Study Buddies

I wish I could say that I love nursing school, but I cannot. I pretty much hated it. I hear things are better there and I pray that is true. While I love ACU, I can't say the same for AISN. But, I am FOREVER grateful for the friends I made while I was at nursing school. I called Amie Heidi and Christi the STUDY BUDDIES!!!
I love that I still get to see my study buddy, Amie, almost weekly at work. She is one of my best friends and has been there for me through so much in the 9 years we've known each other. Sometimes we get sad though. Our other study buddy Heidi moved to the frozen tundra known as Minnesota. We miss her. We are bad friends, we always let her come see us. But we finally decided we should go since she is moving to Texas soon!! We have so much fun catching up with her. I feels like she has been right alongside us working in the NICU, too. The girls were very brave and rode a roller coaster at the Mall of America. I took pictures with the other moms. We did lots of cooking, eating and playing cards. You should check out Amie's recap of our weekend! She has more pictures of the fabulous Pioneer Woman recipes we made. And, you should all learn to play Phase 10, it is soooo fun!

What Do You Want for Dinner?

Thiis is the constant question at our house. I try to cook a few nights a week, but try hard to avoid it on the weekends. :) Lately, I find myself spicing up our same old same old with recipes my blog friends have shared and I LOVE it!!! It is so nice to have something new and when it comes to cooking I am very visual, I really appreciate the step by step pictures people share as well. This meal has become one of our favorites and is very healthy, the little prince even likes it. He eats the bottom and picks out his favorite veggie....black beans... poor kid he is so strange.

So here goes. Chicken tamale casserole and black bean salad. This is a cooking light recipe that I lost the recipe for so, it's close but not exact.
The ingredients... Jiffy corn muffin mix, skim milk, shredded cheese, pam, cream style corn, egg substitute (I think this is why Cooking Light claims it as healthy), green chiles, red pepper and cumin.

Ok I am going to break it down real simple because that is how I like it. If you are like my friend Brooke and don't need all that, go cook you will figure it out just from the ingredients. I took it to her once and she instantly recreated it. I hate love that about her.

Get a bowl.
Dump your jiffy mix in the bowl. Add milk like the box says, and egg substitute for the eggs it calls for.
Drain your green chiles, good luck with this, I can't ever really get them drained without dumping them all in the sink and I only have a big colander and I am not getting it dirty for a little can of green chiles, so mine are semi-drained I would say...
Put your green chiles in the mix, too.
Put in about 1/4-1/2 c of cheese. I think it calls for a 1/4, but I LOVE cheese.
Add one can cream style corn.
Add about 1/8 tsp cumin and 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper. I use Cayenne, I am telling myself it is the same but I don't know that it is. I play with these measurements a little. This is where you make it more or less spicy. Michael likes it smoking, but Avery and I are wimpy so I usually do a small dash, can you believe it Mamma, I don't measure it!

Ok stir just until wet I remember it says.

I don't really know what that means, so I just try not to stir it too long.

Then pam your favorite 9x13 and throw that goop in. Cook it at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes the recipe said. I always have to cook it longer though, probably because my green chiles are too juicy. You know it is done when you can cake test it and it comes out clean.

The topping...

While it is cooking get the following

About 2c shredded chicken, if your husband isn't a chicken snob you can use the canned kind... I can't.

1 can old El Paso Red Tamale Sauce (I use mild, I already told you I am wimpy, you can spice it up if you want)

More Cheese

Sour cream (I pretend to be healthy and usually use fat free)

After the bottom comes out of the oven, use your cake tester to poke holes all over the casserole. The pour your enchilada sauce all over and let it soak into the cornbread part. Then sprinkle shredded chicken over that and cheese over that.

Pop it back in the oven and melt the cheese and warm up the chicken, maybe 10 minutes.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and an avocado slice is nice, too.

linde Some people I know have trouble with remembering to serve a side dish. While this is really filling, I personally feel cheated if I don't get to eat at least 2 things. In the winter we had black beans and rice, but it is summer and we have to wear our swim suits so we went less carb with a black bean salad.

This is from the Glenwood Church cookbook, thanks Dawn!

2(11 oz) cans white shoe peg corn, lime juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, 2 (15 oz) cans black beans, 2 large tomatoes, 1 bell pepper, 1 small purple onion, cilantro

Get a bowl and a whisk. Put 4 tbsp lime juice, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp red wine vinegar, 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper in it. Stir with your whisk. (I bet a spoon would work, too, but I like to follow directions.)

Add corn and black beans (I drain them because they are always a little slimy and will make the salad ugly.

Chop and seed the bell pepper and tomatoes.

Add the chopped and seeded bell pepper and tomatoes to the bowl.

Chop up your small purple onion.

Put it in the bowl, I usually don't use the whole thing. I think it is hard to find a small one and it can be overpowering but you need some and the purple is pretty in the salad.

Chop up about 1/4c fresh cilantro.

Put it in.

Stir, you can use a spoon for sure this time.

Cover and chill 2 hours and serve.

This was sooo yummy.

Enjoy, I challenge you all to share a recipe. I don't think I am a fab cook, but we all need the help!

Marvelous May Meeting with the McCords

We wrapped up our May with a visit to some of our FAVORITE people!!! The McCords. Annalee is a great friend and a wonderful blogger, she documented our weekend here. I knew it was going to be a great weekend when I saw my very own trip itinerary on the bed in the guest room! We had so much fun. If I could move any 2 cities closer together it would be Houston and Dallas so we could see FOUR of our favorite friends more.

Avery is again bustin' a move, our old school C of C relatives would flip over this mixed bathing...

Annalee and Evan found the best water park! It was a church and had the coolest Noah's ark pool that was only 1 foot deep. Our little daredevil loved the slides and the mushroom you can barely see on the right.

Having fun on the mushroom!!!
Enjoying the slide. Do you like the sassy new way I found to keep my hair back. :)

Thanks McCords it was a fabulous way to end our May!!!!!

Marvelous May Memorial Day

Another great thing in May is MEMORIAL DAY! I love it because it means summer is HERE! I am a summer girl through and through. I HATE to be cold, I LOVE to swim. I think the feeling when you go from a cold air conditioned building to a miserably hot car that has been sitting in the sun. I LOVE the lake. I am so glad my parents got a lake house for me to abuse. Memorial Day for Michael and Avery was supposed to have started with one of their favorite things, baseball. They went to Tyler to watch Blake's team play. Unfortunately the other team forfeited so there was no baseball, but there was tons of good family time with Michael's family. I am a bad wife and forgot to send the camera. Sunday I got to join the boys at my parent's house after working Friday and Saturday. We had a blast!

I wonder when I will be old enough that I don't get a kick out of the hold your own camera and take your picture. At least older than 29!

Remember when buddy buddy was bustin' a move? He's cruisin for chicks now...

I love my Mamma...
Avery was not sure about the water at first... it isn't like at water babies... but don't worry he very quickly decided it was GREAT!
All that swimming makes a fella tired!

I hope your Memorial Day weekend was great, too. Thanks for going down memory lane with me. We have one more Marvelous May and then I will get caught up.

Marvelous May Part 1

For most of May I was having camera talking to the computer issues... so annoying and left you so uninformed. Here are some of the fun things we did this month. May is Marvelous because I get to celebrate my birthday. Michael totally shamed me and did a great job of helping me celebrate, I can't say I did the same for him... I will have to do better next year. We started out by going out for Marvelous Mexican food on the eve of my big day. I love that my family stretches out the celebrating for maximum fun.

Avery thought the colors were cool,see doesn't he look excited? Michael and I were there, too but I forgot to take our pictures. Dinner at Matt's was awesome. How can a dinner not be with a Margarita and Bob Armstrong dip... I LOVE dips and chips!

Poor Michael I give him no credit. He was very tricky and called the Friday before asking for Birthday help. I sassily replied I wasn't helping him and launched into a speech about how he always used to put so much thought into my gifts and that I didn't need much, but the thought DOES count. Little did I know, he had already done it all. He even ordered a great Birthday cake from Casa Linda Bakery, yummy! AND I got a KINDLE!!! Oh the fabulousness I can't read it enough. I am amazed at how quickly I have become spoiled to books at my finger tips with no shopping, no need to turn my own pages or wonder exactly what a word means... the definition is always only a click away... GET ONE!

My Birthday morning we got up and went to water babies. I thought it would be so fun for Avery to show off his mad skills for LouLou and Papa. Boy was I wrong. Avery peed on Dad through his swim diaper while waiting for class to start and then flatly refused to do any of his best water baby tricks due to a new case of separation anxiety... good grief.

Luckily, he pulled it together and was in a great mood for lunch at my beloved North Park!!! Snappy Salads were a great way to move past the water baby drama in our lives. How can you not be happy in the greatest mall ever?

That night our soon to be Aunt Courtney was sweet enough to watch Avery because we got to go to a suite at the Ranger game. It was so great!

Dad hired us all for the night as employees of ServPro so we could enjoy the festivities, thanks Daddy!

Jeff and Linde joined in the fun again, so nice of them! Poor Linde, she doesn't know to look AT the camera.

It was a great game, the Rangers won at the very end in extra innings! We had a blast. The fun even last through Thursday when Jeff and Linde came over for dinner again and Courtney joined us. What a birthday week!

Did you see my new button?

I got a new blog button! It is for the breast cancer 3 day.

My mom sister and I are walking for 3 days, 65 miles, to support breast cancer research. This is my Grandma Linda and Papa Henry on their wedding day. Grandma Linda died of breast cancer when I was 5. I am sad that I barely knew her. I remember that she was fun. I know from my family that she was the glue that made her family work it's best. I know she and my dad look a lot alike. I know that her name, Linda, gave my sister her name, Linde. But, I never really knew this wonderful woman. I want Avery to know his grandmothers and I want to know my grandchildren. I am walking so that I will not have to worry that breast cancer will stand in the way of seeing these things happen.
This is my Papa and Grandma Jo on their wedding day. Grandma Jo died when my mom was a freshman in college. My sister, dad and I never got to know her. I know that my Aunt Susan Jo and I get to share her name and I have always loved that. It makes me proud every time someone calls me Abbe Jo. I know that my sister's amazing artistic ability comes at least in part from Grandma Jo, she was also an artist. I know that will always wonder what it would be like to have her in my life.

Please help me in walking my tail off raising money and awareness to fight breast cancer.

If you can't help monetarily I would love for you to help by praying for families affected by breast cancer. While I know what life is like after losing a loved one to this disease I can't imagine what it is like to live with this disease. You can also walk with me anytime. While Avery is fun company, it is even more fun to talk to someone who says something other than Ma Ma. Or, pass along the link to someone who might want to help.

Thanks so much...

Abbe JO

Summer has Started!!!

This is the life. I am so glad my parents live at the lake....

I think ABW is too