Kitchen, Catch-Up, and Cafe

Kitchen

Happy Monday! First, our menu for the week. I've decided that when we start school I will add what we're having for breakfasts and lunches, too, but for now I'm keeping it simple by just listing dinners. This week I've included a recipe that my 11 year old chef-in-training created a few months ago, which he adapted from this Hay and Straw recipe. Fun!

Monday: Cheesy Beef Potato Bake, green beans, yeast rolls
Tuesday: Teriyaki Chicken (Fix It and Forget It, p. 178), stir-fried veggies, rice
Wednesday: Pizza Pasta (a recipe created by my son! See below.) garlic bread, Caesar salad
Thursday: Leftover buffet
Friday: Take Out Chinese
Weekend: Sandwiches, leftovers, eat out after church

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"Pizza Pasta" (A Culinary Creation by Kyle)

1 16 oz package elbow macaroni
1 T butter or margarine
2 C pepperoni, cut into quarters
3 C frozen green peas
1 1/2 C shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 C heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook elbow macaroni according to package directions. While pasta is cooking, melt butter over medium heat in a large skillet and saute pepperoni. Add peas and heat through. Drain pasta, transfer to a large serving dish and toss with pepperoni and pea mixture. In a sauce pan, combine Parmesan cheese, garlic powder and cream. Add salt and pepper. Toss with pasta mixture. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

To read more weekly menus or to post your own, head on over to Laura's.

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Catch-Up

Y'all. Guess what happened after my last post, in which I was so thankful for air conditioning??? You guessed it. We spent Thursday night camping out in the kids' rooms (the only rooms with a/c) and Friday morning with the air conditioner repairman getting our main downstairs a/c unit fixed. Can you believe it? (The same thing happened with my washing machine once after I posted a Thankful Thursday about it!) But, I still went to bed thankful for a/c that night... and thankful that we have two units!

We went over to a friend's house and had a small High School Musical 2 watching party, It was cute! I wrote about it, as well as the new musical I think Disney should write, here.

I hope you had a great weekend! I know some of you are returning from last-minute before-school vacations. I hope everyone had a relaxing time! I wouldn't exactly call our weekend "relaxing" but it was wonderful. On Saturday we enjoyed our niece's 4th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. We hadn't been there in years! It was fun to see her and all of her little friends enjoying the games and fun (but they weren't quite so happy to see Chuck E. the giant mouse when he showed up! Oh, the tears! They either love him or hate him, I've found!) Here's a picture of the older cousins clowning around. I didn't get a picture of the birthday girl, though!

After the party we did some work around the house and then spent Saturday evening after church unpacking our 15+ Awana boxes at the Awana office. (Whew!) It was fun to restock our shelves of all of the t-shirts, vests, jewels, handbooks and supplies that we will need during our Awana Club year. It always makes me excited about the upcoming year, much like buying school supplies does! As usual, we couldn't do it without our faithful kids, diligently working alongside us.

Then, yesterday evening we had our annual Awana leader orientation. We had over 100 people there! We enjoyed some wonderful words from our new teaching pastor, who really encouraged us in our roles to point these little ones to Christ and help them love Him more as they learn to love His qualities that they see in us. While our faithful leaders were enjoying sandwiches, inspiring words, door prizes and training sessions, the leaders' kids upstairs were enjoying our annual "Wild About Awana" party. I love having those parties for the leaders' kids when we have leader meetings. I tell ya, if you want to love on me, love on my kids! That's the philosophy I have when I want to show our leaders how much we appreciate them... I love on their kids! We had food, games and prizes for them, and they all had a great time! We had a great team of older kids and moms upstairs running the party while I ran back and forth between the big meeting and the party, checking in.
Whew! I didn't get to snap any pictures at the kids' party, but I wish I had. It's so fun to see those smiles! I did snap this one of my cute husband, "Commander Luke" speaking to the leaders. ("Commander" is the Awana term for the person who leads the entire club. To me, it seems like more of a "scout-y" term from back when it seemed to resemble more of a scouts-type organization. Our church is more relaxed, and Luke and I prefer calling ourselves the "coordinators" but once someone called me the "Lt. Commander" and, I have to admit... I sort of like it, LOL!)

This week I am continuing to flesh out our school plans. We have our big homeschool association meeting tonight, and I am officially passing the baton of "librarian" to someone else. Our fun friends that are "m's" in China are stateside so we are hanging out with them tomorrow. My hard-working daughter is working at the church cafe on Wednesday helping to cater an event. Friday is my final, major Awana work day in the office to finalize everything for the year. Add to the above a zillion errands and that's my week!

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Cafe

Lastly, (as if you haven't read enough of my rambling if you've made it this far!) join me at the Internet Cafe today where I'm talking about how God hears us, even when it seems like He doesn't. How can we know? Come find out!


Well, I'm all menu-planned and caught up. And, I'll be at the cafe all day!

I'm so very blessed that you stopped by, and have a terrific week!