Batman Birthday Lunch

I was SO excited to pack Oscar a birthday lunch in his Planetbox this year!! I bought some blank magnets that I used for Valentine's day and couldn't erase, so I attached some batman images with double sided adhesive and then covered them with packaging tape (because my contact paper seems to be lost forever in the craft closet). Now that his birthday is over I plan to change that top right magnet to just his name.

His lunch had cucumber slices with a bat symbol, grapes underneath cheese letters, peanut butter & jelly bat sandwiches with some extra cheese bats, cantaloupe chunks, some sno-caps and a tootsie roll pressed out and cut into a bat shape

We found him this batman funtainer at a discount store and decided he should get it with his birthday lunch instead of wrapping it up.

And in his big dipper for snack time were a few packets of batman popping candy and some snapea crisps.  Most of this came back uneaten and he came home with a 102.2 fever on his birthday, but made a quick recovery and felt good enough for his fondue birthday dinner and oodles and oodles of candy all weekend.

Bucket List Update!

Here's a picture of Oscar's Halloween lunch (apple smiles, witch fingers, ghost and moon cheese, cream cheese and jelly on whole wheat jack-o-lantern, grapes and candy corn) and a quick update on our bucket list. We've gotten a lot of things done, a lot of them are linked to the related blog posts.  There are a few that don't have their own post, and I'll throw some pictures down below of those. We're not going to make it to the Scottish games this year - boo - but we've had lots of other fun, so I don't feel too bad about it. With our road trip to Ohio coming up in less than a week we won't have a lot of time for crossing things off the list, so I'm glad they are mostly done.  I'm thinking about taking some crafting supplies (though Robyn probably has plenty) to Ohio and making handprint turkeys while we are there if time allows.

Fall Bucket List

• Go for walks and gather pecans - I checked for pecans on the way to vote - no luck, waited too long!
• Go to a pumpkin patch
• Go on picnics
• Try a pumpkin spice latte
• Make Halloween costumes
• Take kiddos trick-or-treating (what sort of bag does Luke Skywalker carry?)
• Send a fun and delicious Halloween snack for Oscar's class (bonus points for healthy)
• Make caramel apple nachos
• Have a bonfire and make s'mores
• Carve pumpkins
• Drink apple cider (gallons of it)
• Go on a date
• Make leaf art
• Make handprint/footprint art
• Wear scarves
• Make pumpkin cookies with maple frosting
• Take family pictures
• Go to a football game with Oscar
• Go on a nature walk
• Scottish Games!
• Road trip to Ohio 
• Plant trees 
• Make Christmas presents
• Cook something in our dutch oven

Despite carrying the camera and phone around with me all evening, the only pictures of our bonfire/s'mores/dutch oven cooking that I got were these of Alice and Oscar riding in a wagon.

Here's one with actual fire!

And then on Thursday Jeremy was working around here, so he had to cash his check in Waynesboro instead of Mobile. Conveniently, I was just getting done at work in Waynesboro, so he picked me up and we had a mini-date at the ice cream place. We felt adventurous and tried a deep fried Twinkie.

Orange Lunch

The other week I posted a picture of a green lunch I made for Oscar during a week they were working on orange, so now here's the orange lunch. I didn't start out with a plan to make an all orange lunch (or an all green lunch), but once there was cantaloupe and satsuma in there I figured I should run with it.  Carrots, cantaloupe, string cheese, PB honey banana sandwich, satsuma and a butterscotch disc.

I feel a little guilty sending monochromatic lunches, since it's healthier to eat a variety of colors at each meal. But not that guilty - I'm sure this is way healthier than whatever they served at school, even with the piece of candy. I'm excited about lunches this month - I need to pull out my Halloween cookie cutters and start putting them to good use before it's too late!

Experimental pizza leftovers

Most of the time our homemade pizzas end up costing more than we would spend on a frozen pizza. Here are two things I thought of to help keep cost down. 

When we make the whole wheat pizza crust that I posted, We can make two large thin crust pizzas and two boy size personal pizzas. If we don't have company, I plan on trying to freeze those pizza duplicates for an easy weeknight meal the following week. Pizza freezing suggestions welcome!

I also planned an extra meal that would use up any extra ingredients. The pesto, sausage and tomato pizza left us with 1/2 lb. Italian turkey sausage and a bit of pesto, so I added onion, garlic and bell pepper, some whole wheat pasta, a can of fire roasted garlic tomatoes, and some spinach. It turned into the pasta version of the pizza we had and it was yummy! We also had some glazed carrots along with.

This pasta was also yummy cold, so we all had it for lunch the next day!

A few lunches this week -

Leftover pizza from pizza night, carrots, honeydew, almonds and grapes.

GREEN.  Unfortunately the color they are working on this week is orange...  Cucumber, apple, sour straw candy, honeydew, string cheese and PB&J. I put a green post it with purple marker "the HULK was here." He ate it up.

And my favorite this week was ham and cheese sushi sandwiches with his training chopsticks. Carrots and cucumbers, grapes, sunflower seeds, honeydew, and sushi sandwich (flattened whole wheat bread with mayo&mustard, ham, cheese, carrot, cucumber, and spinach.) Everyday I use the big dipper from Planetbox to pack his snack. It usually has some sort of dried fruit/nuts/trail mix. I always worry that he'll feel deprived because the other kids at school buy ice cream and candy, but yesterday he told me he likes what I pack him because it's healthy AND yummy and that the things the other kids eat are bad for you. I don't think I could've asked for a better kid in the eating/food department...

Most of the time I usually pack Alice some lunch in our pink LunchBots so that I don't have to worry about making it the next day when she starts demanding "Dunch! Dunch!". She usually gets the same thing as Oscar. If he gets a sandwich cut into a shape, she is the one stuck with the odd shapes that are leftover. She never complains... though she seems to be pickier than Oscar.  She'll eat cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, carrots, ANYTHING when I'm packing lunches, but when it's time to sit down and eat she isn't a fan of any of those things. I guess they only taste good when mom is trying to cook or pack lunches? 

Kindergartner

Oscar has been in kindergarten for a month now, and is loving it.  He has the same teacher that Jeremy had for kindergarten, so she is parent tested and approved.  Here are a few pictures of his first day of school.

and his very first school lunch and snack.

Inside Oscar's PlanetBox

 

So here is a bit more about Oscar's PlanetBox, since it's awesome. He's got the rocket magnet set, blue carry bag and the ice pack to go with. There is a elastic place for his napkin and silverware. He loves taking his lunch to school and eating healthy foods to help him grow big muscles. He makes me very proud with some of his food choices, he even said it would be ok if I didn't put a treat in EVERY day.

During summer crafty days I pieced him together some napkins. Mom is worried that they will get tossed in the trash on accident, but since there is no other trash to throw out, I'm optimistic. 

 Here are a couple lunch examples from everyday, not as cool as batman, lunches. I can squeeze a massive amount of fruit and veggies in this, and most of the time it comes back empty. (there were a few times he said he ran out of time because he was talking to his friend, which I totally believe because he loves to talk.. and talk and talk and talk.)

I believe that top sandwich is egg salad on pumpernickel, and then bottom wrap might be orange glazed chicken with veggies. I made some teeny tiny cookies that fit in the treat section, and he loves cucumbers with carrot compartments. Lunch packing is a major time suck in the evenings, but so far we're all loving it (Jeremy included, since I'm packing his now, too).

Batman Lunch

Oscar started kindergarten at the beginning of August, so he needed some sort of lunch box device. We settled on a PlanetBox, and I'm LOVING it. (and i think oscar likes it too...) I generally do a protein/grain combo, cheese, veggie, two fruits and a small treat. Tomorrow night, Jeremy and Oscar are going to be renting Batman and Robin and having a sleepover, so Jeremy requested that I make Oscar a Batman lunch. He's got  grapes, cucumber strips with cheese letters, bat shaped PB&J, cantaloupe bats and some chocolate chips. It's definitely not as awesome as this, but it was fun!