Creamy Mac n Cheese Casserole

Recipe Wednesday!!!

Creamy Mac n Cheese Casserole


Ingredients
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 tsp dry mustard
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 2 cups shredded cheese (I usually use sharp cheese)
- 1 box rotini pasta
- 1 bag broccoli florets
- 1 can potatoes, cut into bite sizes
- (optional- you can also put cubed chicken breasts in)

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Bring pasta to a boil, add broccoli and potatoes. Keep boiling until all are cooked. Drain. Return to pan.

3. Melt butter. Add flour and dry mustard. Blend until a thick paste.

4. Add milk and mix. Add cream of chicken soup and stir until all is blended, and mixture is thick.

5. Add cheese. Stir until creamy.

6. Pour sauce mixture over pasta mixture and Stir until combined.

7. Pour into baking dish. Top with cheese.

8. Bake 20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.

Enjoy!! 

This is a favorite in our house! The kids love it! The husband loves it! Win Win!!

5 Truths About Motherhood

`When I was growing up I always knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom. I would play with my baby dolls and imagine being the best mom ever.

And with my barbies...the mom barbie I played with, was the cool mom that all the kids liked. 

BUT...Let me tell you a few realities about motherhood that I have learned since I first became a mom.


1. Being a Mom is hard...

When you first get that positive pregnancy test all you can think about is how good it will be to be a mom and have a baby. 

How much fun you will have dressing your new baby, and the peaceful sleeping baby will get. And then when your baby gets a little older how feeding your toddler will be so much fun to see all the silly faces when she tries new foods.

What you don't think about is that you'll peed on when you change your newborns diaper. When you try to dress that cute little bundle in that little outfit your baby won't stop kicking his legs, or trying to roll over. It's an exercise just to get the little stinker dressed. Getting a baby dressed is hard...

The sleepless nights you now get because your baby wants a bottle every 5 minutes. Or teething that keeps baby awake. Getting baby to sleep good is hard...

Those cute silly faces your expecting to see when baby tries new foods. But, you also get those new foods on the wall, the floor, all over babies face, and all over you. Feeding a baby is hard...

Parenting is also hard because when toddlers get older they start talking. Then you start hearing the word 'no' coming from them a lot. They start back-talking and trying to get their own way. Oh and the fighting and attitudes, don't even get me started on that. 

2. Being a Wife is hard...

You have so many dreams of being the perfect mom when you become one, that sometimes you forget that your still a wife. I'm including this because to be a good mom, I need to also be a good wife. I have three girls, their watching and learning from me how to be a wife and mom. 

Sometimes at the end of the day you just want to go to bed and relax. Maybe watch tv or read a book to unwind. You really just want to be left alone. No more people to pull on your shirt and ask for a snack or hang on your legs or ask for another drink or ask for another story... or, the list goes on. 

So at the end of the day, if your like me, you just want to be left alone. No more questions, no more hanging off me, no more (insert your answer here). 

But that's not always the reality. You still have a husband that needs your attention too. And as much as you just want to hibernate for the rest of the night until the kids get up in the morning...you can't. 

It's hard to be a wife at the end of a long day of being a mom.


3. Being a Friend is hard...

Sometimes you make plans with a friend to go out without kids... But then you have to cancel last minute because a kid gets sick.

You feel like the worst friend ever... because it seems like this happens every time you go out.

Or on the rare chance that you still have a friend without kids... you only talk about your kids because they are your job. Your with them all day everyday. You never ever get a break from them. And your friend is probably sick and tired of hearing about all your kid stories. 

Then there's the fact that your always busy. Your kids have things going on, so trying to schedule a night out is close to impossible.


4. Being a Person is hard...

Your now socially awkward because you're around your kids all the time. 

You say things like "I'll be right back, I gotta go potty" and other things like that.

If your a stay at home mom like I am you may be a lonely mom too. Being a stay at home mom you don't get much adult interaction, which is also why your socially awkward too. 

My kids are my job. I also home-school my 2 oldest. Which means I'm at home a lot. That also means I don't get out much...See where I'm going with this? ...It's lonely. 

You can also lose your identity. Your life revolves around your kids and everything they do and what their involved in. You lose time to do things that you enjoy, just for fun. 

"Who are you?" ... "I'm so and so's mom"

You can forget who you are, and who you were before you had kids. 


5. Not wanting to change a thing is hard...

Yes...I know this sounds crazy. But have you ever thought your life would be so much easier if things were different? If you were someone else? If you didn't have kids?

But the fact is, I don't want my life to be different. I don't want to be someone else. I don't want to not have my kids. I love my life... because it's mine. My ups and downs...are MY ups and downs.

The fact is...even though these little people have taken over my life...I wouldn't have it any other way. I love them more than anything.

The Story of Ava

Since I did a post on the Story of Emma, I'll do one on Ava now. Leah will be the next one.

I'll start where I left off from Emma's story...

My husband found a job! ...but... it was 5-6 hours away. We were living with my parents at the time. I'm very close with my family, so this was very hard for me to comprehend doing...Leaving my family.

He of course took the job. It was the perfect job for him. It's where he wanted to be, and with a great Christian company. He started the beginning of March 2010.

Emma was 3 1/2 months old now. Jon went ahead and moved to the new city, to start his new job. I stayed behind for Emma's 4 month well check appointment. 

Jon came back for 3 weekends in a row to visit Emma and me... The third weekend he came back for a visit, we moved with him. 

The next weekend after we moved... I honestly don't even remember why anymore, I must not have felt very well, so I took a pregnancy test...It was positive. 

On April 1st...of course. Neither Jon, nor my family believed me...I hardly believed it myself... I was pregnant.

I feel like a lot of this was a blur. I don't remember a whole lot... Other than we just had Emma, we just moved to a new City, I didn't know anyone, and I just found out that I'm gonna have another baby. BUT... that's a whole different post click here to read.

I had to wait a whole month before I could go to a doctor, or even make an appointment somewhere. Until our new insurance came into affect. 

I didn't start getting sick until about 12 weeks. It was rough...having an infant and being pregnant at the same time. Of course, every time I left the room for my "morning sickness" Emma cried because I left her. It wouldn't have been so hard if we were still around family. 

Anyway... When it finally came time for the ultrasound, we found out we were having another girl! 

We also found out that my placenta was lying low, but that it should fix itself as i grow. I got another ultrasound around 30 weeks I think...and everything was normal! 

^This is Emma At 11 months old and me 37 weeks along with Ava. 

I started having contractions early morning on Nov. 18th. I went to the hospital to get checked. I went from 3 centimeters to 4 centimeters in about 1 hour. So they decided to keep me. 

I knew that I was under a lot of stress during this pregnancy...but I was about to find out how much it really affected me.

I was due Dec. 6, 2010...the day before Emma's first birthday. She came 2 1/2 weeks early, on Nov. 18th. We named her Ava!

The labor and delivery itself was actually pretty similar to when I had Emma. Finally, the moment came for that final push and when she came out ... there was no cry. I felt like everything around me was coming to a stop. I remember looking at Jon and saying "she's not crying, why isn't she crying? babies cry when their born"

Jon and I just looked at each other and were trying to see what was going on. Why didn't she cry? What was going on? 

A nurse finally came over and told us that since she was so early, technically preterm, she was having some trouble breathing. Every new parents worst fear.

This is the first picture we got of her...

Stress can cause preterm birth. So that's why Ava came early. Preterm is 37- 38 weeks...I did not know this, but if an expectant mother is under stress it can slow down certain organs form developing as they should. So that's why she was having trouble breathing.

They had her under something called 'the hood'.

The hood wasn't helping so they had me kangaroo with her to see if that would help regulate her breathing. That was the first time I got to hold her. They let me hold her for about 10 minutes before they decided to take her to the NICU.

And then they whisked her away.

This is what she looked like for about the first week or so. They hooked her up to a cpap to help her breathe.

When she started breathing better on her own, she just had to learn how to eat good on her own...Without a feeding tube.

She came home Dec.1st! And she finally got to meet her big sister, who was 11 1/2 months old.

 Now she is a healthy 4 year old!!

 This was a rough time, but I know that we went through this for a reason. 

The Story of Emma

Since Emma's 5th birthday is today I thought I'd write the story of her.

It all started... 

On Jon and I's first wedding anniversary we decided to start trying to get pregnant with our first baby! I remember being so excited to finally start the next chapter in our lives and start a family! 

The first month and nothing. 

Month two...still nothing.

Now, I knew it would be too good to be true to get pregnant the first month of trying... But then month three, four, and five went by. I was frustrated. 

And then it happened! It took eight months, but I was finally expecting! Our first baby! 

We were so excited! 

I was already getting cravings and noticing little changes.

I was about 6 or 7 weeks along... It took almost a week for the doctor to confirm that we lost the baby. 

We were devastated. 

I...was devastated. 

Nothing could have prepared me mentally and physically for what I was going through and what I was about to go through because of this.

I was a mess. I went through a lowest low in my life. A depression that I didn't know how I was going to get out of. 

After about three months- the recommended time to wait- we started trying again. I felt good about trying again, but I wasn't exactly emotionally over my miscarriage yet. 

Over a year later and we were still trying...no baby.

I saw a specialist to hopefully get some answers. At one point I was diagnosed with a case of PCOS. But they said I should still be able to get pregnant.

I even had the specialist say that I'll never get pregnant... I believe the word he used was that I was "infertile". 

But no one could give me a real answer as to why I wasn't getting pregnant.

After a couple more months of nothing...I went back to my regular obgyn and asked if there was anything else I could try before giving up. She recommended Clomid... I was on my second month of taking it and BAM, I got a positive pregnancy test!

I was in disbelief...I mean, I was just told a couple months before that I may never get pregnant. 

I remember so vividly what happened when I got that positive... Just to be sure I took a second test. Another positive. Jon was working late that day. So, What else do you do? Call your best friend! So, I called my friend Ang. She wasn't busy so I ended up going over to hang out. This might be gross, but I took my tests and showed her. I asked her if I was reading them right lol! (She already had 2 or 3 kids at the time) She confirmed that I was in fact reading them correctly! 

So when it came time to tell Jon...I was actually a little nervous. What if I lost this one too? I didn't want to raise his hopes only for them to be dropped again.

We were sitting on the couch watching tv... Now if you know Jon, you know that he is a very technical person. He's very into computers and phones and all things techie...So how else is the perfect way to tell him? Through technology! ...and you may not agree with this way of me telling him, but it was perfect for us...I sent him a text! A simple one that said "your gonna be a daddy!"

When he got this text...I will never forget his reaction. He looked at me with a huge smile and said "Are you serious?" I smiled and shook my head yes, and then of course we hugged and I may have cried a little.

This time we waited the recommended 12 weeks to announce it. 

The pregnancy was fairly by the book...I had morning sickness, in the morning, for only the first 12 weeks. I craved steak and that actually helped with the morning sickness. I also craved pink lemonade. It felt like it took forever for me to start showing. I felt like I waited so long for this that I just wanted to show so i could see that our baby was still growing.

At the 18 week ultrasound we found out we were having a girl! 

We also found out that she had a 2 vessel cord. We didn't really know what all this meant at the time... Most babies have a 3 vessel umbilical cord, but our baby only had 2 vessels in her umbilical cord. We found out that meant that she wasn't going to get as much food and nutrients as a baby with a 3 vessel cord. So she would be on the small side. 

I got more ultrasounds than normal to make sure she was getting enough food and nutrients and growing ok.  

About 20 weeks pregnant my husband lost his job. We were scared and unsure what was going to happen. Since we lost our insurance, I had to find a different doctor. Fortunately, we were able to get medicaid. I ended up getting an awesome doctor. Who I actually liked better! We also moved in with my parents.

My due date was November 27, 2009... She was induced 10 days overdue. She was born Dec. 7, 2009! Healthy!

(We first started trying to get pregnant Sept. of 2006. It took more then 2 1/2 years for us to have our first baby)

She weighed in at 6 pounds 1 ounce. 19 inches long. We named her Emma. 

Now Emma is a happy, healthy 5 year old!

And I wouldn't trade our experience for anything. God knew what he was doing the whole time. Emma is an awesome big sister! 

You know you're a SAHM if...

I read a list of 25 reasons you know your a SAHM. I decided to make my own list. I may copy a few,  but these will all be what applies to me.  Here it goes...

You know your a stay at home mom if...

1. You wear yoga pants...but don't do yoga

2. Your socially awkward because you only talk to kids all day.

3. You eat chocolate in secret so the kids don't see.

4. Your TV is on all day but you don't actually watch it much.

5. The best part of your day is when all the kids are napping.

6. Nap time is never long enough.

7. Showers are a luxery...and a rarity. 

8. You go to put shoes on after several days of not wearing them and you find toys in them

9. You spend nap time either cleaning or relaxing

10. When you put jeans on your kids ask where your going.

11. When you go on a date you have nothing to talk about except the kids.

12. Unless its a normal laundry day and you have a load to do, you usually forget about it.

13. Baby wipes are really the only cleaning tool you need.

14. You know what restaurants nearby have play places.

15. It's only 9am and your ready for bed.

16. Going to the bathroom involves an audience.

17. You don't remember when the last time was that you slept all night.

18. Your mini-van is so messy your embarrassed for others to see it.

19. Your able to identify who's coming down the stairs based on the thudding of their feet above you.

20. Sneezing is more about squeezing your legs than the sneeze itself.

21. You randomly find odd things in the freezer or fridge...example: crayons.

22. You know the theme songs to Disney Junior songs by heart.

23. You say something and realize your becoming your mom.

24. Your busy all day and you have nothing to show for it.

25. Your dream car is now a certain mini van and no longer a car.

26. Wiping a toddlers nose is more of an excersise than anything else.

27. You wouldn't change any of it for the world.