Dinner...we are full! And I'm thinking...

I am stuffed. I have this recipe that I've shared before for a cheap and easy roast dinner. The recipe is as follows.

CHEAP ROAST
"Cheap" Round Bone or Blade Cut Roast
1 pkg. dry onion soup mix
1 can cream of mushroom soup
Aluminum foil, wide heavy duty
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350degrees. Tear off about 2 1/2 to 3 feet of foil. Fold in half. Lay roast in middle of foil. Spread both soups over roast. Wrap and seal so juices won't drip out. Cook 3 hours at 350degrees. Be careful when you unwrap foil, so juices don't spill. Great because the cleanup is so easy!

Well, I got to thinking...uh oh! Don't let me do too much of that. Anyway, I got to thinking about how Ray really likes the gravy made with that recipe. Well, I happened to not have a roast on hand. However, I did have some stew beef in the freezer. So I threw the beef into the crock pot, mixed up the dry onion soup and the can of mushroom soup and poured them over the stew beef.

I let it cook all day long. Then just before Ray came home I started making mashed potatoes and fixing egg noodles. It was a good and hearty dinner. I even made a chocolate cherry cheesecake. Inspired by one of my recent recipe posts, Chocolate Covered Cheesecake.

Okay, I cheated. I didn't make it from scratch. Instead I got to thinking, see there I go again...lol. I thought why spend a bunch of money on a lot of ingredients for a dessert just for me, daddy and Rylie. So I grabbed one of my quick and easy boxes of Cheesecake mix that I bought at Aldi's for about $1.99. I prepared the crust and began on the mix. After it was all mixed up I added a wee bit of Almond extract (it gives the taste of cherry), chopped up maraschino cherries and slivers of chocolate from a Hershey's bar.

Oh, and then I thought...MORE CHOCOLATE! So I grabbed a package of frozen leftover chocolate from the last time I ran the chocolate fountain (do you have one of those? I love mine!). I melted that and poured some over the crust and cooled it a bit before topping with the cheesecake mixture. All I can say is "mmmmm, I am stuffed." Ray is too, he liked it all, the dinner and the dessert. Rylie wasn't so keen on the beef and noodles but she did seem to enjoy the chocolate cherry cheesecake concoction.

So as I stood in the kitchen this afternoon, peeling potatoes, I began to think. Yeah, that annoying habit again. How many times have I been right here doing this same exact thing. When Rylie and the older kids think back about their ol' mom is that all their going to remember. "Mom cooked and clean" Are they going to think that "cooking and cleaning" was all there is/was to me?

I stood there peeling them taters, watching Rylie in the dining room. She wasn't doing much, just listening to her mp3 player and singing to herself. I thought about how beautiful she is, how her future can be absolutely anything in the world. She could be anything, do anything. She is so special (as all the kids are). I love that baby girl and sometimes when I think about my kids I tear up as the full emotion of my love for them fills my heart.

I wondered if my mother ever stood and watched me playing as a child and had the same type of thoughts pass through her mind. I wonder if I disappointed my parents. I could have been anything, done anything. I didn't. Don't get me wrong. I had dreams, I had desires for my future. But I was afraid. Afraid of the unknown and going head-on into my future alone. So I hung my sorry little star on the first man to offer me a future with him.

Regrets? Yes and no. I regret no taking the chance on that other road that seemed so dark and frightening. I wonder what was over the that hill I couldn't see beyond. It may have been something very beautiful and fulfilling. On the other hand, it could have been something even more dangerous than the road I took.

Going down that road would also mean that I wouldn't have found and seen the love & beauty of my 3 older children. Although, the path I took was hurtful and dangerous to me in certain ways, I was also blessed with the love and life of my children. Would I trade the life of my children to have the life I dreamed of as a child? NEVER! Not in your wildest dreams.

Ahh, sometimes I wonder about my mind and how it works. How can this simple, nothing more than a housewife and mommy, have such vast and deep thoughts in mere seconds. Maybe I'm just suffering from a wee bit of attention deficit or something.

Oh dang...what do I tell my daughters about following their dreams or the dreams of the man they may fall in love with. (LeAnn's "I Hope You Dance" is playing in the background right now) I want my daughters to dance, but how are we ever sure if the dance we choose to start is one of our own desires, or something that we just "fall" into because it's what someone we love wants?

I hope and I pray that my daughters are stronger than I am, or ever was.
I hope they are smarter than I am.
I hope they have more self-confidence than I've ever had.
I hope they give more than they take.
Yet I hope that they are given to, rather than taken from.
I hope they never have regrets.
I hope they love...wisely.
I hope they are loved...dearly and tenderly.
I hope the road they travel is so beautiful and fullfilling that they don't give a second thought to the path they didn't take.
Why is it that I cry when I think about my daughters and their future and what I'd like for them?

Oh...well, I don't think I'm gonna make mashed potates for a few days. I need a break from all this emotion and thinking for a bit.

Jill Marie