One of these days I have plans to start blogging about more than just my kids school lunches, but spare time is limited and so this is most of what I do here on the blog right now.  I'm glad that there's so many of you who are interested in seeing these things - keep sharing with your friends, and let me know what else you'd like to know about what I'm doing. 

One of the key things I try to focus on when packing a lunch is to give them some amount of balance.  I don't always manage it, but at least several days out of the week I think I do pretty well at giving them a balanced meal with protein, fruit, veggie, and carb.  Sometimes there's more of one than the others, but over the course of the week I think we balance out ok.  

If you're paying attention and go back and look at the lunch posts, it will seem like I skipped a bunch of weeks.  I did.  But I got weeks 11-15 all caught up in one post last week, so I'm still on track with sharing all our lunches for this year.

The first week of the New Year was all about catching up from the holiday break - putting away new toys and clothes, getting the kitchen back in order, doing laundry - certainly not a time to get fancy with the lunches.  So my goal for the week was to keep it simple, but still make it attractive and something that anyone would want to eat. Also - it's the start of ski season.  Where we live we are only an hour away from the local ski mountain, so some combination of kids will be in lessons every Saturday for the next 2 months. (Sounds exhausting, and it is, but it goes by fast.) So for the next two months I will be packing lunch 6 days a week. 

Are you starting to struggle with figuring out what to pack?  My weekly lunch plan really helps me out on days when I'm out of ideas.  I stick to my usual formula of Monday leftovers, Tuesday tortilla, Wednesday breakfast, Thursday lunchable and Friday Sandwich.  It really helps me keep it fresh and not repeat a lunch twice in one week, and I still feel like I have a lot of room for creativity within that framework.  You should give it a try. 

Last week was just four days of school - we had Tuesday off for Veteran's Day.  The kids were all super excited leading up to it. They aren't quite old enough to really understand what the day means, but they were still very excited to wish their older brother, an Iraq and Afghanistan Vet, a happy Veteran's Day. The oldest of mine were just babies when he went on his first deployment, and they couldn't quite understand why there wasn't a cake to celebrate the day. I had to explain more than once that it wasn't a birthday, and in the years to come we will make sure that they learn and understand what his, and every veteran's, service means to us.

Week 10 already!  Halloween has blown by and it's already November.  I can hardly believe it, time moves so fast.  I'm enjoying having my lunch menu each week, which gives me some fall back standard when I'm too tired to figure it out.  But I've also managed to mix it up a bit and try a few new creative things.

With kids and food, we celebrate small victories.  Three of my kids are pretty good eaters (we won't talk about the fourth one!).  They eat a decent variety of foods, but anything resembling leafy and green is where we struggle the most. Pretty much kale chips are it, and aside from that I'm just sneaking it in.