Bedtime Story & The Ultimate Dinner Fix

We are in the midst of a chaotic, over-committed time in our lives right now, so Friday night, Mark worked late to try to get caught up on some tasks. Because he wasn’t home and because I wasn’t feeling motivated to get any of my to-do list done (I was e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d), I decided to take my time putting Maven to bed. Sylvie was already asleep, so we went in Maven’s room to just lay and talk for a while.

She never ceases to amaze me with her cuteness. She decided she would change the roles and put ME to bed. I just went with it and it was adorable. She went through the whole bedtime process as the mom and treated me as the child. The phrases she said mimicked exactly what I say to her {so funny} and she even gave me extra smooches that I always lovingly and graciously accept. “Here’s your puppy, Peppa, birdie, dollie and blankey, mom. Let me tuck you in.” What she did next brought me to tears: She sang me the sweetest song in the world.

I should tell you first that lately I’ve been singing a made up song to Sylvie to the tune of “Oh my darling, Oh my darling, Oh my darling, Clementine.” A toy we have in our house hums that song so it’s been in my head. Instead of those words, I just sing “Oh my Sylvie, Oh my Sylvie, Oh my sweet, sweet Sylvie…” As Maven was “putting me to bed”, she sang to me, “Oh my Mommy, Oh my Mommy, Oh my sweet, sweet Mommy. Oh my Mommy, sweet, sweet Mommy, Oh my Mommy, sweet Mommy.”

Gosh, I can’t even handle her cuteness.

OH. MY. HEART. It was the greatest. I just looked at her in awe, with tears in my eyes, and a heart bursting with all the good feels. After a busy, stressful week of commitments, challenges and a few too many Papa Murphy’s pizzas, it was exactly what I needed.

Sometimes life gets crazy. Sometimes we over do it. Sometimes we go through trials and challenges. Sometimes those sometimes turn into often times. But, we make it through. What I try to remind myself of, is that what means the most is my family and those I love. I do my best to focus my time and energy on those positives and all those lovelies around me.

When we are in the middle of the crazy chaos and I’m doing my best to focus on those positives, I can lose my grip on some other things. Specifically, it can be difficult to stay on track with my meal planning when our weeks are crazy-busy {though I do my best!}, hence the Papa Muraphy’s $5 pizza binger. If my plate is full (no pun intending) of tasks and commitments, I’ve realized I cannot do it all {sword through my perfectionist heart} and my ultra-planning mode has to lean on something or someone for assistance. It’s actually cool what you figure out in terms of solutions when you recognize you can’t do it all! HelloFresh Delivery has come to our rescue and I absolutely love how it takes all of the stress out of planning. Actually, it completely removes it from my to-do list. It provides us with healthy meals and new, creative recipes that I didn’t have to research or gamble on at all.

If you’re not familiar, HelloFresh is a meal delivery service that you can schedule out according to your weekly preference or the pre-published menu. It provides a menu of chef curated recipes based on farm fresh ingredients. {Yes! Love!} You may select the number of people you are feeding, your dietary preferences and delivery date or schedule. The box is then sent and delivered on your doorstep, neatly packed on ice so that all of your ingredients are safe and fresh. Each meal is packaged in its own box – which fit easily in our refrigerator, may I add. The recipes are sent along, which walk you through all ingredients and steps for each meal. The recipes provide a preparation + cooking time estimate so you can plan accordingly, too. Each individual meal box includes the recipe-specific, pre-portioned ingredients. It really doesn’t get simpler than that. Plus, HelloFresh has a team of top-notch chefs that only create delicious results – or so we think from our experience.

I don’t use HelloFresh every week, because I do like to do our own meal planning, but when I do, I’m always glad that we have it on hand. Mostly, I plan the delivery for a week when I don’t have much time to plan anything else at all, which has proven to be very helpful. We’ve been happy with the ingredients {and definitely note the seasonality} and we have even saved several of the recipes in hopes of cooking them again in our house – though it just won’t be quite as easy without the pre-packaged, pre-portioned ingredients at my fingertips.