A Break Week with Snow

This week we decided that we're enjoying vacation with Daddy - no school! Well, other than the high schooler who had her final exam for her vet class and one last week of early morning seminary before break. Grandma from Utah flew in Monday evening.

Tuesday it started snowing and so there was playing outside in the snow and baking cookies and having beef stew in the crock pot. We have this fairly often in winter and it is super simple so I'm going to share the recipe. A note about the meat - you can use pork or beef. We prefer beef though. I watch the beef at the store until I catch some close to date that they discount. It can be stew beef chunks, but it doesn't have to be. I've often found nice steaks discounted to a better price per pound than stew beef so I'll use that instead, cutting my own chunks.

Crockpot Beef Stew

1-2 lbs beef chunks
2 lbs carrots, sliced
6-8 potatoes, cut in chunks
1 can French Onion soup
Salt and pepper to taste
Water to almost cover veggies

Place all ingredients into the crock pot and then add the water. Cook on High for 6 hours or Low for 10 hours. If you want it to thicken up a bit add some cornstarch in 2T of cold water an hour before serving.

Wednesday and Thursday are a bit of a blur. I know we had physical therapy and Cub Scouts and youth group and a Christmas party for our homeschool book club that was super fun. Several kids did some painting projects. I also know we did more things on these days but I just can't remember what. Except cookies - because we baked about 12 dozen for the Christmas party (our usual batch of egg free chocolate chip cookies is about 6 dozen).

Friday - I was up most of the night with Tobias, who has had a weird week of teething and fever that the doctor thinks was the flu. I took a nap when Tobias did. I had bloodwork done to check in on my new thyroid medication dose and did some shopping that needed to happen. Grandma was still visiting on this day. It's been bitterly cold for two days with wind chills below zero. The kids are climbing the walls a bit.

Saturday - We woke up to a world covered in ice. The trees are beautiful, there are icicles hanging from everything, including the bird feeder out my window. The snow that was on the ground has compacted into a sheet of ice. The kids are doing their weekly Saturday morning video game time - 30 minutes each. So far I've heard Lego Jurassic World and Minecraft. Grandma is supposed to fly home this afternoon. That means the kids are going to be grumpy and sad this evening. They've been talking of locking her in the basement so she won't leave. I'm trying to think of something fun we can do in the house (remember, ice everywhere outside). Maybe we'll do a movie night - we haven't seen Pete's Dragon yet. Or we might do a board game night and pull out a few games to play that have been tucked away in the attic for a while.

That's it for us this week!

(Linking here and here.)