Already?!?

I feel like I just began my search for "perfection" and I'm already sucking at it.  My parents are coming to stay with us Friday night and I just looked around my house and literally had a panic attack.  Woe is me and my ready-to-be-condemned home!  It seems that I can focus on or two areas of improvement and any more than that sends me reeling for the closest bottle of liquor.  (Or Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss as the case may be tonight.) 

Oddly enough I'm doing really well with the menu planning AND executing.  That's a first.  Normally I can plan the hell out of something and then promptly lose all interest in actually making it, you know, HAPPEN!   So I did my meal plan, went to Sam's Club and Wal-mart to secure all needed ingredients, and then (get this) actually have made the planned dinner for the last three nights!  Go me!!  And yes, I feel that this deserves a large pat on the back seeing as how I am one lazy-ass mo'fo' (see also; whole blog for reference).  AND tonights dinner was even healthy.... O.M.G  AND, and... I exercised tonight.  OK, I kicked my 5 year old's ass on Dance Central and Just Dance, but I was moving dammit!

So with the focus on meal planning and execution as well as trying to throw some healthy shit in the mix... my house has fallen into disrepair.  So I'm torn.  Do I a) just focus on keeping up momentum in the aforementioned areas or b) slack back down to mediocre and add household management skills into the ringer?  I'm leaning towards keeping up my good works so far and making them habit before adding in anything else.  I'll have to have an all-night-power-clean before the parentals arrive which will probably shred the last of my sanity... but HEY, dinner will be served!

We'll call it a draw...

... Today that is!  Some hits, some misses.

Bugga woke up at 8:30 am and I got him breakfast and then fell back asleep on the couch. FAIL!

Then I woke up at 10 am, ate me Lucky Charms, answered work e-mails, did a load of laundry and then got us both moving.  WIN!

Then we had the best part of the day which was a 4 hour playdate.  I love those because I get to gossip and Bugga gets to play.  Especially during the winter, it's nice to get out of the house and try to alleviate some of that cabin fever that affects very active 5 year olds.  So of course all of that was a nice big WIN!

We got home in time for me to check my work e-mail and start another load of laundry.  Hells yeah on the productiveness!  (Don't worry, it didn't last long.) Then it was Hubby's turn to wake up and we went out for pizza.  I'm going to call that one a fail because going out for pizza does not help the waistline or wallet.  Dinner itself was also a draw because I caved on the cheesy bread, but got the thin crust garden pizza and water.  Yes, water!!  I'm going to make it my best friend even though we've had a checkered past. 

Now it's Bugga and I home alone looking forward to his return when we wake up.  Yep, my hubby is an overnight, 12-hour shifter.  He's off this weekend so my big goal is to clean up really well tonight so that we don't have to deal with it over the next three days. 

If I can do some dishes tonight, another load of laundry and pick up the family room I'm gonna pat myself on the back and then put today firmly in the WIN column.  Otherwise I'll come here tomorrow to make a ridiculous excuse for why it didn't get done.  And none of us like that, do we??

What's for dinner beeyotch?

Normally I consider a frozen pizza or maybe some McD's a satisfying dinner.  Unfortunately my wallet, waistline and boys tend to disagree. 

Some of my favorite types of blogs right now are those that focus on organizing one's life.  It is the first of the year and I'm usually a follower... so yeah.  These are some of the blogs I referred to in my last post as making me feel a wee bit ashamed. 

I'm trying to get started on these "menu plans" everybody is always recommending, but it's slow going.  I tend to take my time getting things set up in Excel and little time actually using them. So I've put in plenty of "laptop-on-the-couch" getting these menus set up, but still haven't really used it.  For now I'm doing things the easy way and planning out two weeks at a time, but taking a note from Little Birdie Secrets and not assigning a specific meal each day.  I'm making a list of 10 meals for 14 days time assuming that we will eat out, have leftovers and at least one night I can guarantee I will make my husband and child forage for crackers or ramen noodles in the pantry because Mommy wants to read blogs so please go away!  Starting off we'll just do our tried and true family favorites and maybe I'll experiment on the extra nights with new recipes.  Don't get me started on all of the food and recipe blogs I follow...

Tonight we're experiencing a snowpocalypse and I had no desire to venture out to the grocery store or Taco Bell so I pulled out our usual standby, Broiled Tilapia Parmesan.  All three of us LOVE this recipe.  It's so easy to pull together and I always eyeball the ingredients and change up the spices and somehow it turns out great every time.  We always keep a box of frozen tilapia in our freezer chest and I'm betting most people have parmesan cheese, mayonnaise and butter in their fridge.  I also misread the recipe the first time I made it and added mustard and now I always include it. 

If I can pull this off for dinner, everyone else certainly can too.  Once I'm done with my menu planning escapade I'll let you guys know what approach I decided to go with.

JC, OUT!