Because I am Sunday night tired ... a recipe

This recipe is courtesy of my sister and it is soooo good. I made this for dinner last night and it did not disappoint! I don't know why you couldn't just combine all the ingredients and put it in the crockpot for the day instead of the oven, so I'm going to try that next time, but either way, this was still delicious and worth making even with the extra steps to cook it in the oven. (I also want to try substituting the buffalo taste with bbq since my kids prefer that to buffalo/spicy flavors)

Loaded Potato & Buffalo Chicken Casserole

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. boneless chicken breasts, cubed
• 8-10 medium potatoes, cut in ½” cubes
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp. black pepper
• 1 Tbsp. paprika
• 2 Tbsp. garlic powder
• 6 Tbsp. hot sauce
• 2 cups fiesta blend cheese
• 1 cup crumbled bacon
• 1 cup diced green onion

Preheat the oven to 500°.  Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.  In a large bowl, mix together the olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder and hot sauce.  Add the cubed potatoes and stir to coat.

Carefully, scoop the potatoes into the prepared baking dish, leaving behind as much of the olive oil/hot sauce mixture as possible.  Bake the potatoes for 45-50 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes, until cooked through and crispy and browned on the outside.

While the potatoes are cooking, add the cubed chicken to the bowl with the leftover olive oil/hot sauce mixture and stir to coat.  Once the potatoes are fully cooked, remove from the oven and lower the oven temperature to 400°.  Top the cooked potatoes with the raw marinated chicken. 

In a bowl, mix together the cheese, bacon and green onion and top the raw chicken with the cheese mixture.  Return the casserole to the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Delish!

Early August Daybook

Outside my window…

It's a mild summer night ... a couple of the girls are playing with a neighbor and I've got two hanging in the school room with me. I love summer nights where the kids can play for a while before bed, but it has done havoc with our bedtimes this summer and we are transitioning.

Giving thanks…



For twelve years of marriage! While our actual anniversary was Sunday, we celebrated on Saturday night. Our niece (the flower girl at our wedding, fyi) babysat for us and the kids had a ball with her. We just enjoyed getting out and hanging out together, just us. It seems like it had been a while since a nice long date night! Dinner at Culver's (with a buy-one-get-one-free deal on a burger!), a little shopping for bedsheets and towels for our bathroom (by year twelve has everyone else's stuff worn out like ours?), and a movie before heading home.

I am thinking about…

Or trying not to ... our homestudy and waiting to hear that it's made it through the review process. We had the chance to proofread it last week and it's a little freaky to read so much about your life written out by a 3rd party that you have only known for about six weeks!

In the Schoolroom…



Mama's fuel for school.

We are back at it! The first official day was on Friday and we kicked it off with lots of donuts and reading aloud. We had a solid Monday (the good and the bad), but we're slowly getting back into a routine of a little reading, writing and 'rithmatic each day. Our CC program doesn't start until the end of the month so we'll have almost four weeks under our belt by the time we add that in.

From the kitchen…





I'm working, working, working on sticking to our meal plan as our fall activities will be starting very soon! I've been checking out a few new cookbooks (thank you library!) and perusing old ones for new crockpot recipes and freezer meals. Tonight we had Pioneer Woman's orange chicken and it was YUM. Monday's are a good day (typically) for me to try a more complicated recipe and this was well worth the extra steps. FYI - some kids here thought the chicken was too spicy, however the adults were passing the bowl back and forth for the last bites.

I am creating…

Much catching up in my Project Life album - yay! Last week (or maybe the week before that?) knowing that we were very close to school starting, I took a couple afternoons and cranked through the first half of 2014. Thankfully, I had been pretty diligent about getting pictures printed almost every week - while the girls have music lessons I usually sort / upload / edit a weeks worth of photos. I'm caught up through our summer trip to Ohio and that feels VERY GOOD. Maybe a PL post one of these days?

I don’t ever want to forget…





The really, really cute stuff that this boy says now a-days. We are all about superheroes right now - "fiderman" is a current favorite. We also like "capan 'merica" a bunch too.

I am working on…

The #shereadstruth plan in Hebrews. This summer has been such a sweet time in the Bible for me and I'm a little sad that I won't have the leisure of so much study time in the morning before the kids get up as we return to a more normal schedule. God has answered a prayer of mine to hunger for His Word and I am eager to get out of bed in the morning to get at it. I also wish I could say I hungered to get out of bed to run several mornings a week, but I'm not quite there yet. : ) I am trying to get up and exercise three mornings a week early - like dark early. I've accepted the reality of life right now that if I don't get up and go before the kids are up, it's just not going to happen later in the day. So early it is.

I am reading…



Well, I'm staring at this. I know I'm not going to want to put it down once I pick it up so I've read only a few pages. Maybe this weekend I can make some headway on it? Since my last post, I've also finished:

• One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (for the Reading to Know bookclub)
• Women of the Word by Jen Wilkins (EXCELLENT book walking you through how to study the Scriptures on your own. I was much encouraged by reading it).
• A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd. Carrie recommended this one and it was delightful. One I'll remember for the girls when they ask for something.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban / Goblet of Fire (mindless re-reading) : )

We also finished The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander - one of our summer read-alouds that took for.ev.er. to finish. This wasn't a great book to stop and start so much because there was a lot of action and unusual names, but we finally got several days under our belt in a row with it and made it to the end. Still recommend it, but not reading it in bits and spurts like we did! We're currently reading Henry Reed's Babysitting Service and laughing our way through it. Henry does not disappoint.

I am hearing…

Right now (because I'm finishing this post two days after I started it) one of the girls and T watching a movie together. N2 asked her dad for a special daddy/daughter after bedtime movie night and the rest of the kids are in bed.

Clicking around…

• Schole Sisters :: a new classical education blog whose focus is "a community of homeschooling moms who believe that teaching is the art of being imitated, who long to teach from rest, and who draw on wisdom from the classical tradition." Am loving what I'm reading there.
• Humming Home Habits from Simply Convivial

Around the house…

Trying to remember to stay on top of daily chores now that we are back in school. The girls have spiffy new chore sheets and they have been working pretty well for the most part. We T did a MAJOR purge in the girls' rooms - decluttering is one of his gifts - and that has been a HUGE help in them being able to keep their rooms picked up during the day. It's a beautiful thing!

One of my favorite things…



And end of summer cousin day. They have been few and far between this summer - the oldest cousin spent several weeks working at camp, we had travels / swim lessons / camp for our crew and schedules just didn't match up often. We had one last fun day seeing the cheap summer movie at the local theater and then swimming the afternoon away. This gang is full of personality as you can tell and we had a blast all being together for the day. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact the my oldest niece is a junior in high school this year. She has her learner's permit and chauffeured us around as we went to the movies and picked up lunch and I have to say I could get used to being driven around. : )

A few plans for the next week…

Activites and dates are starting to fill up the calendar! Tutor meetings for CC are coming up and soccer practice will start for the little girls in another week or two. We've aged B up an age level in soccer so that she and N2 can play on the same team - yay! - only one practice and game to juggle per week instead of two!

A photo worth sharing...



Quite possibly my favorite summer photo. : )