sausage casserole

I used to make this yummy casserole. But the hubs wasn’t completely in love with it so I quit making it.

I also wasn’t too sad that he wasn’t in love with it since the recipe called for a pound of sausage.

Holy heart attack, batman!

So I stopped making it. But I never forgot about it.

I dusted it off the other day to make it for lunch group.

But with one important difference….lean chicken sausage!

We have a great store near us that makes their own sausage with lean chicken breast. And it tastes the same as pork sausage…and it’s not loaded with FAT.

So! If you promise me you will only use this recipe with the leanest possible meat, I will share my recipe with you. Cuz it’s good! (no excuses either..I’ve seen lean turkey sausage at Walmart!)

Pinky swear?

Ok! : )

It’s called Sausage Casserole. And it’s great for any meal from brunch on through dinner.  And the leftovers freeze well too. It’s just a great all around recipe.

Recipe:

• 1 package sausage
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 green pepper chopped
• 4 1/2 cups water
• 2 packages Campbells noodle soup
• 1/2 cup long grain rice

Preheat oven to 350.

Bring 4 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add the 2 packages of noodle soup and the 1/2 cup rice. Cook/gently boil for 7 minutes uncovered.

Meanwhile, crumble sausage and brown with onion and green pepper until fully cooked.

Mix together in an oblong casserole dish (8 by 11 etc) and bake uncovered for one hour.

And then eat it! : )

This is the noodle soup. I don’t buy this sort of thing for anything else and most people get confused about it, so I thought I would show a pic of it. It has two packets inside and you use both in this recipe.

There is another brand called Mrs. Grass that I have found at Kroger. It has the noodles and the flavoring separate so you could use both packs of noodles and one packet of flavoring for less sodium, if that is a concern.

This recipe isn’t going to win any culinary awards, but it tastes really, rilly good.

Guess what we’ve having for dinner? : )

the other side

Happy Monday to you. : )

Thank you all for your sweet comments last week. Thankful to say that the week went by pretty well.

This year the dates fell in such a way that all of our ‘days’ hit in one week. Monday was his last day. Tuesday was ‘the’ day. And Friday was the memorial.

So it had the potential to be one very long week.

Thankfully for the most part, it went well.

Monday night was hard. In tears by the end of the day “for no reason”.

The rest of the week went fine.

But as always, I’m glad to be on the other side.

last day

We’ve been discussing the (possible/probable/whatever) move a lot around our house. But this week we’re kind of distracted.  

Today is the last day.

The last day Bub…ok…Landon..was with us. I thought you all might like to know Bub’s real name. Although more often than not, we speak of him as Bub ourselves.

Anyway, today is the 9th anniversary of Landon’s last day with us.

He was bedridden this last week. He wanted to play computer games at one point, so I carried him to the chair in big sister’s room and he played his little Tonka truck game for a while. And he napped and woke up on this day, as if normal.

But he was hurting.

Later in the evening, the girl and I curled up near the couch where Landon was resting and watching tv. Each of us drinking him up in our own way…talking and saying silly things and just speaking gently to him of our love.

Later in the evening, Daddy gave him a bath. His last. He wanted a mint that night so we gave him a mint and put on a medicine patch. And sent him to bed. You can read more of this night here.

So just for now..for this week..unless I am feeling particularly “in the mood”, the house hunt is off. I just can’t handle the stress of this week coupled with looking at houses and trying to decide another place to live.

And leaving the house we all lived in.

Just can’t handle doing all of that at once.

Today is a special day. It’s a day we lived life together. We hugged. We kissed. We laughed.

We loved.

And we still do.

the experiment

One of the more interesting things about homeschool is the fact that WE are involved in so many aspects of it. From turning in some of her assignments to helping her when she’s stuck to science experiments.

Last night we had the privilege of helping her with a science experiment.

We needed to find some open area to count paces that equaled about two football fields. I grabbed a hoody because it’s decided it’s winter again here. (Don’t EVEN get me started on THAT one!)  And I told the girl to put on something warmer too. She headed into her room to change and off we went.

We drove to a local park a few blocks from our house and let Dad do the pacing since he’s got long legs.

The girl and I waited behind while he did all the work walking and counting. Then Dad held up two rocks and banged them together. We used his iPhone a stop watch and counted from the time we saw them clack together to when we heard it.

And that’s a very short time, by the way.

But she learned about how light travels and how sound travels in the real world, not just from a book. Big fun was had by all…including feeling like those homeschool weirdos feverishly writing numbers down on paper and standing in the cold while somebody else was banging rocks together waaaay over there. We must have looked real sharp.

But the biggest lesson of the night might have come in the form of a certain girl learning that “putting on something warm” means more than changing out of  a tank top into a tshirt…to go with her flannel pajama pants.

We’re nothing if not klassy.

And yes she about froze. (it was in the low 50’s…she wasn’t about to get frostbite or anything)

And no, I did not loan her my hoodie. She was warned.

And I’m the meanest mom ever.

20 years

This week we had an anniversary.

Kind of a big one.

Twenty years! (Woot!)

This was our cake topper.

Isn’t it CUTE?! (I love Precious Moments!)

Happy anniversary to us. : )

I had to resist the urge to post video of the “Happy Anniversary song” from the Flintstones…cuz that’s what always pops into my head when I think about saying Happy Anniversary to somebody.

{resisting}

{resisting again}

Happy Friday, y’all.

There isn’t a song for that…not that I know of. If there was, I think we’d all know it!  : )

house thoughts

Been thinking a lot about ‘the new house’…where ever it will be. And whatever it will look like. Unloading the dishwasher and cleaning off counters. I picked out the counter tops myself,  thinking we would be living here “forever”. And now forever might be ending. Everything is in easy reach. I can quickly get the job done in that room. Plenty of storage and counter space and the perfect work triangle. Not fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it works. And it’s mine.

The workers finished doing some little repairs yesterday. And today I went to Home Depot to buy some paint etc to finish the job myself. A part of me is excited to “move on”. And then another part of me is holding on. Holding on to the comfort of this house. Our house. The house we all lived in. And I know I will carry all of that with me if/when we move, but it’s still hard to think about turning my back on this house. I still see wiggly little bodies when I look in the bathtub. Or a sweet boy curled up for sleep when I look in the office (that was his room). Or the high chair in the corner of the dining room. Even though all of it is long gone.

This is just hard. And the thing that makes it harder is the fact that we can’t find anything we like. I’m just sad. And it doesn’t help that we’re moving ever closer to Bub’s anniversary day. All these moving thoughts combined with remembering and not wanting to forget and yet realizing that every year takes me another year away from all of it.  I realize that some of my memories are fading.

And then I shop for houses.

And I’m in a weird tug of war with my own thoughts.

And yet that life is over. We have moved on. And that is ok.

I know these thoughts are not even from God. He is not the one that wants to hold me captive to emotions and thoughts from the past. I don’t know where I am in everything house related today and I don’t know how to tie this little posty up in a cute little bow either.

This is just where I am today.

I just need to pray and have more of Him in me…especially at this time.

maybe that’s the simplest explanation

I feel like I can’t keep my thoughts straight these days.

I’m so scatterbrained.

I went to the bank the other day to cash a check and sat enjoying the pretty weather in the drive through. And then the little tube came back to me and I opened it to find my money.

And my credit card.

Evidently I sent that instead of my drivers license. Thankfully they know us at our tiny bank and I didn’t have any problems.

I felt so silly that I felt like I had to buzz the girl and thank her for giving me my money anyway…even without proper id. We both had a good laugh.

She blamed it all on daylight savings time.

I blamed it on spring break.

But inwardly I just blamed it on me being a doofus.