Menu Plan Monday

It's a busy time of year for everyone, but our family tends to keep the Christmas season pretty low-key. I do put up a couple of decorations,but we currently don't put up a tree, I do a little bit of baking (but not overly much), and we are also quite low-key with gifts. From us, each of our kids is getting one gift plus a few stocking stuffers. My husband and I actually don't exchange gifts right now. We prefer to use the money on other things like going on holidays or maybe a bigger item. For example, we are considering buying an Ipad for our whole family this year.

This year I baked a batch of cinnamon twist cookies (my Dad's favourite that I make for him since my Mom is gluten-free and doesn't bake with gluten anymore) and about 4 dozen old-fashioned cream cookies (a Mennonite tradition & also one of my husband's favourite cookies). The cinnamon twist cookies did not last very long around here and are already gone. Tomorrow I plan to take some time to decorate the cream cookies with the children. If time permits, I will also make up some snowflake sugar cookies that I usually make for Christmas, but I'm not really sure if I'm going to take time for that this year or not. Maybe I'll get around to it at New Years.

I have decided to keep going with homeschooling instead of taking a few weeks off right now. We will take a few days off (for sure the 25th, 28th, and the 1st,) but I'm hoping to just fit in a bit of extra work in on the other days and keep up as usual. With homeschooling this year, I have found it to be more beneficial for us to take a week off when things get a little crazy or when we are all feeling burned out. Today, we got about 2 1/2 days worth of school work in, so we might be able to make this a 3 day week, which would be great.

Here's the plan for this week:

Monday: Sweet & Sour Chicken, Rice, Veggies

Tuesday:  Bowtie Broccoli Alfredo

Wednesday: Tuna Melts, Salad, & Fries

Thursday: Vegetarian Chili