A Day at the Zoo

A few weeks ago, just before school let out for the summer, I had the great luck to act as a chaperone for my daughter's first grade field trip to the zoo. That was such a great day!

The field trip was the last week of May, but where we live the weather is often cool and rainy up through the first of July. This day was no exception to that. We were lucky to not get much rain while we were there; just a cool breezy day.

Princess on the bus heading down to the zoo:

She generally loves to have her picture taken, but that day she just wanted to get moving toward the animals, so this was the best I could get with my phone:

One of her favorite parts of the field trip was watching the new baby elephant, Lily, playing with her family.

She is also a big fan of the giraffes:

But her favorite part of all? The lorikeets! Feeding them little cups of nectar while they flew over her head and sat on her arm was the big shining highlight of the day.

For lunch I packed a little wild safari in an EasyLunchbox:

Grapes and strawberries are being watched over by the sweet little giraffe, with some cheese sticks and Pirate's Booty. 

A little lion stalks the plains of her gluten-free turkey sandwich, while a zebra runs through the broccoli and mandarin orange segments. For a snack she had a Chobani Champions Greek yogurt tube.

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"C" You at the Beach!

Woo! We are all officially done with school for the 2012-13 school year! The Dude and I finished with finals on Thursday, which was also Beaker's last day of preschool. Summer term at the college doesn't start until mid-July, so we're enjoying a few weeks of summer break right now. Days spent in the garden, at the park, and deep cleaning the house, nights spent playing card games together or gathered around the fire pit in the backyard roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. I love summer!

For Beaker's last day of preschool, I packed up a beachy C-themed lunch. All of the foods in this lunch start with the letter C. And it's also an allergy safe lunch, free of most of the top 7 allergens!

He has cucumber and carrot slices, cantaloupe balls with cranberry bits under a beach umbrella, crackers, cheese cubes, a chocolate cookie, and summery skewers of Canadian bacon.

On the last day of school I grabbed my camera and had the girls stop in the front yard before heading up to the school. They've both grown so much this year!

Bean started the year as a 9 year old new 4th grader at the elementary school. She ended the year as a 10 year old rising to 5th grade at the middle school! She still doesn't love having to stop to have her picture taken:

Princess was a 6 year old brand new 1st grader in September. She was still missing two front teeth from an accident when she was 3 (she fell face-first into a wood floor with a pacifier in her mouth, resulting in her first - and hopefully only - injury visit to the ER). She finished out the school year in June as a 7 year old heading in to 2nd grade, with two newly grown teeth filling in the gap:

None of the boys would let me take their picture, so imagine Brick a couple of inches taller and G-man with a different haircut. G is moving up to 7th grade and Brick is heading off to the high school as a freshman next year! Beaker's birthday is tomorrow, so stay tuned for a new pic or two of him.

We have had a fabulous, fun, fantastic year and we're looking forward to an even better year in 2013-14!

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Random Grown-Up Lunches

Today was the last day of school for four of my kiddos! I had this cool lunch idea all planned out, with flip flops and sunglasses and all sorts of fun stuff. But then I realized that the kids had a half day (a lot of them in a row, actually), so no lunch at school. And then I thought I could just do it for at home, but then I got stuck running errands all day and only swinging home really quick to pick them up just as school let out before running back out again.

So instead of a fun Last Day of School lunch, I am making pizza (with gluten-free mini pizzas for Beaker) and popcorn with root beer floats for dinner and renting a movie for a fun family night tonight. And instead of a fun Last Day of School lunch post, here is a quick post with a few of the random lunches I have packed for the Dude and myself recently:

This one is the Dude declared to be one of his favorites. It's a salad of mixed spring greens with pepper smoked salmon and provolone cheese stars. He also has rice crackers with some soft jalapeno cheese spread and two mini chocolate bars.

The salad also has carrot and bell pepper stars for a little extra flavor, and Caeser dressing on the side.

This one is a little random. It has some crunchy kettle chips, a fruit salad of grapes and cantaloupe, and a main dish of fried rice with skewers of salami.

I thought the fried rice and salami flavors together would be a little odd, but the Dude said they were pretty good together. Go figure!

One for me! This lunch has Van's multigrain crackers, funny-face hard boiled egg halves, a peeled clementine, a handful of grapes, and some cucumber rolls ~ cucumber pieces cut in half, with the seeds removed, filled with cream cheese and stuffed with rolled up roasted turkey lunch meat. They were delicious!

Silly egg faces! The addition of a tiny bit of nori and a sprinkle of sea salt made the hard boiled egg taste delicious.

"Oh, dang. I'm out of bread. No sandwich then. Hmmm... hey, I'll just wrap it all up in lettuce leaves!"

And it worked! The leaves cracked in the center a little when I rolled them up, but they were pretty tasty. I stuffed them with a little creamy Caesar and a little spicy mustard, thin sliced roast beef, provolone cheese, and some bell peppers, then topped them with golden and red cherry tomato halves.

On the side is a handful of kettle chips, cucumber slices with creamy cheese spread, and fresh blackberries with cantaloupe chunks.

Speaking of random lunches...

This is one I packed when I looked in the fridge and realized it was probably time to hit the grocery store again. A little random, but it worked out pretty well. This lunch has a basic Caesar salad ~ romaine lettuce with Caesar dressing on the side ~ and a hard boiled egg, cheese stuffed green olives, leftover gluten-free cheese pasta bake, some Van's multigrain crackers with Laughing Cow cheese wedges, a handful of Trader Joe's jalapeno cheese curls, and a few Thin Mints cookies, all packed in a Laptop Lunches box. Okay, it's a little more than a little random. But the Dude ate it all and didn't complain! Better than no lunch, right?

We have some fun plans for summer, so maybe I'll have some of those to share later! I'm off to enjoy Fun Family Celebration Night with my kids for now!

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Pre-School Lunches On the Go

Life has been hectic and crazy here! I am still making lunches for the Dude and the kids, but haven't had time to sit down and write blog posts. Funny how time seems to zip by and the "well, I'll skip it for right now and get back to it in a day or two" somehow becomes a month!

However, now that I am seriously behind on posting, I have a camera full of lunches to share over the summer! So yay for ... thinking ahead? Sure. We'll call it that!

Anyway, here are a few of Beaker's lunches from the gap time:

Who needs pre-packed snack tray box lunches from the grocery store? This mom-made lunch was easy and fast, and Beaker chose everything that went in! He has a Beaker-safe snack mix dessert, grapes, car shaped turkey pieces, cut string cheese, pickle pieces, and a stack of rice and Van's multigrain crackers.

The dessert snack mix is soy, nut, and gluten free ~ perfect for Beaker! It has fruit gummies, dried cranberries and raisins, roasted sunflower seeds, and rice Chex. There might be a few EnjoyLife chocolate chips in there, too.

For another day, Beaker took this Bob the Builder box full of berries and sweetened yogurt to preschool for his snack.

And for his lunch he took another Bob the Builder box (both of which I found at the Dollar Tree, I think), this one with cut string cheese bits, Canadian bacon on tool skewers, veggie chips, and an EnjoyLife sunbutter bar.

For a simple train themed snacky lunch, Beaker has an EasyLunchbox full of Thomas! He chose Thomas ham rolls with grapes (cut in half to make eating easier for a three year old), a Percy small container with a few fruit gummies, some dehydrated snap peas from Trader Joe's with cut string cheese bits, and James veggie chips and EnerG pretzel rings.

Fast and easy allergy safe lunches for a kid on the go!

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