Every Monday I send my children to school with a check for $8.75. That’s enough to buy just lunch for the week. That’s $8.75 per child for one week.

I realize that I could probably pack their lunch cheaper, but there’s reasons that I don’t and the biggest being I’m a single mom and it’s just easier to send a check and be done with it. I know that I won’t feel like packing their lunch every day (whether it be night or morning) and they won’t pack it like they are supposed to (because you know that 7 cookies and a bag of chips is NOT a nutritious lunch, but they will try to justify that it is. This is just before they just start sneaking food out of the house. I know because I did it.)

As I said, every Monday I send Samara with $8.75 for lunch for the week and every Thursday I get a phone call from the automated lady with the county that says, “Your child, Samara, has a negative balance of $1.05. Please send payment with your child to school tomorrow.”

Every week.

I keep telling her not to buy the extra stuff. She keeps buying the extra stuff. And I know darn well that she’s not eating all of her lunch, so it’s not a matter of being hungry.

Today, I decided to have lunch with her at school. Really, it was because for once, she listened to me and there was left over money in her account and since it’s the end of the school year I didn’t know how I would get it back. (So, I’m frugal like that!)

I was expecting the lunches that I had as a kid. Afterall, the lunch ladies all looked the same as if they could’ve been the lunch ladies from yesteryear. The hairnets, the aprons and the unwelcoming smiles. It was as if I’d time warped myself back to 1990. I can’t recall ever looking at the menus that the school sends home and so I picked one up.

I was expecting the meals that I was used to when I was a kid. You know, the cardboard pizza? The mushy corn? Not here! No wonder lunch has gone up from when I was a kid! And those extras that she keeps buying? It was a smorgasboard of cookies, ice cream, fruit roll-ups, fruit, yogurt and more!

Today, I realized why my daughter continues to buy the extras. They are much more exciting than what’s available at home and for that I can’t half blame her. I wanted to spend more than what was in the account too!

On the topic of school lunches, check out School Menu and its parental counterpart Family Everyday, two sites that work together with School Food Services Directors to provide and promote healthy eating and physical fitness for kids and their parents.

Seriously, this is where school lunches are getting cool! School Menu has games and gears school lunches toward cartoon characters. They want kids to be “tooned in” and there’s even a place where schools can publish their menu’s on the website. (I’ll definitely be doing this as I can’t keep track of that menu when it comes home!)

The games are geared toward kids and so are the pages that deal with nutrition. I told Matthew to sit down and look at it tonight and he loved it.

Everyday Family is another great resource site for parents and I can’t wait to dive even deeper into this site. It offers recipes, ideas on things to do as a family, and things to do for yourself. I can’t wait to see it evolve even more.

So, if you get a chance, hop on over there!

Until next time…

Heather

Filed under According to Samara, Mom Stuff |