Luncheon is Served

I have the greatest job in the world - being a stay at home grammy.  Every day at my job someone tells me that they love me.  We do some pretty great things while the 4 grandkids are here.  We watch movies, they put on plays for me, they have dance parties, and sometimes they fight.  But I wouldn't trade this life for anything.

Once each week, I like to make them special lunches.  Most days we have lunchmeat or peanut butter sandwiches, but once a week or so, Krissy and I make something special.

The first week, we made "undersea hot dogs with seaweed noodles", and watched Finding Nemo.  We dyed Oodles of Noodles green with food coloring, added a hot dog in which we cut legs, and then added goldfish crackers and Swedish fish.  I thought it was a really cool idea, but I have to tell you that the kids were a little freaked out by the green noodles.

The next special meal was heart shaped pancakes with sausage inside.  I have a little cooker that makes heart shaped cakes, so we put the pancake batter inside and added three sausage slices to it and then baked them.  In the smallest section of their lunch containers, they each got syrup for dipping.  They were a big hit, and are on the list of things to make again.

Today's lunch was corn dog muffins.  We made up two boxes of Jiffy corn bread muffin mix and put it into regular sized muffin tins that had been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.  After filling the cups 1/2 full, we pressed 1/3 of a hot dog into each muffin, and them baked them at 400 degrees for 18 minutes  When they were done, we left them sit a few minutes before removing them.  We served them with two cookies and some fruit salad.  Everyone seemed to enjoy them.

I have a few blocks of cream cheese that should be used soon that are in the refrigerator.  Since they all like ranch dressing, I think I'll add a ranch dip packet to the cream cheese and make roll ups with sliced ham, maybe a pickle, and a few soft tortilla shells.  The next day for lunch, we can slice them and voila - our own take on "sushi".  I pinned an idea for "fortune cookies" made with fruit roll ups, and think it would be a great lunch to serve while we watch Mulan.

We'll blink twice and they'll be ready to go back to school, Krissy in 8th grade, Bubba in 5th grade, Izzy in 1st grade, and Jake will be going to preschool three days a week.  I'll miss them terribly, but Izzy and Jake will stay come after school.  And as we all know, time marches on.