Breakfast Bliss

This week our "breakfast chef" has been our sunny Aleksa. Each week the big kids rotate who cooks the morning meal, and that person also helps with other misc. cooking during the week as needed. We've been treated to fruit smoothies, pancakes, peanutbutter granola, oatmeal, sausage/cheese muffins and probably something else I can't remember right now. They enjoy their cooking time, and have learned a lot in the process.

With the Chef in the kitchen, it also frees me up to feed and diaper the baby, check my email, get things ready for school to start, dress the Littles, make the bed, straighten up a bit, start a load of laundry etc. before we all hit the floor running once school starts. Of course, the whole house looks like a hurricane has hit by the time 3:00 rolls around, 'cause we have these little cyclones called the 3yo and 1yo. We're constantly picking up after them, even during school, but alas, they're fast, and determined, and enjoy watching Mama crawl around on the floor. Or something.

Anyway, back to Leksa's fabulous cooking. She's on my mind right now because not only is she making the pizza crust for tonight's supper right now, but she also has the bread machines (I have two) running. She's making some delicious cinnamon bread for tomorrow morning's breakfast. Num-o.

I love Saturday breakfasts... John is usually zooming out the door headed to work when we are getting our breakfast going (his breakfasts are grabbed out of the freezer and nuked lately... usually leftovers of what the rest of us have already enjoyed during the week), so when we can all sit down to eat together, my domestical self sighs with contentment to have everyone's feet under the same table. I actually am usually the Saturday morning chef, but today Leks was on a roll with her pizza dough, and having a great time getting floured up. I wasn't going to argue. ;o)

When John and I were first married, we loved cold cereal for breakfast. Every single day. If we did that now, we'd go broke, completely. Though, I have to tell you that last month John did some grocery shopping for me once and came home with like TEN boxes of cereal. The kids were in heaven. Cold cereal is definitely is not the norm over here. I still do miss my bowl of Life, but when we get it, it's for a snack more than a meal... My family can eat two boxes of cereal in one meal really easily.... because "just one bowl" doesn't fill anyone up. Not after being used to pancakes or oatmeal every day!

Another thing we do to keep the costs down, is that we older folks drink a cup of tea every morning, (occasionally hot chocolate),instead of juices. The Littles drink milk. I try to only buy juice for weekends. Much cheaper that way. Besides, the kids and I have sort of spoiled ourselves with our tea... It's one of our simple pleasures to sip tea over a nice breakfast with great company to chat with. We have some of our best talks over breakfast, and do our daily Bible study/reading then. While we do spend more time in preparation and eating, I consider our breakfast time sacred family time... One of life's simple pleasures that we would have completely missed out on if we had a much smaller family and could have continued our cold-cereal-while-watching-tv newlywed mode...