A Village: In Sickness and in Health

When Evelyn started elementary school in August 2017, I gave myself a mission. My mission was to make myself vulnerable by meeting new families and building relationships with new people so that I would could have a village in our school community. I prayed that God would help me to be open to meeting new people in all types of settings and opening my home to others. Little did I know my hearts desires would be matched unmeasurably. Below is a condensed version of how powerful a village can be. 

I started out by joining the PTA and volunteering to coordinate the STEM Night and Science Fair. Throughout that experience I met several moms that were coordinating other parts of the PTA. Though that experience I learned so much. I was then asked to be the Vice President of Ways and Means for the PTA for the 17-18 and 18-19 year. My responsibility would be to support all of the board members that were coordinating events that brought in money to the PTA. Of course, given my background in education and project management, I took my responsibilities pretty seriously and set the bar high. During the planning of our annual carnival and auction I learned about people. I learned that volunteers engage in volunteer opportunities for different reasons than employees engage in work. 

I learned that everyone has different styles of managing their time, 

priorities, and a different passion level for what they are doing. 

I learned that it's ok to be unique and do things in different ways...not just my way. 

I learned that my priorities may not really be priorities in the 

grand scheme of what others have going on in their lives. 

I learned that you need to consistently be aware that you never know the whole story. 

This was a life lesson that will carry me through the rest of my life. 

Through this time, I continued to build relationships with some very special moms. Moms who were what I had been praying for. We came together over a commonality of our school community/PTA, but it turns out that we all love peanut M&M's and we all were searching for something, something I don't know we all realized we were searching for! We laugh together, cry together, problem solve together, tell each other what we need but don't want to hear, and just do life together. During this time, I also learned that it's totally cool to have lots of friends, new friends and old friends. Each friend is unique and while friendships seem to ebb and flow, I'm so thankful that many adult friendships seem to be the ones that you can pick up right where you left off. 

Fast forward to December 1, 2018. I found myself in the hospital, with stroke like symptoms, unable to smile on my left side and scared I would never be normal again. It was during this that I found that my village was longer, wider, and deeper than I realized. 

The love that has been poured out on our family is unmeasurable. Taking care of my children when I was greeted by an ambulance and firetruck in a Walmart parking lot,  sitting at the hospital with me while Scott went home to put the kids to bed, staying with my kids until my family could arrive from Arkansas, delivering me snacks to the hospital, THOUSANDS OF PRAYERS for very specific desires, phone calls, text messages, meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), offers to go to doctor appointments with me, driving my kids to and from school, and an employer and staff that have given me the time and space I needed to try to regain some normalcy again. 

It turns out my village is my husband, my family, my Janie Stark friends, my current and former work community, Evelyn's Girl Scout moms, college friends, FB Carrollton friends and FB Dallas friends. All that to say you just never know the cards you will be dealt in life and know that while you may think your village is your current closest friends, it turns out that people will "come out of the woodworks" when you need them the most. 

During this holiday season I want everyone to remember 

it's about the relationships, not the presents.

It's about making yourself vulnerable when you would rather 

just be a hermit in your own universe. 

Be real with people, and people will be real with you. 

Be willing to learn and use what you learn from others. 

Be thankful and tell people how much you appreciate them. 

Be present for others. 

PS: I am still experiencing a tingling sensation on the left side of my body and am working with a neurologist  cardiologist, physical therapist, and chiropractor to try and determine what happened and what is causing my ongoing symptoms. These symptoms and the fatigue of my arm after writing and typing are impacting my ability to work full time. So as you say your prayers, please pray that we may find answers to the unknown and that my family may find peace in the outcome and be able to determine what our new normal will look like. Thank you! 

Sample Meal Plan: Using My Freezer Stash

In last week's blog I talked about how I try and clean out my freezer during the month of August since so many expenses for back to school come into the budget. Below is this week's meal plan and  some details about what came from my freezer. I'm excited to that my freezer is slowly being cleaned out and is almost ready for fall soup making!

• Shrimp from Costco ~ I actually buy most of my meat except chicken from Costco and pull it out as I need it from the freezer. I rotate and buy fish/shrimp one month and ground beef the next month typically
• Trader Joes stuff ~ I typically go to Trader Joes every other month and stock up on sides and main dishes that make my life easier. This week includes cauliflower fried rice, mashed cauliflower, asian veg, and bbq beef brisket. 
• Hamburger Buns ~ A few bread hacks. I freeze hamburger and hot dog buns because we never use a whole package when I make something. I also stop by Jimmy John's and buy their day old bread loves for 50 cents each. Slice them into 4ths, freeze them, and pull them out to use  for meatball subs or garlic bread.
• Frozen Green Beans/Broccoli ~ I buy both of these at Sam's (I think...) and love that the bags can be steamed in the microwave or I can cook a partial bag on the stovetop. 

Three nights we are using chicken, so I bought a big package of chicken this week and I have divided it between 3 days.

Sunday
one sheet wonder
I use a cookie sheet lined with foil and pop
all of this into the oven.
 I separate the shrimp so that the shrimp juice
doesn't get on the veggies because leftover veggies
 will be used Friday night.
Shrimp, Carrots, bell peppers, asparagus
 with old bay seasoning.

Monday
Grilled Garlic Lemon Chicken
Cauliflower Mash
Green Beans

*Will grill Wednesday Night
 chicken tonight too.
**Some Green Beans will be left for Friday

Tuesday
Asian Chicken,
Cauliflower Fried Rice, and Asian Veggies
Cut up chicken breast with Soy Sauce
and Penzy's Seasoning.
Marinading in fridge until Tuesday.
I just pan fry the chicken,
and pan fry the cauliflower rice and veggies. 

Wednesday
Grilled Chicken Ranch Baked Potatoes
Will grill the chicken on Monday.
It is in the fridge marinading in milk
 and ranch powder.

Will serve with cheese and broccoli.
I might cook the potatoes in the crockpot
to lessen the cook time after I get home.

Thursday

No picture...sorry

Taco Salad

Ground beef seasoned is in the freezer 

from the last time I made a large batch...

I already pulled it out and put it in the fridge so it could thaw. 

Will add tomatoes, shredded lettuce, 

queso, salsa, and maybe some black beans. 

Friday
BBQ Beef Sandwiches
Leftover Veggies

Bought this at Trader Joes and put it in the freezer.
Buns have also been in the freezer.
Will put in the fridge on Wednesday
so it can pre-thaw.

Leftover green beans, asparagus,
and bell peppers as sides.

Hangry Family + Working Mom: How I Get Dinner on the Table in 20 Minutes

I haven't written on my blog in almost 3 years. Clearly having baby #2, buying a house, and my ever expanding career forced writing this blog on the back burner.

As time has passed, I continue to have a passion for sitting down to the dinner table and pre-planning my meals. Sometimes in life it feels like meal planning is the only area of my life I have control of...ha! Yes, my plans change and some of my meals don't go as planned, but I always get a do over the next day and week. Meal planning has taught me to be flexible and I truly love that we sit down to the dinner table together almost every single night. Tim Challies blogpost 5 Reasons We Eat Together as a Family resonates with the reasons why I enjoy sitting down to the dinner table:

• It keeps us healthy: When we eat at home, I can more easily control what goes in our bodies. I can choose the sodium level, choose not to fry the foots, select organic ingredients or ingredients with some things that are on my no no list like high fructose corn syrup and red dye 40. 
• It keeps us relationally healthy: At the dinner table, we talk about our days and we find out things that happened at school that we may not find out otherwise. We get to try new things and we learn about manners, which help us with our relationships with others. 
• It keeps us spiritually healthy: We have a calendar of verses we read from every day and we talk about new vocabulary words and break down the verses so our kids can better understand the meaning. 
• It keeps us financially healthy: Wow does it ever! Going out to eat is a treat for our family because we eat in so often! I can make a meal for less than $10 and we can't get out of a restaurant for less than $25 ~ and that's fast food most of the time! We save so much money by eating at home! 
• It keeps us behaviorally healthy: At the dinner table we can talk about expected behavior outside the actual incident. Sometimes as parents we have a list of behaviors we would like to talk with our kids about and I personally don't always like to talk about the expectations when the expectations are not met. So, we randomly talk about expectations at the dinner table sometimes! 

This list is a great reflection (and check out Tim's blog) of why eating together is so important, but I can't help but think about how great it is just to sit together as a family every day. In this fast paced world, it's my opportunity to just be with my family. It's sacred and so important to us. 

I work 45 minutes from home and after picking up two children my commute home from work is 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes daily. By the time I get home, it's 5:30-6:00, depending on traffic. When I walk in the door, everyone is HANGRY (Hungry - Angry) within about 15 minutes! So I've determined that I have to be on point with dinner timing so that we can spend the most time together and so that the kids can get to bed at a decent hour. 

For the rest of this blog I'm going to focus on what I did to prepare for this week. It took me about 1.5 hours and my meals are ready to go in the fridge.

Each year at the end of July and all of August I work really hard to use everything possible in my freezer and pantry. This is for multiple reasons:

• In August, extra money from our budget goes to back to school expenses, so by cleaning out my pantry and freezer I can save on groceries and put those funds in the back to school fund. 
• Starting in October, I make a lot of soups. When I make soup I make double batches and freeze one batch for meals...so I need freezer space.
• We are going on vacation next week, so I'm using a lot of things in the fridge so it won't go bad. 

Here's the menu for this week with some details about how I prepped everything. 

Sunday: Stuffed Bell Peppers

Stuffed and ready! 

• Cooked 2 pounds of ground beef (1 pound for this recipe and 1 pound for the nachos on Friday)
• White Rice cooked in a can of diced tomatoes
• A random assortment of spices (garlic, pico seasoning)
• Bell peppers cut in half or with the top cut off
• I mixed rice and beef together put it in the bell peppers, put shredded cheddar on top and put in the fridge so the only thing needed is heating in the oven. Veggies are included in the stuffed bell peppers, so we probably will just have that for dinner with a side of fresh fruit and carrot sticks. 

Ingredients for greek chicken on left
Ingredients for chicken fajitas on right

Monday: Grilled Greek Chicken

• Bought one big package of chicken breasts, used half for this recipe and half for the chicken fajita recipe. 
• Put in ziplock bag with greek yogurt, basil, oregano, garlic, lemon juice, and red wine vinegar
• Put in the fridge to grill Monday night
• Serve with Broccoli and green beans

Tuesday: Chicken Fajitas

• Put in a ziplock bag chicken breasts, salsa, chicken Taco Seasoning
• Will grill with greek chicken above and put in fridge for Tuesday night
• Serve with salsa, cheese, shredded lettuce, on tortillas

Wednesday: Meatball Subs

Here's my shelf with (a) meatballs and bread, thawing;
(b) greek chicken marinating, (c) chicken fajitas marinating

• I buy day old bread from Jimmy John's for 50 cents a loaf. I can cut one loaf into 4 sections. When I buy them I always buy two extra loaves and freeze them.
• On Sunday I took my bread out of freezer and put in the fridge along with my frozen meatballs.
• On Wednesday night, meatballs will be thawed reducing heat time. I heat on the stove in spaghetti sauce. 
• Slice bread and put in toaster oven with a little butter and garlic (love my toaster oven because I don't have to heat my big oven, which heats the house.)
• Serve with cesar salad 

Thursday: Fish and Vegetables

• Put tilapia from Costco in the fridge on Tuesday, so it will be thawed, reducing cook time. Pan cook with garlic and old bay seasoning. 
• Serve with veggies, typically broccoli and green beans.

Friday: Nachos

• I always keep a bag of tortilla chips in the house because sometimes nachos just make life easy on Friday night! 
• Using the 1 lb of ground beef I cooked earlier in the week.
• Using the leftover rice I made for the stuffed bell peppers too as "Spanish rice" 

So essentially, putting my frozen ingredients in the fridge to thaw and precooking meat when I can is how I get dinner on the table in 15-20 minutes every night. 

What are your tricks for success? 

Dinner Meal Planning for a Month 101

Preplanning meals and utilizing your freezer is a great way to save money. We budget $300 a month for groceries, paper goods, laundry detergent, and personal toiletries. In addition, every other month I spend about $200 at Costco. This brings our total grocery budget to $400 per month.  In this blog, I'll share some of my planning essentials, helpful tips, and my dinner meal plan for this month. My meal plan follows the Advocare 24 day challenge food list for at least 80% of the menu :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask :)

Planning Essentials

• A deep freezer: this was well worth the investment 8 years ago. Here's one for just $200! 
• Gallon and quart size freezer bags available at all times especially since you never know when you will be able to make a double batch of something or find meat on sale. 
• A weekly magnetic tear off calendar 

Helpful Tips

• Make extra of entrees and freeze them in quart or gallon size bags (depending on the size of your family). I make double or triple batches of several soups when I make them. For example, chili, vegetable beef soup, and Tortilla Soup. I also love making my mom's chicken soup but I make it thicker and leave out the noodles so that I can use it for chicken pot pie, chicken and rice, or chicken noodle soup.
• Make a list of what is in your freezer. For multiples of a dish put open circles next to it. When you use the dish color in the circle or cross through (if multiples do not exist). (PS I know I spelled beets incorrectly :)
• Watch the grocery store ads for sales on meat, package them prepared for entrees, and freeze them. Just the other day I found chicken breasts for $1.49 a lb. I bought 10 lbs and put them in individual bags of 3-4 breasts per bag. I use these for entrees and on Sunday nights we often grill a batch for our lunches. Sometimes if I find ground beef or ground turkey on clearance because it expires the next day I buy it, cook it that day, and then freeze it (in spaghetti sauce even sometimes)
• Here's the things I keep on hand in my outdoor freezer from Costco:
• Steaks (buy fresh, season them and wrap them individually in parchment paper)
• Ground Beef (1 lb tubes from frozen section)
• Ground Turkey (1 lb package in the fresh section)
• Salmon (I buy a fresh piece ~ about $20 ~ when I cut it up it makes about 8 filets, wrap in parchment paper and freeze)
• Tilapia (buy frozen ~ sealed individually)
• Trader Joes and Costco both have great sides that we enjoy. Brown rice and quinoa, ravioli, frozen veggies etc. 

A month long meal plan
The first row is what we are having that night and the second row tells you where I got the components from. I will say that this month is a special month. Over the past several months I've been making a lot of extra entrees and double batches of soup so I have a lot frozen already. We mostly just need our fresh vegetables this month. In the second row I also made notes of when I plan on making extras of something so you can see how I keep my freezer stocked. Every time I put an entree in the freezer I add it to my freezer list. This ensures that I know what I have for the next month! 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Cleanse Day 1 Recipes

Today I started my quarterly "oil change" to keep me on track with my health goals. Here's my overall plan that I've found to be successful:

Jan: Advocare 24 Day Challenge (10 Day Herbal Cleanse* + 14 Day Max Phase+)
April: Advocare 10 Day Herbal Cleanse*
July: Advocare 24 Day Challenge (10 Day Herbal Cleanse* + 14 Day Max Phase+)
October: Advocare 10 Day Herbal Cleanse*

*I add on meal replacement shakes and catalyst during the cleanse
*I add on catalyst and Thermoplus during the Max Phase


In between my "oil changes" I consistently take Omega Plex, Catalyst, Thermoplus, Liptilean, Clear Mood, and of course drink my spark!

Today was the first day of my 3rd "oil change" for this year. Here's some of the things I made today. Everyone does the challenge differently. I do my best to maintain the expectations in the challenge guide but I make it fit for my lifestyle and have the most success with the energy I have. For me, it's all about doing something you can continue ~ and this is something I can continue!

Hummus Chicken Salad (I through this together so no exact measurements):
shredded grilled chicken
1/2 of a fresh tomato, diced
4 slices of a cucumber, diced
handful of spinach
enough hummus to make it the consistency of chicken salad

Vegetable Soup
1 bag frozen lima beans
1 bag frozen pease and carrots
3 stalks of celery, diced
1/2 white onion, diced
1 can diced tomatoes, no salt
1 can mild rotel, low sodium
1/2 bottle V8 Juice, low sodium (maybe a little less depending on the amount of liquid you want)
2 tsp basil
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp beef paste (like bouillon, but I got it somewhere else and it was, low sodium)

If you are interested in more information about the products or have any questions, please contact me at hatfieldcassandra@gmail.com or go to www.AdvoCare.com/130944364

5 day lunchbox plan!

I've been "prepping" for sending a lunch with Evelyn everyday starting September 3rd. My biggest concerns being waist (things she wouldn't eat, or designing a plan that required purchasing several things and not using but one serving), cost, and ease for her care givers to serve it. Yesterday, my sweet sister-in-law, Rhonda, suggested that I make a 5 day plan and just reuse it every week! How smart is that! Each lunch for the week will be different but we will rotate the same lunches each week. Since Evelyn doesn't quite have enough teeth to eat some things, I decided to come up with things I know she can eat right now, then as time evolves I can make new menus.

Here's the first menu I've come up with. The last row is her afternoon snack. I'm open for suggestions and comments! As you can see I had to reuse Turkey Rollups (that's not bad!)

A few specifications on the things I'm packing:

Smoothies: I found these super cool  silicone molds and some great
smoothie recipes on a blog. They also have some tons of other great lunch ideas including some super healthy muffins that I might bake in mini muffin tins for breakfast! I think I'll just worry about lunches for now though!

Pouches: I previously posted the reusable pouches I've purchased and the great recipes I came up with. However, it looks like the company has posted some great new recipes on their fruit, veggie, and smoothie recipes on the website! I ordered my pouches from amazon.

The great thing about the smoothies and the pouches is that you can make up a bunch ahead of time and be good to go for the month! That's my plan!

Yogurt: Choboni Greek Yogurt Tubes (no high fructose corn syrup!)

PBJ Mini Waffles: I buy little frozen mini waffles and make 2 mini sandwiches using 4 waffles! Super easy!

Turkey Rollups: Turkey lunch meat rolled up with the string cheese

Chicken Squares: I just cube chicken breasts or sometimes even a rotisserie chicken from Costco and freeze them in snack baggies.

Turkey Patty Squares: I cook several turkey patties at a time, cube them up, and freeze them in snack baggies.

Hope this helps someone! I can't wait to see how this works, I feel like my stress level has gone down about this!

Update and change

Well it's been a long time since I've checked in on our blog! Miss Evelyn is now 15 months old. Here's a snapshot of birth to 1 year! It's amazing how fast time flies!

 We are so blessed by this little girl! She keeps us entertained and loving life. Here's a photo journey of the past few months.

After a long battle with breathing problems, 11 ear infections and trying every homeopathic solution. Right after Evelyn turned a year old we finally had solutions and thankfully 3 months later she is SO much better.
*She got tubes in her ears. Not a fun experience but worth it so far
*She went to see a pediatric pulmonologist and has started 2 puffs of a steroid inhaler twice a day.

These two things combined have kept us out of the doctors office and Scott and I haven't had to miss a day of work in the last three months! BLESSINGS!

We now have an obsession with cars! She hasn't quite figured out how to drive them, but getting in and out of multiple toy cars is where I can most likely find her when I pick her up from Mrs. Donna's. I guess having 3 toy cars in your back yard has a purpose! If anyone has a toy car they would like to get rid of, we will happily take it off your hands so we can have one in our own yard!

Spending time on the farm! Over the past 3 months we have been to Arkansas three times! Unfortunately, my father had a quadruple bypass during our first visit. He is doing better now! For our second trip we went on a holiday weekend to keep my dad company during his recovery. Then we just went this past weekend for 4th of July and had a ball!

Here's Evelyn with her "Papa" Great Grandpa Jack on her first 4 wheeler ride and meeting the cows :)

Fine Motor Skill Activity!
Put the beans in the cup!
Claudia and Noe are always modeling
and working with the babies!

Those of you that have been following our family story know that we made a "tough decision" to leave Learn - N - Fun Home Daycare in November of 2012. While at the time this decision was right for our family because of the time we were spending in the car driving daily, we have missed the structure, cleanliness, attention to detail, daily reports, pictures and true love for learning Claudia and Noe have in their sweet home daycare.

Circle Time during Texas Week! This love bug is
transitioning to one afternoon nap,
and the thumb is evidence! 

Big news ~ we've gone back!!!!! The week before the 4th of July our other caregiver was on vacation and Claudia and Noe happened to have an opening and accepted Evelyn back into their home for the week. This was LUCK (and God!)! Evelyn had a great week but it was evident that she was not as advanced as the other toddlers her age. I'm not saying by any means that I believe that my daughter is "behind." She isn't, she is very bright and is a great problem solver. However, as an educator you know how much I value education and when I see an open door to learning for my little one I'm going to run through it if I can.

During the ONE WEEK she was their she began to communicate with us in sign language. I began to see changes that made our lives easier. In fact, so significant that Evelyn wasn't SCREAMING every time she wanted something to eat or drink. She was able to express herself. Although we had worked on sign language at home with her, it was clear that having the follow through on a daily basis at school makes a difference!  So, since Learn - N - Fun has a great group of toddlers right now and have an opening for the next few months until they have some graduating (and weren't quite ready to take on any infants since this group of toddlers is so much fun) we agreed that having Evelyn go back to Learn - N - Fun for the educational experiences, to learn sign language, and to prepare for a structured environment was best. We are so thankful that we have this opportunity to have her in there home for the next few months. Beginning in September Evelyn will go to the Spanish House for a spanish immersion preschool but we know she will learn so much in the next 8 weeks before she goes to "big girl school"! I can't wait to see what that next step for our family is like ~ and no Scott nor I speak Spanish!  I'm also super excited about taking her to big girl school and also quite jealous that Scott has asked if he can take her lunch box shopping! I guess we will start a tradition...I'll do the backpack shopping with her and he can do the lunch box :) So fun! 

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