The Lunch Challenge: Day Five and Six

These last two days have been pretty crazy. You'll see why the Lunch Challenge has been pretty much pushed aside these last two days. Here's the rundown of my frantic weekend.

Friday we had Music Camp till noon, then we raced to our friend's house to feed the animals, and then we stopped at Sonic on the way home and picked up enough $1 chicken strip sandwiches and Sonic burgers for everyone.

We were home about 15 minutes, just long enough to scarf down the food, and then Jerah and I left again to make the 20 minute drive into town. We needed to purchase some supplies for her sewing workshop on Saturday as well as find some of the bits and pieces we needed to finish the costumes for the Music Camp performance on Sunday (Jerah is playing an elephant and Joely's a sheep for the play).

We found what we needed and managed to make it home by 4:15, just in time for my piano lessons…but then none of them showed up. Had I known I would have my late afternoon free, I would have made some kind of dinner, but as it was, we were a little short on food staples, so it would have been a little difficult to throw together a decent dinner.

Then on to Saturday. I woke about 8, made peanut butter and chocolate baked oatmeal (at Jerah's explicit request), then got everyone ready for swimming lessons. We headed out the door around 10:15, the kids had their lessons, and then we sprinted back home so Jerah could get ready for her sewing workshop. We scarfed down some more oatmeal and called it lunch.

We made it to her sewing workshop right on time. While Jerah was attending the 4-hr workshop, Joely and I ran errands. First we went to the used bookstore to sell some books (three boxes worth, fact), then after that we stopped by the discount bread store where I picked up about $60 worth of food for $24. As a devout carb-lover, I just love that place!

The we headed to Firestone for an oil change. After waiting for an hour in the waiting room, I paid the cashier and Joely and I got in the car to leave. We pulled out into the parking lot…and the car died.

It wouldn't restart, so I turned on my hazard lights (I was actually partially blocking the main entrance to the parking lot at this point), and called Firestone. They quickly came outside to where I was parked and promptly discovered the problem: they hadn't reconnected one of the hoses correctly. Just a "minor detail" they overlooked, I guess. I'm just glad I hadn't turned onto the road instead of into the parking lot when the car died.

So we finally made it across the parking lot to Home Depot where we picked up some concrete to repair our fence which was damaged during a storm earlier this week. Then we ran next door to Target and Joely and I grabbed a demi loaf of assiago bread and some ice water and had that for our mid-afternoon snack. Then we did some grocery shopping and headed back to pick up Jerah.

We made it back to the sewing workshop right on time, picked up Jerah, and as we were walking back out to the car, I noticed the front grill around our fog lights was missing. Just lovely! But I had no time to head back to Target to see if the grill had fallen off while we were parked there, so I chalked it up as a loss and headed back home.

We finally made it home around 5 p.m. Just a few minutes after arriving home the doorbell rang; the son of a friend of ours was stopping by to give us a presentation for a company he had just been hired with (Jeff had arranged the appointment). I was still unpacking the groceries as he set up his stuff in the dining room. One the groceries were all put away, I grabbed yet another piece of baked oatmeal and a big glass of milk and sat down at the table so the presentation could begin.

We wrapped up around 6:30, our friend's son left, and I was finally able to start working on the costumes. For the next two and a half hours I planned, created, sewed, threw out, re-planned, re-created, re-sewed, and finally succeeded in making a sheep headdress and elephant ears.

So by this time it's 9 p.m., and I've eaten baked oatmeal, baked oatmeal, half a demi loaf of assiago bread, and baked oatmeal so far today. Not the most Dr. Atkins-friendly diet in the world, but at least it tasted good!

Tomorrow I won't be fixing lunch since we'll be eating at church at the hamburger and hotdog lunch that is being hosted in honor of the Music Camp performance. Can I just say that I am SO ready for this weekend to be over!

I might be wrong, but I have a feeling Amanda has actually been cooking lunch, so you might like to head on over there and check out what she fixed today. And don't forget, we'll be posting a Mr. Linky on Monday so you can link up your lunch recipes (obviously I could use some better lunch recipes!).  Also, if you have breakfast recipes you'd like to share, you can link up to our breakfast challenge summary here.