The Lord Provides....

The Lord Blesses...

The Lord meets us right where we are...

And our family was hungry!

And our family can't afford lots of food right now...

And our family is creative with the gifts we receive so this will go along ways!

And our family shares it's gifts...

this is what is left AFTER we shared with three other families!

Thank You LORD!!

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Many people ask me all of the time how I manage to feed our family of 4 and sometimes 6 on just $100.00 a month, on really prosperous months $150.00 is the max.

This is how... the Lord blesses us with FREE FOOD....

All the time....

And usually right when we need it most!

Are you in a hard spot? Do you want to make you $$ count more than it does right now? Check out the surplus food programs in your area! A friend of mine supplies us with tons of food each month free of charge, because it is surplus. The grocery stores give it to him to dispose of, as long as he does not disclose to the recipients where it came from! (They don't want sued if something is bad, but I understand that in this society) It is truly a blessing to our family! The other program that we use is Harvest Bag in our area. We get a bag of produce and a bag of bread each week for a donation of any amount, even 0 on bad weeks! I don't know where we would be without these wonderful blessings to our family. I know that the Lord is behind it all since we tend to end up with what we really need right when we really need it!

How do you make things work creatively in your family?

Blessing!

Why is it that people think that they can take a two minute snippet of something and judge the whole of that something? For instance, take a little look at my son and say "He's not disabled, you are making it up" or take a little look at my life and say "You are a bad mom" or "You fit this formula" ? Or like in the blog of one Christ fearing STRONG mom of a very ill child that I read, a reader reads a few things and then says "You are making your son sick for attention." Yup, makes your heart sick with disgust doesn't it? It does mine too, especially since I have been there, and feel like I am there again! Why are people so mean and narrow minded? Why do people think it is ok at attack those who are already down and trying so hard in horrible situations? I don't understand what drives our society to be so horrible!

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Does it sound like I am on a rant? Well, I probably am going to be..... it's just been one of those weeks! So get ready for a little tiny look at my roller coaster!

Things have been really hard with Nathaniel the last few days.... actually I don't know how long it's been going on, I just know that it feels like an eternity! He usually has one or two good days followed by a few bad days then back to good again. But recently he has been having good moments, like an hour or so, followed by hard hours... then a few more good moments. It's exhausting riding this emotional roller coaster with him and not knowing what is causing it! I am drained half way into the day, but there is no time for naps, nor would he let me take one! I know that one of the things that is probably bothering him is that we are coming up on summer vacation. Nathaniel does not like chaos. He likes a very firm schedule with little to no wiggle room in it. For instance, something as simple as waling inside the store after he gets off of the bus but before he gets catheterized will throw him off on his behavior for at least two hours! You don't dare forget to take the bathroom keys with you, or need to finish with a customer when going to get him from the bus! It is really hard to give him that kind of consistency on a normal day but over summer time it's so much worse! Four kids to coordinate and entertain, a business to run and two jobs to hold down. Not really the same thing for him as going to school every day.

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Yesterday Nathaniel needed to come home from school early with me. A big kink in his schedule plan. He did ok in the beginning, but about an hour into it he started in with his sister... for no apparent reason. She is sitting on the couch minding her own business, and he walks up to her and hits her. She cries. Me: "Nathaniel, what was that for?" Nat:"Ump"..... Me in my mind "Oh shit" (yes, it is MY blog so I can say what is in MY mind! Don't like it? Don't read!)

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Do you know Nathaniel? Do you know his "Ump" mood? Let me tell you, it is NOT fun! It is one of the first signs that he is about to go into defiant mode, and non verbal mode. I applaud all those parents who deal with non verbal disabled children daily... it is so hard! It takes every ounce of my strength to get through it, and sometimes I go down in flames in frustration! So anyways, this somewhat little incident lead into a two hour defiant, physically aggressive mode. This means that Nat needs held, in an adults lap, with his arms held so he can't hit. It means we either count from 1 to 10 or sing "One Two Buckle a Shoe" over and over and over again. Quiet, calm voice repeating over and over again the same thing. Calm, even when there are ten million things that need done, like finishing a wedding party's dresses, helping customers, answering phone calls from annoying people or answering ten million texts from the husband who has decided that he will only speak through text messages. Then, with no indication of what's happening, my sweet little boy will look at me and say "I am fine Mommy, We are done." Sometimes I get that message after 10 minutes, sometimes it takes hours.... yesterday was an hours day, and we did it twice...

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Then there are the people who think that they can look at one or two 10 second clips of my life, reported through another's eyes and judge what I am doing with my children. I just want to throw my hands up in the air and shout "How can you be so stupid?" But that won't get me anywhere.... no one likes to be called stupid. I was blessed to deal with these type of people again all day yesterday. I makes me want to give up. Seriously. Give Up. But I know that is not what Christ would have me do. He never stopped in the middle of a teaching, looked around and said you are all too stupid to get this. So I can't do it either. Even if I think they are..... functioning at a lower capacity than myself (there is that better than "stupid?). I must dig in.I must stand firm in the knowledge that I am a GREAT mom, who works incredibly hard in the face of much adversity, to give my children the best life that I can. I must rely in the knowledge that my Lord has a plan, and though I can't see it, nor can I understand the current suffering, He knows best and I must trust Him! I must turn up the worship music REALLY LOUD and remind my heart and brain who I serve and why. I must endure, for the sake of my sanity and my children.

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Pray for me in this?

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And then there was the incident at the school about my son's cauterization. I am really picky about who dose this, and that I train them. Not the school nurse, who couldn't pick Nathaniel out of a group of 10 kids (nor probably 5 for that matter). Not any of the staff who has been doing it, yet NEVER spoken to his Dr. No, this is my son. This is a procedure that keeps him safe and healthy, and if done properly keeps him out from under the surgical knife for a bit longer (my prayer is that he can avoid surgery until he is old enough to make the choices that will effect him for the rest of his life, because they are not reversible). So I specifically requested to be present during ALL training of the new staff for next year. And I was told that was fine. We even have a time set up next week where we will be training one of the new staff members. So imagine my surprise when I wandered in to pick the kids up for an unrelated incident, and was told that Nathaniel was with the health care staff training the new person. Was I IRATE? HELL YES! I am still seething over it. So I am off in a few minutes to have a talk to the principal of the school. I hate that they are so inconsistent, and straight up lye to me. This is MY child and his HEALTH that they are messing with. This is so unacceptable to me! In so many ways I wish that I could home school him, but I know that I can't. I mentally and physically need those few hours. And I have to work sometime to pay the mortgage... no one will provided me with free housing! Here's another are that you can pray for me. Because if they can't promise me that no one other than the staff that I have personally trained, will be catheterizing Nathaniel he will be pulled back out of school today. I just can't mess with his health!

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To end on a high note..... because life isn't all bad..... it just feels that way sometimes! I got to do something special last night..... I got to go see my beautiful niece Josie perform with her school choir at the local performing arts center! She did a wonderful job, as did most of the other youth (I will have to post a rant about the boys and their attire latter, I am out of time!). It was an enjoyable evening of music. I videoed Josie's solo and will have to find time to upload it here for you soon!

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So today I am going to stay strong in Christ. I am going to bless a co worker. And I am going to walk the path provided for me by my Heavenly Father. I hope that you too will take the high road!

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Blessings!

*Disclaimer* This is NOT a pity post... read past the first paragraph before giving up!!

So I don't know if all of this craziness with the economy or the state politics is affecting your family any... but it is wreaking havoc with my finances! If the unstable economy isn't bad enough for a business owner, throw in there all the fun things that the governor of California is cutting for disabled people and you have a MESS! But I am trying so hard not to let it effect the kids too much. So when they are constantly asking to go here or there, or do this or that I feel so bad saying no all the time! I don't want to tell them "Can't go to town because there isn't enough gas" or "Can't do that, I don't have any money". So I have been trying to be very creative with activities recently. Today I think we had a winner!

We have all of these really cool places right here in Los Osos that we seldom go to because they aren't "special". I mean in a 6 and 8 year old's mind, doing something in the town that you live in is not "special". But today I just loaded them up in the car and took off without telling them where we were going. And we only went about 3 miles from our house :) We went to Sweet Spring Nature Preserve and walked around. It was fun, not too long of a walk for Nathaniel, and lots of pretty things to look at. And of course we took the camera, for mommy and the kids!

Audrey was mostly in the mood to take pictures, not be in pictures today, but Nathaniel was a willing target for me. This is a major switch a roo for my kids!


There are quiet a few of these cool bridges at Sweet Springs!

Look! A smile from my boy!! So hard to capture that usually....

Nat walking on the cool paths

Ducks to talk to! Audrey had an odd version of "duck talk" going on

Mommy playing with the camera and natural framing..

This came out really neat! Post card picture!

I love old fences!

More natural framing!

A study in God's wonders.... It boggles the mind that one God dreamed up and created everything we see around us... in such fine detail and composition.

Overall, it was a fun outing and we have lots of great pictures to talk about, study and thank God for! I really like days like this,and hope that the kids come to appreciate them too. Because I don't know when things are going to balance out, but I still want to have fun with my kids!

Blessings!

It's been one CRAZY, LONG day...

It started before the sun came up this morning, as it was Garage Sale Sat around here. We have garage sales about once a month here... it's AMAZING how much stuff accumulates in just 30 short days. So, any who, we were up with the sun this morning getting ready. The good news is that there were 5 of us getting ready so it went quickly and we were ready at 7 am, the bad news is that having everyone working around threw Nathaniel off of his schedule, and that is a VERY BAD thing! We had Mr. OCD, Mr. Easily Set Off, and Mr HUGE Tantrums this morning... with all of those strangers in my front yard. But we did GREAT in the GS today, so that felt good too :)

On of the nice bonuses to GSing is that I get a jump start on my Sunday chores! And since we were REALLY BLESSED with TONS of groceries this week, a jump start on chores was a good thing! Faline and I we able to chop 5 bell peppers, 2 onions, a bunch of radishes, a couple green onions, a head of Bach Choy and 3 egg plants for easy to assemble meals this coming week.

We also attacked the HUGE grocery bag FULL of Key Limes. I *LOVE* Key Lime Cheesecake and Key Lime Pie.... but this was a bit many fruits. A few weeks ago, my good friend D blogged about making homemade Key Lime Cheesecake from a bag of Key Limes she had received. You can check it out here. It's a really funny post, but the she is right, the hardest part about Key Limes is juicing them. They are little TINY buggers, and they are kinda stingy with their juice. But a co-worker of mine let me in on a trick this week.... read on D, it's life changing!! You see, you have to flash boil before squeezing them. Pan of boiling water, drop the key limes in for 2 minutes, then drain in.. while they are still warm puncture a hole in the skin and squeeze. It's amazing how much more juice you get!!

I forgot to count how many baggies of these things we had, but this was the third pail of skins we had! That's a lot of key limes, in case you were wondering!

Look at all those empty little skins.... they gave us lots of juice...

12 Cups of juice to be exact....

12 Cups of fresh Key Lime juice...

Now I need lots of recipes for that!
Feel free to leave you favorite Key Lime recipe in the comments!!

Since there was no way I could use all of that before it went bad, we froze it in Ziplocs so I have fresh juice whenever I want!

But of course I had to use some today, so I baked a Key Lime Cheesecake! Doesn't that look divine??




If you would like to make one here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

3 - 8 ounce boxes cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 eggs
1/3 cup key lime juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. To make Crust: In a bowl stir together the graham cracker crumbs and 2 tablespoons sugar, stir in the butter well. Pat the mixture into the bottom and 1/2 inch up the side of a buttered 10 inch springform pan and bake the crust in a preheated 375 degree F (190 degree C) oven for 8 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool.

2. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and 3/4 cup sugar until smooth, beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the sour cream, flour, lime juice and vanilla. Beat the mixture until it is smooth.

3.Pour the filling over the crust. Bake the cheesecake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, reduce the temperature to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C) and bake for 50 to 55 minutes longer, or until center is barely set. Let the cheesecake cool on a rack, then chill it, covered, overnight. Remove the cheesecake from the pan and transfer it to a cake stand.

After playing with the key limes, and making a pitcher of fresh squeezed orange juice, and squeezing enough lemons of 3 batches of lemonade, we had to clean up from the GS... and unfortunately there was a fair amount left over... guess we will try again in the next week or so! Anyways, went we were cleaning up we got a bit creative..

This is a shot into the front of my garage...
Notice anything interesting about it??
(other than my messy garage!)


Yup, that is Josie in there...
behind all the clothes...
and behind the piano...

We don't need her this week, right??

Andrew doesn't know that is the broken piano...

Opps, here she comes over the top...

Guess it will take more than that to trap her...

And, yes, she is still in her pjs ...

and it was after 2 pm!

And this was Josie getting creative with the loads to the car..

That is a rolling clothes rack from the store that she is using to move the boxes to my car! And the car was only parked at the next door neighbors house!

After all of this fun, we headed to BB to finish the day and total out. Then it was back home to actually cook dinner...

Can you blame me for being in bed already with that busy day??

But it was lots of fun, and a sample of what is to come in a few weeks when summer gets here.... all 5 kids (yes, I think Andrew will be around quiet a bit), all day.... day after day after day...

Fun!

Blessings!

It's been a day or so of changes...

Hope you can bear with me while I find my "style" here, and get this set in a way that reflects my heart! Since that is what I hope to share on here... my heart and my family!

Let me know what you think of the new look, new info and new blog!

Blessings!