Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!

Ever read that book? You know the one called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It's been a day! Yep...that about sums it up! Post complete. Not really. :)

Stay tuned below for a quite yummy sloppy joe tater tot casserole recipe that is gluten free. If you would prefer to skip my babbling then just go straight to the bottom of the post. I promise you won't hurt my feelings.

We had a great Christmas break. We went and saw the lights at Town Center, drove around to see Christmas lights, made cookies, took gifts to our neighbors, and visited family. Best of all we had a lot of great quality time as a family. The kids did quite well even with a lack of schedule. Eric's teacher was wonderful and sent home some reading material for him to work on comprehension and overall reading ability and gave me some areas to start pushing him in for math. This helped a lot! True to form though after a week of no real set schedule like at school it started getting rough. We expected it though and really, when compared to last year at this time, it was much better. I didn't realize that until I just typed it out but it was truthfully better. Now we didn't travel this year like we did the previous year but that wouldn't have made that big of a difference really. So yay for improvement!

Today though was just one of those rough days. We haven't seen one like this in a while. He was very hyperactive, ignoring everything you asked him to do, instigating issues with his brother, and whining and back talking when punished for it. That was all before we left for school this morning! Apparently during school there was a meltdown as well. Once he was home I could tell he was just very tired and not focused when doing homework. When dinner was set in front of him we knew the battle was on! Now Brian and I had our game faces on and were prepared for this. The new rule is you do not get down from the table until you have finished a decent portion of your food. Usually we wouldn't push this but Eric is lacking in nutrition and there are only so many things I can throw in a smoothie to help him with this. We also figured out he would rather go to bed early than eat a food he hasn't tried before so we finally resorted to the no leaving the table method. First night went well. Tonight however it was game on. He tried a bite of a very yummy, if I do say so myself, casserole and pronounced he didn't like it. We reminded him of the rule and you would have thought we beat the child. He then upped the anty with "well I have to go to bed at bedtime" to which we responded "not until you have eaten enough dinner." He wasn't expecting that because you would have thought I put a hot poker to him. After more than an hour of listening to him scream, wail, cry, complain, and whine about it he started to come around by asking me if I could warm his food up again. Now usually I wouldn't do this but I knew this was a big step forward for him because it meant he was actually thinking about doing what we asked him so I gladly warmed it up. After some more hyperventilating and freaking out (I'm sure I was doing some myself) about the food Brian somehow managed to get him to take a bite with his nose plugged. He also got him to take another bite while holding his nose. And wouldn't you know it by the end of it the stinker ate a bite without his nose plugged and didn't make one single nasty face or gag! He did admit it wasn't that bad and wasn't worth carrying on the fuss or losing over an hour of playtime. Victory is ours...at least for tonight! Now we are hoping it will carry over to tomorrow when he is served leftovers for dinner. After dinner it was still dicey regarding behavior but nothing compared to dinner. The saving grace was Eric gave up a book to his brother at bedtime because Tyler really wanted to read it. Instead of hanging onto it because he chose it, Eric was very kind and let Tyler have it.

So, on that note, I am going to post the recipe for this very yummy sloppy joe casserole. Brian's mom gave me the recipe and I tweaked it to make it gluten free. The original recipe is here: http://www.allthecooks.com/recipe/Sloppy+Joe+Tater+Tot+Casserole-44956693/
The only difference in mine is that I made the cream of mushroom soup because store bought contains gluten. You can find that recipe here: http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/Gluten-Free-Cream-Of-Mushroom-Soup.htm

Both recipes were very simple to make. My tweak to the casserole was I used ground venison because that is what I had. And the tweak to the mushroom soup was that I used an immersion blender and pureed the soup up a bit. Still chunky but more like the kind out of a can. I have to say this stuff tasted much better than canned! Very rich and would have been great with some garlic bread. I used about 10oz of the home made in the casserole and froze the rest for another use later. Ore Ida brand tater tots are gluten free. Manwich sloppy joe sauce is also gluten free. You could easily make your own but I chose the easy way out. I used the Velveeta it called for but will try it with a different cheese next time just to see the difference.

Alright folks, it is time for me to call it a night. I'm tired after this day. Thankfully God's mercies are new every morning. Praying for a better day tomorrow!