And I Thought A Week Ahead Was Good

I don't know about you guys, but I hate grocery shopping. H.A.T.E. it. Maybe if I saw these guys down the aisle, I'd have a better time. But as it stands, I only seem to find the aisles filled with slow old ladies and screaming children (some of whom aren't with me). Besides, I always spend more money than I should even with a list) and I inevitably come home without the most important ingredient that I needed in the first place. Thus, I try my best to avoid doing it, which forces us to either eat out more than we should or try to make dinners out of stale saltine crackers and chicken noodle soup.

Fast forward to my new year's resolution. Figure out how to be a grownup when it comes to cooking and meal planning. I am a smart and capable woman, so why, on God's green earth should I be perplexed when the kids ask me, "What's for dinner?" Dinnertime doesn't sneak up on me. It happens about the same time every day. Those children we decided to have so long ago seemed hungry last night and chances are, they will be again tonight.

I came to the conclusion that while I may be good at several things, this was not one of them. So, I turned to my friend, the internet, to help me out. And I found it....the Holy Grail of meal planning and grocery shopping....the best things since sliced bread...the answer to my daily dilemma. Are you ready? This is going to rock your world...

www.e-mealz.com

I swear to you that I am not getting paid to rave about this site. I just love it so that I had to share. Parenting is hard enough without all those stupid chores and things around the house we have to do. So far this month, I have followed the meals, saved about $40 a week at the store, and stayed away from feeding my kids crap at dinner. Just thought I'd share. BTW, as organized as this all sounds, believe me, it's pretty easy. No extreme measures are allowed in my house. After all, I am NOT this woman...

Share

Me and My Samoan

So Sunday night, Brandon and I watched 60 Minutes. His idea, not mine. They ran a story on the improbable number of Samoans in the NFL. There are something like 28 of them currently playing the highest level of football from a town of about 65,000 total people. According to the story, if a boy is Samoan born, he is 56 times more likely to end up in the NFL than any other boy from any other ethnic group.

These kids play ball in donated helmets beat to hell on rock strewn fields. They have no state of the art weight room, no fancy locker room, and no locally sponsored scoreboard. But they have something that many of our kids of privilege stateside don't. Adversity.

These kids aren't handed anything. They work hard for their families before ever hitting the football field and they don't take anything for granted. They showed one boy in particular clearing a field with a machete before grabbing his books and heading to class.

True, the people of this heritage tend to be on the bigger side physically, but that doesn't do justice to the size of their hearts and their will. I was struck by how soft we allow our kids to be. We try to shield them from difficulty as if that does them any favors. We bend over backwards so that they have every single thing they "need" to succeed when in reality, all they need is the chance to struggle.

After the show ended, Brandon's eyes were wide. I turned to him and asked him what he thought about those boys and how hard they had to work for the sport they loved. He nodded his head and said with absolute wonder, "Wow. Did you see that dude's machete? That was awesome!!!"
Share

Share