have. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, haha.

I needed many basics, plus I was getting items for our kids’ lunchboxes for first couple of weeks back to school. Plus I needed diapers, and the yogurt was on sale, and….

I was an hour later than planned getting home. Matt had fed the kids leftovers for dinner but it didn’t matter. They were screaming and extra needy anyway. We somehow unloaded all the groceries while holding very loud children.

All said and done, I spent $653 for Costco groceries and we are well stocked up, at least for a few days before we run out of fresh produce again. :)

Wednesday morning Matt and and Elias headed to York to work on our houses there. Malachi was my side-kick all day, helping me with littles. I had an at-home 9:00 meeting for our littlest kids. Then at 10:30 we decided that a fun morning outing would be McDonald’s Play Place. Malachi’s app told us that we could buy nuggets for a good deal so I told the kids that everyone would have a fun snack of 2 chicken nuggets each and that we’d play and come home and bake pizzas.

Good idea, Mom.

Except – do McDonald’s Play Places not exist anymore??? It’s a been a long time since I’ve looked for one. My phone told me there was a Play Place so we drove to that location. But in fact, there was no Play Place. Moving on to Plan B…

Malachi still grabbed nuggets, we handed everyone their tiny 2-nugget snack to eat in their car seats, and we headed to the Scheels to enjoy their Play Place. Phew.

Oh but did I mention that our wagon broke while we were in there?! Good grief.

The kids had a great time playing, Malachi grabbed himself some frisbee golf discs, and we headed home – much later than intended. Too late to bake pizzas before having screaming children who had become hangry.

Soooo, when we got home I told the kids to wash hands, get a drink of water, and meet me at the table for fun sliced apples. We scooped out peanut butter for them to eat with their apples, I found leftover pancakes to warm up with butter, and that was lunch. THEN IT WAS NAPTIME, thank you Jesus.

Oh wait. It was not naptime. I had missed the fact that the three little girls had been taking turns smearing their peanut butter in each others’ hair. Oh no they hadn’t. Oh yes they had. I took them to the sink at stuck their head under the water to clean their hair the best I could. And then it was naptime. Wet hair and all.

That afternoon I experienced something new…

Grocery Delivery

After yesterday’s crazy Costco shopping trip I decided to see how I could make grocery shopping easier to meet our family’s needs. So I put in an Aldi order and took advantage of a Free Delivery deal.

Having my groceries delivered to my door? AWESOME. But will I do it again? I’m not sure. Probably not??

While shopping, I noticed that Aldi’s online prices were all higher than in-store prices. This is the case for both pick-up and delivery. With the high volume of items I need to buy, it will not be worth it to pay the extra amount per every item. Anyone have experience with Aldi pick-up or delivery? Any tips for how to save? Or should I skip it and just shop in the store somehow each week?

Is it still only Wednesday?

Thank goodness for afternoon rest times. I enjoyed some down-time (sitting with my feet up  and uploading pictures of all of our food, hehe) then got ready for company. I was so excited about this because friends from York were coming for dinner. Kelsey happened to be free to join us and I’m not sure if you know this, but she is a professional watermelon-cutter-upper. That’s always her job when she comes. ;)

There were 22 of us for dinner that night and it was magical. We smoked two different kinds of brats and ate them with salad, watermelon, grapes, oranges, carrots, chips, No-Bake Cookies, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars. (<— awww, I wrote this when Asa was only 15.) We enjoyed our visit so much!!

I was visiting with our guests, the bigger littles were playing outside with their kids and our neighbors, and it was getting close to bedtime. Kelsey grabbed the three little girls and gave them a bath to get the rest of the peanut butter out of their hair. Bless. Then Kelsey, along with guests Julie and Emma put them girls down for the night. This was such a precious scene as they said goodnight and headed to bed…

Thursday was my big birthday. :) Just like the day before, I had meetings all morning for our little ones (The Early Childhood Development team is highly involved with our kids ages 0-3 because they are all at high risk and need early intervention. We met with them frequently in York and now we are getting set up with our new team in Lincoln. Lots of meetings later, we are almost ready to roll!)

While I was in our living room filling out paperwork and answering questions, Matt and the kids made a picnic lunch for us. They made Chicken Salad and put it on croissants for sandwiches, plus packed applesauce and chips. I had splurged on Kirkland’s Organic Chocolate Milk for a special treat for picnics but none of the kids enjoyed them very much. A bummer, but now I know not to buy them again. :)

After we ate, the kids ran around the park and attempted to climb a tree.

After naps, they put together a special show for me for my birthday, hahaha.

Elias cooked and perfectly seasoned the shaved beef steak I had gotten in our Aldi delivery, then everyone else worked together to put together a buffet for Steak Nachos for my birthday dinner. All the Bigs were able to join so all 15 of us were together – just what I wanted for my birthday!

My nacho bowl was so delicious!! Cilantro, white queso, seasoned steak, corn, black beans, garden tomatoes, and chips. It was a perfect birthday meal.

Ah, but then there was cheesecake!!

After we ate, we headed outside to hang out.

Kelsey taught me how to play Cornhole. Super fun!

It was a great birthday!

Friday morning we ate cereal and bananas, then headed to a bookstore that was featuring a Reptile Storytime.

We ended up being there with several families from church which was a fun surprise! Most of our kids were brave enough to pet the snakes. :)

Since we were already out and about, we found a park that we hadn’t tried out yet and ate the rest of the Chicken Salad on croissants and No Bake Cookies with juice and clementines. But oooops. This park didn’t have bathrooms, which is a no-go with this many kids! We cut our picnic short and came home so that we could make a mess of food all over our kitchen floor. I mean, so that some of the kids could potty while we finished lunch in our kitchen. :)

For dinner that night I decided that I wanted NO DIRTY DISHES (or drama), so I threw a bunch of chicken nuggets into the air fryer and made these smoothies. Disposable plastic cups with fun straws for the win!

Malachi had made himself a pizza for lunch and the cardboard circle was still on the counter. So that became my fancy serving tray for the nuggets. Nice, eh? The kids ate outside while playing because the weather was wonderful.

Meanwhile, Justus had been coming back and forth all day working with our smoker to made his delicious ribs for some buddies that night. Brayden was his side-kick, which is good beyond what I can express. Our little kids need our bigger kids pouring into them like this. Thank you, God, for moving us to Lincoln so that we could be together in these ways. We all need this.

Acacia gave up on her straw and went all in, drinking her smoothie like a big girl.

Plan B again

If we’ve learned anything we’ve learned that we can make plans, but they almost always need to change.

Saturday morning we had plans to go to Walmart to get a few school supplies and some of our WIC items for the month, especially formula for BabyBoy#11. But, the roofers we’d been waiting on for over a month to come do repairs FINALLY came that morning. So Matt needed to spend time with them, pushing back our plans.

By 11am we were finally able to get out the door, and we decided we needed to work our plans out differently. I put together a snack of animal crackers, applesauce pouches, and cheese sticks and we made our way to the store. All the kids stayed in the the van with Matt and he handed out snacks while I ran into Walmart and hurried as fast as I could to get everything we needed. It wasn’t a very fun outing for the kids, but at least the necessary shopping got done.

I forgot to take any pictures, sorry! I got formula, cereal, juice, cheese, yogurt, frozen hashbrowns, spring mix, spinach, grapes, pears, bananas, strawberries, plus a few packs of glue sticks, crayons, and pencils. Matt and the kids were hanging in there in the van, bless. We unloaded groceries as fast as we could when we got home then quickly warmed up leftover brats and served them with watermelon before naptime.

We made fresh green beans from our friends’ garden that night plus corn on the cob. I put a bunch of Burritos from our freezer into the air fryer to heat up while the veggies cooked and that was dinner. (By the way, make these burritos to have on hand for nights you don’t feel like or have time for cooking. They are so great!)

This was my view of dinner from the corner of the room where I sat feeding BabyBoy#11.

We just have one more week before school starts. We are both excited and sad that summer break ends and a school year begins. When do your kids start their school year again?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

What to Buy (Or Avoid) at Costco or Sam’s to Save Your Grocery Budget

by 7 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Here’s what I buy at Costco or Sam’s so save my grocery budget. And…here’s what I avoid buying at those stores!

What I Buy at Sam’s and Costco

These are the purchases I make that save me the most money as I strive to keep our big family budget at $1,400. (I’m currently feeding 12 people three meals every day. Plus we have frequent guests.)

Here’s what saves me the most at Costco and Sam’s:

Organic Produce

I typically find organic produce at Costco for the same price as non-organic produce elsewhere. I still sometimes opt for non-organic depending on cost, but it’s nice to get organic options at Costco when I can. I have found that their organic apples, pears, mixed greens, spinach, carrots, and grapes are usually a great price!

Chicken Legs

These are always $0.98/pound, which is a great price per pound for high-quality meat.

Sliced and Shredded Cheese

In my experience, the bulk bags of shredded Colby jack and mozzarella cheese at Costco or Sam’s is less than what I find elsewhere, even Walmart. I also buy big packages of sliced Colby Jack and sliced Pepper Jack for grilled cheese sandwiches, saving quite a bit!

Other Dairy Products

BUTTER!!!! I always buy butter and save at Costco – while watching for loss leader sales at other stores, especially during holiday season. Also on my Costco and Sam’s list: Daisy Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, 4% Milkfat Cottage Cheese, Half and Half, and Heavy Whipping Cream. Sam’s has a large container of Whole Milk Yogurt that we like also.

Rotisserie Chicken

They are always $4.98 and you can eat them as-is for a fantastic convenience meal! Or you can turn it into any of these meals.

Chicken Thighs

I buy the six-pack of boneless chicken thighs at Costco or Sam’s for $3.49/pound. (Worth noting: I can also find these marked down for even less at Walmart so I always check there also.)

Beef Hotdogs

These are a great price at both Sam’s and Costco, and their taste doesn’t compare to any others I’ve found. We especially love the box of 80 beef hotdogs from Sam’s. They are so good!

Frozen Chicken Nuggets

These are a GREAT price at Costco and they taste better than any others we’ve tried.

Applesauce Pouches

If you buy these (with all of our littles, they are a great convenience food for us!) I highly recommend that you pick them up at Sam’s or Costco. They cost much less per pouch at these warehouses. Plus Costco has a Kirkland brand that is priced even better!

Caesar Salad Packs

I actually don’t know or even care how much these cost, ha. There’s something about these that just taste so very good! I always grab a couple from the produce department and we enjoy them with our meals during the next couple of days. Brayden and Keith eat thirds and fourths of this salad!

Frozen Pizza

I used to think of these as a splurge, but as it turns out, buying frozen pizza is actually a frugal option if you think of them this way. In our opinion, the Kirkland frozen pizzas at Costco are the best tasting compared to other brands.

Grass Fed Hamburger Meat

Currently, the best price I’ve found for Organic Ground Beef (Costco) or Grass Fed Ground Beef (Sam’s) is at these warehouses. Occasionally, Sam’s even has some marked down for quick sale, and I grab it up!

What to avoid

Here’s a list of items I typically find for a better price elsewhere…

Hotdog and Hamburger Buns

In the big scheme of things, this isn’t a super big deal or even a big waste of money. But I’ve found that it saves money to pick up hamburger and hotdog buns at Walmart or Aldi instead of at Costco or Sam’s.

Bagels

The same goes for bagels. I can get them at Aldi for much cheaper than those at Sam’s and Costco.

Salsa

We really like the Aldi organic salsa, and it is much cheaper than what I find at the warehouses. I buy a case of salsa at Aldi every time I go in.

Spaghetti Sauce

The Aldi Simple Nature organic spaghetti sauce is a great price and tastes great.

Hamburger Meat and Sausage

I watch other store ads to check for big hamburger meat discounts. And usually, I find sausage at Aldi for just $1.99/pound. So I don’t ever buy these two meat varieties at Sam’s or Costco unless I happen to catch a meat markdown at Sam’s that matches my price point.

Canned Veggies 

I’ve found that canned beans, tomatoes, green beans, and corn are usually more expensive at Sam’s and Costco compared to Aldi. So I typically buy a flat of of 12 cans of black beans, baked beans, and corn when I go to Aldi instead of getting them at the warehouses.

Wow, is that it?

Overall, prices at Costco and Sam’s really are the best, especially for the high-quality foods that they offer. There are just those few items that I tend to look for elsewhere, and sometimes it isn’t worth making an extra trip to another store.

What are your buy and don’t buy suggestions from Costco and Sam’s?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: July 23-29, 2023

by 6 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

This week was a hot one! We still had a lot of fun and we enjoyed a lot of great food. Here’s what our big family enjoyed and ate this week…

Big Family Food and Fun July 23-29

For Sunday’s lunch I followed this Crock Pot Pizza Casserole somewhat loosely. I dumped 16-ounces of dry pasta into each of my large crock pots. I cut pepperoni into one, and added cooked ground sausage to the other. I then added two cans of pizza sauce to each along with some salt and water. This was so fast and easy! The casseroles cooked while we were at church.

When we got home I sautéed sliced sweet peppers and made buttered corn for side dishes. We all sprinkled shredded cheese on our Pizza Pasta – super tasty!

We were blessed to have Justus and Kelsey, Eva, and three more friends join us for our meal that day.

For dessert I had baked a cake in the crock pot. I made a vanilla cake this time, but here’s how to bake a cake in a crock pot – so cool! After it cooled, I poked holes in the cake and dumped vanilla pudding into the holes. Then I Whipped Cream and spread it over the cake. It was fun and delicious! (I used a boxed pudding mix this time but here’s my Homemade Vanilla Pudding recipe that’s extra good.)

Sunday evening I pulled out leftover Burrito Filling and Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip that I’d made last week. I mixed them together, warmed it up, and served it with chips.

I was up super early (4:00) with BabyBoy#11 Monday morning so after getting him back to bed and enjoying a nice long “Coffee with Jesus” time I got some work done in the kitchen before any of the other littles got up. I started by making a triple batch of Snickerdoodle Bites.

I was hungry by 6:30 for my second breakfast, haha, so I made our not-so-famous Salad Smoothie to drink while I worked. :)

Then I washed out our Blendtec and made Peanut Butter Cup Whipped Cream for later.

Some of the kids were up by then and starting to get hungry so I made everyone Scrambled Egg Sandwiches.

Matt and I have decided that outings in the mornings are much better for everyone than trying to wrangle everyone around the house. But it was super hot this week. So we decided to take the kids to the Splash Park. For lunch, I warmed up leftover hotdogs from the fridge and cut them in half because there were only 7 dogs left.

I packed them in an insulated bag to keep them warm. Then in a separate bag I packed peach cups, chips and salsa, cucumbers, Snickerdoodle Bites, and juice.

Long live the Snickerdoodle Bites. Hahaha, here’s what they looked like when we got to the park and pulled them out to serve. Poor little warm, squished bites. We all got a good chuckle over how the heat didn’t let these hold their shape. Then I grabbed a spoon and served blobs to everyone. No harm no foul.

The splash park is the best. Everyone was super hungry after playing. Then after eating, they went back into the water for more play.

Last week I had browned several pounds of hamburger meat, so for dinner on Monday I used some of it to make Sloppy Joes. I sliced home grown squash and zucchini our friends had given us at church and sautéed it. SUCH A TREAT. I warmed up leftover green beans for the non-squash lovers to eat. Plus I got out pickles and mac salad to fill everyone’s bellies.

Then I surprised everyone with Peanut Butter Cup Whipped Cream that I had made earlier in the day. I scooped it out into small bowls and topped it with a few animal crackers. The kids thought it was soooo much fun! The cream treat by itself is super good (and low in sugar) – but the animal crackers with it made it extra good. The crunch maybe? Or maybe eating monkeys and hippos tastes better than any of us realized?

After dinner, we loaded everyone up and went to Scheels for an outing. Why did we go there? Two reasons:

  1. Air
  2. Conditioning

We needed an outing but phew, the heat. Scheels made for a perfect fun outing with its play area, aquarium, animal display, and $1 Ferris wheel! Only three of the littles were tall enough to go and two of the three had to ride with an adult. Rock, paper, scissors – Mom won. Or lost. No one is sure. (Neither Elias or Matt like heights so…)

Brave Brayden rode in a seat by himself.

Mom sat with Kiya and Keith. I think Matt captured this picture when I was screaming with glee. But my face looks like I’m about to eat my young.

It was truly a fantastic way to spend our evening. We spent $5 on some needed badminton birdies and $3.99 on the Ferris wheel for the four riders. Not too shabby for a not-quite-free night out! Oh, and then we walked over to Trader Joe’s since it was next door. I love this store but it’s pricier than other stores I have access to now since I need to buy such large quantities. So we just got lemons and mixed greens. I’ll likely not shop here much, but I will go back for stocking stuffers at Christmas time. :)

Tuesday morning Kelsey came over so that Matt could get some work done on the Castle. (It’s an amazing home for us, but it is over a hundred years old and does require some maintenance. Plus he’s getting some of our top floor bedrooms ready to rent out in the upcoming months. More on that later.)

Kelsey helped me take all the kids to a library for a fun Sparks Fly event (all about static electricity). It was shorter than we realized it would be and we wanted to keep the kids out of the house longer so Matt could work longer. So we ran back home and left the kids buckled and sitting in the van with Kelsey while I ran into the house and filled a picnic bag to take to the park.

I wasn’t even very sure what I grabbed until we unpacked the bag at the park, haha. It wasn’t too bad actually – we discovered cheese and crackers, avocado cups (found at Costco and Sam’s), applesauce pouches, juice boxes, and leftover Peanut Butter Cup Whipped Cream  with animal crackers.

We played until the heat got to us, then headed home for lots of drinks of water and then naps.

That night we loaded up and drove 30 minutes to Mahoney State Park to meet some York friends who were camping there all week. What a blast! They served us burgers, brats, and hotdogs with chips. We contributed grapes, mandarins, and juice pouches.

The kids made smores…

Watching Keith eat his was the best form of entertainment.

After we cleaned up the food, we loaded the girls in the wagon and all of us walked over to the marina to see the fish. It was a lovely visit with our friends – so lovely that I didn’t take many pictures. :)

We got home late and went to bed dirty. The next morning we had showers! Then three of our kids had appointments with their therapist. We had an early lunch then took the kids to play in the play area of one of the Lincoln malls before naptime. (Again, we were looking for an outing that involved air conditioning.) Lunch was leftovers with fresh green beans. <—our gardening friends are spoiling us and we love it!

Since we’d already eaten lunch, the only picnic food I packed to take to the mall was a bottle for BabyBoy#11. :)

We came home for naptime, and I headed out with my computer to work in the quiet for a couple of hours at Panera. Before coming home I ran to Aldi because as usual, we were low on fresh produce and milk. I also picked up some bagels and buns while I was there. Later I sent Elias to pick up meat on sale at a different store. My July Grocery Total: $1185 <— Surprisingly (barely) under budget as the month ends!

Dinner that night was BLT Wraps and clementines. I’d already mixed up the filling so Matt and Elias put together the wraps and fed everyone before I made it home. Meanwhile, Justus and Kelsey ran over to do a load of laundry and hadn’t eaten yet. I love impromptu get-togethers like this. I mixed up more BLT filling (the Costco bacon bits made it possible) so that everyone could have their fill.

Matt and I took the kids outside to play in the water after dinner while Kelsey cut up the watermelon I’d picked up. Good thing she did! Playing in the water made them hungry again so they ate an entire half of the melon!

(Not pictured: kids’ behavior issues during, before, and after all of our fun. I always share about the fun we have. You don’t want to see the fits. I don’t want to dwell on them here. But we sure do appreciate your prayers. Our kids’ needs are high, multiplied by the trauma they’ve experienced. It keeps us on our knees as we are constantly in prayer about how to love them through their hurt and work toward healing.)

Thursday morning we planned to go to a “Learn to Do Magic Tricks” Class at a library. Since we’d already be loaded into the van (it’s kind of a big deal), we decided to pack a picnic to take to the zoo afterward. Then we could eat and let the kids play in the water area there since it was so hot!

For breakfast, I offered bagels, strawberries, and blueberries. Kiya and Keith opted for the remaining smooshed  Snickerdoodle Bites. Keith used a spoon and mashed his like playdough before eating it. Whatever. :) Meanwhile, I made Turkey and Spinach Subs for our picnic lunch.

The magic tricks class was fun (but hectic with all of our littles). I’d forgotten our zoo pass so we ran home to get it and Elias hopped in to join us at the zoo. We enjoyed our subs with applesauce and water or juice.

Then we let the kids get soaked in the water area – the real reason we’d gone to the zoo that day!

We visited the spider monkeys before heading home for naps. These outings are awesome and fun, but let me tell you, by naptime Matt and I are WORN OUT. We usually have an iced coffee “date” at the beginning of naptime so that we can recover before getting work done and tackling the evening with the kids. :)

For dinner I had thawed three packages of chicken from the freezer: one of boneless thighs, one of boneless breasts, and one of drumsticks. I had marinated them in Italian dressing all afternoon, then we smoked them. We got out watermelon and tossed together one of the Aldi’s salad kits we’d bought last week. It all tasted amazing!

Friday morning we enjoyed Cheesy Scrambled eggs, sausage, and strawberries. I used some of the eggs and sausage to make to-go Breakfast Sandwiches for Matt and Elias who were headed to York for the day to work on our properties there.

Mid-morning, Keith discovered our Apple Peeler-Corer-Slicer so I washed it and showed the kids how it worked.

Apples taste so much better when you cut them this way!! This is how you go through five apples in five minutes. :) Hooray for Eva coming over to spend the morning with us so that I wasn’t on my own with eight kids. (Our former foster son, a 4-year-old half-sib to several of our kids, came to visit for the weekend!)

We decided to brave the heat to let the kids go play at the Splash Park again so I packed a meal for us to eat at a picnic table there for lunch. Our visiting Bonus Boy has a pretty limited list of foods he’ll eat so I made our meal based on what I knew he would enjoy. (This post shares ideas for what to feed picky kids, and #5 on that list details what he likes to eat.)

We ate Banana Bread and Butter sandwiches, yogurt, clementines, blueberries, cheese, and juice. (This was the Banana Bread that I’d baked in the crock pot a couple of weeks ago. I had frozen half of it so it was great to pull out and enjoy.)

Late in the afternoon before kids got up from naps, I made a double batch of No Bake Cookies. Why? Because it’s always nice to have goodies on hand to share with people who come over. And because I needed “kitchen therapy.” Praying and breathing while I’m cooking or baking always helps me find peace and calm when I’m feeling a bit out of sorts.

We warmed up leftover hamburgers for dinner and ate them outside with carrots and pickles. We survived the heat that night with water guns and our little splash pools.

Saturday morning we planned to meet friends at the Farmer’s Market but it started to rain heavily so we switched to Plan B and loaded up for the Children’s Museum instead. We have a year-long family pass so this was perfect.

The Surprise

Little did I know that Matt had been cooking up big plans for several weeks and that rain or not, he really just needed to get me out of the house for the morning. :) I thought it was odd that he didn’t want to make any lunch plans for the day, insisting that he and the kids should make lunch at home instead. “It’s good for them to take ownership in what we eat,” he said. “They’ll appreciate your work more this way.”

Ok. But???

We had our Bonus Boy with us so we took all eight kids to the Children’s Museum. Phew. Overall it went well. And look at this sweet picture. They are SO RARELY all easily managed but here we are heading back to our van after playing all morning:

We arrived back home to a HOUSE FULL OF PEOPLE. What had my husband been up to??

Well. Next week I’m turning the big 5.0. So he surprised me a few days early with a sweet party to celebrate. It was everything incredible and I can’t get over it!!

Throughout the afternoon, people kept showing up!!! Every time I turned around, someone else was at the door with a hug, with flowers, with a balloon, or with a card. Truly, what a precious, lovely surprise. I feel so very loved. Matt and the bigs are so amazing to do this for me.

Eva and Kelsey had helped arrange for people to bring dips, then “we” supplied the chips, crackers, and drinks. It was a meal of many of my favorite foods.

Ah, there he is. The guy who pulled this off in the midst of our huge move.

One of the best surprises?? Malachi had been at church camp for two weeks and away for work the week before that. We have missed him!!! I wasn’t expecting him to be home until later in the afternoon. But there he was, after getting up early to drive three hours back to be on time for my surprise. My sweet Malachi.

All said and done, there were 62 of us celebrating together that day. 62!!!!! Many hadn’t seen the Castle yet so we gave lots of tours. This provided much opportunity for us to all praise God together for the gift He gave us when He provided us with this home.

Old friends met new friends. York met Lincoln. I’m still marveling about the beauty of it all.

The party ended at 1:00 but with all the people continuing to come and go, we didn’t say our final goodbyes until after 5:00. That’s when Matt and I realized that we’d hardly eaten all day and we were starving, hahaha.

We cut up the leftover smoked chicken from Thursday and Kelsey made a Caesar salad kit. We tossed it together, got out watermelon, and chowed down.

What a fantastic week!

Now, to be clear, I’m still 49. I won’t be 50 until next week, so I’m going to hold on to my 40’s for four more days, hehehe. Meh, whatever. Looks like the 50’s are going to be pretty great!!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: July 16-22, 2023

by 4 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Ready for our Big Family Food and Fun post for this week?

Big Family Food and Fun July 16-22, 2023

Our week began with a big birthday meal for Eva on Sunday. She requested Lasagna and no one complained. :)

Her parents and a dear friend joined us (it’s so fun to do life with them in Lincoln too!).

That evening we got to join many of the youth and families from church at a swimming pool for a big event. Before heading out we ate a quick meal of chicken nuggets, fries, strawberries, and carrots.

Keeping everyone alive at the pool is a full time effort, so I got no pictures of our fun. :) Everyone was starving when we got home so we devoured two frozen pizzas before bed. (I had baked them before we left and I was so glad I did!)

The kids had been requesting “Eggs in a Nest” for breakfast so that’s what we enjoyed on Monday morning.

I FINALLY made Matt’s Father’s Day Cobbler. The question remains: did I make it a month late – or 11 months early? I feel like I’m ahead for Father’s Day 2024. Heh?

While the little girls were eating breakfast that morning I blended up this smoothie for Matt and me. When the blender was running, the girls all started laughing hysterically for some reason, which was incredibly fun and made up for at least three tantrums each.

At lunchtime, we loaded up and took advantage of our zoo membership. It was this day that I discovered this “salad in a bag for a picnic” trick. With our salad, we ate applesauce, avocado cups, cheese, sliced meat, crackers, and juice boxes.

That night we warmed up leftover Lasagna and corn and cooked fresh green beans friends from church had given us. NOTHING beats fresh green beans!

Tuesday morning Matt and Elias headed to York to work on our house there. I sent them with Sausage and Egg Breakfast Sandwiches and bottles of juice.

The rest of us ate eggs (we went through 15 that morning), sausage patties, plus an entire container of yogurt.

I browned 5-pounds of hamburger meat that morning so I could make Burritos. But I scooped out about a pound of cooked meat and mixed it with corn, beans, and white queso from the fridge. It heated in our small crock pot for a couple hours while Kelsey and I took the kids to the library for a fun “Magic” Show.

The magic show was super fun! It was rainy that morning so this was a perfect outing for us that day.

That afternoon I got hungry for these Peanut Butter Flourless Brownies. These can be great or these can be dry. The key is to pull them out of the oven before they seem to be done. I actually only baked these for 10-minutes and it worked great!

Keith agreed by eating three of these and licking his plate!

I made these Frozen Yogurt Cups, except that I used this Smoothie recipe so that I could “hide” spinach in there. The color turned out….special.

And then, since the four littlest were still sleeping, I used the rest of the hamburger meat I’d cooked earlier in the day plus a pan of this Stick of Butter Rice I’d made to make a huge batch of Burritos for the freezer. We’ll enjoy these on busy days, or I’ll pass them on to others who need them. (Fun Fact: I’ve stopped putting butter in my Stick of Butter Rice as a way to save money. The recipe minus the butter is still delicious and well, butter can be up to almost $1/stick now so….)

I had thawed 4 packages of our favorite tortillas from Azure Standard. So we ended up with 32 Burritos!

Matt and Elias were still in York working on our house so Justus came over after work to help me feed the kids dinner. I browned up some sliced ham, Justus made mac and cheese, then we gave the kids the frozen smoothie cups and flourless brownies. They thought we were sooooo silly for giving them “desserts” with their dinner. Little do they know that they got lots of nourishment in these treats!

We ate outside (of course), and boy did those smoothie cups melt everywhere. They are pretty messy. Tasty, but messy. I won’t make them like this very often. :)

After dinner, Justus played Walnut Baseball in the yard with the kids. It was the best! What is Walnut Baseball, you ask? It’s where you pick up all the walnuts off the ground that fell off of the walnut tree, and you use them as baseballs.

Bases loaded. The three-year-old up to bat. It was intense. 

Wednesday morning for breakfast Anna helped me make a triple batch of Peanut Butter Honey Rice Krispie Treats. We ate them with bananas. (These bars firm up after they sit a while. But if you serve it right after making them, you have to serve it in bowls with spoons.)

Matt and I loaded up the kids after breakfast to go to Library Story Hour. Today was Butterfly Day, featuring the Hungry Caterpillar book. So sweet and fun!

Apparently it was National Hotdog Day. So obviously, lunch had to be hotdogs. Pineapple Fluff Salad sounded good so we ate that as a side dish along with a jar of pickles.

I am astounded by how quickly we accumulate recycling items. Matt emptied this container into our recycle dumpster two days ago but here it was overflowing again. (We eat a lot I guess.)

The Lincoln Zoo stays open until 8pm on Wednesdays so we decided to have dinner there that night. I made a big container of Tuna Salad, which we ate with crackers. We also enjoyed Havarti cheese with crackers, mandarin orange cups, and juice pouches.

And check it out! Since we’d enjoyed Butterfly Day at the library that morning, we made a point to enjoy the Butterfly Garden at the zoo after we ate our dinner.

 

Thursday we needed milk and a few other items so we decided that our morning outing would be a family trip to Aldi. Oy. I braced myself for the craziness of it, and grabbed not one but two quarters for carts. :)

Acacia and Josie held hands on the way there. I LOVE IT when they are sweet together like this.

Matt had the cart full of babes and I had one for food.

We spent $135 on chicken thighs, ground sausage, milk, yogurt, cream cheese, strawberries, blueberries, watermelon, salad kits, juice, and buns. I was so glad I checked for sales on meat because their boneless skinless chicken thighs were just $1.99/pound. Amazing and well below my price point! I bought five packages.

By the time we checked out, loaded up, and made it home it was far past lunchtime. Thankfully I had blended up this Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip before we left so we got it out of the fridge and ate it with tortilla chips before naptime.

That evening was incredibly special as dear friends from York came to visit. We made this grilled chicken with baked potatoes in the crock pot, watermelon, green beans, and these gluten free, dairy free Banana Muffins. <— I hadn’t made those muffins in a very long time but wanted to accommodate our friends’ food sensitivity needs. I thought they were only sort-of good, ha. I’m not sure what our guests thought. But our six littles ate them like they were magic muffins. We started the night with 24 muffins and ended the night with only 2. So yay for that!

After eating, all the kids discovered that they could fit inside our dining room cabinets. :) We took a walk together to the Sunken Gardens, then came home and enjoyed popsicles. The night was perfect. Their visit and hugs were just what we all needed.

Friday morning Matt and Elias went to York to work all day so Eva came over to help me. I had a meeting with a case worker, so Eva entertained the girls by making a Sister Sandwich in our playroom.

A friend and her baby joined us all for lunch so I opened up some salad kits from Aldi and cut up last night’s leftover grilled chicken to toss in.

Dinner that night was a bit crazy because Matt and Elias hadn’t made it home yet and I was on my own with all seven kids. I was quickly scrambling eggs and frying last night’s leftover baked potatoes when someone who shall remain nameless got mad and threw a pound of strawberries on the floor. She very unhappily picked them back up.

We survived the evening and were very happy to see Daddy and Elias get home soon after we ate.

 

Saturday after a quick breakfast of yogurt, berries, and Peanut Butter Honey Rice Krispie Treats Matt and I decided to check out Pioneers Park Nature Center with the kids. I made Ham and Spinach wraps to take with us.

And I packed sliced cheese, mandarin oranges, tomatoes, raisins, pistachios, and juice. Plus a Spindrift for Mom. ;) Meanwhile, I was thawing a ten pound chunk of meat to use later in the day.

Pioneers Park was soooooo much fun. We saw bison, walked some trails, explored the Herb Garden, and experienced hands-on learning inside the Chet Ager Building. I had read that the park had a place for kids to dig, so Keith took his excavator and carried it around the entire time, hahaha.

We found a shady spot to eat our lunch.

Then the kids used the buckets, cups, and the beloved excavator to dig in the sand. (I’m not sure that this is the digging area the park website was talking about, but it worked!)

Everyone was dirty, sweaty, and tired on our drive home. But here these two are again, holding hands and singing as we traveled.

Remember the 10-pound hunk of meat I was thawing? I turned a bunch of it into Burgers for dinner, then browned the rest of it to have on hand for meals like this. Our across-the-street neighbor, John, was outside gardening so I hollered over to see if he’d like a hamburger and he came and joined us. It was awesome!

It’s going to be extra hot in the upcoming days so we picked up two little pools for the kids to splash around in. They enjoyed these after eating their burgers.

They got in and out so many times that the water turned disgusting and made bath time a bigger ordeal than it already usually is. OY. Worth the effort? 100%. :)

P.S. July’s grocery spending total so far is $1069 with one week left to go. Can I say within our budget this month? We’ll find out. :)

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Big Family Food and Fun: July 9-15, 2023

by 8 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Ready for Food and Fun: July 9-15? We are on week three of Castle living. Each day we make a little bit more progress as we settle in. Of course, each day we make lots of messes, eat lots of food, and throw lots of tantrums so unpacking boxes is a bit of a challenge between dealing with normal day needs. :) We’ll get there!

Unrelated to food (unless we’re talking about formula), suddenly none of his clothes fit this little chunkers. (BabyBoy#11, not Matt. Matt’s clothes still fit.) Good thing I found some clearance items this week!

I’d say we ate pretty well this week as we have been well cared for by others and I am getting settled into our new kitchen. Every day I tell Matt, “I LOVE this kitchen!” Hopefully he doesn’t get tired of hearing it. Truly, it is an amazing kitchen and I’m so thankful God gifted it to us.

(This was the real estate photo.
The kitchen is no longer this clean because we live here and make food here.
But pretend that it is still this shiny.)

Food and Fun July 9-15

Sunday morning we sliced the Sourdough Pumpkin Bread our friend Barbara had made for us and enjoyed it with grapes before loading the kids into the van for church.

Before we left I had put potatoes into the crock pot for a Bake Potato Bar for lunch. When we got home, I realized that I had only set the crock pot to “low” instead of “high” so the potatoes were still not done. Oops. SO, I switched our lunch plan with our dinner plan and we warmed up more of Barbara’s food! What a gift that she had taken care of us so well!

We enjoyed her Turkey Alfredo, finishing off the first pan and half of the second. YUM.

That evening, we had our baked potatoes with bacon, cheese, peas, sour cream, and butter.

Monday morning I realized our need for quick-to-grab foods so I stirred together these No-Bake Cookie Cups. They are made with just a little bit of honey so they’re perfect for breakfast or snacks.

The rest of the day was borderline nuts. (What else is new?!) We had foster care specialists come in the morning to tour our home and approve it for foster care. We warmed up leftovers for lunch, then took the kids on a walk to the Sunken Gardens before naptime.

That afternoon, BabyBoy#11 had a well-baby check up with his new doctor. I filled out tons of paperwork to get all of our kids in the system and to authorize their medical records to be transferred over. Then we ran to Costco because it was close by. I rushed through grabbing a few essentials because Matt’s truck was in the shop and we needed to pick it up by 5:30.

I got home and we threw all of the kids into the van with a snack to hold them over (which it did not). We picked up Matt’s truck and went into Sam’s because it was two minutes away. Elias was with us, thankfully, so we had three adults with seven (hungry) littles in Sam’s. This was not my most relaxing shopping hour, ha. We filled two carts with more essentials. Meanwhile Keith screamed through half of the store because I wouldn’t buy him boots that he didn’t need. Oy.

We grabbed the beautiful $5 Rotisserie Chicken on our way out of the store, got home and tore it off the bone to quickly feed everyone before bed. Zero out of ten, do not recommend executing a plan like this in the future. But that chicken sure did taste good.

There was a mess of chicken skin, bones, smashed grapes, and apple cores all over the dining room when we were done and we managed to get the kids in bed – only thirty minutes late.

The good news is that I am now stocked up on groceries again, woohoo! I spent $216 on food at Sam’s and $286 at Costco. I’ve been avoiding the stores in an effort to use up what we have, and I’m so thankful for the savings as we’ve had other moving expenses. Making meals and snacks will be much easier now!

The next morning Matt and Elias needed to leave early to get to York for a meeting and to work on our house there. So I made them Sausage and Egg Breakfast Sandwiches for the road. We had a lot of strawberries that I’d picked up over the weekend so I made another batch of this Cheesecake Parfait to enjoy with them.

Then Kiya got up and the kids finished off the No-Bake Cookie Cups I’d made the day before.

Kelsey and Eva arrived to help me manage the kids all morning since Matt and Elias were going to be gone all day. (Malachi is gone for three weeks for work and church camp.) We decided to take the kids to the splash park I packed a loaf of bread worth of turkey sandwiches, juice boxes, and mandarin orange cups to eat there.

The kids LOVED this outing and took great naps when we got back. When everyone got up, I was on my own with all seven kids so dinner consisted of air fried Orange Chicken (boxed, from Sam’s), rice, and broccoli. OH WAIT. I burned the broccoli. So our veggie turned into spinach dipped in ranch. OH WAIT. Kiya eats her spinach with ketchup. Hey, whatever gets the nutrients in, I say.

Wednesday morning we ate yogurt with granola for breakfast before heading to our “new library” to check out story hour.

Silly as it sounds, when we got there and the story hour lady was soooo nice, it made me teary-eyed. We had loved story hour in York and I miss it already. I miss a lot about York and it’s all starting to hit me. So I cried a bit through Llama Llama Red Pajama. Tired much, Laura? :)

See Kelsey there? She had picked up a 2-year-old buddy to help out a friend
and they were at the library when we got there!

We came home and warmed up leftover Turkey Alfredo and made quesadillas with the leftover Rotisserie chicken from Monday.

I also sliced apples with this cheese, which is SO GOOD. Unless you don’t like it, and then it’s not so good. But most of us think it’s SO GOOD.

I had a lot of spinach in the fridge, and there’s only one solution to dealing with that: Make a cake. Obviously. I knew my kids would love the treat, and they were only fascinated that I could bake a cake in a crock pot. They didn’t care about the spinach. Big score!

That afternoon during naps, Kiya and I had a “date” at Aldi to pick up everything I hadn’t gotten at Sam’s and Costco. Highlights: whole milk yogurt, salad kits, protein snacks for Elias, cheese and meat trays for picnics, juice, and whole milk cottage cheese. Also macaroni salad because I have been hungry for it but didn’t need a Costco-sized container. :)

I spent $115 at Aldi that day, bringing our July total up to $884 so far. (Keep in mind that our four youngest kids are on WIC so that provides us with around $210 in food – a huge blessing. You can see what WIC provided for us this month in this post. Plus lovely people have showered us with food blessings since we arrived in Lincoln.)

My plan was to smoke Pork Loin for dinner, but wow I am learning that I need to budget my time differently now that we are in a city. Driving places takes longer, but also just getting out the door to go shopping takes longer because I’m not organized enough yet to efficiently find my purse and shoes. One day at a time.

Anyway, by the time we got home, there was no way I was going to start smoking pork loin. Matt had the smoker going so we quickly threw on Smoked Sausage I’d gotten at Sam’s. While that cooked, Elias put together the Caesar salad kits, I steamed corn on the cob, frosted the crock pot cake, and worked really hard to open the container of mac salad. ;)

We were so hungry and this feast tasted so good!! With cake for dessert – woohoo!

Inspired by my Crock Pot Cake, I decided the next morning to use the big bunch of brown bananas in my kitchen to try baking this Banana Bread recipe in the crock pot. It worked well enough that I’ll write a post about it so you can try too if you’d like to bake without heating up your oven!

While it was “baking” I cut two cantaloupe, a watermelon, and two pounds of strawberries to have in the fridge for easy side dishes.

Matt was working on fixing one of our air conditioners all morning (always fun when things break right after you move in). But we were able to all steal way late morning to have lunch at the zoo. We are amazed that we can “walk to the zoo for lunch” whenever we want! It’s just a few blocks away and we have a year family pass. Lunch with tigers and pandas. YES!

That evening our next door neighbors joined us in our backyard for dinner. They have been so good to welcome us and help with various needs. Our kids and their kids are becoming great friends and spending time together that evening was fantastic. We smoked three of the Pork Loin that I’d gotten BOGO last week and enjoyed it with green beans, banana bread, plus watermelon and mac and cheese brought by our neighbors.

Lunch on Friday was delicious soup Barbara had made plus Matt made grilled cheese sandwiches and set out pears.

Elias baked frozen pizzas that night and we enjoyed them with cold melon outside.

Matt spent time cleaning our smoker while the kids and I picked up sticks so the guys could mow. Afterward, the kids all lined up like this and started singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” It was kind of amazing because it is so rare that all the kids cooperate and play together like that. I had to document it! :)

The next morning we ate a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and yogurt before heading to the Farmer’s Market to meet friends.

I also made a double batch of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies because our friends were coming over for lunch after the Farmer’s Market. It was fun to bake cookies for the first time in my “new” oven!

Lunch with our friends was a Nacho Bar with chips, taco meat, white queso, salsa, sour cream, cheese, tomatoes, corn, black beans, and avocado.

That afternoon I put together a huge Lasagna for our Sunday lunch so that we could celebrate Eva’s birthday together. We pulled out leftover to clean out the fridge at dinnertime, gave all the kids baths (no easy task), and cleaned the kitchen.

Hope your new week is off to a great start!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!