Category Archives: Bento

 

First grade already — where does the time go!

Kidlet really didn’t want to get up and go to school today.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t nerves (kidlet is so far from shy and retiring), but just a desire to stay home and play.  Still, it can’t hurt to remind him that I am thinking about him today.

Just like last year, for the first day we have hand shaped sandwiches with little hearts (the kisses) cut out of the palm, ala “The Kissing Hand“.  I got a new (smaller) hand cutter this year.  The one from last year was basically life sized and takes up too much space in a regular sized bento box.

Ham and cheese sandwiches, carrot and tomato, ranch dressing, black grapes.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

Summer is 2/3 gone already, its hard to belive.  Another month and it’s back to the grindstone for the kidlet.  In the meantime, camp invention is winding down. Here is todays packed lunch.

Egg salad sammies with cheese duck toppers.  Wavy sliced apple flowers, strawberries and (currently frozen) blueberries, peas and a slice of strawberry and cream jellyroll.

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Kidlet has his final week long day camp this week.  He is doing Camp Invention being held at his elementary school, which this year is thier “Innovate” program . It has a number of modules, but his favorite yesterday was disassembling a “take apart item”, which we sent with him (He took an old mini boombox and a broken Brainy Brainy toy) and they are using along with a bunch of different recycled items (some brought in by each of the participating kids) to create some crazy invention.  He wouldn’t tell me what he is planning on making.  I get to be suprised at the end of the week.

Egg salad pocket sandwich, which I had to cut in half to fit.  Watermelon hearts and blueberries.  Carrot hearts and yellow cauliflower.  2 lil’ smokies.

I am going to have to find one of those little tiny pocket sandwich makers that creates multiple sandwiches from one large one.  I know I’ve seen them somewhere online.  I just have to figure out where.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

When I pick Kidlet up from day camp, the lunch stuff is still generally out on tables in the party room where they eat.  Three days in a row I’ve been, not shocked, but a little suprised at the crap that most of the kids have in thier lunches.  The pile of trash is ridiculous for only 8 kids, and includes so many snack sized bags of chips, sugary granola bars, cookies, rice krispie treats, gummy fruit snacks, and other junk food. 

Is a sandwich, chips, cookies and maybe a piece of fruit still really the gold lunch standard in this day and age when you’d have to have your head in the sand to not know so much more about nutrition than our parents did and childhood obesity is a real epidemic?

I can’t say that I never let my kid eat junk.  Of course he sometimes has chips and sweets, but its not every day, nor the bulk of what goes in his mouth.  He also understands that those are sometimes foods, and that while no foods are “bad”, some foods aren’t as good for us and we should only eat a little of them.

Stacked ham and cheese sandwich, lil smokies, quail eggs, apple and blueberries, carrot.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

He’s been eating so little of his lunch this week, I used one of our smaller boxes and just packed a large snack.

Sandwich, layered cheese flower with fruit roll up face, watermelon and blueberries.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

Despite a small meltdown yesterday, kidlet is really enjoying this day camp.  It’s one I picked for him just for pure fun.  His June camp was about team work and sportmanship.  His August camp is science and engineering.  Both are designed to be fun as well as teaching, but this week — nothing remotely educational about it.  It’s at Inflatable Kingdom (large inflatable jumping, sliding, obstacle course thingies), and aside from the normal bouncy things they have an arts and crafts room with free time as well as scheduled crafts and are bringing in different events each day. 

Yesterday they had a clown making balloon animals, got temporary tattoos, made masks and did spin art.  Today they had face painting and a giant inflatable water slide set up in the parking lot, which apparently kidlet didn’t want to leave even though it was gray and cool and everyone else was covered in goose bumps and ready to go in, heh.  Tomorrow they’ve got a rock wall and I don’t know what else.

Pb and J circle sandwich, cheese fishes, golden kiwi, blueberries, babybel cheese and broccoli.

He hasn’t eaten much of his lunch either day — until I pick him up at 1p and then he is starving and wants to finish it on the way home.  They do offer snacks several times during the day (mostly healthy-ish, fruits and veggie booty and things like that), so that is probably taking the edge off his hunger.  However,  I think mainly he is having too much fun to spend time eating.  Kids! =)

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Day camp this week. 

Turkey and colby jack on whole wheat “flatout” roll-up, raspberries and blueberries, carrot and broccoli, babybel cheese.

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Poor kidlet picked up a bit of a sunburn yesterday.  He’s never burned before, although I guess I shouldn’t be shocked since I forgot his sunscreen.  He has always had very sensitive skin (he’s the kid that couldn’t be in a wet diaper for 3 seconds without getting a rash), and with the weather the way it has been all spring and summer, he had no chance to pick up a little base tan before spending four+ hours running around in a shade-free field.

Egg salad sandwich — I used the new pocket sandwich maker, but it was too big and I had to halve it.  Dragonfruit (white flesh this time – cutting into dragonfruit is like opening a treasure chest.  Will it be white?  Red?  Pink? ;))  and watermelon flowers, baby corn.  Small side car (not shown) with a few chocolate filled biscuits with cute little koalas printed on them.

It could have used a little orange or something on the sandwich, but it was really a fat one and already going to be all the way to the lid so there was no room even for a little carrot flower or something like that.

Posted by Kristen in Bento

Kidlet didn’t want to leave day camp yesterday.  They have the half day option (9-1) that we chose, a full day option that goes until 5, and before and after care as well.  Well, the full day kids were having a “field trip” yesterday to – of all places – a field (lol) where they were having a BBQ picnic.  He really wanted to stay, but Baby L was still napping when I left to pick him up and although DH was home, he was working from his home office, and he needed us to get back before she woke up so he could actually get work done.  Kidlet got pretty sullen, but he didn’t escalate into a tantrum which suprised (and pleased) me.  We came home and played with the water table, had otter pops, and worked out the grumpiness.

PB and lemon curd sammy (BTW, I only use “100% peanut” peanut butter, not the regular stuff with added sugars and stabalizers and all that gunk), hard boiled egg with lemon pepper, bouquet of carrots.  Red grapes, golden raspberries, blueberries and a “2 bite” mini lemon cupcake.

The cheese figure was supposed to be a sun but I couldn’t find my cutter with the pointy edges so it ended up looking more like a flower.

Baby L has been a little more difficult going down for her naps the last couple of days.  After a few weeks of dream-like ease in getting her down, she is suddenly crying for 30+ minutes again. sigh.  Parenthood!

Posted by Kristen in Bento