We are back in the swing of normalcy again! School is back in session and the kids are no longer saying "I am bored!" Richard always tells them, then find something to do, we are not the entertainment directors on a cruise ship. Most of the time they are bored when they are not getting their way when they are playing with their siblings.
My vacation started out pretty interesting. Riley cut two teeth the Friday before my vacation! She was no longer a cranky baby, except for yesterday. On Sunday Richard was cooking a standing rib roast and we discovered that our oven was broken! Great! Perfect! Right before Thanksgiving too! The top element worked but not the bottom one. I bought a oven thermometer to make sure and it was broken for sure. I set the oven to 450 and the thermometer only read barely 200. Crud! How would we cook Thanksgiving dinner? We had about 15 people going to be there for dinner! Richard said we would go rent one from Rent A Center if we needed to.
Monday I was trying to cook dinner after I called the landlord and he put in a work order to get the oven checked out and hopefully fixed. I was putting bread crumbs on top of the casserole I made and instead of pulling my hand straight out, I lifted it up and burned my hand on top element that was at 450 so I could cook my casserole! Ouchie wawa!! Man that hurt. It was so hot the burn turned white!
My casserole was pretty darn good, but putting on the oven mitts was very painful. So Richard had to help me. I was pretty impressed with my casserole, other then needing more salt, the kids ate it up! I made up the recipe and was pretty shocked that it tasted so good!
I called the appliance repair shop like the landlord asked me to and they said they could be at our house at 9:30 Tuesday morning! We prayed that it could be fixed and our prayers were answered! It was a bad heating element. He replaced it and the oven WORKED!! YEAH! Time to bake and get things ready for Thanksgiving! I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread and only one turned out! I took that to one of my Visiting Teaching ladies. I need to make two more for my other ladies this week!
Rachel's kids showed up Wednesday and chaos erupted in the house! Noise and laughter and yelling and everyone trying to talk over everyone else. So of course my anxiety kicked in and I got grouchy!!
Thanksgiving was great! I had prepped everything the day before so all we had to do, was cook it! We had the missionaries and a lady from our church over. She is a sweet lady. She lives by herself and is a recent convert. Richard had asked her what she was doing for Thanksgiving and she said a lady at church was going to bring her a plate of food later in the day on Thursday. Richard talked to me and we decided she is too nice of a lady to be alone, so we invited her over. She really enjoyed watching the parade with my kids. She said it was funny to watch them get all excited over celebrities in the the parade.
We ate and then watched Forever Strong. It was awesome! The coach in the movie Larry Gelwix, is our Mission President! I am so getting a copy of the movie and asking him to autograph it! My friend Anne's copy is autographed. We paused the movie in the middle and served pie and went back to watching the movie!
We dared Walmart that same evening to see if we could get the one thing we wanted for the kids for Christmas, but they were all gone! We had been at Walmart earlier that day and the lines for Black Friday items were already forming! Crazy! We were glad that the item was not there because the checkout lines were HORRIBLE!!!! The registers in the front of the store's lines were all the way around the clothes department! We would have been there for days!!
Luckily the item went on sale at walmart.com for a little more then the sale price but still way below the original price! So we got it and the kids picked out their gifts for Riley for her first Christmas. Needless to say, I will be buying stock in batteries and buying out the 99cent stores!
By Friday evening the house was chaos free! WE relaxed and looked at our christmas list and figured out all that was left to get was the sibling to sibling gift, the kids' gift to Rachel and one more gift for Rebecca and we are done!! We will be doing our Christmas picture next week and then our Christmas cards will be done! We still need stocking stuffers, but that is pretty easy. Richard and Rebecca learned how to make candy in school, so they will be getting home made candy in their stockings, plus our friends will be getting homemade candy, coookies and breads for gifts also!
I am hoping this holiday season will be relaxing a joyfull and no last minute trip to the stores to get gifts! YEAH!!
So How was your Thanksgiving?
Casserole Recipe
1 large bag egg noodles cooked to 90% doneness
2 head of Brocoli, cut up and par boiled
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, roasted with salt and pepper and olive oil, then cut up into bite size pieces
3-4 cups Richard's Cheese sauce
Bread crumbs
in large casserole dish pour drained noodles into bottom of dish, evenly sprinkle the chicken and brocoli on top. Pour cheese sauce over top and lightly mix all together. Put into oven at 350 for 20 minutes, covered, then remove cover and sprinkle on bread crumbs. Cook until bread crumbs are golden brown. Eat and enjoy!
Richard Cheese Sauce
1 stick of butter
8 tblsp flour
half a block of Velveeta cheese cubed
1/2 cup shredded colby jack cheese
4 cups milk
Melt butter in pot, whisk in flour to make a roux. let bubble for a few minutes to get rid of the flour taste. Add milk. As it heats up the milk, butter and flour mixture will thicken. Turn off heat when the mixture is thickened to your desired thickness. Add velveeta and mix to help melt. When the velveeta is melted add the colby jack. add white pepper to taste. Cheese sauce should be pourable but not runny, like cheese wiz when you heat it up in the microwave. It also great on brocoli or add Rotelle and is a great dip!
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