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?