Chicken Burrito Bowl

With a busy toddler running around and me working a lot of evenings, the crock pot has become a must have at our house to make healthy dinners happen with significantly less frustration.  My husband's favorite crock pot meal is the chicken burrito bowl.  Bonus - the kids all like it too!  This is one of the easiest meals to make.

Ingredients:
1.5# boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 cans black beans - drained and rinsed
1 can corn - drained and rinsed
1 jar salsa of your choice
1 Tbsp chili powder
1/2 Tbsp cumin powder
1/2 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1/4 cup water/chicken broth/veggie broth
brown rice or quinoa


Optional Toppings:  cheese, sour cream, guacamole, fresh cilantro

Directions:

1.  Place chicken in bottom of crock pot.  Add remainder of ingredients, except rice/quinoa and stir.  Make sure chicken remains covered.  Cook on low for 8 hours.  After chicken mixture is cooked, shred chicken with two forks and then mix all ingredients well.

2.  Cook brown rice or quinoa according to package directions.

3. Put rice in each bowl and top with chicken mixture and desired toppings.



That's all there is to it.  Even my twins can make this one so long as they have help measuring.

Makes great leftovers too!

New Year, New You!

Find out why you should start your new year with a 30 day clean eating challenge.  Learn which foods are nourishing and which foods are holding you back. I want to give you the tools to succeed in living a healthier life!  There are two events coming up soon.  See the information below for details.  If these times don't work out for you, please let me know so we can arrange another time for you.

Topic: 30 Days to Healthy Living
Time: Dec 17, 2015 2:00 PM (GMT-6:00) Central Time (US and Canada)

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I can breathe again.

Well, when I last left off, I had just graduated from PA school and I was looking for a job.  I was also living with my parents while we built a house.  THREE years have passed (good grief) and there have been so many answered prayers.

We are loving our new house.  We have just enough bedrooms and a big wide open living space for hosting friends and family.  Jonathan loves his four car garage and we all love our neighbors.  We designed it with the idea of living in it forever and I think we just might...Unless, of course, God has something else planned for our future.

When I graduated from PA school, I took a job in primary care that required a commute to a nearby town.  I loved my patients and walking beside them in life cheering them on and crying with them during the tough times.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do all my work during normal work hours and my family was suffering for it.  One of my twins was getting a lot of notes home from school and my other twin was developing quite the attitude.  I was always stressed out and I took it out on my family.  The birth of another baby girl in December of 2015 was the tipping point.  I stopped just praying about a change in our situation and started looking around to see what I could do to get my kids out of daycare.

I never saw myself in urgent care, but this is exactly where I am now.  I was always afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep up with the pace and that something would come in that I couldn't handle.  But, the hours (part-time) and the ability to take all three of my kids out of daycare was exactly what I had been praying for.  Despite the fact that there are no guaranteed hours, no benefits, and I was scared of this field, I took a huge leap of faith and God has blessed us abundantly for it.  The same day I turned in my letter of resignation, Jonathan got a promotion to a closer office.

This change has made my life feel so much more balanced.  My twins are doing better, I'm not stressed out all the time, my marriage has improved, and I get to watch my baby learn and grow.  I don't get to be quite so invested in my patients now, but I do get to be more invested in my friends and family.  And the job isn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be.  I'm getting much more comfortable with things like sutures and IV fluids.  I'm becoming a much more well-rounded PA.

Early Risers

I am a morning person.  I can't help it.  Even on days when I have no reason to get up and no children in my house I am up by 7:00am.  I am not, however, ready to socialize right when I get up and certainly not before 6:00am.  It's like a magical time for me at which point I become capable of communicating.  Talk to me before that and I might bite your head off.  God blessed me with two early risers.  Julia is like her momma.  She might get up early, but she's not really ready to start her day yet.  She just wants to snuggle.  Amelia, my little social butterfly, knows no time at which she is not happily chatting away.  Now my girls go to bed at 8:00pm every night.  So 6:00am is an appropriate wake up time for them at this age (4).  Unfortunately, my little darlings had a hard time figuring this out.  They wanted to get up at 5:00 or 5:30am no matter what time we put them to bed.  We tried using a baby gate to keep them in their room until 6:00, but they just knocked it over and then it scared them and they started bawling.  Then we found my very favorite product ever.

The Teach Me Time Talking Alarm Clock and Nightlight.  This clock is amazing!  You can set it to turn yellow at bedtime then green when it's time to wake up.  It didn't take long for the girls to catch on to this.  In addition, this clock has several other cool features.  You can make it read just digital or just analog or both.  You can push a button and it will tell you what time it is.  There are games in which it will ask you what time the clock says and then you push a button and it tells you the answer.  It even has an alarm for when the kids get bigger and getting up early isn't so much fun anymore.  This clock retails for about $40.  We got ours online from Barnes and Noble, but there are several other online sources as well.

A Season of Change

I can't believe I haven't posted since August.  Obviously a lot has happened since then.

I finally achieved my master's degree in Physician Assistant Studies.  Now I'm studying for my national certification exam and looking for a job.

Julia has been loving her class this year.  She has show-and-tell every Friday in which she brings something that begins with a selected letter of the alphabet.  They are counting down 100 days of school and on day 100 they will have a pajama party.  They have already had an 80's dance party.  Her teacher was really impressed with her when she gave an impromptu performance of the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song.  I'm teaching my girls all the best things from the 80's and 90's.

Amelia's class seems to be in a constant state of transition.  They have had three lead teachers and at least two afternoon teachers since August.  All that change has been hard on the kiddos.  Fortunately, her newest lead teacher is excellent.  She has years of experience and is no-nonsense.  Just what a class full of little girls needs to quelch some of the drama.  Her Christmas party was tons of fun with decorating sugar cones like Christmas trees, tossing bean bags through a wreath, and balancing Hershey Kisses on spoons across the room and then placing them in a stocking.

We sold our first house and are now living with my parents while we build our dream house.  We signed the build contract two months ago and already had all of our interior and exterior selections made.  So far they have managed to uproot the two trees in the backyard, but one of the stumps is still lying there.  I was hoping the framing would be complete by the time the cold weather hit, but it seems that there are a lot of houses in progress with our building company.  We were hoping to be in the new house by March, but it looks like it will be more like April or May.  Praise the Lord my parents have built before and are reasonably understanding about the whole situation.

This is our lot before the trees came down

First Day of Pre-K

The girls had their first day of Pre-K on Monday.  They were really excited to get back to school and see all their friends and they couldn't wait to explore their new classes.  The girls go to a really small school, so there was nothing intimidating about this transition for them.  They were already very familiar with their new teachers and they have most of the same classmates still.  Julia is an Allstar.  Her class pet is a snake named George Washington and her teacher is a soccer junky.  It's a good fit for Julia because she's so creative and active.  Amelia is a Terrific Tiger.  Her teacher is on maternity leave, so time will tell what her class will really be like.  She is enjoying her substitute for now though.

Keeping the Peace

Like any set of siblings, my girls have their moments where they play nicely together followed immediately by screams and tears.  Praise the good Lord for one bit of wisdom that I found somewhere on the mighty internet many moons ago that has drastically decreased the amount of bickering in our home.  On a calendar on the refrigerator (where all of our sanity saving documents can be found) we have the letters "A" and "J" alternating on every day of every month.  Each of our girls take turns being the Leader of the Day.  Big title that comes with lots of perks.  The leader of the day in our house gets to choose all things first, unless of course they are over-ruled by Mom and Dad.  This includes, but is not limited to dish color, seat at the table, car seat, movie, TV show, etc.  It also means that she gets to do things first, such as say her prayers first before bed.  Sometimes being the leader means that you have to be the brave one.  At our first dentist appointment we had no eager volunteers.  So the leader of the day was elected (by yours truly) to go first.  I think the beauty of this technique is that nobody really gets terribly sad (whines or pitches a fit) when it's not their day because they know that tomorrow they get the coveted title and all that goes with it.

How do you keep meltdowns at a minimum in your house?  Do you have any tips for dealing with sibling rivalry?

Sometimes I think they may actually like each other!