Mom Blog Work

Wednesday! Has this been a long week for anybody else? Between the two of us, we are up against ear infections, crazy work stuff, clingy teething toddlers and non-stop rain. Time to write some Good Stuff lists!

Karissa's Good Stuff

• Family jam sessions (piano, flute, bongo drums and dancing)
• FB'ing with an old friend who is halfway around the world, serving our country
• Blogging again - so nice to be back in this space
• Kids building nests with every pillow and blanket they can find
• A new to us park with an awesome playground
• Andre sharing Les Mis with the kids
• Sleeping in til 7:30 - every little bit counts
• Mama Mantras tin drop to some great people

Megan's Good Stuff

• Coffee. Oh. and Beer.
• Ernest. He'll make this list every week!
• Antibiotics
• Best Friends

What's on your list this week?

We have been talking about food a lot lately since we started blogging again. This is another "Food" post but in a different vein. This is the second post in our Emergency Prep series. We are building out our Emergency Kit and this week's focus is food and water.

Water
Water is the single most important item in a family emergency kit and you need a lot of it for a family of 4. You want one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days. For our families of 4 that's 12 gallons of water! Not to mention more for Megan's family pets.

Food
We waffled a little on the food front at first. Do we just get those emergency ration bars? What are those things anyways? How much variety do you really need? Won't you eat anything if you're hungry? We have decided to buy practical food that is familiar to our families. Think peanut butter, canned stew, chili and fruit. Throw in some hard candy or lollipops as a comfort item. We are buying enough food for 3 days and figure a few cans for each meal.

Shopping Tips

• Watch expiration dates
• Buy your can opener now
• Think high protein, low salt
• Items prepared with water (soups, oatmeal, etc) require additional water to be stored
• Items you can eat without heating are ideal
• Watch out for strong smelling items like mint gum which might flavor other items
• Pop top cans can explode - regular tops and your trusty can opener may be a safer bet
• Don't forget baby food if you have a little one still in that stage

Cost
We are aiming to come in around $30 but admit it was a guess. I was really dissapointed in the sales ads looking at them from a stock-up perspective but Here are a few sales that might come in handy this week:

• Cliff Bars, 10 for $10 / Safeway
• Crystal Geiser Water, 1 gallon for $1 / Safeway
• Quaker Granola Bars 2 for $5 / Safeway
• Chicken of the Sea tuna 3 for $1 / Fred Meyer
• 24-Pack Nestle Pure Life Water 3 for $10 / Fred Meyer

We'll be shopping this week (or, more likely this weekend) and will show off our new stashes next week.

Good luck, Emergency Kit shoppers!

Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives

The two of us have a tendency to obsess over things a little bit. We grab on to a subject and it consumes our daily IM conversations, our online reading, our thoughts and our conversations with our husbands. This week that subject is emergency preparedness. Megan kicked it off with her post on Monday and we've been spinning about it ever since. Building an emergency kit for a family of four and pets is daunting to say the least. The subject is scary and something nobody really likes to think about. At some point though we just have to jump in and get started. Enough research and "what-if" questions.

Introducing "Project: Emergency Prep"!
We are going to get our kits built and document the process here. With the recent disasters in Japan it looks like a lot of people are doing the same thing. There are premade emergency kits sold out all over the web and apparently some people are busy securing luxury bunker space as well.

While bunkers didn't make our list, we do have a list put together based on a combination of two lists found online:

• American Red Cross
• Ready.gov

We've broken down the list into four categories. This will give us something to focus on each week, group store trips and hopefully make the process a little easier. Our categories are:

• Food and Water
• Safety
• Shelter and Protection
• Communication and Logistics

We invite you to join us in this project and get your kit set up too. Each week we'll focus on one of the categories above.
Spend this weekend getting your list together so you're ready to get going next week.

Our focus next week will be food and water supplies. Check back next week to see what food and water was on our list, how much we spent and some pictures of the start of our emergency kit.

Three blog posts in one week! Dare we say it? Is MomBlogWork back?! Let's hope so! That's gotta be Good Stuff, right?

Karissa Good Stuff

• Brady playing "slug bug" with us in the car by shouting "nana!" randomly (Herbie Goes Bananas)
• Saving money
• March Madness excitement and how happy it makes my hubby
• Photobooks
• Time with family
• Mo's chalk drawings on the driveway

Megan's Good Stuff

• Giving Rey's hair a little trim at home so it doesn't get in his eyes, yet keeping it shaggy.
• Ernest: he's by far the better parent of the two of us, and he holds the family together. He's the glue!
• Listening to all the boys (dad included) playing tickle monster in the other room.
• Catching up with my cousin Shannon on the phone (how quaint, right?)
• Completing another 5k

Share your list in the comments - they're so fun to read!

I have been inspired by the cute and creative bento-style lunches out there in the blogsphere for some time now. Its kind of upping the ante on muffin tin meals which we've been doing for awhile. My kids don't have to tote a lunch anywhere on a regular basis but I've been itching to try my hand at creating a cute lunch. I finally managed to get some supplies at a local Daiso store (Japanese dollar store type chain) and whipped up these two cute little boxes for my kids' last week:

Mo got PB&J, ham, cheese, apples and berries. Brady got the same but with tortellini instead of PB&J. All things they would eat normally but with no wasteful plastic bags!

I made these for our busy Tuesday night rush where we cram dinner time in between gymnastics classes while perched on metal bleachers. Typically we (*gasp*) hit the drive-thru or I slam together a few PB&J's but this was way more fun and they ate nearly everything! I don't know if it was the accessibility (finger food, mostly) of it all that made them more likely to eat it all or that they were super hungry.

I do struggle a bit with the scraps leftover from slicing w/ cookie cutters. Do I eat them? Do I save them? Do I need a dog? I also wonder if I packed enough to satisfy them since it looks so small once it's put together. There were no complaints of growling stomachs afterward so I think I did okay.

What I like about bento-style lunch is less packaging and how cute and fun they are. You don't have to have fancy containers - Tupperware would work fine! Bento meals help me feel free to throw in non-traditional American lunch foods too. The kids liked them last week, they were easy to put together and the supplies were cheap. All in all, a fun meal!

Here are a few bento lunch blogs and photo pools for more inspiration:

• http://wendolonia.com/blog/: My favorite. Love her tips, FAQs and list of food ideas!
• http://www.anotherlunch.com/: A friend recommended this one.
• http://www.flickr.com/groups/bentoboxes/: Flickr bento group
• http://lunchinabox.net/: Tons of great ideas here

Makes me almost look forward to those upcoming lunch packing days!