health

Meal Prep Monday (21/07/2025)

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Not much happened this week by way of meal prep or snack prep or however you want to classify this. I have been sick. The girls have been a little bit on the edge but not too drastic, really. I have felt like I did when I had Covid nearly exactly three years ago, just not as bad, which is not surprising as I’m not currently 35 weeks pregnant. So. Not much happened.

I did manage to make chocolate chip cookies as a preventative measure. For girls, not me. I also made some Everything Balls as a preventative measure. For me, and apparently everyone. I love that this happens. I was halfway through rolling them into balls when S came into the kitchen for something like a third mandarin and just snaffled a ball. Glenn ate one of the mini cups last night and before I had finished covering the tops in chocolate tonight, he ate another. These are guaranteed to be eaten if I pack them in C’s lunchbox, so long as the she has eaten her sandwich (I have passed down certain traits for sure). 

Sandwiches and hard boiled eggs were also made today, but the eggs will have to find another way to be cooked as the best hotplate for them is suddenly cactus and only knows about off and full. Eye roll. 

I am having a good think, but I really think that is it for this weekend. In my defence, apart from the stupid sickness thing, one of my plans had been to use up our unexpected mandarin glut. I was still tossing up between mandarin marmalade and mandarin bread when E decided she was going to eat mandarins for afternoon tea one day and went through four of them and S is a great mimic so she had a few as well and suddenly we have not enough for anything much. Good.

Meal Prep Monday (14/07/2025)

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

A few things happened this weekend. Friday was the Friday for a fortnightly funky food farm box of fruit and veg. I add a dozen eggs to this order because we love eggs. By the time we came home from the park at lunchtime, it was waiting for us at our front door. S very enthusiastically carried the eggs to the kitchen while I watched helplessly until she had speedily and carefully put them on the bench. 

Then through some glitch in the system, the other dozen eggs I had ordered to be delivered from Woollies – first extra large, then I had to change it to large, then that wasn’t in stock so it would be jumbo – well, it made me feel like a magician. Or more accurately, a magician’s assistant, most likely a volunteered audience member, as I found not one, not two, but three dozen jumbo eggs in our delivery. 

Having 48 eggs did affect my weekend food plans, I must admit. That, and the other thing that happened which was the hot water system beeping every 10 seconds on Saturday. Every. Ten. Seconds. No. Matter. What. It turned out to be needing a battery change. Yes, this was the day I found out they have batteries and yes, I had asked the internet and ChatGPT for help, and no, nobody told me this until our real estate phoned me and told me. Thank goodness we had some of the right size battery in stock. But this did mean that irritability was high, and that Saturday washing was put on hold. Baking took over.

So. Friday dinner was salmon bake from my childhood (5 eggs). Saturday morning breakfast was scrambled eggs (7 eggs). I made “sheet pan eggs”, as this person calls it, which is usually in our household baked by Glenn in a round pan and called eggy pizza. Same deal, though – lots of eggs (10), lots of vegetables, a bit of cheese, baked until set. Great for breakfast or lunch or a snack. Great to have on hand for when you ask a 4yo what they want for breakfast after the time you actually normally like everyone to be eating breakfast and the 4yo says enthusiastically, “eggy pizza”, and the first reaction is, “but it’s too late for that”, but the second reaction is, “but that’s okay because I made some on Saturday!” This one had broccoli, cherry tomatoes and capsicum in it. Also to be mentioned in the delivery oddity was an extra bag of frozen strawberries, which I hadn’t really wanted in the first place, either (I was aiming for raspberries). S helped me make strawberry and chia jam with some of our bonus strawberries. I made chocolate chip zucchini strawberry muffins (2 eggs) – these are a new favourite, I think – and zucchini and blueberry baked oatmeal (2 eggs). 

Sunday was prepping some sandwiches for school lunches. Today, with E home with me and both of us not well, I boiled some eggs (4 eggs) and made some chocolates. I think of them as “loaded chocolates”, as they are dark chocolate mixed with a hefty dollop of nut butter, and combined with, in this week’s batch, dried blueberries. There are, um, not as many now as were made this afternoon…

With other fried eggs for breakfasts, our 48 eggs are down to 12, which seems like quite a normal number, and I feel well-stocked for lunches and snacks and breakfasts. For now.

Meal Prep Monday (09/06/2025)

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Three days. Three kids. Husband working. How much can I do.

The whole having kids and having a husband who works retail (so, weekends) has really hampered me getting into a lot of meal prep. All these people who post about their one hour on a Sunday when the dad takes to the kids to the park and the mum gets to meal prep and do the whole look at how much I made in an hour with no kids around and no distractions. Yeah. Good for you. Another factor is that Glenn loves to cook, so me not meal prepping much is fine because then what is he going to cook? Cooking is part of his destress and who am I to interfere with that.

This weekend I felt like I achieved a great deal. But I also felt that I was on my feet the entire time, and the one tiny bit of something for me that I wanted to do when the girls were playing – to sew two tiny bits on my skirt to secure the elastic at the waist – was ruined. I mean, I had to remove the needle and the foot and then do a deep extraction on the material, all because of girls fighting. The fighting that needs a grownup to intervene so we don’t have the kind of chaos and hospital trip that has the authorities involved and asking, where was the responsible adult in this. Ahem.

That said, much of what I did on Sunday – where we didn’t go to church because S was getting to the level of Snot Monster again and clearly needed a rest day – was accompanied by S sitting quietly on the kitchen floor next to me, pulling out the Christmas cupcake cups, lining them up, returning them to the tube, repeating. Or playing with the magnets on the fridge. It was very calming, if a little tripping hazard.

In my chocolate chip cookie post, I said to start it as early as possible. I started my mix last weekend and couldn’t progress with them until Friday. That is, I think, the longest between start and finish for me so far. We also had a three spotty bananas in the fruit bowl, and Glenn and I both held out on buying more bananas while there were spotty bananas. Three bananas is perfect for my new favourite snack, “4 ingredient” peanut butter banana cups. Which, despite the presence of a topping of chocolate chips, are apparently unappealing to my girls so they are all mine. Score. Also on Friday I made a batch of veggie pizza muffins, mostly for me for lunches. Italian herb seasoning has resulted in a very faint suggestion of spiciness so that’s a guaranteed return with grumpy face if I try to pack it in C’s lunchbox. 

Saturday morning I had a dinner panic. I wasn’t taking girls to the shops. We were meeting Glenn at his work in the afternoon and planning a little trip to South Bank.  The South Bank bit didn’t eventuate because everyone was exhausted but still, I knew we would be out and then home needing dinner and I had no idea what to feed girls. I found a recipe for chickpea nuggets. Perfect. Of course, when they were done and cooled and I was looking for a spot for them in the fridge, I found what would be a much better dinner option – chicken drumsticks and rice leftover from a recent dinner hit. Nuggets are destined for the freezer and an emergency meal. 

A new loaf of bread meant a new batch of sandwiches for the freezer, cut into love heart shapes because I love her and she maybe needs to have more reminders of that. And at 2am I remembered that I hadn’t prepped overnight oats so yes, I did that at 2am while everybody else slept, thank goodness. There was so much I didn’t get to do, but seeing all of this really does boost my sense of achievement. 

Top left: chocolate chip cookies. Top right: veggie pizza muffins (large and small). Bottom left: chickpea nuggets. Bottom right: love heart peanut butter sandwiches.

Busy

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

I have been busy. Things I have wanted to maintain have slipped a little. I have five or six posts begun but not continued. Sometimes they are begun and then I don’t get to the checking it stage before it really is too late to post it. Sometimes they are begun and I just don’t get to continue.

There has been a lot more work. This is good. This is also maybe slightly less good. Good because it reduces the financial stress considerably. Pay for me is dependent on how many words I type, so this work is not necessarily necessary but it definitely helps a lot. Pay rate for me is also assessed and reevaluated every four months, and word count is a part of that. As I only work four days, the extra work I’m getting kind of equates to an almost extra day and so bumps up my ranking. 

Extra work is maybe slightly less good, though, because I am now working a lot. C taking foorrrreeevvvvvveerrrrr to go to bed at night makes it harder, and I don’t want to keep saying “I have work to do” for her to be convinced to go to bed. Not that what I want or need makes any difference to her willingness to go to bed, of course, but language is important, and I don’t want the soundtrack of her childhood to be “I have to work”. I’m not keen for “We can’t afford that”, either, but I’ll work on phrases. More work also means less time to think and to write for this blog and to sew and to crochet. Right now the balance is in favour of work in order to relieve the financial stress but it is on the cusp.

Another big factor in reduction of my writing is children. Yes. Children. I wake at 5 for this (or work). S has been waking often just after 4 and insisting I sleep on the floor in their room which is fine but then I wake just before 5 and want to be in my bed for a bit and then I sleep right through the 5am alarm and then there’s the 5.30 alarm and E is then wanting me to hold her hand and then we’re kind of at 6am and I might have made my cup of tea by then but now E is up and wanting to either be on me and help or wanting to watch something which is lovely but distracting and often S is needing something around this time too so I am left with a full cold cup of tea and needing to go on a walk but it now has to be a short walk and should I even bother or should I try for a kettlebell workout later on. If work is due or if I have a lot of it to do, then that will win over any writing or exercise. 

Still, there is always hope. The last two weeks I have not really done any work Thursday night or Friday or Saturday and then Sunday night has been the first for some extra work and then I have slogged it out until Thursday morning. This week will be different. Small portions creates more balance. I plan on having some time not working – Thursday night was free, and Friday morning and most likely Friday night. The weekend, though, will have just a little bit in the mornings and evenings in order to keep this as a bit instead of taking over my life for four days. That’s the hope. 

Right. Where’s that kettlebell.

How to do this

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Thinking I’ll get back to the blog this year is all very well, but how? How can I find time in my life to get my thoughts out and write about all the stuff of our life? I had thought that after children were asleep would be the go, but no. That is turning into grownup conversation time – you know, the chance to talk about the little things of our day or that we’ve come across while scrolling and not have small people wanting our attention or needing our help or screaming about whatever it is that they are screaming about now.  (It seems at least once a week I come across something on Instagram demonstrating how hard it is to talk with another adult when you have children around. It’s like watching a movie of our family). Plus, I’m often now falling asleep on the floor in the girls’ room so that they can all feel safe when they go to sleep. Amazing, sure, but it really cuts into Me Time.

So, how? Recently I have started to make changes in my life. I have been just a little bit overweight since just before becoming pregnant with E and nothing I was doing seemed to help. I started a course that is helping me lose weight but also helping with life. It is all about small habits that can stick and become just what you do. My big block to losing weight was exercise. I couldn’t exercise the way I wanted when I wanted because children were around and Glenn works random hours so I couldn’t get into an exercise habit. But I made myself work out how I could find time to exercise every day and realised that, actually, getting up at 5.30 and going for a walk is totally my thing so that’s what I do now. An extra habit to help this is to put my walking clothes in the bathroom the night before. The girls know now that if I’m not there, I’m walking, and they are fine with daddy and jigsaw puzzles and books and Bluey.

Over the weekend I thought of what I was wanting to write about next and felt stymied when I just couldn’t do it. So I had a think. How was this going to work? When am I going to find time to write? Well, before the exercise. I can definitely wake at 5 and make myself a cup of tea and enjoy a bit more Me Time before going for a walk. It has the same drawback as trying to do a home workout, in that in the last 15 minutes, for example, I have investigated E whimpering (needed the quilt back over her) and thought that S was waking up and would therefore need me and then be all delightful and excited to be up and going for a walk with me but I think her random cry of ‘I GET UUPPPP’ was actually the flipping around in the cot sound and she might be back asleep. I will check in a moment.

So there it is. New year, new habit. Will this last? I hope so. Do I feel excited about this? Definitely for real life sure as sure. Will I manage to go to bed earlier in order to counter the earlier wake? We’ll see.

Update: S was fast asleep. Plus, I was much more energetic on my walk because I had been awake for a bit already instead of stepping out, bleary-eyed, trying to wake up while I exercised. Winning.

Hello, 2025

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

It’s probably an easy guess as to one of my goals for 2025. SO much happens which means that, also, SO much takes up my time which means that, also, SO much just happens and passes us by. Some stuff just happens or changes and it takes a little while to notice that, actually, we seem to be past that “I’m finished my food and even though I know how to say ‘I’m finished eating now’ I choose to fling the remains from my bowl to wherever I can thereby getting the message across as well as some handy throwing practice” stage. Thank goodness. Or the relatively sudden change from reading 15 picture books at night to reading a chapter book at night to reading 5 chapter books before being told to turn off the light because yes you really have to go to sleep it’s nearly 10pm. And there have been some big changes that deserve their own space. But I thought I would tell it how it is today.

First up, The Tired. The Tired that comes from Glenn playing the New Year’s Eve concerts so getting about 3 hours’ sleep. The Tired that comes from E waking up at 4.40 for the day. The Tired that comes from being ON from the first wake to the last asleep, for weeks and weeks. The Tired that comes from being “just a teeny weeny bit not very well” as E would say. The Tired that comes from not being able to sleep during the day thanks to children needing love and attention. Which is wonderful, of course, and I am loving all the huggles and cuggles coming my way, and even the cannonballs that are all the rage right now but with the *very* important rule that the person being jumped on MUST have their eyes open. Lesson learned. Ahem. Tired.

Other things I want to remember from today, this day of new beginnings and fresh starts. ABBA. S insisting on “Mummy Mia” repeatedly then dancing the joyful, carefree dance of a 2-year-old. E rocking out to Kiss with what I am coming to know as her performing face, which reminds me of a librarian caricature. C being very excited about an iPad game and about us learning French together and then reading a Fairy book and making connections, all while looking 12 or 17 with her new pixie haircut. Glenn making us a dinner that ticked (nearly) all the boxes of fancy but also not noticeably fancy so girls could eat it without worrying about “ficy” or boring, plus it was easy for tired girls to eat, plus it was sporting spinach and walnuts even though you wouldn’t know it. 

I made sure to do the things that I NEEDED to do to satisfy myself. I went for a walk in the morning. I did my skincare routine morning and evening (it has been a long, long while since that happened). I ate good, nutritious food. I baked some mini muffins. I started a list of areas to declutter. I decluttered one of those areas (the ironing board is visible once more). I repotted the 3 plants I had bought in the last week – sage, rosemary and… mint (with a bonus basil that had been hiding in the sage). I trimmed the opportunistic tomato plant. I took 2 minutes in the bedroom at dinnertime to breathe before getting onto the bath and bed routines. I gave all of my girls cuddles. I was mindful (in the receptive and thoughtful sense, not the careful sense) of how beautiful and delightful and smart and imaginative and creative and caring each of them is.

And, to demonstrate to myself that some things just don’t change – and they don’t have to, and that’s ok – I started thinking about my goals for 2025 this evening. At about 9.18pm. The main thing is, baby steps. Happy New Year!