Meal Plan #3

When trying to put a meal plan together I try and stick to the following but by no means is this our holy grail. Some nights I just want to try something new or I want Mexican more than once a week, etc.

Sunday: Traditional Sunday dinner

Monday: Pasta

Tuesday: Mexican

Wednesday: Left Overs

Thursday: Salads/Sandwiches

Friday: Crockpot meal/International

Saturday: Eat Out/Left Overs

The key to meal planning is to plan ahead. When I have a meal plan that calls for shredded chicken I will make my chicken ahead of time on the weekend. Throw chicken breast in the crock pot(however much I need for the week) with chicken broth(enough to cover the bottom of the crockpot and half of the chicken) and cook for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low. After shredding and cooler transferring the chicken to a ziploc bag and saving the broth for Karl. This will save so much time during the week. 

Sunday // Meatloaf with Green Beans & Potatoes

This recipe is by far the best Meatloaf recipe I have ever tried, you will want to save this one:

1 egg, lightly beaten
2/3 cup milk
3 slices bread, crumbled
1 cup (4 oz) shredded cheese
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup finely shredded carrots
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1-1/2 lb ground beef

Sauce:
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup Ketchup
2 T. prepared mustard

In a large bowl, combine the first 8 ingredients. Crumble beef over mixture and mix well. Shape into a loaf and place in a greased 9X5 loaf pan

In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, ketchup and mustard; spread half of the mixture over loaf. Bake at 350 for 60-75 minutes or until no pink remains and a thermometer reads 160. Drain. Let stand for 10 minutes before slicing. use remaining sauce for dipping

Monday // Pizza with Chicken Sausage (used naan bread for the crust and baked the chicken sausage over a skillet before putting it on the pizza with pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce baked at 375 until the cheese melted)

Tuesday // Dorito Casserole

2 cups shredded chicken (from the weekend)
1 1/2- 2 cups shredded cheese (Mexican 4 blend)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can Rotel (mild)
1/2 packet of taco seasoning
1 bag of Doritos (Nacho Cheese)

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients EXCEPT Doritos. In a 9X13 baking dish spread the mixture on the bottom of the dish. Cover the top with crushed Dorito's (I only cover half the dish with Dorito's. We will always have left overs and to avoid having soggy chips I will use fresh chips on my left over portions) cover with foil. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until bubbly.

Wednesday // Left overs

Thursday // Caesar Sliders with Sweet potato fries (recipe here, I actually didn't follow this recipe just got the idea from it. I used the shredded chicken that I cooked over the weekend and mixed it with Brianna's Home Style Asiago Caesar salad dressing and served it on a hawaiin roll with lettuce)

Friday // Sweet & Sour Chicken with Fried Rice (recipe here)

Saturday // Tortellini Soup (recipe here)

Breakfast // Quiche (recipe here, instead of tomatoes I will do green peppers)

August Recap

August was an exciting and BUSY month for us! I mentioned in the last post that on August 1^st we closed on our home. This was such an emotional day for me. I got way more sentimental that I thought I would but as soon as we finished the paperwork and I saw the new owner and how excited she was I felt complete easement over everything. We closed on a Wednesday and had a contract on a rental house but wasn’t able to move in until that weekend so we lived out of suitcases and moved in with my parents for a week. I have never felt more disorganized and scattered but also so very grateful for this new journey God has lead us on. Our stuff was and still is all over the place being stored at different people’s houses. As we are getting settled in we are gradually gathering our stuff and storing it in our little rental.

Right before we moved out of our house we moved Grady to a “big boy bed” AKA a mattress on the floor. In the midst of the move and in the spirit of making things as normal as possible for our babies Chad built Grady a “big boy” bed for when we moved into the rental home. He loves his new bed, I’m not going to decorate our rental house since we don’t plan on staying long but Grady’s excitement over his room was icing on the cake. Also, in the hustle and bustle of everything going on I completely forgot about Karl’s birthday (August 5^th) and on that day I hurried and ordered a cake from Amazon and we celebrated a few days later, completely felt like an awful doggy mom.

Before we closed on our house we had a pretty good idea about what our next steps were going to be. Well our plans got SH*T on and we were back to square 1. We prayed so hard for God to lead us the way we needed to go. On August 14^th Chad got on the internet and found a piece of land that had been posted just an hour before. After we picked the kids up we drove by the land and made an offer just 3 hours after it was posted. The next day we heard back from the seller and they accepted our offer! It was truly a blessing that we got on when we did cause when we spoke with the agent they had sold all parcels within 36 hours. I will go into more detail in later posts but we could not be more excited to not only have a piece of property but to actually have a permanent place to go!

August 16^th marked Chad’s official last day at his job and his first day of nursing school. I could not be prouder of his ambition and determination. He has never given up on his dream and that is something I truly admire about him. If this week wasn’t busy enough Chad and I worked on Audrey’s birthday present and at the last moment we finally got it finished and it is what dreams are made of.

We purchase an Ikea kitchen back in March when we went to Kansas City. We had some left over grey paint that we used and I purchased so gold spray paint and marble looking adhesive. It turned out way better than I expected and we finished right on time. Actually while Chad was putting the finished touches on the kitchen I was blowing up the balloons for her birthday. Since her actual birthday fall on a Saturday and we had her party that night we used the morning to celebrate her as a family. She woke up about 6:30 (normal Audrey time) and after her bottle we brought her into the living room to her birthday present. She loved every moment and sure does love being the center of attention. As soon as bubba woke up we loaded up in the car and headed to our favorite donut shop for birthday tradition donuts. Daddy got to hang out the rest of the morning while I went to go set up for the party.

The rest of the month was pretty low key. We stayed home on the weekends and got settled into our new normal. Chad and I did sneak out for a date night to celebrate all the wonderful things going on in our lives.

We could not be more grateful for this opportunity and this beautiful thing called life. We have really learned to trust in our Lord and boy it is truly amazing to just sit back and look at his amazing work.

Audrey's Birthday Party (Fiesta)

Guys! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Kids birthday parties are my jam. I absolutely love them and feel like now that I have done a few I know exactly what I’m doing. I will admit that I was in a complete rut with Audrey’s birthday party. We had so much going on that I could not focus on her birthday party but it all came together and probably one of my best parties I have put together.

Like I do for every birthday party idea I discuss them with Chad and get his feedback, normally he just agrees, and I can just judge from his expression. It might be embarrassing to say but I probably start thinking of theme before they are even born. Well I was 100% sure that I was going to do a floral theme for Audrey’s birthday and started gathering ideas on Pinterest. After scrolling away, I came across a fiesta theme and fell head over heels. I discussed it with Chad and he was all in probably the first time he really got excited about a birthday party.

After we found out that Chad was going back to school I debated on changing the theme to a well less expensive one. But I had already fallin in love and there was no changing my mind. We decided to have the party at my parents house since we didn’t know if our house was going to be sold yet or not. Thankfully they agreed and we could not have been more grateful cause on August 1^st we closed on our house and was still unpacking and getting settled the weekend of her birthday.

I went on Oriental Trading and bought a bunch of decorations I don’t know if it was the fact that they were stored at my parents house and I didn’t see them but I just kept buying decorations like crazy. We decided on having the party at 6pm and serving tacos to go along with our theme. I called around to get it catered and it was a little more than I wanted to pay so I settled on making the meat myself and getting everything else catered.

We did have to find someone else to make the cake since my go-to bakery closed their doors at the end of July. Luckily, I found someone in the area and she did an amazing job. We also ordered the cookies from our next door neighbor and like always they turned out beautiful.

During the week that we were staying with my parents (between closing on our house and moving into the rent house) I got this brilliant idea of making party favors out of piñatas. It was a great idea in my head but by the 3^rd piñata in I was regretting that discussion, I recruited my mom and dad to help as well so it turned out to be pretty comical.  They turned out so cute though and the kids really enjoyed them.

We borrowed a bounce house from my coworker and my parents got Audrey a water table for her birthday so we had plenty of activities for the kiddos. My parents have a beautiful back patio and it was perfect. I was a little worried about the temperature since we are in Oklahoma in the middle of August but we had a tent and fans going to keep it somewhat cool.

The party turned out way better than I could have imagined. This little girl is so very loved oh and yes she dove right into her cake and then didn’t like it being on her hands.

Being surrounded by kiddos is my absolute favorite!

Credits:

Audrey's Outfit - Little Darlin Boutique

Audrey's Flower - Ava's Flower Crowns

Number 1 Cake Topper - Viva La Fiesta

Cake - Shannon Brown (Local)

Cookies - My Blooming Bakery

Photo Back drop - Oriental Trading

Place mats - World Market

Cactus - World Market

Audrey - 12 months

Our baby girl is 1 and I am in complete denial. Our baby girl will light up your day with her enormous smile. She is an aggressive lover and everyone that meets her gets so attached, which I do not blame them one bit she is the sweetest.

Sleep:

Audrey knows how to sleep through the night, yes I said knows and not does! She sleeps through the night most nights but when she does not feel good she likes to be held and rocked. She goes to bed around 7:30 and will wake up anywhere from 5:30-6:30 sometimes if she wakes up early we can get her to fall back to sleep but sometimes she is just ready to start the day. She is still on 2 naps a day, one at 9am and one at 1pm and I do not see us going to 1 nap anytime soon. She will normally give us one 45 minute nap and one hour and a half nap. She will nap for 45 minutes at 9am one day and then an hour and a half at 9am the other day you just never know.

Eat:

Audrey is an amazing eater. She will eat more than her brother some days. She eats mostly everything that we have for dinner unless we are having hard meats like steak or pork or if we are having anything spicy. She LOVES fruit especially blueberries. Blueberries were on sale at the store so I purchased 2 containers and she was eating handfuls at a time. When she went to go poop it was alarming, it looked like newborn tar like poop. I made the mistake of googling it, luckily the comment right after reading that it could be from digested blood was that it could be caused from blueberries. We cut blueberries out of her diet for 24 hours just to make sure and sure enough it went back to normal. I’ve never examined poop so much until I became a mom. Grady got constipated right around 6 months of age, so we never really noticed the different colors/variations of poop like Audrey.  

Audrey loves saucy foods including goulash, spaghetti, mac and cheese. We also give her a veggie which is normally green beans or peas. She used to love carrots when they were pureed but not so much now. She absolutely LOVES fruit, she loves watermelon, blueberries and strawberries. When she is cutting teeth that is the only time she does not like to eat and will only eat fruit for dinner I’ll also try yogurt or cottage cheese to get some protein in her.

Development:

She is the definition of hangry if she is not eating by 6:30pm, boy you better get her a snack cause when she is hungry she will let you know about it. She is still not walking and has no desire to. She is bull headed and when we try to get her to walk she just sticks her feet up in the air and lets us know who is really in control. She can say momma, mommy, dada, daddy, bubba and she has said words randomly like water, eat, etc. I know it’s not long until she starts talking all the time and walking everywhere.

She is our little tornado. I have not had to baby proof anything before but with her, it may be a different story. She is also hilarious and keeps us laughing all day long. She does not like it when she is alone and has to be next to you all the time. When you leave the room and she notices she loses her mind. She is the sweetest though she loves people and being around others. She will be screaming in her car seat and as soon as we open the door she sees other people she will have the biggest smile on her face. She loves to be mobile but also loves to be held. She is always on the go and determined to do whatever she wants to do.

Boston Trip - Part 2

The next day Chad found a restaurant that served eggs benedict, his favorite breakfast food. We walk a ways to get there and after we arrived we found out that they only serve eggs benedict on the weekends. The breakfast was still delicious. We didn’t have any plans for the remainder of the day so we decided to make the long walk to Harvard University. On the way we stopped by a brewery called the Lighthouse, we also stopped in an open house that we saw on our walk. It was so much fun pretending to be locals.

When we finally reached the University we had to use the bathroom terribly but when I went to go ask someone they informed me that there was not any public restrooms on campus. Although we only saw a little bit of the campus and the library is was absolutely stunning. We probably should have gotten an uber or taken the subway to get back to our apartment but we decided to walk instead. We had amazing weather when we were there so walking did not bother us at all.

After we got back to our apartment we took a short nap and cleaned up for the game. We ate at Cask n flagon which is right by the stadium. It was packed but as we waited for a table we had a few beers next door. The food was delicious and we met a family from California that was going to the game as well. After we ate we went straight into the stadium. Chad’s eyes lit up with so much excitement.  

The game was the highlight of our trip. The energy in the stadium was unreal. I am so so glad that I purchased the tickets for that Thursday night, not only did the Red Sox Win that night but they also got a grand slam! To say it was amazing is an understatement.

Everyone that we ran into has super nice and helpful. It was one of the best trips Chad and I have been on if not the best trip. We didn’t have anything planned and maybe that’s just how we need to do things from here on out. We will for sure be coming back to Boston.