Chili

Chili is one of our family favorites during the Fall/Winter - I love that it's one pot and that my kids will take it in their thermos for lunch.  This is the recipe that my mom always made while I was growing up so it's a total comfort for me and I try to keep the necessary ingredients on hand because sometimes you just NEED a pot of chili.  I had planned on sharing this recipe next week, but with Super Bowl this weekend I thought I'd share since a big pot of this with cheese and fritos would be an awesome game-watching meal.

What's Up Wednesday

Today I'm linking up with  Shay and  Sheaffer for the first What's up Wednesday of the year!

Valentine's Day Doodle Town

Valentine's Day is around the corner and a little festive coloring is in order...

Weekend Top 10

Friday started with some excitement!  It was a school-wide pep rally and Griffin's Lil' Stangs cheer team got to perform a cheer and dance.  They could not have been cuter and this picture of them walking out made me smile and I swear I can hear Shania Twain say, "Let's Go Girls" when I look at it ;)

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!  This feels like a SUPER short week for me - and I'm for SURE not complaining about that :)  

Day in the Life - "Day Off" Edition

When I did my little reader survey back in December, "Day in the Life" posts quickly rose to the very top of the requested posts list.  I love reading them as well and decided to document my day on Tuesday since it looked a little different than a "regular" day that I've documented before.

Earlier this week I got a sub and took a day off of work to chaperone a field trip and get caught up on a few things.  I requested off weeks ago and it worked out PERFECTLY because I was still recovering from an awful sinus infection and really needed a day to slow down.

Thankfully I had taken a shower earlier (seriously the only thing that was giving me any sense of relief while sick!) and so I was able to eek out every last minute of sleep on Tuesday morning.  My alarm went off at 6:30, but I think it was about 6:50 before I actually got up.  The kids alarms go off at 6:30 and in this time they'd all made their way downstairs and got themselves dressed.  We lay their uniforms out on the floor of our bedroom at night so they each have clean clothes (down to socks and underwear) accessible and there's no searching.  It's easier for us to keep ALL the uniforms in one central place than 3 separate closets.... their regular clothes they keep in their rooms.

Groundhog Day books and activities

Groundhog Day came up at our house in a discussion revolving around "what holiday is next" :) and we've had a great time exploring, learning and playing over the past week or so and now all three of my kids are well-versed in all things groundhog! 

I added several books to our collection and they've all enjoyed checking them out and reading them.

In  Groundhog's Dilemma  half of groundhog's friends are happy and half are upset about him declaring six more weeks of winter.  They all start asking him to start calling the weather the way they want and he agrees - leading everyone to believe that he can control the weather.  He ends up having to tell his friends the truth (that he just calls it like he sees it) and his friends love him regardless - it was a sweet story about friendship and even people pleasing.  We all loved this one!

Weekend Top 10

Thank GOODNESS for a three-day weekend, right???  I had big plans to conquer ALL THE THINGS on my to-do-list, get ahead in my blogging and pretty much have the most productive weekend of all time and then the sinus infection from HELL hit and pretty much knocked me flat out for the past 72 hours.  Thankfully I THINK I'm on the upswing of things if I can just get some good sleep over the next few days.  Despite feeling under the weather and accomplishing about zero of the things I wanted to, this weekend still proved to be a good one. 

Saturday morning we woke up to the teeniest tiniest dusting of snow ever.  We didn't really have any stick to our grass, but the roof was covered and the kids all checking out the snow before we headed out had me reminiscing about mason seeing snow when he was one. 

Craft Ideas

I'm assuming that a LOT of y'all are at home with your kids today so I thought I'd re-share some of my favorite craft ideas from over the years.  

You can click  HERE to see how we made our very own easy snow globes...

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!!!  We're limping across the finish line this week (I'm not feeling great) - but we're going to make it, rest up and rally :)

Tomato Soup

Luke is a BIG fan of tomato soup and so a couple of weekends ago I decided to try out  this recipe for him.  I liked that it had pasta in it in the hopes that it might fill him up a bit more than a regular creamy tomato soup because OH MY WORD can this boy eat right now.

Seven Questions

Valentine's Day Printables

My Valentine printable posts are some of my most viewed and most requested posts every year.  

When I design printables I create them in a 4x6 format that you can right click, save to your desktop, upload to a photo printing service (I use Walgreens) then fold in half and staple to the top of a  cellophane bag with a treat inside or directly to the top of a snack (you can find the cellophane bags that I like  HERE or pick them up at Hobby Lobby).  The kids write their names (and the names of their classmates if the teacher prefers that) on the cards with Sharpie and we're done! 

It's the norm at our school to do little "favor bags" instead of just a card or candy.  Any of the ideas that I shared today or a couple of weeks ago would totally work just as a card though if attaching a little favor isn't what your family or school does!

We started talking about Valentine's day treats last weekend and it was not surprising at all that Luke requested Harry Potter.  It has been a bit of a struggle to get him to decide on a card design/wording... ten year olds can apparently be fickle. ;)  Here's what we've come up so far and the jury is still out on which one he'll decide to actually use...

Weekend Top 10

I had a different post scheduled for today - but completely slacked on any and all blog prep this weekend so instead I'm sharing the top 10 from our very regular, very lazy weekend :)

Saturday morning we finished a puzzle, ran to the grocery store and caught up on laundry.  All the exciting Saturday morning things.

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!  I'm so excited that  Erika and Narci are back with me today sharing their FAVORITES.  As always, you can grab our graphic, link back to one (or all!) of us and share your own Friday Favorites.

Fall Family Pictures

I shared our Christmas cards back in December but realized that I never shared all the pictures that  Narci did for us back in October and they were TOO CUTE not to!  

We've been taking pictures on this road north of McKinney since Mason was one and we were so sad to see a bunch of construction happening out there this year.  These may be our last pictures on "the road" as we know it!

Hashbrown Casserole

I needed a quick side to serve with meatloaf the other night and had  this recipe bookmarked so I decided to give it a try and IT WAS SO GOOD!!! Healthy, no.  Delicious, yes.  If you need a simple, TASTY side dish this is the recipe for you!

Here's What You'll Need...

- a 30 oz bag frozen, shredded hash browns, thawed

- 1 cup sour cream

- 8 oz (or so) of sharp cheddar

- 1 stick of butter (or margarine)

- 1 can cream of chicken soup

- chopped onion

- salt/pepper to taste

Here's What You'll Do...

Step 1 - throw some chopped onion (I didn't measure... and I also used frozen... add as much or as little as you'd like!) in a bowl with the soup and all but about 1 cup of the cheese.  Mix it together well.

Step 2 - Mix in the sour cream (I used light) and then mix in the potatoes and stick of melted butter.  Mix it all until it's combined, then pop it into a greased 9x13 and top with the rest of the cheese.

Step 3 - Bake the casserole at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes (or until it's all bubbly and golden) and serve it warm.

This is the world's worst photo because it gets dark at what feel like 1 pm now :) and by the second day when I went to take a leftover pic I ate it before I remembered - but TRUST ME this is tasty!

Happy Wednesday and happy cooking, friends!

Amazon Lately

The last time I shared my Prime purchases was back in October and I'm excited to show you a few fun favorites that have arrived on our porch since then.

This game arrived over Christmas break and it's SO MUCH FUN!!!  It's essentially the Bananagrams game, but with numbers.  You race to create "pods" using numbers and operation symbols until all of the number tiles are gone.  It's been great practice and the boys both really love it.  It's awesome because it naturally fits different levels without any modification.... Mason naturally uses only the addition and subtraction symbols and Luke uses multiplication/division as well as creating longer equations often involving negative addends and order of operations. 

Last bit of the festive fun

Today I'm wrapping up the last of our holiday festivities.  The Saturday after Christmas we hosted one last Christmas celebration with Dave's family.  

Friday Favorites

I feel like I could write "Christmas break" and call this post a day.  This break has been a total gift.  It's not lost on me what a blessing and perk having this time off with my kids is and I really feel like we savored it.  It's been wonderful.

We macarena'd on an unmade bed...

 

Christmas Day 2018

Christmas Day this year was pretty much perfection.  I let go of a few things that really didn't matter and felt like we just really enjoyed the day. 

Last year Santa wrapped the kids presents and this year they were unwrapped so we were stuck with the dilemma of how to keep the kids from coming down at 5 am and peeking so Buddy the Elf made this "Mission Impossible-esque" staircase out of crepe paper and then had a chalkboard sign that said "Wait 4 your parents" :)   It worked like a charm and we started hearing lots of giggling around 6:45.

Christmas Eve 2018

I'm just now getting around to sorting through my pictures from Christmas and I'm still having a hard time that it's come and gone!  Christmas Eve we headed to the brand new Play Street in Keller for some playtime, Santa talk and cookies with milk ALL while being out of our house and keeping our cleaned house clean :)