5 Things Friday

Posted on July 3, 2026 by Sheila

We are currently experiencing a heat wave with temperatures between 95-100 and feel like temperatures between 105 and 110 degrees. We are also continuing to experience extreme drought conditions. We have a watering system for most of our square foot gardens but it really cant keep up with the heat and drought conditions. I am not sure how much produce we will be getting.
Matt was able to find a couple of small cherry tomatoes and we have gotten a couple of cucumbers and several squash. I am disappointed but we continue to try and definitely use what we get1
Because of the holiday (fourth of July) occurring on Saturday, Matt and Lily both were off today! Kendall worked today but is off the weekend and so is Zach. We enjoyed a rare treat of pizza for dinner since we were all home for dinner.
Matt and I spent a large part of the day cleaning the house. With all the kids working just about every day, I am struggling to keep up with the daily chores and have not been able to keep the house to a clean level that I wanted. It feels awesome to have the whole house clean!
I am continuing to work on adding food to the freezer! I was able to make two additional meals of stuffed shells this week. I have also added several options for breakfast will continuing to use up the eggs!

Another busy but productive week.

Summer Goal Update

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Sheila

In order to stay accountable, I need to make a weekly update on what I have been able to do!

This week is likely one of the slowest of the summer, keeping this in mind, I have been focused on making specific progress toward the goals.

One big thing that we accomplished this week that was not on the list was cleaning out the master closet. Matt and I reduced our closet by HALF!

This week I was able to pick about half a gallon of blueberries from the garden. Matt make blueberry muffins last night and the rest were frozen for future use.

1. Make and order 8 photo books. I have made one complete book on Shutterfly from our cruise. I am waiting for a good sale before ordering.

2. Read a total of 8 books. No progress this week.

3. Make and freeze 12 baked ziti’s

4. Make and freeze 6 million dollar spaghetti pies

5. Make and freeze 6 pans of chicken enchiladas. I actually purchased 4 chickens at Costco to make this easier and the cheapest as well! We now have 6 in the freezer and one for dinner next week! Goal met 6/19/2026.

6. Either walk or exercise 3 times a week for at least 8 weeks. No progress on this week. I have not been outside much at all this week with lots of kitchen progress.

7. Make and freeze 6 taco pastas. I was able to make 6 taco pasta and we ended up freezing 5 of these. I am going to count this as goal met 6/19/2026

8. Make and freeze 6 chicken, broccoli rice casseroles. I was able to make 6 chicken broccoli casseroles. and we ended up freezing 5 of these. I am going to count this as goal met 6/19/2026

9. Make at least 50 meatballs and freeze. This one is a little tricky but I wanted a place to record this. I made and froze 6 meals of Salisbury steaks this week. When I made the list I did not realize we were out of Salisbury steaks so that is the reason it was not included.

5 Things Friday

Posted on June 12, 2026 by Sheila

Status of first week of Summer break

1- dentist appointment and one tooth pulled and lost!
1- counseling appointment
1- doctor appointment
2 – cars in the shop for repair! Luckily mine is under warranty.
3- days spent at the pool. One was our first swim meet!
4- loads of towel washed, dried and folded
5- freezer meals made and put in the freezer!
5- people offended that I yelled at the boys across the pool! no obscenities involved

5 Things Friday

Posted on May 22, 2026 by Sheila

1. For the first time in 22 years, Matt and I have made plans to go away for the weekend without any children! I need a break and this worked out to be just at the prefect time. I am not going to give any more details till we are home safe but I am super excited!

2. The garden is looking really good! One big change is the amount of watering we are doing. With that in mind, the current plan is to get one more tote to fill with water. So that even in drought we should be able to not use water that cost money!

The up front cost should be around $50. We are hopeful to get this put in place this weekend as we have a solid week of rain chances and have already filled most of the 2 tanks we have.

3. Foster care is stressful. I have a ton more stress in relationship to the agency and it’s policies, procedures and expectations than actual dealing with every day kid stuff.

4. Kendall has to attend graduation practice next week otherwise she is completely finished with High School. Zach took an exam today and he is also finished. Davie County has 9 official days with the last one being an early release day. The count down to summer is really really close. I have less than that due to Kendall’s graduation!

5. Since this is Memorial Day weekend and we don’t have school on Monday, I want to finish the book I am reading. And do small repairs on both the Tahoe and Rogue. Added stress of the Honda has stopped again!

Five Things Friday

Posted on March 20, 2026 by Sheila

The weather has been all over the place. On Monday, Zach and Kendall were out of school due to a high threat of tornadoes. Tuesday and Wednesday the temperatures stay in the 40s. Today on Friday we had a high of 74. We are expecting a very nice weekend with highs in the 80s. Next Tuesday we swing again into the 50’s and 60’s.
Zach has been working really hard last week he got all the mulch put out for the year. Today, he was able to get our garden bed repaired and filled with paper and dirt. Next up on his list is to get some pellets and wood shavings in the chicken coop.
The chickens continue to range between 5 and 9 eggs per day. I have been water glassing some eggs for future use. But this week, I have not been able to add to them due to the dirt that is currently covering all our eggs. I am hoping to finish at least two or more gallons this spring. We should have a full solid year of good egg production but next fall/winter may be a slow period again. I have no plans at all to add ANY chickens to the flock this entire year. I may consider .add in 2027 depending on the amount of eggs we have at that time.
I am very hopefully that we can get the heat set up in the greenhouse so that we can move both the peppers and tomatoes to the greenhouse this weekend. I plan to keep the greenhouse going until the first week of May. When after checking the weather, I can transplant out to start growing.
I am going to declare that the white Honda we purchased in January, is officially fixed. It has been running just fine after using that initial tank of gas along with new spark plugs and wires. We are hopefully to get Zach’s truck fixed and running so that it can go up for sale very soon!

Weekend in Review – Playing Catch

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Sheila

This was a rare weekend. We had absolutely nothing on the agenda for Saturday until Zach’s truck started acting up and then the car stopped at Tractor Supply on Tuesday. Matt and Zach prioritized get one or both vehicles back to running. I decided this would be a good time to tackle a couple of projects that I have literally been putting off for months.

First up the camper! We arrived home from Disney in December and unloaded the luggage and everything we needed out of it. Haley and David spent several nights in it at the end of December as well. It was not nasty but needed to have all the sheets/bedding washed and a good vacuum never hurt anything. I ended up have eight total loads of laundry including E’s bed and various blankets that were hung on the line. This was a huge cost savings as we are looking at probably 10 hours of drying time! I did get the blankets put away and E’s bed made but the camper beds still need to be made up.

After making such good progress on Saturday, I was inspired today! I decided to tackle the filing cabinet and three other bins of stuff that I moved out of the office to turn into a bedroom. I had tax papers from 2013 that needed to be shredded and lots of organizing. I ended up spending around 5 hours on this project but I am happy to say that I was able to get everything sorted and organized my desk feels amazing right now! And the cherry on top is the fact that I was able to reduce things down to more manageable and that is my word of the year!

Word of the Year

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Sheila

Fun fact is that I have never made a “New Year’s Resolution”. I have in the past and even made a couple of goals for this year. But I am have been thinking and figured it would be a good time to try something new. I am going to chose a word to focus on this year.

REDUCE

This might seem strange but I need to spend some time and energy reducing things in several areas of my life.

First up is my pantry. Kendall will graduate from high school this year. She is already deciding on a college and then in two additional years she will be off on her own adult adventure. Zach at the same time will be graduating high school and staring his adult adventure. I am guessing that within 3 years we will have an empty nest. That means we will probably need less than 1/4 of the pantry that we currently have. In reality, if we don’t consume and use up most of the “non favorite” items now then they may be here forever. The pantry challenge is going to help with this idea. I am also planning on not purchasing any meat unless I find a deal I can’t pass up until June. I definitely want to empty out and turn off our chest freezer and move the convivence freezer out of our bedroom. This should definitely help reduce the clutter in my room as well.

Along the same lines, I am currently storing items in our pantry, the laundry room and our shower room. I would like to reduce this to having all the food in the pantry, using the laundry room as a storage area for paper products and then laundry items. This would leave the shower room for self care needs. In reality, I need to sort through all the items in the shower room and decide which ones can be thrown away, sold or simply need to be thrown away. This would also allow me to clean out the bathroom cabinets as well. Overall, I want to reduce the number of items that we keep on hand to a maximum of 6 months with most items reduced to three months. This will translate to a year supply for two people much easier than now.

Next on the reducing list is the number of clothes that I am keeping. I need to have a really good closet purge and reduce the items that I am holding on to. That is definitely something that will be waiting till the summer.

I have already shared plans to reduce our debit and spending this year as well. The overall goal is to be debt free except the mortgage in 5 years and totally debit free in 8 to 10 years. Neither Matt nor I will be or can really increase our incomes at this point so REDUCE is definitely a must.

REDUCING Clutter and REDUCING my Stress yeap Reduce is a good word for this year.

5 Things Friday

Posted on December 19, 2025 by Sheila

1. Today is the official start of the Christmas pajama pants season. I have two weeks to be able to enjoy wearing these. If you see me in public, I will be festive and warm! So mind your business

2. I have not eaten breakfast out/grab on the way to work for the past two weeks. This may seem small but it is a big deal for me! In reality I will have saved probably $20-$40 this month alone.

3. We have our annual Christmas dinner planned for December 27th. I have already started some of the preparations in hopes that it will not be as exhausting and I can enjoy more of the fun parts of it!

4. Our new HVAC system is installed. Here is me looking forward to warmth and lower bills!

5. On Sunday, we will enjoy a “Birthday Party for Jesus”, lunch with Friends and Carols and Candles at church. This is a festive as it gets and I am looking forward to each of these!

Building Update

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Sheila

A short recap…. while on vacation, after discovering we have a new fence right on our property line, one of the things we talked about doing was replacing this building.

Initially we were thinking that we would need to move it to allow for clearance to the back of the yard. Luckily that was not the case. We started the process on August 31st. You can see the first section of progress here

This ended up being a longer and more expensive project than was expected! But I am super excited to say that we have officially completed the project and it turned out amazing!