Season of Life

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Sheila

I have fully embraced the idea that each season of life is different. I also realize that although each season has some hard parts some of just hard overall. This season of foster care is much harder than I would every have anticipated. But at the same time I am seeing the huge difference and gains that are being made. Today I am going to share somewhat random thoughts about it. Let just say up front these are my opinions and thoughts,

This summer we used paper plates EVERY day! It was a simple way to keep up with the dishes and not add one single thing to my to do list. This week we ran out of paper plates and I *think* that at this point we can start using the regular plates again however this may change when life starts to overwhelm again.
This is a quote from Kendall’s special education text book and it is the most accurate description of what we have seen “Following Kanner’s initial research on autism, many researchers focused on inappropriate or bad parenting as a case of autism…. speculated that during their child’s infancy some parents, particularly mothers, withheld affection or exhibited extremely negative feelings toward their son or daughter: consequently the youngster retreated into a autistic “empty fortress.”
E has been sleeping through the night with only a few exceptions since moving to his new room. Even the times of waking up have not resulted in me losing more than an hour of sleep! THIS IS HUGE
E is beginning to eat a little more. Just this weekend he ate banana bread and a meatball. Although the struggle is still very much a struggle. It is an improvement.
He is consider to be at or above grade level. We are in the process of discharging all EC services. The down side to this is that we will have to find private speech services and likely a play therapist. But at this point we can’t fit into the schedule on a regular bases
Trimming is his nails is the most traumatizing event! I am honestly at my wits end!
DSS had E approved for SSI, I am not sure what this means as far as long term but for the short run, it will pay for after school care instead of me paying half.
E LOVES camp Manna and ask to stay longer and more days!

Friday Night Wordless Wednesday

Posted on September 16, 2026 by Sheila

Saving on Saturday

Posted on September 12, 2026 by Sheila

This week I was a lot slower than normal due to having a cold! I spent some extra time asleep today but I was still able to accomplish a couple of things that I wanted to share.

First up I collect a gallon of tomatoes from the garden. We really enjoyed the pizza sauce that I made last Saturday so I decided to repeat the process. I used about a gallon and half of tomatoes (filled up my casserole crockpot) add some fresh oregano and basil along with a 1/2 cup of lemon juice and a tablespoon of sugar. This sauce turned out perfect! I was able to can up 11 additional pints for future use! I went ahead and made a fresh crust but with the ingredients all out I also made and froze two additional crust which will be nice for using during the school year.

I can tell the garden is coming to a close. So I have decided to go ahead and plan for next year. I had purchased a small green stalk planter on sale in the spring. We used dirt from a garden bed that is currently behind the green house. This is a bed that is out of sight and out of mind so we will be moving it this fall. I am going to use this small green stalk for attempting lettuce and spinach this fall and in the early spring.. I actually received a packet of arugula seeds that I started on the top row. I also purchased two additional tops for my green stalk planter during the sale they had last week.

I did some research as to what type of garlic, spinach and lettuce would grow best in my area. One of the big reasons is that I have had very limited success with this in the past so I decided to try something new. I placed an order for all three things so we shall see if they work.

I am attempting to lower the grocery budget significantly during the final four months of the year. I would love to keep this month September to less than $200. I went through and skipped most of my subscribe and save order for the month. So far including the Amazon I have spent $106 for the month. We are starting to run low on paper products so a trip to Costco will likely occur around the first week of October which will mean at least a $500 budget for October.

EVERY BIT COUNTS!

Three Day Weekend- Labor Day

Posted on September 7, 2026 by Sheila

Today is what most people would say the last day of summer. Some years it feels like fall already but not this year. The temperature was around 83 *however since this is 10-15 degrees cooler than last week, it was a pleasant day to work outside. I spent alot of time trying to battle back the weeds. I got all of the blueberry bed cleared and about half of the bed on the side of the house. I also spent some time pulling weeds in the garden, removing dead things and trying to make it look a little bit better. I am actually very happy with it now. I harvested a gallon of tomatoes and we have 14 zucchini plants that have sprouted along with two bean plants. I also found a couple of loofa sponges that are big enough to use effectively! I am holding out hope that we get a load of zucchini and a couple more nice batches of tomatoes in the next couple of weeks.

Matt and I ended up installing a new rain barrel for the bed in the front of the house. I had also decided to remove the back barrier. I am planning to make this bed a pepper bed next year so it will not be needed and it was actually really ugly. We also placed some additional pieces of wood under the legs to help it look straighter. I also worked on some general clean up around the outside of the house and we changed the front sign from flowers to fall!

The other area that was a focus was continuing to add to the stockpile. I made a batch of salsa on Saturday and canned up four additional pints. I also made both pizza sauce and a couple of extra pizza crust today! The canning closet is looking really full and I am thankful that even though I did not officially participate in the Every bit counts challenge. I only have less than 20 empty jars at this point. I am very hopefully that we will be able to fill these remaining jars up with tomato products in the next month as well as start to empty some of the jars out so that we can significantly reduce the grocery budget.

I am disappointed in the fact that we are almost eight days in September and I have yet to have a no spend day. On the bright side, we decided and scheduled a short weekend trip to Myrtle Beach in October as a time to just get away and enjoy some time together without a lot of outside demands.

Sunday Garden Update- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Posted on September 6, 2026 by Sheila

I realized that I rarely provide garden updates during the summer and fall months. The reason is probably because of how busy we usually are. However because of how excited I am about the tomatoes and the possibility of having a zucchini harvest I wanted to share. I want to say upfront that the garden has been a huge disappointment this summer. I ended up purchasing four boxes of tomatoes from the farm stand in order to get us stocked up for the winter. I think so far we have maybe 5 zucchini and yellow squash. The weather has played a huge role as it has been extremely dry and hotter than usually. Or is this a bad garden year because I was out of town for four weeks? Guess it really does not matter!

I ended up planting 15 zucchini seeds last week in a last ditch effort to see if my seeds were bad or if I just cant grow things. We should have enough time before our first frost but it can be a toss up as we get closer to October. Hopefully we will get some more zucchini at least we have sprouts!

Now the Good…. I am not sure of the tomato variety but they are all beautiful and we will use them all!

The garden arches have fill out and we should get some loofas from them!

The bad…

And the ugly, my front tomato beds that have already died with little results and the reason I am so excited about the volunteer tomatoes

Did I Get the Date Wrong?

Posted on September 5, 2026 by Sheila

Today is definitely September 5th, but after my day yesterday, it really should have been a Friday the 13th. This is going to be a real and raw blog and I will go ahead and say if I offend you sorry I don’t mean to point fingers but rather just recorded the events so that in the future I can look back and laugh and say I survived.

E was scheduled a visit with both of his parents, which historically cause a lot of disruptions for us. He was awake around 5:30am with his heart racing and hungry. I decided there was no reason to even attempt to go back to sleep so after calming him I was up for the day. He was moving very slowly and required ALOT of extra prompts just to make it to school.
Kendall is completing an internship at Cooleemee on Friday so she is riding with me and planned to hang out at my office for the afternoon. We went out to eat in Downtown Mocksville. Imagine my surprise when the car would not crank right after lunch. I also had an emergency light that said CVT. This is the same part that was replaced in June. I called the dealership and was not that I was outside the area they can tow in so I could pay an additional amount to them, attempt to drive the car or call for Nissan roadside assistance. I decided to take my chance and drive the 30 minutes to the dealership. When I arrived, I was told they only had one technician and he had just went to lunch. The expected time was 2 hours. I looked at my watch and decided I should still have enough time to make Zach’s game. I was waiting patiently until about an hour and half in. I was told that I could not get a loaner car until they decided what was wrong. A little after two hours I was told that it was the battery but they were not sure what the cost was? And it would be at least another 45 minutes. I lost it. I started asking for management, luckily about 15 minutes later we were out the door.

Kendall and I got home with just enough time for me to use the bathroom and head to Zach’s game. Kendall was staying at home to get E after the visit. The game was over an hour away. We got to the game and realized that E still was not home and no one had contacted me at all. An hour and half after his visit was scheduled to end, I started texting and calling the four different numbers I had for the DSS office. No answer to either text or calls and not one single line had the after hours on call Social worker number. Kendall was concerned and I was as well. E arrived an hour and forty-five minutes after his visit. I did receive a text an hour after he was dropped off. I also received a call 2 and half hours after he was dropped off.

We were actually surprised the game started on time because of lightening in the area When it started to rain we moved mom into a slighty covered area. Unfortunately, her scooter decided that it was not going to work either, Thank goodness we safely made it to the car and waited out the storm. Matt and I did not get home till almost 11pm and it was right at midnight when Zach came home. E ended the night crying himself awake x 3.

Yeap it should have been a Friday the 13th.

Wordless Wednesday- 2 New Closet

Posted on September 2, 2026 by Sheila

These are the last two rooms that we have re-arranged and designed this summer. Instead of moving my office back into a room, I actually like having my desk next to the bed so we definitely needed the bigger closet space. We actually got rid of approximately 30% of our original closet before moving and re-arranging.

The original closet