If you fail to plan, you plan to fail...

I'm a planner. It's in my nature. My dad is a more than a touch on the OCD side and I definitely inherited that gene from him. This obsessive gene carries over into pretty much every area of my life, much to my husband's chagrin. I don't joke when I tell you that my closet is a work of art. My clothes are organized by sleeve length, jeans are in one part of the closet, work pants in another - you get the idea. And all of these sections are organized by color of the rainbow. I know, it's nuts but I love it and it works for me. When we first started dating, Andrew loved to mess with me by moving my clothes around and out of order or taking the hangers and switching the direction in which they hung. I'd like to say it didn't drive me crazy but it did and they didn't stay messed up for long. I was trained by the best and it rubbed off. Over a decade out of the grocery store business and my dad stills faces his cans in the cabinet as do I.

This vignette is all to tell you that I am pre-disposed to plan. I plan my workouts, I plan my meals, and I plan the schedules of the 5 members of my family. You don't even want to see what our family Google calendar looks like. It may be OCD, but it works for me and helps to make sure that the we stay afloat during the busy school year. That's not to say that we don't forget to rsvp to the occasional birthday party or find ourselves at Dick's Sporting Goods buying a field hockey stick on the eve before Little A.'s field hockey camp starts as was the case this week, but it helps.

As we begin to transition ourselves back into the madness of the school year, this degree of planning is what helps me stay a bit more sane (I'm sure they'll be some hair pulling regardless!) This year is going to be a year of adjustment for us. H.'s going to be in a new school, which should provide more support for him, which he needs, but it's also a new place, with new people and systems to orient ourselves to, and it's not in town so the transportation and slightly different school calendar will be an adjustment for us all. On top of that, all 3 kids are doing fall soccer which means 6 days a week of soccer. And to complicate things, 4 of the 5 week nights we'll have kids on the field at dinner time which means juggling getting homework done and kids fed and in bed at a reasonable hour (and with enough time to allow for Andrew and I to get our work done with time to spare for some trashy tv!)

With that in mind, meal planning is key. The crock pot is my friend and ally. There's nothing better or easier than walking in the door to a prepared dinner in the crockpot - well, except for having a full-time chef which isn't going to happen ever so in lieu of that, the crockpot will have to do. For those who need meal and snack ideas, who want to see what we're eating or how a slightly obsessive mom of 3 meal/workout plans, I'll be posting my weekly calendar here. Most of the recipes I'll be posting on the Clean Eating tab or feel free to email at mkshen76@gmail.com for recipe ideas/links if you don't see what you're looking for under recipes.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned - this page and site, like all of us, is a work in progress.

To get the ball rolling, here's my current meal plan. I'm improvising a little since I'm messing around with a new meal plan (switching from the 21 Day Fix meal planning and calorie counting over to the IIFYM system - huge learning curve!)