Friday, I love you...

The first week of school is done.  The rest of my week was busy but nothing like the first day!  Thank goodness.... I can't say the same for a lot of the teachers at my school though... it will be a different year...
I ran all my weekend errands this afternoon so that I can have the weekend free of those...
The rest of the family headed out to the first Friday night football game tonight...

I decided I could wait till it was less than 100 degrees to enjoy football...

Katie had her first pep rally last night!  She thought they spent too much time introducing the football players...I reminded her it really is all about the football and there wouldn't be a pom squad without the football players...( and she's not performing tonight... I would go even in the heat if she was, didn't want you to think I was a bad mother, at least not for skipping a game)

After much fast food the last couple of weeks I finally made it grocery shopping tonight.  I even came home and put up some meals in the freezer...
I used my quiet time while the fam is gone to enjoy a margarita out of a box (that I discovered tonight), an episode of Dateline that has me a little scared to be home alone, and a couple hours of cooking...
a good night!

And for those couple of hours I have:

Golden Pork Chops with Cinn. Apples
Honey Sauced Chicken
Slow Cooker San Francisco chops
Spicy Egg Casserole
Brie and cranberry stuffed chicken breasts
Mini Meat loafs
2 Creamy Chicken Casserole

It all started with needing to make a dinner to take to a friend tomorrow when I go see her tiny new baby... I decided if I was cooking her a meal I might as well put a few up for us...
Seven meals in less than 2 hours isn't bad...  I'm excited to have crock pot meals ready in the freezer...

I'm taking my friend Creamy Chicken Casserole, my families favorite...

Creamy Chicken Casserole

4 chicken breasts cut into bite sized chunks
2 cans fat free Cream of Mushroom soup
1 pt. sour cream
Mix and place in 8x8 baking dish.  Crush 1 sleeve of Ritz crackers and sprinkle on top.  Melt 1/2 stick of butter and drizzle over top.  Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.  Serve over rice or noodles.

Happy weekend...

Friends and fun

My sweet friend and her daughter were here for the weekend.  We enjoyed hanging out and visiting with them so much.  The girls had a great time!  We watched movies, ate (even at the "derDog"), and spent many hours just talking and talking while working on our planners.

Our main plan for the weekend was to update our planners that I made a couple of years ago.  She brought boxes and boxes of pictures!  She spent time sorting and finding pictures while I put it together.   Debbie had left with hers before I remembered I didn't take good pictures of hers!

Inside front of Deb's

My new planner

Front

back

inside front cover

think the back area with all my friend pictures may be my favorite part...

I am thrilled with how it turned out!  I still have a couple of months to finish today.  I used my last one daily for about 2 years, I loved it so much that I hated to change it to a new one.  Now I'm excited about this one, new type, new look, better calendar pages.

Love it!!!

What's red, yummy and has a million cups of sugar?

Jennifer came out for the long weekend and I quickly lined up some projects for us! I wanted to do some little end of the year gifts for teachers so we made Strawberry Margarita Jam. It tastes so yummy but really may need to be strawberry margarita "sauce" instead of jam...it's just a touch on the 'not quite jam' side...Jennifer was excited to learn to make jelly (or sauce)...

She got a little too excited with one jar...but in turn the dogs got quite the strawberry treat! She gives a better explanation of this event over at her blog...

I also found corn on sale and couldn't resist... so Jennifer also learned the art of cutting corn off the cob...

Found out Elvis really likes corn...

Jennifer may be afraid to come back... I told her next time we go pick apples.

Jennifer has a long history of dropping things... if you notice that I can't use certain letters while blogging it is due to the "Margarita Pie" in the bottom left corner of my keyboard...

And, look how she cleaned it up....

I am always amazed at how much more I can get done on a three day weekend.... last weekend and week were spent busy with the mother in law and broken hip so this weekend not only had a lot of rest and fun but a LOT of laundry

Sounds like a bonus question to me...

Let me take a moment to tell you of my love for Target. I asked for clothes for Mother's day. So Mike told me to go shopping... you know how when you finally go shopping you can't find much... that's what happened. Everywhere except for Target. Target is faithful to provide, at least in the tee shirt, skirt and shorts dept.

I was easily talked out of skipping church Sunday... even years after loosing my mother, I still don't really enjoy church on Mother's Day...I know I'm a mom, but in my heart Mother's day is about my mother... I remember one Mother's day, going with my mom to the cemetery where her mother was buried and her just weeping at her grave. It was the only time I remember seeing her cry and I remember it being awful...now I understand.
Sunday morning I was quickly reminded that it was about me by my kids...
My youngest is so sweet... I woke up to her asking Mike to get up and make me breakfast...I couldn't get my eyes open before she was showing me what she had made for me. She made me a lovely picture titled "Cara's Castle" out of markers and some of my scrapbook goodies.
My favorite thing was a bunch of coupons she made. I got coupons for everything you can think of and in case I needed something not on the coupons, one said it was good for anything...also, the instructions say I can use them five times a week. She doesn't realize that she'd be awfully busy if I redeemed all of these!
Katie wrote an essay about me in English and that was my gift from her. It was very sweet and interesting to see what she thinks of when writing about me. Surprisingly, it was all good!
We went to lunch and then to see "Earth" at the movies.
It was a relaxed family day. I managed to not do anything very productive. It was just what I wanted for my day!

We're watching our latest favorite t.v. show, The Big Bang Theory... discussing the nerds on this show has led to Mike telling me a very long story about how he quit the Boy scouts when he was young because his group was a bunch of nerds.... think I'll have to remind him of the mismatched shoes last weekend...he hasn't noticed that I'm not really paying attention... Hope there isn't some important lesson to this story that I have missed.

several movies later...

the big girl has been sick all weekend so we have done a whole lot of nothing at our house but watch movies... I rarely watch a movie, I just can't seem to sit still that long or something... but this weekend while the big girl has been laid up in the living room with movies on I've watched more movies than I've ever watched in one weekend... we've watched Elf, Night at the museum, Evan Almighty, 27 Dresses, part of Hairspray and now Mr. Bean's Holiday (am I glad we didn't' spend money on this one in the theater). (edited to add Matilda and The Chipmonk Christms movie...I don't know if I can make it through the Chipmonk's again...it was bad enough the first time in the theater... Elvis the bulldog doesn't like the chimponks either) I've done a crafty project or two and million loads of laundry...have dinner ready to go in the oven and made fresh bread....
off to fold laundry, serve up more advil and ginger ale and finish the misery of Mr. Bean's Holiday...