Getting Ready For School

School's back tomorrow and the sadness at reaching the end of the holidays is mixed with just a touch of relief. I love school holidays - no rush to get kids dressed (#1 obviously dresses himself but sometimes the effort I have to put in to make that happen surpasses anything you might expect!), breakfast eaten, beds made, dishes done and everyone out the door. I love being able to do stuff with the kids, especially spur of the moment kind of stuff, and just hang out and play with them. But, at the end of the veeerrrryyyy long summer holidays it's nice to return to some structure and routine. And Offspring #1 has been craving 'school work' for absolutely weeks. We've done lots of 'school work' at home - working on his letters and his numbers, doing reading, etc but he doesn't believe me when I tell him he's learning stuff when we do cooking, or craft, or just clean up the house (okay, maybe I am making it up when I tell him the last one LOL) and he keeps telling me that he needs a real teacher so he can learn more stuff.

I have decided that I need to get super organised with school lunches from the beginning. Now I'm back working I need to take lunch, the boys both need lunches and Offspring #2's daycare doesn't have a cook at the moment so I need to provide lunch for her too. I'm aiming to come up with ideas that are a little more exciting than plain sandwiches - we also can't have anything with peanuts or nut based products as the other three members of the Red Dirt household all spend the day in places where they are banned.

So far I have made:

- cheese scones, a tasty treat for a snack. There's a batch in the freezer.

- berry yoghurt muffins - a favourite recipe that I've posted about before, this is another nice morning tea snack. Only 10 of the dozen I made today made it to the freezer.

- oatmeal and raisin cookies, another recipe I've posted before and a firm favourite here. They are cooling on the bench and smell divine. They'll fill up the cookie jar nicely for after school (and for something sweet with my cup of tea).

- trail mix. This was purely experimental and I'm not sure how well it will be received. It has a mix of popcorn, cornflakes, dried apples and apricots, sultanas and some toasted pepitas and sunflower seeds. I'm thinking it will be a good snack for the times Hubby and I aren't really hungry but are looking for something to nibble on while we're working. It's also something different for #1 to take as a recess snack.

I also made a roast in the slow cooker today. It was cooked perfectly - beautifully tender and very tasty. The recipe came from Slow Cookers for Dummies, worth checking out of the library rather than buying it I think, and now I have roast beef for sandwiches for the next few days.

I also have a few interesting (well, interesting to kids probably) lunch ideas that I'll be trying out so I'll let you know how they go.