Menu Plan Monday - Week of August 24th

This is our last full week before Jack returns to school!  Hopefully we will be able to fit in plenty of fun while our schedule is still fairly open.  Jack is very much looking forward to returning to school.  I'm a little apprehensive about settling into a new routine/schedule with him in school 3 mornings a week and I'm going to miss our relaxed (relatively anyway ;) ) summer days.

Last week was pretty busy for us and included dinner with friends and a birth(!) for me, a check-up for Molly (she is a healthy 26 1/2 lbs (85th percentile) and 32 1/2 inches (60th percentile)), play time with friends x2, and family gatherings with either side of the family both Saturday and Sunday.  Mark also went into work for a few hours on Sunday morning.  Basically, I blinked and it's Monday again!

So... yeah.  I tackled my stove top this weekend.  Funny story (not funny ha-ha, but funny like whhhyyy do these things happen to meee?!), back in April I started a small fire on my stove top.  It was towards the end of a crazy week where I was feeling stretched pretty thin.  Jack had a lingering cold (we all had been sniffly with the same bug, but Jack got hit the hardest) and he was finally willing to eat and requested mac and cheese.

In the process of making a box of Annie's mac and cheese (I mean, COME ON!  8-year-olds make this stuff without issue) I inadvertently turned ON the rear burner rather than turning DOWN the front burner as I had intended and minutes later items that I had sitting on the rear burner (obviously NOT a good place to sit things, oy...) like the cardboard mac and cheese box, a heavy plastic spoon, and a kitchen towel, caught on fire.  I realized it pretty quickly when smoke started coming from the kitchen and the smoke alarm went off (::facepalm::) and thankfully it wasn't an ordeal to smother the small fire, but it really did a number on my flat top stove.  Here's a tidbit of knowledge for you: melted/burned plastic cookware doesn't wipe off of glass stove tops.  Hope that helps!

This is the picture I sent to Mark after the fact.  I think he really looks forward to hearing from me while he's at work.

So anyway, I did an initial clean up of said fire mess (it has not looked like the above for the last several months), but was left with burned on plastic that had me feeling annoyed/guilty every time I caught sight of it (=all the time), but I did my best to just kind of... ignore it and hope that it magically went away on its own (proactivity is my strong suit) because I didn't know what the heck to do with it!  This weekend Mark left a putty knife laying on the counter and I decided I would reclaim my back burner!  Putty knife + baking soda + vinegar + lemon essential oil + elbow grease x a lot =

I have my burner back!

My new goal is to try not to catch anything else on fire.  So far, so good.

The boys brought me home some pretty flowers because they're sweet :)

And oh yeah, my completed birth doula certification packet is in the mail!(!!!)  Or... maybe it has arrived at its destination already.  I put it in the mail on Wednesday.  Anyway... WOOHOO!  It feels so great to have my packet completed.  I'll be impatiently waiting the next 6 weeks-3 months for my packet to be reviewed and (hopefully!) approved.


Here's what we're eating this week:


Sunday:  Parents' house

Monday:  Pulled Pork Stuffed Sweet Potatoes with Green Beans

Tuesday:  Fresh Tomato and Whipped Feta Tart with Salad

Wednesday:  Buffalo Chicken Pizza

Thursday:  Leftovers

Friday:  Out

Saturday:  Out


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com