Wendy Copley's Blog, page 6

Summer Fun: The California State Fair

Last weekend Wyatt, Augie and I went to Sacramento for the California State Fair. My husband has been traveling a bunch this month for work (and for a friend’s birthday party) and we were feeling a little home-bound, so on Friday night I booked a not-too-expensive-but-still-nice hotel near the Cal Expo (the place the fair is held). We drove up from the east bay Saturday afternoon and had time for a long swim in the hotel pool and dinner before turning in early for our big day ahead.

WARNING: many photos of kids having fun ahead!

Sunday morning we were up bright and early! We grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby, checked out and rolled into the fairgrounds at 10:07, right as it opened. I bought our tickets online the day before, so we breezed right through the lines (though they didn’t really look too bad) and walked right into the fair. The first thing Augie spotted was one of the big golden bears that are scattered throughout the fairgrounds. He saw other kids posing on it for pictures and wanted to do it too, but once he was on top of it he hated it and wanted right off — hence the scowl.

Wyatt spotted a giant slide first thing and begged to go on it. You can probably figure out that if Augie was nervous on the bear he is not so into heights and/or thrills so he decided to sit this one out.

One of our early stops was Camp Smokey. We stopped at five different stations teaching fire safety lessons and the kids got a stamp on a passport at each one. When they were done, they collected a prize (a cool Smokey the Bear bandana) and then Augie wanted to climb on the fire truck.

Next stop: the baby animal barn! The boys tried milking a fake cow.

Then we walked around looking at several new born calves and goats. Sooooo cute! We were bummed that there were no piglets though because they are the cutest of all.

When we first entered the barn, we got little containers of cream to shake so we could make our own butter. We all shook and shook them while we looked at the animals and watched videos of babies being born and by the time we left we had some butter.

After a few rides, it was time for lunch. I wanted some crazy fair food and I found it in this slice of deep-fried watermelon! If you are wondering, it was pretty tasty. The batter was very light and the heat from the frier intensified the watermelon taste. I would recommend it! (Though I would have been happier if they’d left the really sweet red sauce off of it.)

By this time we were pretty hot, so we headed over to the exhibit halls. I thought the boys might find them a little boring, but they LOOVED them. Our first stop was the Minds in Motion area where the kids played with electrical circuits, and giant chess pieces and covered each other in bubbles. (Augie got a big “oooooooh!” from the crowd when he pulled this one off.)

Next we hit Tech Trek which was all about the intersection of science fiction and the real science it has inspired. They loved posing with a Terminator statue and running a Jurassic Park dinosaur egg turner in particular but we spent a long time exploring almost everything in this room.

As we were crossing the courtyard to the crafts exhibit, the show on the center stage caught our eye so we sat down to watch Cirque Zuma Zuma, a seriously cool acrobatics show. My parkour-loving boys were excited to see some really advanced skills in action like this guy who did handstands on a stack of four chairs.

My favorite thing of all the things at the State Fair is the exhibit of prize-winning crafts. Before we went in, I told the kids that I knew it wasn’t their cup of tea, but I asked them to please be patient while I looked because it was one of the main reasons I wanted to go to the fair. It turned out I didn’t need to say anything because they loved it! They asked me to take photos of fairy gardens for their grandma, and tugged at my sleeve to show me the exquisite wood-working projects. When we got to this vignette Wyatt said, “Uh oh! I think that baby’s in trouble!” Ha!

Look at my cute lemon boys!

As we were walking to the Farm area, Wyatt spotted these cool water sphere thingies and wanted to go in one. The boys had each brought some allowance money with them, plus I gave them each $5 to spend on something that I was not willing to fund. (Augie chose to spend his money on carnival games, which…ugh!) Wyatt decided to spend $8 on this. He didn’t regret it for a single second though and had a blast.

Next we wandered around the Farm, another of my favorite spots. This was another spot with a passport to stamp and the kids dutifully visited pepper patches and grapevines to fill their card and win a prize. They were not particularly happy with their goodie bags when they received them though. Wyatt was particularly annoyed to find a handful of healthy recipes and a Cookie Monster magnet and the fresh apple just added insult to injury for my braces-wearing kid. They really enjoyed the insect pavilion though and they spent a good 15 minutes petting these huge farm-raised sturgeon. (They’re slimy, if you’re wondering.)

We had time for one last ride before we left — the incredibly photogenic swings!

Do you go to the fair in the summer?

The Week in Bentos: More 2015 Day Camp Lunches

The kids were back in camp this week, so I am coming at you with another summer edition of the week in bentos. Let’s dive right in!

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

First up is a lunch packed in our new ORANGE Yumbox! How awesome is that color?? I am going to be writing a full review of this lunch box soon that highlights all the improvements Yumbox has made to their original box, but for today I’ll just say that my love for the Yumbox has been fully renewed.

This lunch was for Augie and it held: a couple freezer meatballs, half a leftover bratwurst (in a rectangular silicone cup), watermelon and cantaloupe chunks, carrot sticks (in a green silicone cup so they didn’t blend in with the box too much), pirate’s booty, cucumber slices, a few cookies and a CLIF ZFruit.

Wyatt had an almost identical lunch, packed into our green Yumbox, but I accidentally deleted the photo.

(Full disclosure: Yumbox is a sponsor of my blog and they sent me this lunch box to review but I am always honest with you about what I do and don’t like in a lunch box.)

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I pulled out our new Bentology boxes. Augie had pirate’s booty, leftover grilled pork, watermelon, cucumber slices and a strawberry cereal bar.

I also included an all-in-one spoon/fork/knife combo thingy for eating the melon. We got one of these as a freebie a few years ago and the kids were always fighting over who got to use it in his lunch, so when I accidentally slammed it in the diswasher door and broke it in half I decided to buy a 4-pack of them. No more arguments, everyone is happy.

Wyatt also had a Bentology box and an orange spork. His lunch was pirate’s booty, leftover pork, cantaloupe, a cereal bar and thinly sliced carrots with ranch dressing for dipping. The carrots are sliced that way so he can eat them with his braces.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I made the kids identical lunches: snap peas, a ham and butter sandwich on baguette, blackberries, and bacon-flavored popcorn. I packed them in an EasyLunchboxes bento box.

The sandwiches — normally a big hit with my kids — were a total failure by the way. I forgot that Wyatt can’t eat baguette with his braces (BAD MOM!) so he had to pick the meat out and leave the rest. I have no idea why Augie didn’t eat his but it was virtually untouched when I went to empty his lunch box out.

Thursday

The kids had identical lunches again on Thursday: delicious chocolate-caramel-shortbread bars that Daddy brought them back from a work trip, a sunbutter and jelly sandwich, strawberries, plum and a few cucumber slices for Augie and carrot slices for Wyatt. The lunches were packed in our Yumbox Paninos.

BONUS GROWN-UP BENTO: Speaking of my traveling husband, he was off on another trip Thursday morning so I packed him a lunch for the plane. He had a chocolate chip cookie bar (cut in half to fit in the box), a ham and butter sandwich, strawberries, carrot sticks and cucumber slices all packed up in an EasyLunchboxes bento box.

Friday

Today, the kids were back at camp with their Yumboxes. Augie had cantaloupe, bacon popcorn, cukes, jelly beans (leftover from our trip to the Jelly Belly factory back in June), turkey meatballs and a chocolate chip cookie bar.

Wyatt a nearly identical Yumbox lunch packed with cantaloupe, bacon popcorn, leftover corn, jelly beans (leftover from our trip to the Jelly Belly factory back in June), turkey meatballs and a chocolate chip cookie bar.

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

 

Summer Fun: Easy Weekend Play Party

I’m excited to partner with CLIF Kid today to tell you about their Come Out to Play campaign.

Ahhhhhh….summer time! Warm weather, lots of free time and constant play dates with friends!

Well, that’s what it looks like in our fantasies at least. In reality, I have a heck of a time getting my kids together to play with their friends over school break. Between family vacations, relatives visiting and all the different camp schedules it’s hard to find a time when kids can just run around being kids together!

Pre-planning seems to be the key, so when CLIF Kid asked me to host a big summer play date with my friends Heather and Whitney from Rookie Moms, my kids and I were all over it. We sent out emails about a week before, met up at a local playground and just set the kids loose!

Here’s how we organized this super fun (and easy) play party:

The Basics:
Timing

We decided to hold the party on a weekend to minimize conflicts with work hours and summer camps. We all had a lot going on on Saturdays, but Sundays were generally pretty low-key so we opted for a Sunday afternoon.

Venue

Any playground will do, but it’s nice to pick a place with a field so the kids can really run. We opted for a school playground that was centrally located between all our houses.

Invitations

Dude — keep it simple! We cast a wide net and each invited about ten families. Like I’ve mentioned several times already, coordinating something like this can be tough in the summer. We were hoping for a 25-33% positive response and that’s about what we got. Our emails went out about a week before the party so people had enough time to plan but not so much time that they forgot.

Gear

You can make this as simple or as complicated as you like. We brought a bunch of fun toys so kids of all ages and temperaments could find something they enjoyed, but I think they would have had just as much fun if we’d stuck to one or two things or even if we’d skipped the equipment altogether.

Some of the play equipment we brought:

hula hoops
basket ball
soccer ball
jump ropes
ladder ball
skateboards
scooters
giant Wubble ball

I also think it would be nice (and easier for the host) to ask the other families to bring a favorite outdoor toy to share. Last year, we asked people to bring bikes to both of my kids’ birthday parties and they both say that riding around with their friends made for their best birthdays ever. (Take that, expensive party venues!)

Snacks:

Again, you can make this as simple or as complicated as you like. You’ll definitely want a big jug of water because kids will get thirsty running around in the sun. You can also invite the other families to bring a snack to share. CLIF Kid provided us with lots of ZFruit and ZBars so we were happy to provide snacks for everyone. We had quite a few, so we set out samples of every flavor to let the kids taste them all then had them vote on their favorites. (The results were mostly evenly distributed among all the flavors, but Chocolate Mint ZBar Protein and Cheery Cherry ZFruit were the favorites.)

Activities

We had a few games in our back pocket (tag, red rover — that sort of thing) that we were prepared to pull out if the kids needed a little help getting going but they proved to be completely unnecessary. Our kids were so happy to see their friends that they all just got down to the business of the day — playing! — as soon as they started showing up. We all had so much fun that I’m excited to start planning another play party for later in the summer!

Need more ideas for outside play? CLIF Kid created an online Hub to inspire outdoor experiences that will encourage kids (and parents) to get outside and have fun. The CLIF Kid Play Hub provides tips and tools for parents and communities to promote play for kids of all ages.

How does your family like to play outside? Share your outdoor play adventures using the #outtoplay hashtag on social media.

This post was sponsored on behalf of CLIF Kid via One2One Network. All opinions stated are my own.

 

Flower Lunches for the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

Last Wednesday, the kids and I set out on a field trip to the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I’ve been to the Conservatory several times and it’s one of those special San Francisco places I adore. The kids have never been — not really. We did take Wyatt once when he was a little baby so we could see the world’s largest, stinkiest flower — the corpse flower — but that doesn’t count because…you know…infant.

I’d be lying if I told you the kids were fully on board when I told them we were going to look at flowers for half the day. My boys are not big horticulture enthusiasts despite my best efforts to get them excited about plants and flowers. But as they spotted the Conservatory through the trees after a short walk through the woods, they started to come around. Isn’t it beautiful? (In case you’re wondering, the panes of glass on this giant greenhouse are whitewashed so all the plants inside don’t burn up.)

We were primarily there to check out the current special exhibit, “Stranded!“. We are all addicted to survival reality shows — Naked and Afraid, The Island, Alone and, our favorite, Survivorman — so this exhibit was right up our alleys. It turned out to be a little more Gilligan’s Island than I was expecting (see the coconut radio in the top left photo), but it was fun and I learned that bromeliads are an excellent place to find fresh water if you’re stranded on a tropical island.

The rest of the Conservatory is filled with thousands of gorgeous flowers. There are orchids absolutely everywhere, along with gigantic — and very old — plants that towered above us in the main atrium.  Of particular interest to my boys were the meat-eating Venus Flytraps and pitcher plants — though we never managed to find any that were actively eating bugs. The water room is my special favorite, though I was disappointed that the giant lily pads I’ve seen in past visits weren’t on display this time.

Because we were at the park for most of the day, we needed packed lunches so of course I took the opportunity to make us a flower bentos! (As a boy-mom I need to seize every flower lunch opportunity presented to me!)

Our three lunches were pretty similar, but they were all presented a little differently because we each used a different LunchBots bento box. Augie’s was packed in the LunchBots Quad. He had mini-peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cucumbers — both stamped with little flower cutter/punches. ( I can’t find the exact cutters I have online but they are similar to these.) He also had a grape “flower” with a strawberry center packed into a silicone baking cup, mini saltines and some strawberries.

Wyatt’s lunch was packed in our LunchBots Trio. He also had PB&J (cut with a larger flower cutter), his own grape flower in a silicone baking cup, strawberries, mini saltines and cut and stamped radish slices.

I packed my own lunch in the mammoth LunchBots Cinco box. I had dried apple chips (which I shared with the kids), ranch dressing (for the veggies), a grape flower, strawberries, a mix of carrots, radishes and cucumbers, tuna salad (in a big pink flower cup) and mini saltines for eating it.

We ate our lunches on a hill next to the big field outside the Conservatory which was almost as pretty as the green house itself. There were tiny little daisies all over the soft green grass (a rarity in water-starved California) and it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Perfect!

Assemble a Kit to Streamline Trips to the Beach (or Pool)

When I moved to California from Iowa almost 25 years ago, I was sure I’d be at the beach all the time. Constantly. At least once per week. But reality didn’t match my expectations. In fact, for the vast majority of those years (20 of them) I barely even visited a beach once per year.

Here is the truth: it is HARD to go to the beach. Being at the beach is fun! Getting ready to go to the beach is tons of work. There are so many necessities to gather up, children to dress in swimsuits, and snacks to pack. Sometimes it feels like I spend more time preparing for a trip to the ocean than we spend at the beach itself!

Or at least it did, back in the olden days. A few years ago, I figured out a trick that streamlines beach prep and makes it simple to just get our suits on, grab a few towels and GO.

The key is to pack a big bag with all the essentials for an afternoon at the beach at the very beginning of summer and then leave it in the car at all times. I stuff mine with toys, sun protection and portable snacks (we love the snacks from Horizon Dairy because they are yummy and convenient), then stash it in the trunk.

BONUS: with the exception of the sand toys, the stuff I keep in our beach kit is the exact same stuff I take to the swimming pool. Double time saver!

Here’s what I keep in my beach kit:

A beach blanket (background in photo above) — I picked mine up at a tourist-trap, road-side store in New Mexico when we drove cross-country ten summers ago. Because it’s made with a loose weave the sand shakes out easily and it dries fast too.
Floppy sun hat — I only keep one of my hats in the bag because the kids wear their baseball caps pretty much all the time.
The beach bag — Bigger is better. I wish mine was slightly larger so I could throw all our beach towels in it when it’s time to go, but it’s not too bad to put them in a second bag. I also wish it was a little cuter, but it was a freebie so I’m not going to complain.
Snacks — A must! We all get hungry really quickly running on the beach and playing in the water so I always keep snacks in our bag. Horizon Fruit Snacks and Apple Fruit Crunchers satisfy our sweet tooth and because they’re individually packaged they keep well even if they’re stowed in the trunk for a few weeks at a time.
Baby powder — The best sand remover in the world! Rub some on your sandy feet and legs and it just falls off.
Sunblock — This bottle stays in the bag at all times
Toys — A ball for playing catch, shovels for digging, and some smaller cups and containers for building sand castles. I often raid our recycling bin for the cups — the bigger sour cream containers are good scoopers and yogurt cups are great for adding details to sand castles.
A  towel — We grab our big swimming towels along with our swimming suits if we are making a dedicated trip to the beach, but I still like to keep one towel in the bag for spontaneous stops when we are heading home from somewhere else. We use it to dry our feet after wading or to dust the sand off after a walk. (And you wouldn’t believe how often you’ll use a towel in the course of daily life if you have one stowed away in your trunk.)
Goggles —  These also live in the bag full-time so they don’t get misplaced in the house. We use them occasionally at the beach, but we always use them at the pool.

Once everything is stuffed into the bag, I tuck it in the corner of our trunk where it’s out of the way. I keep a few bigger sand toys in there too. (Yes, we have FOUR buckets. Wanna make something of it?) And this summer I bought myself a beach chair which I am also keeping in the trunk. Unlike my beach bag, the chair is kind of in the way, but it is so comfortable when I’m sitting on the sand that I’m willing to put up with it.

When we return from our outing I wash anything that needs washing, replace the snacks and then take it right back out to the car. Easy peasy!

How do you streamline trips to the beach or pool? I’d love to hear your tips!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon Organic. The opinions and text are all mine.

The Week in Bentos: Day Camp 2015

My boys have been in day camp this week and it’s one of the few times this summer I’ll be consistently packing them lunches, so I thought it would be fun to go back to my roots and post a summary of what they had. Yep — The Week in Bentos is back for one week only!

Here’s what they had in their day camp lunches:

This post contains affiliate links.

Monday

We were up bright and early Monday morning because all of us were excited about camp. YAY CAMP! Our early start, plus the fact that the kids don’t need to be at camp until 9 am gave us a bit of a more relaxed morning. (I assure you there was still some yelling about shoes though.) That gave me a bit of extra time to play with the lunches and camp-ify them.

Wyatt went grocery shopping with me on Sunday afternoon and while we were walking the aisles of Trader Joes he spotted pretzel rolls and concocted a sandwich he wanted in his lunch box on the spot. OK then! I cut one of the pretzel rolls in half and gave each kid a sandwich with ham and butter on it. Kind of a German/French hybrid of a jambon buerre. They both reported back that it was super tasty. I put letter picks in it to spell out “CAMP”. The rest of Augie’s Bentology lunch box held sour cream and onion Pirate’s Booty, cucumbers (including one cut into a bear shape. There are no bears at their camp, but I took a little artistic license.), and blueberries (some of which were threaded onto leaf picks).

I also tucked a few cookies into the silverware compartment. You’ll notice I’m a lot looser about treats during the summer as I go through the rest of these lunches.

Wyatt had the exact same lunch as Augie, but he had strawberries instead of cucumbers because it is a nightmare to get him to eat any vegetables at the moment.

Tuesday

For the second day of sports camp, I made Augie a PlanetBox lunch with a few sporty accents. He had cucumbers, hummus for dipping them, pretzel thins with a disposable soccer ball pick tucked into them, blueberries (I threaded a few onto a baseball cap pick) and another ham and butter sandwich on a pretzel roll because he liked the one I made yesterday so much.

Wyatt had leftover rice and pork from Monday dinner, plus a few berries. I forgot to take a photo!

Wednesday

On Wednesday, the boys had nearly identical thermos lunches so I only took one photo: leftover mashed potatoes, freezer meatballs tossed with bbq sauce, blueberries, strawberries and a Clif Kid ZFruit rope.

Thursday

Thursday the kids had identical lunches again. Hooray for identical lunches! I packed them in our Yumbox Paninos: hash browns (reheated from the freezer and cooled down again before adding to the lunch box), ham, grapes, a strawberry, letter cookies and Pirate’s Booty.

I thought I had put an “A” cookie front and center for Augie but I see now that it’s a “4”. Duh.

And as I said, Wyatt had the exact same thing: Yumbox Panino, hash browns, ham, grapes, a strawberry, letter cookies and Pirate’s Booty. I got the “W” for Wyatt right though!

Friday

Today the kids asked me to make them sunbutter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. So easy! Augie wanted a Batman theme for his bento, so I cut his sandwich with our bat sandwich cutter, then added disposable paper Batman picks to his cucumbers and berries. (This lunch was packed in an EasyLunchboxes bento box.)

Wyatt also had a sunbutter and jelly sandwich, along with grapes, blueberries and strawberries. No decoration for him because he prefers his lunches plain. (His lunch was also packed in an EasyLunchboxes bento box.)

What are you putting in day camp lunches?

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

7 Packing Tips for Day Camp Lunches and Snacks

Summer is here and that means lots of kids are headed off to day camp! Yay! They are playing games, crafting, learning new skills and … eating lunch with new friends.

RRRRRRRRRRK! [That is supposed to be the sound of a record scratching to a halt. Remember records? Those kids you are sending off to day camp probably don’t even know what they are. Yes, you are old now.]

Lunches? Really? I thought we were done with that on the last day of school. And I bet there are some of you out there who don’t even have to pack a lunch during the school year because your kids eat in the cafeteria every day. Am I right?

The good news is that packing lunches for camp isn’t that much different than packing lunches for school. But there are a few special things about camp lunches you might want to keep in mind as you start loading up those backpacks with tasty on-the-go meals for your kiddos:

Ice Packs and Thermal Lunch Bags

Safety first! And in the summer that almost always means keeping food cold enough. Harmful bacteria multiply rapidly when food temperatures are in the danger zone — between 40 and 140 °F (4.4 °C and 60 °C) — and that bacteria can make people sick. We definitely don’t want our kids to suffer from upset tummies, so perishable food needs to be packed in thermal lunch bags and kept cold with ice packs.

A single ice pack will almost never keep a lunch cold enough — particularly if backpacks or lunch boxes sit in the sun for any length of time — so you should always pack at least two ice packs in your lunch bags. If you want you can swap one of the ice packs for a frozen juice box or a frozen smoothie that you’ve packed into a reusable food pouch.

Other tips to keep food cold:

If you pack lunches the night before and refrigerate them over night it will help keep them cold longer. Even better you can pack them right into the lunch bag and refrigerate that too for extra cold-osity.
If you pack lunches in the morning, pop your lunch containers and lunch bags in the freezer for a few minutes while you prep the food. When you put everything together the containers will already be cold and your ice packs won’t have to work to chill the box and bag in addition to the food.

Read the Rules

Always read the food rules for the camps your kids attend and be sure to follow them! Some camps ban all tree nuts in lunches, some don’t. Some only ban peanuts. Other camps have rules about keeping kosher or vegetarian food. In my experience here in California, there are very few camps that don’t have at least one or two rules about food.

Knowing our camp’s rules — and respecting them — is a no-brainer for me. My kid’s desire for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich does not even approach the importance of keeping other children safe and healthy. And it’s also no fun for kids to have items from their lunches confiscated when a parent breaks a food rule.

If your kid is a PB&J addict, try swapping out the peanut butter in her sandwiches for sunflower seed butter or cream cheese.

Other food safety tips to keep in mind:

Read the labels on packaged snacks carefully to make sure they don’t contain nuts or other banned allergens. I’ve found chocolate chip granola bars are often a safe snack choice.
If you eat peanut butter or other nuts at breakfast, take a second to have your kids wash their hands and faces before they head to camp. This will keep them from smearing allergens on tables, toys and other objects that are handled by lots of people.

Pack Protein

In my experience, kids get hungrier at camp than they do at school. They exert far more energy shooting baskets and playing tag than they do sitting in a classroom all day, so I like to give them snacks with protein to help sustain them. Some ideas for protein rich snacks:

veggies with hummus for dipping
yogurt (especially Greek yogurt)
rolled up strips of deli meat
hard-boiled eggs
bean or meat-filled taquitos with salsa for dipping (I buy these in the freezer section of the grocery store)
chicken or turkey sausage with bbq sauce or catsup for dipping
tortilla chips and bean dip
sliced cheese and crackers

Don’t Forget Snacks

On the subject of snacks, many camps ask that parents provide morning or afternoon snack for their children in addition to their lunches. (If you go to a camp that provides snacks for kids, I bow to your wisdom and camp-choosing-abilities.) When I pack snacks for my boys, I like to separate them out into separate containers so they don’t have to unpack their entire lunch to eat them. I also like to keep some pre-packaged items for this purpose on hand:

apple sauce pouches
granola and cereal bars
individual cups of olives
seaweed snacks
single serve packs of crackers
string cheese

Consider a Divided Lunch Box

Another thing you might consider is investing in a lunch box with built in dividers. There are a couple of reasons for this:

First, one pretty common practice at summer camps is to have kids throw their lunch bags in a big bin first thing in the morning. That bin gets carted — and bumped — around all day as it’s moved from one activity to the next. A sturdy, divided lunch box keeps food from getting squished and also helps prevent it from mixing together.

And even if this isn’t a practice at your child’s camp, it’s worth it to have one big lunch box so your kids don’t have to worry about losing lots of small containers and lids in the chaos of lunch time. Bonus: parents don’t have to wash a million little containers and lids every night.

Some divided lunch boxes I like:

EasyLunchboxes
PlanetBox
Bentology (pictured above)
LunchBots
Yumbox

Figure out which one of these is best for your family using this handy chart.

Push the Water

Don’t forget to pack a water bottle! Active kids out in the hot sun are a recipe for dehydration. Make drinking water easy and appealing by packing a bottle that will keep water cool as long as possible. I like to use stainless steel thermal bottles because they’re free of sketchy chemicals and they keep water cold for a long time.

My family’s favorite style is the PlanetBox Bottle Rocket. This bottle is super-effective at keeping water chilled. I’ve put ice cubes in our Bottle Rocket in the morning, and they were still banging around in there at the end of the day. They were smaller, sure, but the fact that they weren’t completely melted was pretty remarkable. The only downside of the Bottle Rocket is that the $28 price is pretty steep, so if you’d like a lower priced, but still pretty good option, I recommend the Thermos Funtainer. It also does a good job keeping drinks cool and it has lots of fun character decoration options for younger kids.

Other tips to trick your kids into drinking their water:

Stick the bottle in the freezer while you are packing the rest of the lunch to give it a little extra chill
If your kid isn’t an enthusiastic water drinker, consider adding a couple slices of fruit to make it taste more juice-like. Lemons and limes are obvious choices, but a sliced strawberry or some lightly mashed raspberries or blueberries are yummy too. And I can’t speak for all kids, but one of my boys loves it when I add a cucumber slice to his water. Fancy!

Label Everything!

Finally, remember to label your lunch gear.  Lots of lunch boxes look alike so make sure you put your kids’ names on things so they can tell their lunches apart from their friends’ and so all that expensive gear comes home. You can use a sharpie to label things, but I’ve found that even the most “permanent” of pen marks wears off eventually in the dishwasher. A few years ago I invested in a big pack of personalized labels with our last name on them from Mabel’s Labels and it was money well spent. I put these labels on every single piece of lunch gear I send to camp (and school) so that when items are inevitably forgotten I can easily retrieve them from the lost and found.  (They are good for sweatshirts too.)

Do you have any tips for packing lunches for day camp?

Are you looking for more ideas for packed lunches! My book, Everyday Bento: 50 Cute and Yummy Lunches to Go is packed with ideas for fun, delicious lunches. With 50 brand new bento box lunches and step-by-step photo tutorials showing how to make them it will provide you with loads of inspiration when it’s time to pack lunch. Order today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

My Week in Photos

Things have been a little quiet around here as we wrapped up the school year and dove into the first week of summer. But we’ve been having fun with our more relaxing days and I’d thought I’d share a few photos.

Last Friday was the boys’ last day of school. Woooooo! I have a big first grader and a sixth grader in the house now. I pulled a photo from the first day of school back in August to see how they’ve changed and they sure do look a lot older. Also shaggier. And it seems they are also somehow dirtier? (That may have more to do with photos taken before vs. after school though….)

This is what Saturday — the first day of summer break — looked like. Ugh. I love living in the San Francisco bay area, but sometimes I hate it too. We persevered in spite of the 55 flippin’ degrees and put on flip-flops and shorts but we also wore big, cozy hoodies so we wouldn’t freeze.

Earlier in the week, one of my kids was arguing with me about video games (sigh) and I accused him of being addicted to them. He countered by telling me I was “addicted to boring family hikes.” Though he was dead serious, I couldn’t help myself and I started giggling like crazy. I am addicted to family hikes, I guess — though I don’t personally find them boring so Sunday afternoon, we struck out for a local park to tromp through some redwoods. These aren’t the monster redwoods of my beloved Muir Woods, but they are still huge and gorgeous.

Does my family look sufficiently bored here?

No?

I better work on making these hikes more boring….

I’m pretty strict about our screen time rules during the summer so the boys needed to find a way to entertain themselves without tv or video games while I ran errands and got the house in order Monday morning. The result: shenanigans!

Later in the day, we all went over to the beach along with one of Wyatt’s buddies. The boys collected tiny crabs and dead jellyfish in a bucket to “rehabilitate” them, threw buckets of water on each other and pretended that their long, skinny cookies were cigars while I read a book. Perfection.

And then that night a squirrel got into a local substation and knocked out power to 45,000 homes while we were getting the kids ready for bed. We’d planned to all watch a little tv together, but that plan obviously needed to change. Zach grabbed a beer and a book and sat on the front steps to read in the last evening light. I joined him about 30 seconds after I took this photo.

Traditionally, I keep the kids home from camp the first week of summer vacation and I try not to work much so we can get things started off right. Yesterday we hit the road and visited the Jelly Belly factory up in Fairfield. The last time I took the kids, Wyatt was younger than Augie and Augie was a baby in a stroller and neither of them remembered anything about the tour so it was fresh and fun for them.

Wyatt tries a dirt-flavored jelly bean. #JellyBelly

A video posted by Wendy Copley (@wendolonia) on Jun 9, 2015 at 2:21pm PDT

Another highlight for them was trying yucky jelly beans from the Harry Potter and Bean Boozled lines. Here you can see Wyatt sample a dirt-flavored jelly bean. Blech!

And then this morning we woke up to an unexpected rain storm! We are starved for rain here in drought-stricken California, so of course the kids went outside at 8 am to run around, play catch and collect water in overturned umbrellas. I watched them through my dry bedroom window!

Have you started summer break yet? What fun things have you done?

Crescent Roll-Ups Four Ways

A few months ago I started making ham and cheese crescent rolls for the boys’ lunches (and many, many after school snacks). Whenever I post a lunch with one of these rolls in it, I get a few questions about how I make them. They are ridiculously easy! So easy, in fact, that I decided to show how I put them together in a quick video.

The technique is pretty basic, so it’s easy to adapt it to any ingredients you have on hand. No cheddar? Put in a little jack cheese! Vegetarian? Pesto will do just fine.

Watch this short video to get the details:

(The lunch box in the video is made by EasyLunchboxes.)

Fake-out Apple Crisp: a Fun Kids’ Cooking Project

On a recent afternoon, my 10-year-old, Wyatt, was looking for something to do. His brother was on a play date, he’d already finished his homework, and his daily dose of screen time was hours away. Before the refrain of “I’m bored!” could start, I suggested that we cook something together. He was game, so we set to work on a fake-out apple crisp inspired by the box of Cinnamon Snack Grahams on our kitchen counter (from Horizon Dairy, a sponsor of this blog).

I first started giving Wyatt cooking lessons several years ago and he got pretty good at quesadillas, scrambled eggs, Caesar salad and a few other dishes before I sort of forgot to keep teaching him new dishes. It’s definitely time we start adding a few new recipes — and cooking skills — to his repertoire. This apple crisp comes together pretty quickly, so it provides instant gratification and it’s also a great way for Wyatt to practice using a knife.

Here are the ingredients we used for this dish:

Horizon Cinnamon Snack Grahams
3 or 4 apples (we had three in the fruit bowl, but I wish we’d used one more)
1 Tablespoon of butter
Brown sugar

And here’s how we made it:

I started by teaching Wyatt how to trim, core and chop the apples. I had planned to have him peel the apples before he cut them up, but the vegetable peeler was in the running dishwasher, so we skipped that step. No matter — no one even noticed the peel in the finished product and we got a bonus hit of fiber!

Whoop! Whoop! Fiber!

We don’t have an apple corer so Wyatt used a paring knife to cut the cores out of the apples. He had a hard time at first and I talked a lot about keeping his fingers behind the blade of the knife (sometimes more frantically than others), but after a few chunks he got the hang of it pretty well.

When all the apples were cored I took a minute to show him the difference between a chop, a dice and a mince. We were going for diced apples for this recipe.

Dicing the apples was much easier than coring them and pretty soon he started getting silly.

Oops! Too silly. He nicked his finger with the knife!

Fortunately the cut wasn’t too bad and once he was patched up with a band-aid he could get back to work. Of course it would have been better if he hadn’t cut himself, but a tiny little cut can sometimes be a good reminder that you should never get silly when you have a knife in your hand. Am I right?

Time to move over to the stove. He set a saute pan on medium heat, then added a tablespoon of butter. Once it was completely melted, he added the apples and tossed them until they were entirely coated with butter. We put a lid on the pan and let them steam in their own juices until they were soft all the way through. This took about 10 minutes, but you should give them a stir and check them every few minutes.

When the apples were soft we turned the burner off. Next Wyatt sprinkled in some brown sugar, stirring, tasting and adding more until he thought they tasted just right. I think it goes without saying that he was quite liberal with the sugar!

When the sugar had melted and the apples were nicely coated with the sauce, he divided them equally between four bowls.

Next, it was time for a crispy topping. This is were the “fake-out” part of the apple crisp comes in. Instead of making an oat, sugar and butter topping and baking the crisps in the oven we took a major short cut. I pulled out a big handful of Horizon Cinnamon Snack Grahams and then Wyatt smashed them up with a rolling pin. Next he sprinkled a healthy amount on each bowl. It added a nice crispy crunch without a big mess.

Finally, it was time for Wyatt to sample his creation. His reaction: “Amazing! This is the best thing ever!”

And then he asked if he could make a second batch!

Do you give your kids cooking lessons? What have you taught them to cook?

Visit Horizon’s website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram for more delicious activities to spark kids’ curiosity!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Horizon Organic. The opinions and text are all mine.