When The Kids Take Over

As most of you know I am recuperating from a lower back strain injury.  For those who suffer with chronic back pain my heart goes out to you.  I can only imagine what living with that kind of discomfort day in and day out must be like.  For me, I know this is only temporary and if I behave myself I'll get past this and be good as new.  I say behave because I am a very impatient patient. 

To make sure I behave the girls took over.  My job has been to take care of myself and manage getting to work and working through each day and fortunately I have been able to successfully do that.  It would seriously mess with our finances if I had to be off work for a prolonged length of time.  The two days I did miss were covered by sick leave, but I didn't want to use up all of that either.  So I've had a lot of incentive to behave.

Homemade Mongolian BBQ

The girls pretty much ran the show.  I think I only washed two small loads of dishes and folded one load of clothes all week.  Other than that they did the rest.

Initially we had quite a bit of food I had prepared ahead in anticipation of a possible ice storm with power outages.  That kept us quite well through that first week.  Then after a week it was time to start preparing meals again.

Chili dogs!  Yum!

Last Monday they made a list and we went to Fred Meyer so they could pick up some stuff to prepare meals.  I pushed the cart and they did the shopping.  They did a fantastic job too.  With $25 they picked out items I would expect them to like chips and frozen pizza, but they also picked out healthy things too like a veggie tray and some mushrooms on markdown, a bunch of bananas and whole wheat hotdog and hamburger buns.  They compared prices and sought out sales.  I was so proud.

Mushroom burger & tater tots.  That was one awesome burger!

Here is what they prepared:

Sunday:  Homemade Mongolian BBQ (stir fried noodles with veggies and shrimp)

Monday:  Frozen pizza and salad

Tuesday:  Chili dogs and chips

Wednesday:  Mushroom burgers and tater tots

Thursday:  Mongolian BBQ (it was that good we needed a repeat!)

Friday:  Grilled Tuna Sandwiches, veggies and dip

Saturday:  Homemade veggie pizzas on whole wheat crust

They put everything away when we got home and I loved how they worked together as a team to decide who was going to prepare certain things.  One day my youngest made the salad and the oldest the main course and then they would switch.  They also took turns washing dishes and putting food away after we ate.  It was really good for them.

Veggie pizza ready for the oven.  My youngest did a great job chopping everything.

By Saturday I was doing much better and able to make pizza dough and help assemble the pizzas.  Everything they prepared was delicious, well rounded and pretty darn nutritious.  I was super proud of them.