Six Batches of Burritos!!

Our weekday evenings are very busy.  We both work full-time and Nikolas is at school all day.  He has therapy sessions two evenings each week that leaves us getting home very late.  We're all tired at the end of the day, and when little brother comes home, we'll have even less time to prepare meals during the week.  We don't like having to turn to fast food on those busy nights, so I've started exploring freezer meals a bit.

I made four different freezer meals a couple of weeks ago and three of them were very successful. Nikolas enjoyed them so much that he ate three servings of the chicken, broccoli and rice casserole! We also really liked a burrito dish that I made using shredded beef and green enchilada sauce. I made another batch of them this evening and they turned out great.  In about 90 minutes I was able to make five freezer meals plus one batch for dinner tonight.

I started off by putting a 2.5 pound pot roast in the crock pot this morning and letting it cook on low all day. Bonus was that the house smelled great all afternoon.  Once it was done I pulled it out and shredded the beef. It was really tender and moist, and it had a nice flavor!

I mixed some of the beef, some shredded cheddar cheese, some green enchilada sauce and some Tastefully Simple Fiesta Seasoning together for the filling.  For a couple of batches I also added some refried beans to give us some more variety.  I also cooked up some ground beef and made two pans of ground beef, bean and cheese burritos.  

I stuffed them and rolled them in large burrito shells with the ends tucked in so the filling doesn't spill out when they are cooked.  I placed them in a pan with a thin layer of the green enchilada sauce on the bottom and covered them with a little more enchilada sauce and shredded cheddar.  I also used a little bit of mozzarella cheese on a couple of the dishes. 

When I was finished I had five pans of burritos plus a pan for tonight's dinner.  I labeled the lids and Jason hauled them all out to the freezer.  

I'm planning to try some of the freezer meal ideas that are in my Tastefully Simple catalog next.  I'll be sure to share our family's favorite recipes in case anyone else wants to prepare them for their family!   

Making Progress!

We've been working hard to collect the final documents that we need for court.  Everything is apostilled and ready to go except for two documents from our home study agency that should be arriving this week.  Once we receive the last two documents (our home study update and a letter from our social worker stating that she will complete our post-placement reports), I'll make another trip downtown to have them apostilled.  Then everything will be sent to our lawyer in Bulgaria via our agency in Washington.  

Things are moving along in Bulgaria, too.  We were informed that we received our Article 5 letter on April 6th.  For those who are not familiar with the adoption process, a visa application to a Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy was filed for little brother.  The Consular Officer reviewed his information and evaluated him for possible visa ineligibilities.  Once the Consular Office determined that he appears to be eligible to immigrate to the United States, he/she notified Bulgaria's adoption authority and issued the Article 5 letter.  Once we receive a final signature from the MOJ, our case will be sent to court and we will be assigned a judge and a court date.  (For Nikolas' adoption, our case was sent to court 6 weeks after we received our Article 5 and our court date was scheduled for two weeks later.)

We also met our Brittany's Hope fundraising goal and will be awarded a $4000 grant to help with our final adoption and travel expenses.  Thank you so much to everyone who helped us by donating to Brittany's Hope.  We have estimated that just the airfare for our family will cost approximately $6500-$7000, so this grant will help so much!   
We're hoping to be able to bring him home in July but we'll have a better idea of our time frame once we receive our court date.  For now we're just getting things around the house prepared for his arrival!