Having a HUGE family is fun until you have to feed everyone.  Truthfully, I love grocery shopping because I love food and I also usually love to cook.  But, since adding Lleyton into the mix, it was getting more and more complicated to cook big meals every single night, especially when having to get the other kids to soccer, tennis, and basketball four nights a week with games ALL weekend.  It was HARD and the stress of having to cook dinner at lunchtime just so I could rush around every single afternoon and night with an infant was just down right crazy!  The amount of money I was spending on groceries every single week added to the stress.  I was spending way too much money ($300-$350/week) sticking to strictly paleo dinners for everyone in the family.  But WHY?!  My kids are healthy, but they aren’t paleo by any means.  So, Jeremy and I had a heart to heart, did some budgeting, and decided to help each other out!

What was the outcome of that heart to heart?  Meal prepping TOGETHER on the weekends and making a date out of it!  We make a charcuterie board, drink wine, and have a dance party in the kitchen.  We choose a Friday or Saturday evening, when we are less busy with the kid’s activities, we make our meal plan for the week and then we make the kid’s meal plan for the week.  Our food is typically paleo and the kid’s – well, theirs is cheap and easy!  After planning out our meals, we make our grocery list and order the groceries online.  I recommend everyone order groceries online.  It saves you so much time, you aren’t tempted to walk down every aisle of the grocery store and buy things that weren’t on your list, AND you can see how much money you’re spending as you go.  Huge life saver right there!  Most grocery stores will either have it ready for pick up or they can deliver it to your house.  Do it!  Seriously – DO IT!

As much as the kid’s love the paleo food I whip up, apparently I was robbing them of the cheesy pasta they love.  And hey, that’s fine with me because we save so much money by simply not buying extra paleo ingredients for their meals.  We knew we weren’t going to cut a drastic amount of money off our grocery budget just because of the amount of people we have to feed, but week one we shaved off $60.  I’d say that was a WIN!  For those of you that hate math, that is a savings of $240 a month!  Now, why exactly were we trying to decrease our grocery costs?  One, we were actually wasting a lot of the produce we were buying because we weren’t using it fast enough.  Two, because of how busy our weekends can get with sports, we realized we were having to eat out a lot on the weekends, and with a family of seven that can really add up!  Three, as busy as we can get with the kid’s activities during the week and on the weekends, we still wanted to be able to budget for FUN things for us to do as a family every single chance we get.  Whether it’s saving for a fun weekend in the mountains, a day of fun at a theme park, or a big trip in another country (more to come in another post), that extra $240 a month goes towards our family fun which is why it was so important for us to get this under control.

Ladies, when your husband or significant other tells you he wants to help, LET HIM!  I’ve always had a problem with pushing people away when they want to help me do something.  I think in my head it just made me feel like I was weak or that I could always do something better than someone (I know I’m not alone in that).  I’m not really sure why, I’m just hardheaded so I guess it goes hand in hand.  But cooking with Jeremy is so much fun and it’s actually a pretty cool date night idea for when you don’t have a babysitter and you’re stuck at home.  And who doesn’t like to snack and drink alcohol while cooking?!  If you raised your hand to that question then I feel sorry for you.  In all seriousness, this has made our lives so much easier.  It puts us ahead for the week and if one of us beats the other home from practice, we already know what’s for dinner and we can start heating it up for everyone.  I mean, surely no one can mess up heating food in a microwave?!

P.S. – If you hate your kids asking millions of questions like “What’s for dinner?,” “What’s in it?,” “When will it be ready?.”  Well here is your way to shut them up!

Get ready for some helpful and healthy weekly meal plans for parents and kids coming soon to save you money and lower your stress!  Below was our meal plan for week one.  Take a look!

 

Kid’s Dinners:
Monday:  Chicken Enchiladas
Tuesday:  Spaghetti
Wednesday:  Leftover Chicken Enchiladas
Thursday:  Leftover Spaghetti
Friday:  Extra shredded chicken from the enchiladas turned into bbq chicken sandwiches

Our Dinners:
Monday:  Paleo Asian Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry with Cauliflower Rice
Tuesday:  Leftover Stir Fry
Wednesday:  Paleo White Chicken Chili
Thursday:  Leftover Chicken Chili
Friday:  Leftovers of everything above!