If I have leftovers from the week I try to send leftovers for lunch on Friday. It helps me get the fridge cleaned out for the weekend, and makes for very easy lunch packing.  Last night I made a big pot of macaroni and cheese for the kids for dinner. They usually devour it, but we had been at a holiday party earlier and I think they all had too many snacks. So there was tons of mac & cheese leftover. Perfect for lunch! 

Schedule

I've done a lot of quesadillas lately, because they are quick and easy, so today I thought I would try to mix it up just a little. Tortilla pinwheels are super easy to make and you can put basically anything in them.  You just put a thin layer of your fillings on a flour tortilla, roll it up as tight as you can, and slice.  I like to put a little skewer through them to keep them from falling apart when my kids toss their lunches around. 

Schedule

It's "breakfast for lunch" Wednesday!  But it's been so dark and rainy in Seattle this week, that I felt like a nice hot lunch was needed.  So lunch was a nice hot bowl of oatmeal, with a few extra little snacky things on the side. 

Schedule

This is just simple snack box of little nibbles - like a homemade lunchable. But I realized that I hadn't been using any of my cutters in a long time, so I thought I'd break out a couple and just cut the cheese into some pretty flowers.  It doesn't take more than an extra minute or two, but it makes the lunch look just a little more fun.

Schedule

Schedule

Listen, I'm no sanctimommy. I'm not even going to pretend that we eat like this 365 days a year. I'm working hard to do the best I can, as much as I can.  But even I sometimes need to take a break. 

We're living in the real world over here.  I try to feed my kids the healthiest food I can get them to eat most of the time.  But when we are on vacation, we eat like we're on vacation. I mean hey, it's my vacation too, I'm not interested in being the food police. I want to enjoy myself, and I want them to have fun too. They get burgers and fries and milkshakes. We order off the kids menu and they get to choose. They've had goldfish crackers, and those little snack size bags of cheez-its, and chocolate covered packaged granola bars, and those sandwich crackers that may or may not have real cheese in them. There were even a couple bowls of Fruit Loops from the hotel breakfast buffet (which I'm happy to say they didn't actually much of). There's a lot of stuff that I won't buy at home, but when we are on vacation I think relaxing the rules is just fine - it's two weeks out of the entire year and I don't think it's going to kill them.