I'm NOT a Supermom!!!

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING drives me more nuts than when my husband calls me 'Supermom'.  He's half joking (because he knows it drives me nuts) and half serious (for some reason there is nothing that he thinks I can't handle).    

YES...all of the above criteria on the poster may apply to me, but I'm not 'Super'...I'm just an ordinary mom who has been blessed with the ability to stay home with my babies, and I take pride in my home, and the food my children put in their mouths.  I don't think there is anything wrong with that.  

-75%  of the time, I am running late, unless it involves picking the kids up for school.  

-My vehicle is ALWAYS a mess!

-I have many days where I don't change out of my pajamas until it is time to go get Ava, and then the only reason I do it is because I would not be caught dead letting social acquaintances see me in my pajamas. lol

You see, I have flaws just like every other mom, and the truth is if I had to hold down a full-time job outside of my home, I wouldn't accomplish half of what I do at home.  But because I have such a hard working husband, I get to enjoy my days doing things I love...like baking!!!

Yesterday, I told you all I was going to start making as many meals ahead of time that I could, and that's exactly what I have been doing today.

First I made veggie pizza, because Ava loves it, and I knew she'd be excited if she got to eat a piece for lunch today.

I use the Pillsbury pizza crust.  This is only half of it.

Spread it out on a greased baking sheet.  I like to get it as thin as possible.

Pop it in the oven and bake according to the directions on the package.

While the crust is baking mix equal parts cream cheese and mayo.  Stir really well.

Add in ONE ranch package.

Then add in some diced tomatoes.

By now, your crust should be done.  Remove it from the pan and allow to cool a little bit.

Best investment EVER.  I use this to shred and/or chop EVERYTHING!!!

For my toppings I use a vegetable medley of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.

SEE...told you it was a GREAT investment.  It not only chops but mixes up the veggies so that you get the perfect amount of each one when you sprinkle it on your pizza.

Slather a thick coat of your sauce on...

Add your toppings.

Add cover with shredded cheese.

My family requests this for every.single get together we have.  It's DELICIOUS!!!

After lunch Ava wanted to make some rice crispies treats, so that is what we did.

Then I took a break, checked the mail, cried when I opened a card my friend, Jessica Abell, sent me that contained a cloth that was annointed with oil and prayed over for me.  Gosh, I'm crying again just writing about it.  Every time I start to feel even a little uneasy about things, He shows me that it is going to be O.K.

Then I talked to my good friend, Amanda, on the phone for about an hour.  

Then back to cooking it was again!

I got the chuck roast in the crock pot for the beef drip and stroganoff recipes I will be making this week.

I made up a bowl of Chris's favorite dessert....banana pudding

And I got the casseroles in the oven for supper tonight.

Mix even parts cream of chicken soup and sour cream

Dice up cooked chicken and add it to the mixture.

Next add one bag of Long Grain and Wild Rice, and stir well.

Divide in two portions and put in 8x8 baking dishes.

Crush 3 packages of Ritz cracker and coat with melted butter

Top the chicken mixture with the crackers and sprinkle on some poppy seed.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until crackers start to slightly brown.

As of ten minutes ago, I was done cooking for the day and this is what my kitchen looks like...

In case you can't see how many dishes I dirty in the process of making these meals I took a close up of the sink.

YIKES!!  

See, now if I was a supermom, I'd already have this messed cleaned up, but instead I'm sitting here blogging and helping the kids with their homework.

Did I mention I haven't combed my hair today either?!!!

I'd take a picture to prove it but I'm just way to vain to post a picture of my uncombed hair for the world to see. haha

Grocery Bills and Weekly Food Menu

With some many families struggling due to the economic recession, I often wonder how other families get by.  I follow a blog called Trenches of Motherhood, and she often times does monthly challenges to see if they can stay within a certain budget for the month.  The challenges are tough, but are an eye opener in the respect that that is literally all the money some families have.  I wonder what kind of budget other families of 6, like ours, try to stick to.  We try to stay around $800 per month for everything....groceries, fast food,...any food we will eat during the month.  Before I go to the grocery store each week...I write a menu...with each meal broken down into the individual items I need to make that dish.  Once I get to the store, as I am crossing them off, I also write the prices for the items down.  Then I can calculate how close to budget I am staying.  Some weeks, depending on what I am making that week, I spend less and some weeks it is more, overall we try to stay as close to budget as possible.

My aunt and uncle have always bought in bulk to save money.  She makes a menu up and every Sunday they make up all the meals they will be having that week.  While that works for them, it's never been something I was interested in doing in the past.  But with my upcoming surgery I've been focusing more on 'freezable' type meals, and often times I will make 2 of whatever we are having for supper and freeze one of them.  (I'm running out of freezer space!)  Lately, with the kids being back in school, meaning 3 sets of homework, school activities, etc some nights we are just too busy for me to cook a full meal, but eating out when you have 6 people in ridiculously expensive.  So, I've decided I'm going to try setting aside one day to make the majority of my meals for the week.  There will be some recipes that I can partially make ahead of time, but all of them will take no longer than 10-15 minutes to finish preparing the day we actually eat them.  As I prepare these meals I will photograph them as far into the process as I can go and still freeze/refrigerate them, and then the day we have them, I will discuss how to finish the dish out, how long it took to do so, and what our total cost for that days meals were.

Here's our menu for the next 7 days:

Thursday:  Breakfast- Bacon and Toast
Lunch - lunch meat sandwiches, carrots and grapes
Supper - Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole

Friday: Breakfast - Cereal
Lunch - leftovers from Thursday
Supper - Mexican Chicken Casserole
Dessert - Homemade Banana Pudding w/bananas and wafers

Saturday:  Breakfast- Muffin Melts
Lunch - Subway because Chris has a softball tournament (the Subway always offers $5 footlongs on tourney days...so we just take our own chips and soft drinks.)
Supper- Italian Beef Drip (this is perfect on busy days because you just have to throw it in the crock pot and let it slow cook, and when you make it a few days ahead and let it sit in the juices the meat becomes so tender it just falls apart.)

Sunday:  Breakfast - Kids eat cereal before church...but following church we go out as a family for brunch...usually to Denny's and we order off of their $2/$4/$6 menu, and our bill is always somewhere around $30-$35, but this is our 'family day'!!! :)
Supper - Beef Stroganoff
Dessert - Blueberry Bread

Monday: Breakfast - Pancakes
Lunch - lunch meat sandwiches or leftovers
Supper - Chicken Parmesan, Salad and Garlic Bread

Tuesday: Breakfast - Bacon and Toast
Lunch - Chicken Viola
Supper  Veggie Pizza
Dessert - Cupcakes

Wednesday: Breakfast - cereal
Lunch - leftover veggie pizza
Supper - Meatballs, salad, and mashed potatoes

I try to group together days where I am using repeat ingredients.  Such as the casseroles, they require a lot of the same ingredients yet they taste so different that it's not a big deal to have them back to back nights. The beef drip and stroganoff both require beef chuck roast.  So, I slow cook a large roast and split it up into what I need for each recipe.

I will also tell you that I spent $131 at the grocery store tonight, and that purchased everything (minus essentials you have stocked at your house like flour, sugar, etc) needed to make all of these meals.

I'm curious on how every one else plans their meals out for the week?  Do you plan ahead or is it a decision made on a day-to-day basis?

How do you prepare to grocery shop?  Do you make list?  Do you stick to it?  Do you have a budget and do you stay close to it?

Wordless Wednesday

Just sittin' on the dock at the lake!!!

Hard Questions

I strongly dislike mornings like this....the ones where I can't go back to sleep after Chris leaves for work.  I know I am going to be tired by early afternoon, but my mind is too busy racing to let my body rest.  Generally, right around the time my physical tiredness starts to defeat my brain, I look at the clock and realize there is no way I can let myself go to sleep because the kids have to be up in 15 minutes to start getting ready for school.  Chances are that not long after the big kids get on the bus, Breanna will be awake and our day will start.

It's days like today that I wish I was a coffee drinker...or really a caffeine drinker period.  But on a general day, if you raid my fridge you will find bottled water, Powerade, and caffeine free coke and diet coke.  We even buy decaf tea.

I haven't talked much lately about what's going on in my treatment process...mostly because the less I talk about it, the further I am able to push it to the back of my mind.  Maybe it's denial, I don't know, but whatever it is....it's a BLESSING that allows me to spend most of my days living a life where nothing on the outside appears to be wrong.  I know that that won't be my reality for too much longer so I just want to enjoy it while I can.  I've developed a pretty bad chest cold...between that and issues with the insurance...surgery has been pushed back to the 23rd of this month.  They don't want to risk developing pneumonia post op, and further complicating things so antibiotics it is for me right now!

The kids are starting to see the physical tiredness setting in, and last night at supper they started asking questions about it.  We've never really approached it with them because they are so young, but I guess at 8 and almost 8 they are curious.

They asked questions like, Will you be tired all the time after surgery?  Will you have to sleep a lot?  Will your boo boo's hurt really bad?  Will we be able to see your boo boo's or will your shirt cover them?  A lot of general questions.

They asked if my hair would fall out, because they've seen that happen to other people with cancer, and I told them it might.  Then they asked why some people's hair falls out...is it because the doctors put your medicine on your head?  I chuckled at this!  I LOVE how innocent yet curious their minds are.

Then the questions started getting a little more serious.  A little more than maybe what I was mentally prepared to talk to about my kids.

Big A asked me if I am sick because I take care of them so much that I don't take care of myself.  It took everything I had to fight back tears when I explained to him that that wasn't the case at all, that sometimes people just get sick.  And that it doesn't matter what's wrong with me, I will ALWAYS take care of them because they are the most important thing to me in the world besides their dad.

Then came the BIG question...with a crackling voice he asks, Are you going to die?

How do you answer a question you don't know the answer to??? And how do you put it into terms for small children to understand?

I honestly don't know...I don't think so, but only God knows the answer to that for sure.

It had crossed my mind, that it would cross their mind, that my hair might fall out.  After all, Kinsey is growing her hair for Locks of Love.  But it, honestly, never occurred to me that they might be thinking about...worrying about...me dying.

Well, who would take care of us if you do? Daddy can't cook! You do our homework with us, and tell us to take baths, and tuck us in at night.

"Daddy, Mamaw and Papaw, Nana and Papa, Aunt Kiki, Grammie Dee,.......everybody that loves you guys.  And don't worry...I'm sure daddy would learn how to cook if he HAD to.  He just doesn't want to because I might ask him to do it if he knew how," I said.

Or, MAYBE, he would just take us to eat fast food EVERY NIGHT!  (picture three little smiling faces pondering junk food and soft drinks every.single.day!)

Whew!...At least the thought of eating fast food and drinking soda every night took us away from the hard questions.

Weekend in Review

Chris and I ended up having a rare date night Saturday.  We went to see Drew Barrymore's new movie  Going the Distance.  It was crudely funny. We came home and I made roasted potato salad for the family reunion.

We went to church at my parents church on Sunday, which doesn't start until 11 a.m. our time, so we got to sleep in.  It was great to be able to sleep in!!!

The family reunion followed church and there was SO much delicious food, and it's always nice to see family, especially the siblings of mine that I somehow only see a handful of times a year.

When we got home, Chris mowed, I read a magazine and the kids jumped on the trampoline.  It was so nice outside!  Chris got the fire pit going and him and the kids hung out outside while I cleaned the entire house.  I LOVE a clean house.  It makes me feel rejuvenated.

Today, we got up and I made some more freezable meals; Chris loaded the lawn mower, dirt bike and 4 wheeler and took Big A and Ava down to the lake so he could mow and they could ride.  Kinsey, Breanna and I hit Wal-Mart, and then I took Kinsey to a birthday party.  Since getting home from her party, Kinsey and I have been hanging out watching Lifetime movies.  I'm starting her early!  haha.