My kids brown bag it to lunch at school more often than not. Well, maybe not in a true brown bag since that wouldn't be nearly as cool as the colorful or character lunch boxes they take these days. And they're not really even boxes...they're more like rectangular shaped carriers made out of some strong fabric material. But whatever you call them, they serve the purpose of transporting their lunches to school on days they choose not to buy.

My goal is to have a little part of me go in each of these lunch boxes - a little snippet of Daddy. A little laughter, a little cleverness, a little inside joke, a little rhyming...and a ton of love. I want my kids to be reminded every time they open their lunch at school how much they mean to me. How much I love them. And maybe be a little entertained in the process.

So every lunch I make has notes in the lunch box. You should try it too! Feel free to use any of the notes you see in this blog in your own kids' lunches. Or use them to be inspired to write your own.


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Friday, January 14, 2011

First they see it...then they jump over it.




Cows.  For some reason cows are great fodder for jokes.  Has anyone ever really gone cow tipping?  Do cows really sleep standing up that often?  Or is it just really easy to sneak up on them?  Not sure.  But I bet it's much easier to sneak up on them if they're standing there focused on the mooooooooon!



Thursday, January 13, 2011

AAAAAH - CHOOOOOO!

You can't go wrong with knock knock jokes on lunch notes.  They can be clever, silly, or just down right dumb and they'll still get a nice chuckle at the lunch table.





You may already have an arsenal of knock knock jokes up your sleeve to use, but it's a fun challenge to come up with some on your own.  If you're feeling downright un-creative someday then grab a knock knock joke book, or look some up on the internet.  Your children really won't care where you got the joke from, and reading a bunch will help to get those creative juices flowing!


Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Can't go wrong with animal lunch notes!

All kids love animals, and like to use their imaginations to put animals in silly situations.  If you're ever stuck writing a note just think of an animal and come up with some rhyming words for it - then you're 1/2 way home!







That paints a really fun picture for a child.  Just remember that while including the sap in lunch notes is good, it can get old and lose it's punch if you do it in every note.  I go for fun or funny more often than not.








We do have a dog, a little puggle (pug/beagle mix) named Lilly.  After I wrote this I just imagined the picture it put in my daughters' heads...Lilly strutting around with her head held high in her golden collar.  I guess I'm too practical in my old age though...all I could see in my own mind was how heavy the collar would be, with Lilly's poor head close to the ground as she struggled to lift the weight of the gold.

Maybe when I make my millions we'll have to settle for gold encrusted dog collars!




Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Lucky Charms for life...




My beautiful daughter Allie would eat cereal at every meal and snack if we'd let her.  She loves the little marshmallows you find in Lucky Charms and similar cereals, and never seems to get sick of this milky meal.

All I can say is...Allie and I are a lot alike!





Monday, January 10, 2011

The lessor of two GOODS!



You have to love winter time if you're a kid in grade school.  Snow days are a thing of pure joy, and 2-hour delays are almost as good.  This note was written the night before a scheduled early release day for my girls.  There was plenty of snow and ice on the ground - not enough for a snow day but enough for a potential delay.  If the delay happened then the school would have normal hours after that.  If the delay did not happen, then the school would release the kids early as planned.

No matter what, a shortened day of school was going to happen...so as the note points out, on that day my kids just couldn't lose!





Friday, January 7, 2011

Life is quirky.

There are many silly things in life that can be pointed out in your lunch notes.  Like this one:





Also...goldfish really aren't gold.  Most of them are orange-ish, right?  Just sayin'...







Thursday, January 6, 2011

Snow days rock!

Every kid gets the after Christmas break blues.  But there's always hope that tons of the white stuff will fall from the sky, bringing school delays and snow days.







Yes, bring on lots of snow days.  But not so many that school is extended until July!




Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Questions, questions...




One of the toughest questions ever for a tween.  Both my daughters have seen Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus in concert already, but only one of them really likes J.B.  Tough call for them, but fun to think about...plus it has the potential to get lunch table conversation going!









A fun rhetorical question, and rhyming is always entertaining.  What...you didn't realize clouds are for sale to do with what you please?





Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Don't forget the SAP

Jokes and poems are always great for notes in a lunch box, but you should also use the opportunity to just plain pour on the sap.  Kids like this stuff when they're young...and your opportunities to really pour it on diminish as they get older as they could get more embarrassed and less receptive to it.  So once in a while, throw in a note like this:




Simple and to the point, and very reassuring to your child.  Gives them a warm fuzzy.  I don't do this kind of note everyday since then it would lose its potency, but once in a while it's good.






Monday, January 3, 2011

Happy 2011! First post New Year post.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend.  2011 is...well, not too much different yet.  That's okay I suppose.  The kids are back to school, which of course means more lunch notes.  Like this one:








I love superheroes.  Super powers always amazed me as a kid, and I wished I could fly just like Superman, or have x-ray vision, or be invisible, or super fast.  Wonder Woman fascinated me because just like Batman, she was very mortal.  Sure she was strong and skilled and so forth, but if just one bullet got past those golden bracelets she'd be done for.

It makes me laugh now to think about the invisible jet she flew in the old Saturday morning Superfriends cartoons.  How strange to see a woman in a sitting position streaking across the sky.  And we always saw the outline of the jet...was that just for perspective, or could anyone see the outline?  And does invisible mean truly cloaked or still detectable by radar?  Guess it doesn't really matter.  Anyway, this was a fun note to write.