For Busy Fall Nights...Weekly Meal Plans to the Rescue

The fall is arriving this week, literally September 23, this means school is in full swing and sports have recently started up.  This also means that our house is in full-swing.  This fall, our household is only playing two sports.  I am coaching my youngest son’s soccer team (Under 5) and my oldest son is playing flag football.  Thankfully for U5 soccer, we only practice once a week but my older son practices twice a week for an hour and a half. For a firefighter household, some weeks are better than others because when you have two parents to orchestrate the busy night with, you can manage to get to practice and still have a good, healthy meal to come home to without the house looking like a tornado hit it.  However, this isn’t the case all the time.  For instance, this week my husband’s schedule is Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, which means that he is not home at all during the week for the morning routine.  I must prepare all lunches, get the kids ready and out the door for school, and make sure I have left the house a disaster.  Also, I must have dinner ready at night on nights when practices are scheduled.  In my opinion, this is the worst schedule out of the whole set.  Now, I know this schedule in advance, so I try and organize our weekly dinner meals into two categorize – crazy night and non-crazy night, because let’s admit I’m not superwoman and going out to eat seems so much easier, but we need to eat at home because it is what is best for all of us.  This is when I look to Pinterest and other blogs sites for quick meals that I can either throw in the crock pot before I leave or a one-pan meal dish in less than 30 minutes.  These are great resources and take away the pressure to think of something on your own.  I subscribe to a blog A Dash of Sanity that sends out a weekly meal plan to my email.  The weekly meal plan includes main dishes as well as desserts.  These meal plans have a good idea or two that I can use for the week.    So, I wanted to share this wonderful resource with you.  Take a look and see if you could use any of these meal ideas for your crazy week.

For our love of serving this country,

Nicole