Weekly Meal Plan

It has been a roller coaster of a week around here. 

My nephew has spent the last seven days in the hospital battling RSV among other respiratory viruses.  A few of those days were particularly scary, but thank God he is on the mend and will hopefully be out of the hospital sometime tomorrow or Tuesday.  He is only 10 months old and is just the sweetest boy you could ever lay eyes on.

So I spent the week stress eating...worrying about the baby and worrying about my sister.  And I fell further behind on my obligations at home....so here I am.

My husband and I were able to spend a whole day together Saturday, which never happens.  We went to dinner and went shopping.  We tried to go see a musical but unfortunately it was sold out.  It's hard for us to plan those things ahead of time because my husband's schedule fluctuates so much.  When we got home, we watched an older movie on Netflix and laughed all the way through.  It was nice just having some time together.

Sunday was spent cleaning and grocery shopping.  Since we haven't had a cleaning schedule in years, many, many areas of our house have been neglected.  It's a long story, but basically it's really hard to be motivated to clean when you're stressed, physically, and emotional wore out.  As the income situation has improved for us, we realized it's time to start focusing on things we have neglected to keep up with.  My husband worked on patching a hole in the ceiling (we had a roof leak last year and had to take out part of the ceiling to get to it to make sure we got it all repaired), we sorted through 2 years of mail piled up....yes TWO YEARS....so much so that our poor shredder overheated a few times, but it's all completely done now.  I went through lots more paper clutter in our bedroom, and we also deep cleaned our family room.

I went shopping to Dollar Tree, Target, Aldi, and ValuMarket.  I was able to find some bins at the Dollar Tree that will be cleaning bins for under each sink in our house with it's own set up cleaning supplies.  I got the tip for this from a YouTube video (I think it was Shelley's Home Life) that it's easier to just have a set of everything in each bathroom so that you don't have to hunt stuff down and transport it from bathroom to bathroom.  Sounded good to me.  So at Target I bought extra Method cleaning supplies, put them in the bins and distributed them to the bathrooms and kitchen.  I feel more accomplished already!  I did spend quite a bit at Target...about $70 but I picked up more than just cleaning solutions.

At Aldi, I only spent $50 and then at ValuMarket I spent $24 for a total grocery bill for the week of $74!  At least  until I realized I forgot to buy coffee :)  So it ended up more like $80.  For five people though that's awesome.  I L.O.V.E. Aldi.  I was terrified to try it out and didn't think I'd like it...but I love it.

So on the menu for this week is:

Chicken and Tortellini
Tater Tot Casserole
Spaghetti
Chicken and Stuffing (Crock Pot)
Shells with cheese and steamed veggies (meatless)
Chicken Noodle Soup (Crock Pot)

We had fast food for dinner tonight so between that and eating out for dinner for our date night, I probably will have to adjust our dining out budget for March.

On the agenda for this week....finally do a budget break down (although I'd rather do this in video form if I can muster the courage), recipes, taxes, and a brief overview of my zone cleaning calendar.  How much I fit in and am able to update remains to be seen.....

Enjoy your week everyone.