grocery lists and where im going wrong

ok there are things i feel pretty good about as a parent.....i think my kids have their priorities in order and are as dedicated to school as they are to sports....and i really really love that about them ALL....today was one of those days where you look at your kids and think - wow, they really are doing some great things.....i went and watched josh's team at mesa competition break their balsa wood bridge - which was very fun.....and we got yet another letter in the mail from another university about summer study programs for luke and his engineering brain....AND we got jake's preliminary SAT scores.....really a very gratifying mental day at the bayers.....i love knowing that my boys are using their BRAINS along with their athletic gifts.....and where we are watching it just start to emerge with josh, we are really seeing the fruits of all the studying and preparing pay off for the older boys....and i realize once again how lucky i am....

and THEN i find myself at the grocery store at 10:30 at night.....mostly just me and the cleaning crew hanging out at safeway and i have the ridiculous realization that while my kids are all super cool, i am totally reinforcing the stereotypical gender roles in my house....i do all shopping and food prep (what little there is) in my house....all i really ask is that the kids throw stuff on a list as they realize we need it or run out of it....not so much to ask really in the grand scheme of things - and i will admit that dinner prep has always always always been my plague.....as much as i love to eat, i hate the whole PLANNING of dinner, especially at 8 in the morning when i'm trying to figure it out....but i digress.....i get to safeway tonight and pull out my "list" (you will see why its in quotes in a second" and this is what is says:  ranch, choc milk, chips, parm cheese, toaster strudel, pb, razor blades, toothpaste, grape jelly, hard pretzels, dinner, veg, fruit, 75 w bulbs, almond milk......REALLY????  is there ONE ITEM on there resembling actual food? and we literally have a fairly empty fridge....these are the things that are important - by handwriting.....jake only cares about chocolate milk and snacks....kris doesnt actually eat food, except for pb and j and pretzels.....josh just wants to make sure we have toaster strudel....and luke doesnt add anything because he is like me - he will find something to eat with whatever is in the house.....

so as i'm walking around putting those lovely items in my cart and looking to fill in the blanks with that dinner stuff that is my reminder to myself that we need actual food, i run into the only other person in safeway, with a cart full of JUNK...and all i can think is "yes, i came out at 10pm at night because we are CLEARLY OUT OF POTATO CHIPS"....awesome

many of my friends have heard me gripe over the years about not being able to lose weight....not that i think i am morbidly obese or anything, but id like to trim down a few or 10....and it strikes me that i will never be able to as long as i shop like this!!  THIS is exactly why we are overweight as a nation.....and i'm the poster child for irony!!  i actually KNOW that its wrong to eat like this and yet i do it anyway because its EASIER!!  i know that my family is so far from the cleaver sit down dinner that its almost unrecognizable.....at BEST i cook some kind of meat and throw together a salad or veggie....i dont cook anything that comes out of a box (unless its a cake or pasta :)....so in that way, i feel like i'm somewhat teaching them a better way to eat....but the fact that we eat out or order in 70% of the time is disheartening at best and truly sad at worst....and when your primary shopper has the appetite of a teenage boy and is actually feeding teenage boys, you have a recipe for disaster....ugh!!

the good news is that they are young and active and can afford to eat like crap....even tho they shouldn't....the bad news is that you never outgrow your taste for potato chips or ice cream.....i am hoping that maybe luke will invent something that makes spinach TASTE like potato chips!!!  then all the worlds problems will be solved :)

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.  ~Mark Twain
Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.  ~Doug Larson