Freezer Meal Momma

Things here are getting crazier by the day... So I desperately wanted to be able to throw something in the crockpot and forget about dinner until it was time to serve it. I found just the thing - and 16 different meals or more depending on your family!! 

Wildtree makes it all so easy! You can customize it based on your family's needs and desires - if there is a protein you don't eat, swap it out for something else. If there is a vegetable you don't like, swap it out. You eat only organic, Wildtree is all organic - add your organic proteins & veggies and you are set. You are Gluten Free -- most of these products are too! 

I bought this kit and the 50% off add on for this month's promotion -- and BAM -- I have all of these ready to go in the crockpot straight from the freezer! Contact me to get information about our crockpot plans and add ons for this month!

Crockpot Chicken Posole

Chicken & Tomatoes with Garlic Cream Sauce

Flank Steak Fajitas

Mediterranean Chicken

Fajita Pulled Pork

Shredded Chicken Burritos

Primavera Meat Lasagna

Chili con Cerveza

Chicken & Veggies in Gravy

Absolutely Onion Pot Roast

Extra Recipes:

Italian Meatballs

Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes & Feta

Chicken Pot Pie

Sweet Baked Chicken

And some extra side dish recipes

Add on meals: (available in March at 1/2 off!)

Italian Chicken Sandwiches

Super Sloppy Joes (sooo yummy!!)

Wicked Slow Cooker Chicken

Outrageous Meatballs

Stuffed Cabbage

Absolutely Onion Pot Roast

I love that the grocery list and recipes come with each of these plans for you... It makes life so much easier! The kit came in on a Tuesday - so I did the shopping over the weekend then we prepared everything Tuesday night after John got home from work. 

It took us about 2 hours to get it all done, but each of those chicken recipes calls for 2 lbs of chicken -- so we split them into 2 meals. Which means we ended up with -- 32 meals roughly, and with the supplies you get... You can make most of the meals twice!

There are 3 different crockpot menus that could be used -- and the add on kit is good only for March at the 1/2 price deal -- it's an add on if you spend $50. 

Here is everything all ready for the freezer! Such a blessing I found this company just before we started going through this ordeal.

God was in the details here, without a doubt!

MoyaMoya - Finally a Name

You know that moment when you finally have a name for what you've been feeling that confirms you aren't crazy... but at the same time it's scary as hell because it's truly a serious condition? Well, I hope you don't ever know that feeling -- but it is both comforting and frightening at the same time.

I recently experienced this - less than a month ago, I was sitting at home and received a phone call that would change the course of life for sometime to come. I wasn't brought in to the office to receive such news... but my former doctor's nurse called me to tell me that I was diagnosed with MoyaMoya Disease.

It is rare, but explains so much about what has been going on with me since January 2013. While I have had it longer than that, it's when things started to change. I had my TIA in January 2013, and was released from the hospital not thinking that there was much to follow up on. I was told that if I kept my blood pressure in range there was nothing to lead them to believe anything would be a problem in the future. In truth, that was completely wrong -- my blood pressure was only a minor detail in the process. 

I had no idea that a water challenge among friends would lead us down this path, but I'm glad it did. On December 30, 2013... I started a water challenge with a group of fabulous ladies and dropped all caffeine from my diet. It lead to 26 out of 31 days in January 2014 having debilitating headaches. I went to see a neurologist (a whole story for another post) -- but she decided to do a repeat MRI to see how things were looking in my brain. A week later, I learned it was abnormal and further testing was needed. Another week later, I learned of the MoyaMoya diagnosis.

I had heard of MoyaMoya before because my cousin's daughter had been treated for it roughly a year ago, and is doing great... but I knew it was serious. I knew she had brain surgery for the condition, but that things now are going well for her. What I wasn't sure about was the difference between having it as a child vs being an adult. I also wasn't aware that you could have it on both sides and require two brain surgeries.

I know that now, because that is what I'm facing at the moment. I've heard how bad it is from Stanford, and have met with a surgeon here in Houston as well. Going to Stanford would mean being in California for a month, and away from my kids/family/friends/comfort zone for the entire surgery process. Having the surgery here would spread it out a little more and we think make it logistically a bit easier to deal with.

None of the decisions we are making are anything we thought we'd be dealing with, but we are facing it while navigating what we think and pray will be best for our family. We are writing our wills, because we've needed to for a while -- but something about brain surgery makes it more imminent at the moment. We have met with a couple of different doctors to get different opinions, now we move forward with our choices.

I believe we have landed on a surgeon, and will be staying in Houston where our entire support system (give or take a few) is within 4 hours of us. The plan right now is that I will be having a cerebral angiogram next Thursday in the afternoon to look more in depth at what is going on in my brain as well as to look for donor arteries that can be used to do a direct bypass on each side of my brain. From there, we will set up surgeries that will be 6-8 weeks apart.

This article came out yesterday just before we went to meet the doctor that we are planning to use -- so I wanted to share it with you as well.

I'm hosting fundraisers for myself, because these procedures aren't going to be cheap -- and anything I can do to take some burden/stress off of John right now makes me at least feel like I'm a little bit in control of my own life.

Scentsy (new spring catalog!!!)
Wildtree (Simple. Healthy. Dinner. is a good new program OR if you're interested in a freezer meal plan, contact me and I'll get you a menu together)

The YaYa's

Things have been crazy, and I've got some news to document here on the blog... but I want to wait until Friday to put it out there so that I can understand more about it to explain it fully. In the mean time, I want to share with ya'll something that has been a huge blessing in my life.

In my adult years, I have struggled with finding a good core group of friends that would be the type of ladies that I could count on in times of need. You know the ones that step up when tragedy strikes or ladies that are there to celebrate the good times with you as well. The ones that you can call in the middle of the night if you needed something. They are rare.

I hear about ladies that have "besties" or "BFFs" -- I just haven't really felt like I've had those in a while, there are a couple of ladies that I love dearly... but life gets in the way sometimes and we aren't as close as we used to be.

Insert the YaYas -- like the movie only, it's real.

One of my friends who is in the middle of the photo on the right side, started this group. Her mother has been involved in one of these groups since she was young, and they have a wonderful time together. So she started one of her own! I'm so thrilled that she did!

We have a Facebook group to be able to share information and even invite new friends if we want to. Initially she made sure that she invited people to be a part of it, and that each of them would know at least one other person in the group. For instance, you see me here on the left of the picture and another friend next to me -- we went to church together along with J.

Out of about 20 people in the group right now, the 5 of us made it to the first meeting. It is set for every second Saturday of the month at 7PM... so that makes it easy. We meet at a restaurant and have a few other special things planned.

June and December will have special things tied to them - in June we are going to meet at someone's home and have a Favorite Things Birthday celebration. The plan is that we will get together to celebrate everyone's birthday at one time, and do a Favorite Things exchange. You pick one thing that you just can't live without and bring one for each person attending - then you go home with a little something from each person. Then in December we will have a Christmas party -- which may involve a white elephant exchange or an ornament exchange or something... or who knows we might do something else.

We've thrown around ideas about doing secret sister things... but we've also added a cookbook to the plan too. At each meeting we are all going to bring recipes to the meetings, a different category each meeting... and Molly is going to put it all together into a cookbook for us.

We eventually would like to start traveling together... and just generally share in life's journey together. I am so honored and thrilled to be doing this with such wonderful ladies. I personally am grateful because I'm about to go through a big health journey, and knowing that they'll have my back if I need it is comforting. Also having my family around makes it so much easier to know that I'm close to family who will also be around for us as well.

As they say, this is the start of a beautiful friendship...