Organizing the Chaos-Part 1

Welcome to our little spot in Cyberspace! We are just a typical American family just trying to stay organized in this crazy world. However, most of the time it is just chaos. With an 8 year old, 3 year old, 10 month old and another on the way, it is pretty interesting in our house ALL OF THE TIME. Chris, the hubby, works as an engineer and has a great job but he travels a lot. That leaves me, a full time graduate student and substitute teacher, in charge of all of the kiddos. With a new arrival on the way, we both are feeling the need to add some much needed organization into our life. 

Enter eMeals! It is an awesome little service that does all of your meal planning and grocery list making for you. Sounds great right? It must be. Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, endorses it. Chris heard about it on the radio and I already knew about the service so we have decided to give it a shot. Today, we signed up. We picked the classic plan but there are so many to choose from. There is low fat, low carb, clean eating, slow cooker, vegetarian, organic and clean eating slow cooker to choose from. After you select your plan. You can select the store that you shop at the most. We shop at Walmart usually but Aldi is listed so I may try that store next week! You can also opt to add a lunch plan and a breakfast plan. I added the lunch plan because I typically eat junk that the kids eat and Chris eats out a lot so I thought it would be a great way to stay healthy and save some money. 

Today I left the kids with my grandmother (Bless her sweet heart!) and set off for Walmart with my list in hand. Ok, so maybe I will stop here and tell you how I usually shop. I usually shop with Corinna in the top of the buggy and Brayden in the basket part of the buggy. I go with no list and basically randomly grab things that looks good at the time. I rarely get a week's worth of food and frequently go back during the week. This wastes gas, time, and, if we added it all up, probably a ton of money. Needless to say, this took a lot longer than my usual trip so I was so thankful that I had left the kids with Grandmother. I also felt like I spent more than usual but once I got home and did the math. I got enough food to feed us for less than 20 dollars a day. Chris probably spends almost half of that when he eats lunch out at work. 

Now for the menu, tonight's recipe was Tilapia Packets with Rice. It was basically Tilapia, some veggies, spices, and butter in an aluminum foil packet that I baked. The rice was just Rice-a-Roni rice. I liked it. Chris ate it but turns out he doesn't like tilapia. Brayden didn't touch it. Corinna loved it. She even signed more for it. I uploaded a video to my Facebook that you can see over there. I was pleased with the results tonight. I'll let you all know how the rest of them turn out.