Our Week in Meals #475

Good morning, and happy Sunday! This week included class parties, lots of baking, and holiday lights. You’ll find all of the highlights from the past few days, along with each of our dinners, in today’s roundup of Our Week in Meals.

For those of you who are new to the blog, Our Week in Meals is where I share a little bit about what we’ve been up to over the past week — as it relates to our dinners each night. This series gives you a glimpse “behind the scenes” at some highlights from our life, shows you how I balance a busy schedule with feeding my family, and offers a few new ideas for your own weekly meal plan.

Now, let’s back up to last weekend…

We woke up to a dusting of snow on Sunday morning, so church was cancelled and we stayed close to home.

Our big plans included restocking the kitchen with groceries, decorating a gingerbread house (Spencer and Casey had a lot of laughs with this project!),

and baking a few batches of cookies. I made our favorite chocolate chip cookies (minus the flaky sea salt), but swapped the chocolate chips for mini Christmas M&M’s…

Plus a batch of soft peanut butter blossoms,

and these Williamsburg gingerbread cookies, per Spencer’s request.

My niece, Abby, has been on a roll with her baking in Florida, too! Her older brothers are so lucky; she’s whipping out fresh batches of my chocolate chip cookies each weekend (with her furry assistant, Griff, nearby)!

I made my mom’s Maryland crab cakes for supper that evening, since I took advantage of some (slightly more affordable) lump crabmeat that I picked up from Costco the week before. These are always a family favorite!

Served alongside coleslaw and French fries…

Now, shall we chat books? My mother-in-law recently loaned me the WWII historical fiction, The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. This reminded me of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah — a beautiful yet heartbreaking story that stays with you for a long time. It’s incredibly well written and will keep you turning the pages to see how the two storylines come together.

The kids had a 2-hour delay on Monday, so the morning was off to a slow start.

We enjoyed Bisquick waffles for breakfast, and I took Spencer to an orthodontist appointment mid-day (round #2 of braces is coming right up)…

Before basketball practice that night, I served an early dinner that was another kid-favorite: homemade chicken nuggets,

plus the boys’ favorite Duke’s homemade mac and cheese. I also cut-up some carrot sticks, celery, and cucumber on the side for dipping with Ranch.

I joined Mollie and Sallie for a walk on Tuesday morning, came home to make another batch of Christmas M&M chocolate chip cookies (this time for Casey’s class party), and got some work and gift wrapping done.

Dinner that night included dump-and-bake meatball casserole, a salad, and a loaf of Ashley’s sourdough bread. Easy peasy!

After a walk with Ashley on Wednesday morning, I headed up to Culpeper to run some errands before lunch.

Gibbs’ friend Addison requested a carrot cake, so I baked this easy recipe that afternoon so that Gibbs could bring it to a party the next day.

Before youth group that evening, we had slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches with potato chips, coleslaw, and pickles from Yoder’s.

Thursday started off with another walk with Ashley, followed by a haircut. Squeezing in all of our appointments before the end of the year!

We kept dinner really simple that night: tomato bisque with a Panera baguette on the side. Always a hit…

I went to Pilates on Friday, came home and made a batch of Rolo pretzels (with Christmas M&Ms instead of pecans), and got dinner started in the slow cooker.

When Keith and Gibbs were home from the golf course, we had Crock Pot beef stew for supper…

…which I paired with a batch of easy, one-bowl orange cranberry muffins. Such a cozy meal for a chilly night!

And that brings us to the weekend! Keith took Casey up to Fredericksburg for a soccer practice on Saturday morning, while I stayed home with the other two boys and did some cooking in the kitchen.

That evening we had tickets to the Winter Wander holiday light show at The Boar’s Head Resort.

Khloe joined us!

We had s’mores, hot chocolate, walked the trails,

and stopped for a quick dinner at Chick-Fil-A on the way home.

So there you have it, friends — another week of easy meals! I hope that you’ve found something new to add to your own table in the days ahead. Thank you for being here, and have a wonderful holiday week!