Planning

School was suppose to start this week however for both Todd and I that didn't happen.  We were still working out our schedules with our teachers.  Every semester we go through this and it seems like every semester each of our schedules is different.

Our first year here we both took 14 hours from the university.  Evangelia was 8 months old and I was pregnant with Elijah so I went to class in the morning and then would have class again in the afternoon.  Somewhere overlapping my schedule Todd went to class too.  Our next year my class was in the later morning which threw me and the kids for a loop as they would be up for a few hours and start the day with me only for me to leave them for several hours in the middle of the day.  The next year I tried a different approach since it would take the kids about a month to get use to our new schedule, I had my teacher come to my apartment complex and meet me in another building so I wasn't spending 30 minutes on a bus to get to school and then another 30 minutes to get home from school on top of my 2 hours in class.  Thankfully my teacher came to me so I only had to walk 5 minutes to get to class.  It saved me a whole hour of time spent away from the kids.   This year it looks like my class time is changed again.  I will have most of my class time from 3pm until 5pm.  I was a little uneasy about changing from morning to afternoons but there isn't much I can do. 
But with having class from 3-5 that use to be my only free time to do things for myself.  I didn't want to give that time up.  Having class that late will also make me have to make part or all of dinner ahead of time as that was usually my dinner prep time.  I can take up to 2 hours or more to prepare dinner so I am now having to prepare earlier in the week/or day so that we can eat at our normal time. 

So how do I do this? 

After it took me a year to figure out how to be a student, mom, wife and manage my house I realized I needed to be intentional with meals.  My second year here I had a one year old and a baby who was nursing so I had to have specific time laid out for me.  I created a 6 month (yes 6 months!) food calendar where I had planned out meals for those months.  If I didn't have an idea of what I was going to make each day it was just way too frustrating to get to meal time and hearing the members of my family asking me, "what's for dinner?" and then sit and try to figure out how to get a meal on the table at a decent time. 
The past year I plan a month's worth of meals and have it posted on my fridge where I see what is planned for that day in the morning or even the day before so I know how much I have to get done.  I even gave each day of the week it's own type of food for example: Sundays are always Breakfast for dinner nights, Mondays are Meat meals, Tuesdays are Mexican food, Wednesday are my Crock Pot Meals, Thursdays are Italian food, Friday we try to eat out and Saturdays are left overs.   Now with having class late I am taking a day at the beginning of the week and making all my breads or anything in advanced so all I will have to do is either cook the meal or reheat it.  Since we don't have biscuits, rolls, other breads available in refrigerated cans I have to make it all from scratch.  So I try to look a week ahead and spend a day making up pizza dough, biscuit dough and other breads and tortillas before hand to put in my freezer. 
I've also realized that since coming back the kids seem extra hungry so I am having to triple my recipes so that I have enough for everyone to eat.  I am a little scared what life is going to be like when the boys are teenagers!  And even though I am trying to do this all Todd has still managed to be losing about 2 lbs every week.