Laboring through Labor Day week

The boys don't officially have school this week, so I'm taking advantage of my extra time (ha!) to go through a long to-do list. My list includes such mundane tasks as menu planning, grocery shopping, our monthly Costco trip, and doing some deep cleaning and organizing, as well as a few more exciting items such as doing some art projects with the boys. We also have a few school items to catch up on, and we do math every day, even during off weeks, so we're doing that this week as well.

In Austin, I found that I did much better both staying within our budget and serving healthy meals on time when I had a monthly menu plan. I had a weekly menu for breakfasts and lunches that repeated each week, and made up a new dinner menu each month since I don't like repeating dinners that often. September will be the first month back on that system since we moved here. I got my menu planned out today, and my grocery list written, so I'm ready to shop tomorrow! Our grocery budget here is double what it was in Austin, but I'm determined to figure out ways to cut it back some without compromising quality, balanced meals. We'll see how that goes!

Several items on my to-do list involve baking, so I worked on that today. I had lots of "help" from Joseph. The other boys were busy watching Nickelodeon (TV is forbidden during the day when we're doing school, so this was a treat!) Joseph and I baked 6 loaves of bread (some for the freezer) and made whole wheat oatmeal graham squares (kind of like cereal bars--we use them for a snack or sometimes a quick breakfast with milk). Also on the agenda are chocolate chip cookies that we freeze as balls of raw dough so that we can have freshly baked cookies whenever we want, and homemade granola. We'll get to those tomorrow. Here are some pictures of Joey helping make one of the batches of bread:

Here's my little helper all ready to go!


Stirring yeast into water and honey...


Adding the whole wheat flour...


Adding more whole wheat flour...


Joey loves to watch the mixer mixing...


"No more pictures, Mommy!"


Boys watching TV...yes, even Josiah likes to watch!


This past weekend we spent two days with many of our church friends at a beautiful spot in upstate New York called Mohonk Mountain. I took lots of pictures but am waiting to get some from Jeremy and a couple other people, so I will post those later!!