Birria Tacos and a Grateful Heart

Today was one of those days. One that almost made me pull my hair out, daydreaming about making it to my bed at the end of it all. That kind of day. The day started off how it typically does. Woke up to the usual sound of my baby yelling from his crib. I stumbled to the kitchen to get my coffee brewing in hopes of having a cup ready after grabbing the baby. (As if I'd get to drink it while it was hot. That’s a very rare occurrence) Got the baby in a fresh diaper, made his bottle and plopped down on the recliner; coffee in hand. Soon little footsteps patted their way closer to me. Mommy, can you play with me? My four year old beamed a big hopeful smile as he spoke those words. My anxiety and overwhelming sense of all that I needed to accomplish today filled my brain. Let me finish my coffee and get your brother situated and I’ll be right down buddy. I'm not sure what it is about playing with my kids but I am going to be frank. It's a part of motherhood I actually dread. I can do crafts, play games and read books all day but when it comes to getting down on the ground and playing with toys. I dread every moment of it. Yet I know it's something they look forward to and it makes them feel loved. So I make the effort. And between everything a stay at home; homeschooling mother has to get accomplished in the few short hours of the day it becomes that much more daunting. I know you are probably wondering what in the world does all this have to do with birria tacos. Don't worry I’ll get there. Finished feeding my youngest and slowly trudged my way down the stairs to his bedroom. Play time lasted about five minutes before I was needed elsewhere. Finally able to gulp down my coffee I started on getting everyone their breakfast. By the time that was accomplished it was time to reset and clean up everything. Dishes got washed, laundry got started, the rest of my home got a quick tidy up and floors cleaned. Now time for homeschool. My children are four and seven so we keep it pretty simple when it comes to the actual work we do each day. Usually a book, going over the basics like the alphabet, calendar and numbers. Then my middle child works on handwriting and some choice art. My oldest will do some literacy, spelling and math. Then we usually do some sort of either science, geography, or history lesson together. If you are wanting to homeschool and are intimidated I invite you to do some research on what kiddos in kindergarten through second grade really need to be learning. I am completely against how modern public education does things. Only prepping them for testing, hour sitting still. But that's a blog post for another day. We finished homeschool and in the chat about what sounded good for dinner tonight my husband mentioned birria tacos. Bam easy enough. I had a roast in the freezer I had been meaning to use. Threw that bad boy in the crock pot and loaded everyone up to head to town for the store. We grabbed all the ingredients and went back home. If I was going to make these tacos worth it I needed to get the broth made and on the meat fairly quickly. We also had a playdate coming up so time was of the essence. I am fairly confident in myself as far as cooking goes. A quick glance at the ingredients and I can usually figure the rest out. Got groceries in, turned on music for the baby, gave him something to play with in his highchair and sent big boys down to tidy their rooms. Got to work multitasking lunch and pan roasting these peppers for the sauce or broth whatever you want to call it. In the midst of all the chaos, I happened to let the peppers get a little too hot and soon my entire house was filled with spicy smoke. Yes, that's right, spicy smoke. Everyone was coughing. It wasn't the normal burnt bacon kind of smoke. When you burn peppers it literally burns your eyes and lungs. Opening the windows was cutting it. My husband ran to his shop after he helped get the kids outside away from danger and grabbed an industrial fan. In my state of panic I grabbed the pan of peppers and sat them on my kitchen table on top of my favorite table runner. Not even thinking. Just wanting to get them off the hot stove. Smoke cleared and everyone ate lunch on the patio. Whilst cleaning my mess I grabbed the pan to realize I ruined my runner and not only that, I had burnt a giant circle on our brand new kitchen table. Defeated, I now had to get everyone and everything cleaned up. I also had the task of trying to get the baby and my youngest to sleep because we had a playdate at the park in just a few hours. That is something else I dread. Socializing. I have major social anxiety to the point I usually make myself sick. We are new-ish in town and I am trying to make it a priority so maybe my children will feel more confident in making friends than I do. I would love friends but they don't just magically appear so I have to force myself into doing the hard things. Praise the Lord the middle child napped. The baby did not but that's okay he can fall asleep in the stroller at the park or the car ride to said park. It was a rush and another stressful moment getting out the door and we made it exactly on time. I consider that late but for today it was a win. I really had to stop and thank God for how chaotic my day was. Because if it hadn't been I might have found an excuse to cancel the playdate. That's how awful my anxiety is. We had a really good time. I connected with another mom who we see in our co-op for homeschool and she also attends the church we started going to. We had lovely adult conversations and our children got to play for a few hours. It felt really good. We got home and the birria tacos tasted delicious. A crazy stressful day gave me another reason to be grateful for how everything happened. It also humbled me a lot. Made me stop and appreciate the craziness. I will link the recipe I used. I must caution you. Watch the peppers and low heat will suffice!!!!!