Weekly Menu - What we take on vacation

First up is Food Prep!! This is what I prepped for this week:

 It actually took me two days to do food prep because I didn't realize I was out of ziplock bags until I was home from the store.  On day one I prepped - Spinach for smoothies and salad; lettuce for salads, grapes, pineapple, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and lemons/limes (for water).  With the fruit I also prep small bowls to send with Darryl in his lunch.  I also made a batch of my new favorite Salad Dressing - an asian dressing that is to die for. 

 On Sunday, I finished up by prepping bags of smoothie stuff that go in the freezer until needed, pickle/ham roll-ups for snacks, mix for homemade Ice cream and finally, the large square container has Darryl's lunch stuff - cookies and poptarts ready to go into his lunch to making packing it a little easier at 3:30 AM :-)  One other item not in this photo is extra Pork Chops that I cooked on Sunday for dinner.  I planned extra so I could slice them up into strips to use on salad throughout the week.

Food prep takes a lot of work, I'm not going to lie.  On Saturday, between shopping and prepping, I spent about 4 1/2 hours working on "food".  We are eating a lot more fruits than we used to though so that is good.  The smoothie prep is new this week - I'm going to see how it works out and decide if it is worth the time to do that or just to mix them up each morning.
On to other things!!

I'm in the midst of cleaning, washing, packing, and printing (all of our stuff we need) for vacation.  I shared our extended menu last week so today I'll just let you know what we normally take with us as far as food.  (I know, thrilling, isn't it?)

We are staying in hotel for 5 nights and that get a little pricey as far as snacks and drinks.  The hotel offers free breakfast which is a HUGE plus because I don't have to pack simple things for breakfast.  With kids, I know we will be up in time to catch the breakfast too :-)

Anytime we go away, I always pack drinks.  Pop machines are so rediculously expensive that to not carry your own drinks is crazy, right?  We will be taking our cooler and I think the room has a fridge.  (I don't trust those little fridges though - things can freeze so fast in there!!).  So, I always take a carton of Pepsi and Diet Sprite.  Plus a Package of bottled water since it is easy to add Crystal light packs to those and have lemonade for both the adults and kids :-)   This year I'll be adding Juice Boxes to the packing list for the kids.  I love them because they are easy to throw into my little cooler that goes in the kid bag for when we go on day trips.  Chocolate Milk is a must ;-)  I'll pick up some of those little Chugs to keep in the cooler for bedtime for the boys.

What about snacks?  Some times I WAY over pack when we go away and I'm trying not to do that this time around.  I would like to limit it to basically one snack per person. I have found mine - it is this awesome chocolate drizzled carmal corn (YUM!).  For the kids, I will pack poptarts and Breakfast bars along with some crackers/cheese boxes that they love.  Finally, for Darryl - I'm not sure ;-)  He loves Fig Newtons so maybe those plus he also likes the cracker/cheese boxes too ;-)  The nice thing about vacation is that you pick up stuff along the way like Fudge, or special cheeses, or crunchy fun stuff.  This year I also plan to pack fruit - grapes, strawberries and apples and cheese sticks.  Three out of the four of us love fruit (Nate, not so much) and fruit is a great snack to take alone on day trips too!

That's it :-)  With breakfast at the Hotel, we only plan a light lunch/snack and then an early dinner.  Then, everyone can have a snack before bed if needed.