Pulled Beef Sandwiches

I had a friend and her two kids over for supper tonight and I made a super easy meal.  My mom gave me the recipe for these sandwiches several years ago and it's probably the easiest crock pot meal ever, especially for people like me with very little time to cook.

Ingredients:

1 beef roast - any cut or size will do, the bigger the roast, the less dipping sauce you will have at the end.  I usually buy the cheapest one I can find.  This one happened to be just over 2 lbs for $11.59 which now that I think about it, isn't terribly cheap, but it was the cheapest one at the store when I was there.

1 jar chili sauce - it's near the cocktail sauce in the condiment aisle

1 jar pickles - actually you really just need the pickle juice, so this is a great recipe to use when you finish eating the pickles and have a jar full of juice left.

 

 

Mix the chili sauce and pickle juice/pickles in a crockpot.  Add the roast and cook till done.  The time really depends on how big of a roast you use.  I put mine in before I left for work and turned it on low.  It was done when I got home.  If you turned it on high it probably would only take a few hours.

When its done, pull the roast out and throw away any pickles in the sauce.  Shred the beef and add it back to the sauce to soak up the juices.  Put meat on a bun and you can use the extra sauce for a dipping sauce.  Alternatively if you didn't want to have to fish the beef back out of the sauce you could just leave it seperate.  It probably wouldn't be quite as messy either.

 

 

 

It's a very easy meal and quite delicious I might add.

New Start

I know it's been a while since I've updated on here, but with moving into a new house and not having internet for almost a month, not to mention the holidays, it was a little difficult.

The new house is awesome, but of course knowing me, not unpacked.  But that's another entry all together.

I've been having a very difficult time getting Marren dressed every day.  She has completely stopped wearing socks and has a terrible time with pants and underwear.  Long story short I basically have to start the car and start getting ready to leave acting like I'm leaving her home before she gets dressed.  I don't know what I will do the first time she calls my bluff.

Any way, my cousin reccommended a closet organizer with the days of the week on it.  So every Sunday we will pick out clothes for the week and that will be that.  She won't get the option of putting on five pairs of panties and 10 pairs of pants.  She picks them out Sunday and that's it.  I actually got 2, one for each of the girls.  I know that it will at least help me in the mornings so I'm not wasting time searching for clean panties or a match to a sock.

This is what it looks like in Marren's closet:

 

 



Nothing is Ever Easy

So Tuesday morning I had to get my car into the shop at 8:30am.  That's easier said than done with 2 small children.  I actually set my alarm and woke up before Marren for the first time in 6 weeks.  We even managed to get to the shop 5 minutes early.  The guy asked if we needed a ride somewhere and I asked him how long he thought it would take.  I did bring stuff to keep Marren busy for an hour or so.  He said he thought it could take a couple hours so they gave us a ride home. 

When we got home I called by babysitter who said to let her know if we needed help getting around.  She offered to come get Marren and take her to school if the car wasn't fixed by then, which it wasn't.  Fast forward to noon and I still hadn't heard anything.  I was starting try and figure out how I was going to make it to my Dr. appointment at 2.  So I called the shop and said I needed to know if they knew if it would be done before then because otherwise I'd need to find other arrangements.  They said they'd check.  Finally an hour and a half later they called to tell me it was a solenoid in the transmission and they wouldn't get the part until tomorrow.  In the meantime I called a friend that works at the clinic where my appointment was and she said she could come pick me up (I live about 5 blocks away and would have walked if it wasn't so cold).  I called my babysitter and she said she could pick Marren up from school and bring her home at 3:15.  Now I just had to figure out how I was going to get home from my appointment and how I was going to get to the conferences at 4:45. 

As I was on the way to the clinic my babysitter texted me to say she was really sorry but she couldn't pick Marren up now because she had fainted and cracked her head on a railing in the process (she is also currently pregnant).  I was all panicking now.  Luckily my friend said I could borrow her car and just pick her up after work and she could watch Marren while I went to conferences.

When I checked into my appointment, the receptionist informed me my Dr. had been called over to the hospital and subsequently was now running at least a half hour behind.  Great!  That meant my 2:00 appointment was now a 2:30 appointment and I had to make it to get Marren by 3:15.  Her preschool is literally in another state.  I knew I should have just called and rescheduled before I even left the house!  I told the lady my problem and she said to wait til 2:30 and if they hadn't called me back we could reschedule.  Luckily they called me within 10 minutes and I was done by 2:30.

Everything else went smoothly after that.  I got my car back on Wednesday evening, minus the $559 it cost me to fix.  Plus they told me I probably needed 4 new tires.  Yeah, that's not going to happen right now....

Car

When my mom was here this weekend, I wanted to try to get an oil change since she would be able to help with the girls while we waited.  So we set off for Wal-mart and after waiting in line for 10 minutes (I was the 3rd person), the one employee at the counter wasn't even close to being done helping the first person in line.  Nor did he even attempt to acknowlege the fact that there were more people waiting.  I decided I wasn't going to wait what was likely going to be more than an hour for an oil change, so we left. 

When we were pulling into the parking lot at home I noticed my check engine light came on.  I assumed it was for the oil change since I was over a 1000 miles past where they suggested to get it changed.  I figured it just triggered automatically.  I wasn't too worried.  I planned on going some where else to get it changed either Tuesday or Thursday when Marren is in school.

Fast forward to today, I had to run to the store again and when I pulled into home this time another light came on.  I checked what it was and it's the throttle/transmission light.  Great, just what I need.  So I called the repair place and they can get me in first thing in the morning.  That's exactly what I want to be doing with two small children at 8:30 in the morning, when I have to get Marren to school at noon, I have a doctor's appointment at 2, pick up Marren at 3:15 and then conferences for her at 4:45.  I just hope its something like they just have to change the transmission fluid.

The joys of only having one car.

Company

There's no motivation better for cleaning your house, like a pending visit from your mother.  My mom called me earlier this week and said she was planning on coming up to visit for the weekend since she didn't have to work on Friday.  When I hung up, I looked around the house in shame because it has gotten completely out of hand again. 

I had given up on the 3 year old ever picking up after herself.  You couldn't see the carpet in her room under the layer of clothes, toys, and yes, even pull ups.  Don't worry, the pull ups are clean.  For some reason she has decided she doesn't like how her panties fit anymore (or any article of clothing for that matter, but that's another story) so she randomly will put a pull up on in the day, then I tell her she needs to take it off, so she throws it on the floor.  Every time she puts one on, she grabs a new one.  She throws an absolute fit, if I bring out a clean but used one and tell her to put it on for bed.  She has gone through a months worth in about a week and a half.  It's driving me crazy because those things aren't cheap.  Not to mention the fights have become exhausting.  She has become even more stubborn in the past few weeks.  I'd pick up all the clothes on the floor and put them in baskets and the next morning they were all over the floor again.  Anytime I would tell her to pick up it's an immediate battle of wits.  The hallway and living room floor were also covered in a layer of her crap.  She's becom the queen of excuses at 3 years old.  I tell her to pick up she immediately becomes sick, or tired, or her arms hurt or legs hurt, or even better, goes into an all out tantrum kicking and screaming on the floor. 

I actually did get a lot taken care of before my mom got here.  I took out 3 bags of garbage, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned up my mess in the living room, and folded the 2 months worth of laundry that was sitting on the bed she sleeps in.

Unfortunately all of Marren's mess was left when my mom got here Saturday morning.  But thankfully, my mom is awesome and helped clean it all up.  I'm always amazed by what she can get done.  It will take her an hour or two to get done what it would take me an entire day to do.  Marren started off quite helpful and listening well.  However her attitude deteriorated rather quickly and my mom saw what I've been dealing with the last month.

I did get some organizing done.  I bought a big tote to put Marren's clothes in that are too small.  So hopefully we will be able to cut down on the clothes mess in her room plus some of the fits about clothes not fitting right. 

So now I'm left with a fairly clean house.  Let's just hope it stay that way....at least til Thanksgiving...

Trick or Treat

So trick or treating went better than I expected.  Marren went as Rapunzel from Tangled, and we'll say Johannah went as a snow ninja (she was in a 0-3 months snowsuit that was gigantic on her).  Marren was very good and listened well.  I was afraid she'd be so excited she'd be running everywhere.  But she stayed right beside me, held my hand when we crossed the street, and only went up to the houses with lights on.  She said thank you most of the time.  She did get a little scared a couple times.  One was the second house we went to, a guy was dressed as a witch or something and had a really long pointy nose on that scared her.  The second time it was a singing Frankenstein hanging outside the door.  He was singing "Who Can It Be Now."  I thought it was pretty funny, but Marren didn't share the humor.

We didn't stay out too long because it got pretty cold especially with the wind.  Overall it was a good time.

Rapunzel:

Snow Ninja:

Both:

Missing Brain; If found, please return

This is not really a Halloween reference, although I am slightly dreading tomorrow night and the process of trick or treating with a 3 year old and a newborn.  I haven't been trick or treating since I was 11.  Marren's dad took her the last 2 years, so this will be a new experience for me.

This is a reference to the fact that my brain has ceased to function as it used to.  Today I was in the process of getting all of my financial statements and tax returns in order as tomorrow I will be meeting with a mortgage lender.  It's a big hassle for me because my tax return programs are on an old laptop I don't use anymore because it's slow and sometimes doesn't work right.  I also have 5 different retirement accounts resulting from 3 previous jobs and my mother who used to be an investment banker. 

I started off firing up the lap top and printing the last 2 years of tax returns just hoping it's what she needs, because that's all I have.  My ex has all the W-2's and all the other forms.

Then I moved on to gathering the current statements from the investment accounts.  The 5 retirement accounts mean I have 5 different usernames and password combinations that I have to remember.  And by remember I mean go to the website and immediately hit the "forgot username/password" button because out of shear laziness I have never bothered to write any of them down.  This process has served me fine over the last few year and especially the last few months when I needed the information for the divorce.  I would go to one site "remember" my log in information, savea pdf of the current statement and print a copy.  But what happens, as in the case tonight, when your brain takes a vacation and you are unable to even remember the institution where one of the accounts is located?  I knew this information a month ago but it escapes me now.  I'll have to search the house to see if I can find a statement that was mailed to me 3 months ago.  It must be here, because I surely wouldn't have thrown away the mail from only 3 months ago yet.

After hitting the print button on the third statement I realized that none of them had actually printed.  After 15 minutes of frustration of trying to figure out what was wrong with the printer (I know it's working, it just printed the tax returns for heaven's sake), I gave up and went to leave the room.  That's when I had to step over the printer cord and remembered I had unhooked it 30 minutes ago to plug it into the laptop to print the tax returns.

Sigh...let's hope the meeting goes well tomorrow.  It's at 10am so hopefully we'll all be at least fully clothed by the time we need to leave because I know I won't be fully awake yet.  I also have to drag both the kids there because I have no where to take them at 10 am on a Wednesday morning.