Two Casseroles

First thing this morning, I woke up early and got the overnight French toast casserole that I prepped last night, into the oven. Then, while that was baking, I ran back out to the new 7Brew, because although we had coffee at home, we had no creamer, or even milk or cream, and I simply can’t drink coffee black like that… Plus, today was officially their grand opening, so if you bought a large drink, you got a t-shirt for free!

So I actually ordered a large iced cinnamon roll latte with extra cinnamon, extra sweet, but without the actual ice. Then I poured it over ice into the cups I saved/rinsed last night, to share with Jeff. And not long after I got home, the casserole was ready, and it was absolutely delicious. Will need to be making this more often, since it’s so easy, requires almost zero effort, and everyone loved it.

After breakfast, I sat down to actually make the grocery list and the to-do list that I meant to make last night, and scheduled our grocery pickup order for late this afternoon. And first up on the to-do list, was finally taking our Christmas tree down! We had un-decorated it about two weeks ago, and then just left it up with only the lights on since then. But Jeff got it taken down, and then I swept up about a pound of the glitter/”snow” that always falls off of it, before we got that and all the rest of the Christmas decor officially packed back up in the closets until next Christmas.

While Jeff and I were doing our chores, the girls were off playing together. At one point, they came into the dining room in these dresses, wearing sunglasses and rolling their new suitcases along, telling us they were fancy best friends on their way to vacation in Hawaii. I didn’t have my phone on me then, so I missed getting that picture, but they were so cute and they played so sweetly together. Then they also helped us take all the smaller decor boxes to put away, once we were ready for that. We needed to run some errands and get some lunch, so we made a quick drop-off at Goodwill, ran into Walmart to look at some picture frames but didn’t buy anything, and then went to Publix for some lunch.

After lunch, I got Addison down for her nap, and Jeff ran out to get himself a large energy fizz drink thing from 7Brew, so he could get a free t-shirt as well. Once Jeff got home, we left him there folding laundry, and Emerson and I did porch pick-up for a home decor thing I bought off Facebook marketplace. Next up, we picked up our groceries from Walmart, and then checked out the new Wawa that’s been open a few months now. They have a whole little food & coffee shop set up in there that’s pretty cool, and I wanna go back sometime to try out some of their foods, since today we only got drinks.

When we got home, we put away all of the groceries, right as Nana stopped by for a quick visit. She was delivering dinner to some of her friends who were sick, so she stopped in to see us too for about 30 minutes. Then I put together some poppy seed chicken, and washed dishes while it baked. (I had to wash the same dish I used this morning in order to make the second casserole of the day.) My mom used to always make this for me and Megan growing up, and we loved it so much. Plus, it’s another one of those super simple meals that requires no real effort, but tastes delicious, and my whole fam loved it tonight!

We always serve it over white rice, but I feel like I could probably make a few alterations and bake the whole thing with the rice include, and just make a altered version of my regular chicken & rice casserole. I really wanna try it, but I’m always scared that it won’t work out and then I’ll have potentially ruined dinner… But maybe one day I’ll still give it a go.

The girls played around in the bath for a long time together, and Jeff folded more clean clothes while I was helping the girls get bathed and dressed. We watched some tv after bath, and then got started on bedtime. After a while in Emmie’s room with her, Addie came in to give loves to both of us, and she was just so sweet and snuggly.