Crockpot Henny Penny Chicken

I’m linking up with Kelly’s Korner today in her Crockpotalooza.  We do lot’s of Crock Pot dinners during football season.  I’m usually ready to eat about 6 and Coach usually gets home around 9 or 10 so the Crock Pot is an easy solution for us. 

Henny Penny Chicken is my go-to recipe because it literally takes no thought or prep.  You can use frozen chicken, it uses ingredients I always have around the house, and you can cook it as long as you like.  SO EASY!

Ingredients:

• as many chicken tenderloins as you like (I typically use about 6 from the frozen bags)
• I can of the family size cream of chicken soup
• Lemon pepper

Place all chicken and soup in crock pot, top with lemon pepper.  Cook on low at least 4 hours, up to 12 hours.  I usually serve over white rice with some sort of veggie. 

Seriously, it doesn’t get any easier than that!

Battle of the Lakes

After Matt’s game on Friday night Julie, Jon, Sydney, Mrs. Joseph and I hoped on 71 to Austin for Jeff’s game.  Westlake played Lake Travis at DKR for the “Battle of the Lakes.”  There was over 17,000 people there!

Jeff is the DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR this year at Westlake.  Whoop!  Matt and I are so proud! 

Westlake played great but fell to LT 35-7.  It broke my heart that Jeff lost his first game as DC; I know how hard these coaches work and how each loss makes you feel.  I’m sure he will have them in tip-top shape in no time.

On a brighter note, Westlake totally won halftime!  The Hyline was stunning as always, but the band!  Oh, the band!  All of the WHS students received an iPad for school this year, and at halftime about 10 members of the band played their iPad’s instead of their instruments!  WOW!  The rest of the band marched without instruments for one of the best routines I’ve ever seen.  They formed a stick figure and “walked” across the field and kicked a field goal!  Here’s a video I took of the routine- you can hear the iPad’s playing and hopefully you can see the band marching.  I was on about the 20th row so probably too close to really get a good view. 

Season opener

Wow, I feel like I can finally breathe!  Friday night Katy played North Shore at home and all day at school I was a nervous wreck.  I think I would have been really anxious if it were just the first game of the season, but combined that straight out of the gate we faced North Shore…yeah, anyone would be nervous. 

I got to the game and Mrs. Carp (KHS athletic secretary) and Mrs. Joseph could barely sit still.  I felt a little better after I saw how they felt, lol.  Getting through pre-game and the national anthem were TORTURE, but once we kicked off I felt better. 

It was SO INCREDIBLY HOT, but the heat didn’t seem to faze our Tigers.  We won 34-6!  Our offense and defense hit on all cylinders and made North Shore look silly.  Needless to say by halftime I was feeling a little more relaxed and was able to sit and enjoy the rest of the game.

At one point Coach J got a little heated at one of the ref’s.  These pictures are too good not to share!

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The rest of these pictures are all from the chronicle’s website.  Love them!

Love you, Coach!  Congrats on your first win!

Back to School

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Today was the first day of school for the 2011-2012 school year and my 23rd first day of school.  Wow!  I honestly cannot imagine doing any other job where I didn’t get to experience the first day back after a long summer off.  I love the sleepless night beforehand, the back to school shopping, the school supplies!  Oh, the school supplies.  Honestly, that’s probably half of the reason I do what I do (I kid.) 

My new babies were great today and I loved seeing their excited faces this morning greeting all of their friends.  I had several of my old babies come see me and they seemed so much older than I remember them.  Is that seriously possible?!?

I posted some of the projects I did for my classroom last night but did not include my new wreath!

I was totally inspired by Lauren’s Pinterest wreath board and had to add this wreath to my room.  It’s very elementary, but the teacher-nerd in me HAD to hang this in my room.  I got sooo many compliments from my babies today so it was totally worth it.  And seriously SO EASY!  Honestly, $10 and an hour is all you need for this project.  I used my cricut for the letters and laminated them at school.  This would make a great gift for a teacher and one the teacher is sure to love!

What do you think?  How was your first day of school?

Cricut!

So I have a confession to make…I am really good at procrastinating.  Like, so good that I have a whole room in my house that I still haven’t unpacked since we moved in.  In 2008.  Yeah, I told you it was a problem.

I have tons of lists in my mind of things I want to get done and always file everything under “to do this summer.”  One such list was Matt’s football scrapbooks.  I want to keep a scrapbook for each season so when he’s 90 and finally retires we can look back through and remember everything.  I’ve been really good these past 5 years at taking pictures, cutting out newspaper articles, saving ticket stubs, program covers, etc.  But everything I have saved has ended up in “the room.”  So this summer I made a huge dent in “the room” by scrapbooking 2 of the past 4 football seasons.  Yay! 

I already had the 2007 seasons mostly completed, but finished up 2007 and 2008.  It’s not the most creative but holds everything we want to remember from some really fun times in our lives.

It took me about a week to do the 2008 season because I cut out all of those letters on each page BY HAND!  I had to trace then cut and then glue everything in.  It took for.ev.er!  So when I went to Michael’s to stock up on paper for the 2009 season, I made a big purchase…a cricut!

 

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It’s a machine that cuts shapes and letters for you, GENIUS! All I have to do is feed the paper in and type what I want printed and voila!  I should have done this a long time ago!

I’ve been so busy with school I have not finished the 2009 season yet (thank you, procrastination) but I have done a few things for school:

A new sign for my door

Signs for my team

Classroom rules

And I made a “Katy Tigers” banner that I forgot to take a picture of.  The best part is, I probably spent a total of 3 hours on everything!  Best purchase I’ve made in a long time. 

Now to finish the 2009 and 2010 seasons… 

Here we go

Matt’s been back to work coaching for awhile now and it’s finally official for the rest of us!  On Monday we had the Town Pep Rally at KHS to kick off the 2011 football season.  The weather was great and breezy- a perfect August night.  (So much better than these 100 degree+ days we have been having.)

Lol, I couldn’t resist posting this.  Love my hubs!

Miss Keegan Grace

Matt introducing his players

2011 Secondary

Me and my coach

With my cheer girls, all grown up

Atwood

#20- the current and the original

Ebrecht’s

GO TIGERS!

Princess party!

On Wednesday we all got together to celebrate Miss Brooks’ first birthday!

She was so adorable in her little tutu and sparkle shoes.  Oh, I could just eat her up!  She loved all the attention and gifts (really the tissue paper) but her favorite thing from the night was the balloons!

My mom made a fabulous feast of lasagna and chicken parmesan and managed to fit 21 of us for dinner.  Way to go, mom!  She is such a wonderful hostess.  I’m sad I didn’t get a better picture of her and Brooks than this:

 

I worked my tail off on Wednesday making dessert and Brooks’ smash cake.  I even got my cake pops to turn out better than last time!  Unfortunately the cake pops turned over on the smash cake in the car on the way to the party so neither looked great.  Just my luck that BOTH the cake pops and the cake would be ruined, not one of the other.

Brooks was NOT a fan of the smash cake.  She sort of dug into it, but nothing too messy.  So very girly of her.

Love you, baby girl! Happy birthday!

Happy 1st birthday

Baboo- today you are ONE year old!  Where has this year gone?!?

I feel like just yesterday we were at the hospital waiting impatiently for you to arrive.  But you were so worth the wait!

You are the BEST baby little girl that we could have ever asked God for.  And you have SO many people who love you to pieces. 

I pray that each year gets better and better for you and your mama.  You have learned so much this past year and I can’t wait to see where you are on your second birthday!

Hopefully before your second birthday you will have a little cousin to love on.  

Love you Brooxie Kate,

Aunt Amanda and Uncle Matty

Goodbye, Matty

It’s official…it’s FOOTBALL SEASON!  Two-a-days started today (really 4-a-days for the coaches, two freshman and two varsity) which makes me a…

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Don’t worry, Matt is acclimated to the heat from working summer fitness and drinks LOTS of water throughout the day.  The trainers keep an eye on the heat index and they take lots of breaks in the shade.  He told me today when he came home “it wasn’t that bad.  And I was so into practice I really didn’t notice the heat.”  I’m not sure I really believe that, but I’m glad to know that in 100+ degree weather he still enjoys his job.