Medical Emergencies
I have been living at the hospital lately with a sick little one. Nothing much else going on in life as everything else is currently on hold.
Posts Tagged ‘ family ’
Updates from Life
As you know I haven’t been posting much to any of my blogs or the podcast. I have refocused most of my time and energy back where it belongs, to my family. Should time free up again, I hope to spend more time blogging, until then it is time well spent with my children, my husband, and taking care of my home.
We have many projects that are taking up a lot of our time but they have been great family projects. First up is our vegetable garden, while it is small we hope to get enough produce out of it to save some on our grocery bill this season. The kids all picked vegetables they are in charge of and have been diligent in caring for it. Also to their delight we planted some marigolds and sunflowers.
Several weeks ago we constructed a guinea pig home and cat proofed it. We adopted three male guinea pigs that are about a year and a few months old and that have lived together in a 1′x2′ cage most of their lives. They were surrendered to a rescue shelter and were not used to being handled (the noted reason for surrendering was because the children wouldn’t clean the cage). They are doing smashingly and already are used to their meal schedule and come to our voices. The little one we named Scooby Doo now curls up on my chest and will nap. They have some a long way from the shy and squirmy little guys they were and the children, my husband, and I just love them to pieces.
I have to take a sideline here and rant for a minute. Children should not be the sole responsible party for a pet. Children cannot BE responsible for pets and giving a child a pet does not teach them responsibility. I have seen numerous parents agree to let children have a small pet on the condition that they will take care of it and if they fail the pet will be “gotten rid of”. One, this teaches children that parents allow a child to ignore a pet and live in terrible and inhumane conditions (since the parent won’t step in) and two, that if they don’t want the pet all they have to do is to stop taking care of it and the parents will get rid of it. This is a very tragic and common occurrence and parents who think they are teaching their children lessons of responsibility usually don’t realize they are teaching irresponsibility instead. Adults should be in charge of the pet with children assisting parents. Remember, the best way to teach your children is by example. (end rant)
I have been sewing and crocheting quite a bit and trying to get rid of a lot of surplus fabric I have by turning it into rompers and dresses for the littlest girl. My oldest daughter learned to sew recently and has been working on some of her own projects as well. We have even made some cozies for the guinea pigs.
Coupons and shopping trip deals have been taking up several hours every weekend but the money we are saving is worth every penny. It costs enough to feed and care for a family of six as it is and the way grocery and incidental costs are going up it is costing more than ever. Every week we spend time as a family clipping coupons from the Sunday paper, I then organize them and check out the weekly ads. I have found several websites to be invaluable resources in planning my weekly shopping:
Money Saving Mom - (Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart deals as well as a few other good deals)
BeCentsAble - Grocery Gatherings include weekly ads and the coupons that go with them allowing you to either get items free or for pennies on the dollar. They note the best deals for items on sale or with coupons at a long list of stores so you don’t have to spend quite so much time keeping track of them on your own when planning your shopping trips.
Those are the two big ones I check. There are many other blogs I am keeping up with and I will share those with you later. I will have a post from my great deals this week to share with you the kinds of things these sites have helped me to accomplish (for example, I got $20 worth of stuff absolutely free yesterday at Wal-Mart). It takes some work, but a penny saved is double that which is earned!
My primary job is to be a great mom and wife and to care for my family and home. While technology is a great passion of mine, it cannot consume my time. I do love teaching people about technology and being an open source evangelist but there are only so many hours in the day and once I have spent 40 hours a week or more away from home my family suffers when I spend another 40 ignoring them at home. I am more than happy to answer questions, share what I know, and link to things I think are truly exceptional, but I don’t have time to be a news outlet. ;) I am keeping up with as much as I can but can’t afford to miss out on my family. Thanks for understanding that.
You don’t have to be a farmer to make cheese
and other free, fascinating, and informative how-tos.
Well, that isn’t exactly the title of the publication but it does tell you how to Make Homemade Cheese (PDF) and even includes recipes! I have seen dairy farms and cheese making places (my oh so technical terms) on the Discovery Channel but it always looked so intimidating, what with all the industrial equipment and such. After reading the free publications from the New Mexico State University I realized there is more I can make in my own humble kitchen and backyard than I previously thought. Don’t worry if making homemade cheese doesn’t appeal to you, they have documents on everything from reconstructing clothing to potty training toddlers to recipes for pinto beans and my personal favorite, In a Pinch Ingredient Substitutions (PDF).
More favorites of mine:
- Make Jelly, Jam, and Spread at Home (PDF)
- Managing Your Family’s Money (PDF)
- Rags to Riches (clothing reconstruction) PDF
- Pattern Alteration (PDF)
- How to Keep a Small Poultry Flock (PDF)
- Creating Strong Families (PDF)
- Backyard Composting (PDF)
- Growing Sweetcorn in Home and Market Gardens (PDF)
- When to Harvest Vegetables (HTML)
More free nutritional, cooking, sewing, canning, and family publications at the New Mexico State University How To Publications site
Pulling together as a family
Between the soaring gas prices and the rising costs of necessities we are really feeling the crunch of the economy at home. While it would be awesome if the blogs and podcast would finally start pulling in some extra cash, they really haven’t done it yet. My family made a lot of sacrifices over the last year while I spent every waking moment on the computer writing, podcasting, and researching content and the time has come where I can’t expect them to continue to miss me 80 hours a week not to mention I am missing them most of all. Online has to take a backseat to my family since giving up my day job is not an option. My family is more important than any other blog or social networking event is so hopefully everyone understands why it seems I have gone dark for awhile.
Besides the new challenges facing the average family in the US right now, the real wake up call was that 10 years and a better income later, I had less money now than I did in the past in a single income family. We were doing something wrong and we had to do something to fix it or we will never survive the current economy crisis. We are going back to our roots and doing what we used to to save money and make our hard earned money go as far as possible. We also realized we don’t spend enough quality time together so we made a plan and agreed to start implementing change. We put our plans in motion a few weeks ago and things are looking up.
One of the easiest changes I can make is to alter my work schedule to cut down daycare costs so I can be home when school gets out. This starts this week and I will be getting up before the sun comes up to start my commute to work every day and I will be home more with the kids and be around to take care of my home.I have gotten some great tips from online blogs and groups in addition to just common sense back to basics living for overcoming the rising costs of living. We will survive stronger, happier, and healthier than ever and I will share more of our money saving tips that include our garden, made from scratch recipes, sewing/crochet/knitting, and smart shopping methods. My free time has moved completely over to household productivity/management time but blogging won’t cease completely; posts will be less frequent, but they won’t be absent.
QotD: One Small Act
What small act of kindness have you done in the last thirty days?
Submitted by One Kind Act.
Grandad was recently diagnosed with throat cancer. It is not life threatening yet as it hasn’t spread but he had two options for treatment: 1) radiation/chemo which has a 70% chance success rate alone but will destroy his saliva glands (and temporarily his taste buds) or 2) surgery to remove the tumor immediately but the procedure will take his voice box. He has opted for the radiation/chemo combo in an attempt to save his voice. This was a difficult choice for a man who loves to eat and has his own garden and fresh herbs and a man that loves to talk. In the meantime he has a feeding tube because his throat hurts too bad to swallow and he doesn’t like to take the morphine because it makes him nauseous.
I love my Grandad dearly and he lives on a farm about an hour away with my Grandmama. They are having a hard time keeping all the farm chores up with the illness and all right now so I packed up the kids the other day and we headed down for a visit. The kids did the weed eating, the garden picking, the hauling, and any other chore they could come up with. They had a blast. It’s funny how kids love to do chores for other people, but not their own. =)
Anyway, we decided we would go down every other Saturday to help out as well as just to visit. I hope that if nothing else, the visits will put a little cheer into a dreary time and help take their minds off the illness and discomfort. You can’t help but smile when a curly headed two year old girl wraps her arms around your leg in a hug and looks up with a smile to tell you “Love you, Grandad”…
NY Times Story: My First Lesson In Motherhood
Guess I am feeling a little sentimental tonight because this story totally hit me hard. Perhaps it is because I have four children that I wouldn’t exchange for all the comforts and riches in the world; because I adopt every stray animal that comes near me; because every kid in the neighborhood that hangs out with our kids always end up at our house. No matter, this story from the NY Times is a good read…
My First Lesson in Motherhood
By ELIZABETH FITZSIMONS
Published: May 13, 2007
I SAW the scar the first time I changed Natalie’s diaper, just an hour after the orphanage director handed her to me in a hotel banquet room in Nanchang, a provincial capital in southeastern China.
Despite the high heat and humidity, her caretakers had dressed her in two layers, and when I peeled back her sweaty clothes I found the worst diaper rash I’d ever seen, and a two-inch scar at the base of her spine cutting through the red bumps and peeling skin.
The next day, when the Chinese government would complete the adoption, also was Natalie’s first birthday. We had a party for her that night, attended by families we’d met and representatives of the adoption agency, and Natalie licked cake frosting from my finger. But we worried about a rattle in her chest, and there was the scar, so afterward my husband, Matt, asked our adoption agency to send the doctor.
We had other concerns, too. Natalie was thin and pale and couldn’t sit up or hold a bottle. She had only two teeth, barely any hair and wouldn’t smile. But I had anticipated such things. My sister and two brothers were adopted from Nicaragua, the boys as infants, and when they came home they were smelly, scabies-covered diarrhea machines who could barely hold their heads up. Yet those problems soon disappeared.
I believed Natalie would be fine, too. There was clearly a light on behind those big dark eyes. She rested her head against my chest in the baby carrier and would stare up at my face, her lips parting as she leaned back, as if she knew she was now safe.
QotD: Terms of Endearment
What is your favorite term of endearment?
Submitted by lostdwarf.
To lighten the mood, I call my husband a crack head and he calls me a crack ho and then we have little crack babies. We are a little twisted I suppose, but it makes us giggle and we really do love each other. It is our way of trying to avoid fights mostly… how angry can you stay when you spouse looks at you with big eyes and calls you a crack head? lol The ridiculousness of it makes us smile.
Chocolate Cake and Chocolate Pudding!
What a nutritious dinner! Notice the healthy stuff on the plate that goes untouched.
Kid Art
Kid art as drawn by my kids one night on the paper tablecloth on the tables at Garfield’s Restaurant in Bartlesville, OK.