Meal Prep Monday Madness!!

I watch all those awesome people who prep months of meals and freeze them, and make extra, etc, etc.  I, however, have never been that person.  I do not like to cook, and I do not like to prep.  For the past two years I keep making plans to prep freezer meals, but never found recipes I liked that worked well with our family.  My husband does most of the dinner cooking in our home, and he does not like to freeze meals, so this has been something I have struggled with for a while.

Last week I read the blog where it talks and shows freezer meals.  I browsed through and found that it went EXACTLY with our family's crazy diet and food likes!!  I found a new desire to attempt this meal prep idea.

I like the idea of meal prep for many reasons:
1) Do all my shopping in bulk, making things more affordable
2) Not having to stress about "what to do for dinner" the nights my husband is sick, or we were too busy to plan ahead.
3) No longer having an excuse to eat out after church
4) Healthy dinners already packaged and ready!
5) Being prepared and having peace of mind.

I already have menu plans for breakfast, lunch, and snacks because that is MY area of cooking.  Dinner meals, however, really elude me.  Even with my mountains of cookbooks, I truly struggle with finding meals and recipes that everyone in our family likes.  We also have diet restrictions making the "obvious" stuff really hard.

The reasons I kept making excuses for not doing this:
1) Too much planning
2) Overwhelming options
3) Too complicated shopping list
4) an ENTIRE day just to prepping??  Who has time for that?!

Reading that blog, and seeing that it was all things that worked for our family, and seeing the shopping list already done took out a lot of my excuses.

So, today, I spent two hours shopping and following the list and filled up the cart.  Now, I have gotten this far before, but I never actually got around to getting the bags, and prepping the meals.  I mean, after all, shopping is so exhausting!

Today I resolved to buy, and package it all today.  Even though it was daylight savings time, AND a Monday, AND I was full of excuses, I buckled down, got it all done, stayed focused and ended up with an amazing day!

Now, at the end of the day, I have 20 freezer meals prepped, and overall it was not nearly as bad as I kept thinking it would be.  It is so relaxing and calming to know that I have backup dinners ready, and NO MORE excuses for just grabbing fast food.

I am excited to providing healthy meals and planning well for my family.  It's easy to make excuses, but it's important to buckled down and make the right choices!

This is now going to become a "meal day" monthly at our house.  Put it on the calendar, plan ahead and enjoy the good meals!

Also fun highlights of the day:
1) My mom was able to take the kids to the trampoline park for a "spring break" special!
2) The boys rescued a baby bunny from our cat and are now enjoying a new fun friend!
3) All our school work still got done early!
4) Even though my "Monday morning" cleaning didn't happen, we got a LOT accomplished and had a very fulfilling day!