Summer Happenings 2016 Part 1: Summer Menu

This summer has proven to be quite busy and yet I don't know what in the world we've been doing!  I haven't even been able to blog for a whole month. How does this happen?

I was going to catch up on our summer with a "5 Random Things" post, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the photo editor I've been using. I have more pictures than you're probably interested in, which is why I make collages, but I can't make those collages right now (I can't take any more pics right now either, but that's another story). SO, I've decided that I'll try to do some catching up with a Summer Happenings 2016 blog series. 

Let's get started. Shall we?

We're going to start with our menu plan. 

I spent a lot of the spring time working on getting a year round menu plan ready to implement by the beginning of June. I am excited to say that I got it done! (That was quite the undertaking for me). In my last The Homeschool Mother's Journal, I talked about having a seasonal meal plan. So, I have a summer menu plan, a fall menu, a winter menu and a spring menu. 

I was able to start the summer menu at the beginning of last month. I don't usually share this type of thing, but it has and does effect our homeschooling routine. Not having a menu plan makes me a litte chaotic. I get stressed out every 2 weeks trying to figure out what we're going to eat, I have to think about making a grocery list and the stress really just snowballs. This summer has been smooth sailing with already knowing what we're having for dinner each night and being prepared for those meals. 

Ready to see the summer menu? (Click on the image to get a closer look.)

This is just a dinner meal plan. We eat snack-type breakfast and lunch, then we have a good dinner meal with Papa Man in the evening. 

Breakfast choices are as follows:

• Cereal (limited to twice a week), fruit
• Eggs, toast, fruit
• Oatmeal, toast, fruit
• Muffin (limited to once a week), yogurt, fruit
• Waffles or pancakes, yogurt, fruit

Lunch choices are as follows:

• Peanut butter/Jelly sandwich, pretzels, carrot sticks
• Ham/cheese sandwich, pretzels, carrot sticks
• Spaghetti O's and fruit
• Easy dinner leftovers
• Baked potato, fruit. 

So I make sure we have all the groceries to cover breakfast and lunch on hand at all times. 

Now, this menu looks like a lot of food, but we eat up all our leftovers (or at least most of them), so it's past the middle of July and we have yet to make/eat all the meals on this menu! Granted, we usually go out to lunch on Sunday afternoons, but I wanted to have an easy meal plan for that day, "just in case". 

I do have a lot of meals on this menu that I personally cannot eat, so I  make sure to keep potatoes and eggs on hand as my alternative meal. 

OH, and I have to brag about the fried green tomatoes I made for the very first time. They turned out pretty good.... just needed a little more salt. I could only eat one, but it was very tempting to eat more (I can't do the fried thing). 

I am so glad to be able to blog again. I can't wait to share about our library's summer reading program, the shape notes we learned about last month at grace singing school, the diy projects I've tackled and the curriculum we're going with this year. 

I'm kinda sad that summer is wrapping up!