School Break

  I recently registered my son into a traditional school; well, a year round traditional school.  Last week and this next week he's already on break.  That's one lucky kid!  One week in a desk and already on vacation.  So what to do during this two week hiatus?  He's not hot on eating the same kinds of lunches at home that he will at school.  In fact, I've been asked more times than I can count if we can go out to eat last week.
  My kid is on a mac and cheese kick.  We had been doing Annie's, now I'm going to have to figure out how to make my own that he likes.  I'm really not looking forward to attempting fruit snacks he's going to like.  In case you missed it, Annie's sold out to General Mills.  There's a petition that's really not going to do much of anything if you'd like to sign it.  I did just because it made me feel a little better that I'd said something, as little good as it will do.
  However, mac and cheese isn't the most wholesome thing so we do some sort of veggie with it as well.  Can I send him to school with mac and cheese?  Of course, but it's hot at home.  It's that easy to interest my kid.  We also do leftovers, which is even better if you can make those left overs into a sandwich.  Unfortunately, my son discovered he like pepperoni and cheese sandwiches as well.  Judge me all you want, but when you're breast feeding one kid and the other is finally clamoring that he's hungry (even though you asked about five minutes before you started feeding the infant), you let the 9 year old make his own lunch with the stipulation he needs to include a vegetable.  He's back to liking carrots again, so he changes between spinach and carrots at this point - his favorite is the veggie mix you find in the freezer section but I haven't taught him to use the stove yet.
  When he goes back to school we're going to try a few new things as well.  I get bored of the same stuff day after day too.  Bentos sure can be cute, but the cute ones are copious amounts of work and often use ingredients banned from my house.  I'm scouring my bento, school snacks, and sammiches pins to find some simple lunches for the boy and DH.  With this move I won't be seeing him at lunch, so he'll need to take it with him.  Here are a few we'll be trying out once the boy goes back to school:

veggie nuggets, I'll be replacing the eggs with ground flax eggsand the Parmesan with nutritional yeast.

Doctor Who bento: multiple days; Cassandra sandwich, a TARDIS sandwich, the other three pretty much as is.

Yoda!  Maybe carrots cut into strips to replace the grapes, no fruit snacks, not m&m eyes (broccoli stem?)

"Pizza" pockets, whatever filling I choose to go with.

Mini corn dogs, use Nathan's hot dogs

fruit snacks

pretzels

Here are my pin boards if you are interested.  They're not all healthy options, sometimes a treat is ok.  Some of them I'd like to make healthier.
Bento ideas, school snacks, sammiches