Kids Leaving Home

Steph moved yesterday. We all did good until time for me to leave. She had a hard time with it so Ross and I both were crying when we left. She is scared and has never been this far from home before. She is strong and she will do fine. She is about a hour and half away.

The house they have is great. The bedrooms are big, the kitchen is a womans dream. They have a big back yard for the kids to play in. I do worry but I know that God will take care of my family. This is a time for her to grow up some more. It is also a time for me to let her.

I believe John will take good care of all of them. He is not the same guy he was 3 years ago. I think he is going to be a great dad to all three kids.

Now it is time for me to get my house straighted back up from having them here. She left some things that I need to box up.
I will try to get started on sharing my frugal living tips in the next day or two.

Thanksgiving Day 2

Well, we went to the mission this morning. We gave out hats, socks and gloves. Today there were many who thanked us. Some wouldn't take something because they didn't need it. I was very blessed by going. I am so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to go.

It was so cold out there. The wind was blowing and it was raining when we first got there. The rain stopped, which was great. We ran out of hats and gloves. I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving day.

Thanksgiving Day

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. We are going to give out socks at the mission. My cousin has been doing this for years. He now goes to 3 different cities to give out socks on Thanksgiving. He was in Ashville, NC. yesterday, Knoxville and Chattanooga today. A friend and his wife are doing Chattanooga for him. It is a very humbling experience to see all the homeless we have here. Some choose to be there and would live no other way. The ones that really touch you are the ones that don't want to stay that way. There are so many children it is really heartbreaking. I will post again when we get back. I need to get my camera to where I can start posting pictures. I might try that today.

We are eating supper with the kids tonight and they are moving tomorrow. So might not get to post again for a day or two. I want to start posting more regularly.

God Bless and have a great Thanksgiving!

Thankful for Life

We have enjoyed our wildlife all summer. We had beautiful hummingbirds, now that they are gone we miss them. We are wanting to get some other types of bird feeders because we have a lot of birds here. We have a herd of deer that are coming in to the backyard. We know that there are at least 3 smaller ones and 2 larger ones.

We are loving living out here in the country. There was a time in my life that my husband couldn't me out here. I didn't want to be so far out away from everything. I have no ideal why I that was so important then. It is not important now. I like the darkness at night and looking at the mountain behind us. Of course, what was important then is no where near as important now.

Now just being with and taking care of my family is more important. Stopping and recognizing God, what He has made and enjoying it that is important. God has taken such wonderful care of us this year, I am so very thankful to Him for it. We would not have made it through had it not been for Him.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. God Bless.

Having Grown Children

I have been struggling for a while with having a grown daughter and grand children. I have not known how to be a mom to someone grown. It is very hard. My daughter and I have had our share of problems over the years be we are friends now. She has never been very far from me and my babies have stayed with me almost as much as with her. She is moving about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hour from me and I am having a hard time with it. She and the kids have lived with us since March and I am going to miss them terribly. But I can also see all the good that can come from this move.

I just really need to give it to God and let Him deal with it. I know that His strength will once again get me through.
Our children grow up so fast, we need to enjoy them while we can.

Taco Soup

This is our modified version of Taco Soup. We love this soup and eat it like chilli.

1 can pintos
1 can black beans
1 can chili beans
1 can white beans I use what ever white bean is on sale
1 can kidney beans
1 can whole kernel corn what ever type you like the original calls for shoe peg but that is usually more expensive so we use yellow.
2 cans rotel tomatoes we use mild but you can use which ever heat you like
1 ld. ground beef
1 pack taco seasoning

In large pot (this makes a very large pot of soup) put beans, corn, tomatoes and taco seasoning. Brown ground beef and add to soup. Put just enough water to cover and simmer about 30 minutes.

We make petros out of this just like you would chilli.
Hope you enjoy.

Salsa Recipe

My friend Debbie gave me this great salsa recipe.

10-12 large tomatoes
3 cups onions
1 1/2 - 2 jalepenos (with 1/2 or all seeds)
1 1/2 cups green peppers
3 tsp. canning salt
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp. cilantro

Skin tomatoes place in large pot. Add diced vegetables mush all together. Add vinegar then salt, sugar and cilantro. Cover heat til boiling, reduce heat to medium and cook for 30 minutes. Let cool.


I put this in quart size freezer bags and froze it. My family loves this.

A day in the life..........

I don't know who reads this but I am sorry I have not written in so long. Things here have been really crazy. I have not had the energy or what ever you want to call it to do much of anything that i didn't have too. I know that sounds bad.

My husband was in the hospital for 8 days last month but now he is better. We are going to the Dr. today to get the results of his PET scan.

To me life is very hard right now. I am struggling to just get out of bed in the mornings. I am not sure what my problem is but I am ready to feel differently.

I have some recipes and things that I want to get put up and I will try to do that in the next day or two. I just thought I had better put a little something up here so people would know I was still around.

Hope you have a good day and God bless.

Life around here.

I said in my last post that things were difficult here and they have not been much better as the week has gone on.

The radiation has burned my husbands neck really bad and getting something done has been a chore. I had to get a little hateful with them to get his neck treated. Now before I found the Lord again getting hateful was a daily accurance but now I try to not be that way all the time it just isn't right. But I guess like most women when a loved one hurts it makes that protective nature come out and you just reach a point that they do something or we are going else where period.
Well, they finally sent us to a dermitologist?. We have been treating his neck seince yesterday afternoon and there is already a difference. Thank God.

I know that with all that we are walking through I am learning to have a lot more sympathy for people with very sick loved ones that require alot of care. Cancer is a family disease and effects everyone in the house. I do not know how people who do not have the Lord make it through. I know I could not. I would be in the phsyc ward.

I am thankful for good friends and family through this too. They have been very encouraging to me.
We are off to the doctor again. God Bless and have a good day.

I haven't written in awhile.

Things have been really crazy around here. Johnny has had to be at the doctors office everyday at 8:00 til noon for the last 2 weeks. It has been very trying here. I have also been trying to work 2 to 4 days a week and it gets very tiring. We are getting through with help from the Lord. If it were not for our precious Saviour I am not sure we would make it. Hopefully this will be over soon. Life is interesting to say the least at this point but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I will share with you in some future posts just what God has done in this home. Have a good day and God Bless. We are off to the doctors office.

Wildlife

We have between 6 to 10 hummingbirds here. We have 2 that are regulars, a male and female. We all love to sit and watch them. They fight over the feeder. We have gotten such joy out of watching them. So many people have told me that they haaven't had many this year or none at all.
We just love it here where we are living there is so much wildlife. It is so very peaceful. As soon as I can I will try to get osme pictures up.
We were going down the road the other day and there were two wild turkeys in the road. We also saw a flock of them in a field near there.
We have many deer out here and all kinds of bugs. I have never seen so many types of bugs.
There is a bird at the back of our property that we can not tell for sure what it is. We are thinking owl. But it flies from tree to tree swopping down to the ground like it is catching things. It is light colored and will do that for a long time.
We sot out side the other night for a couple of hours just watching all the different animals in our yard.
There was what my husband thinks was about a year old buck feeding off down the back.
Ross loves it, of course he yells when he sees something and scares ot off. LOL
We are so very blessed to be here and thank God that he put us here.

Saving money on milk

To save money on buying so much milk here I use powdered milk and make my own. This saves us alot. I genereally fix about 2 gallons a week. There are six of us and 3 are kids so we go through alot of milk. The milk is fat free but tastes better than skim. The kids get their fat through other sources. I fry things for them , they eat alot of pizza and other fatty type foods. I use olive oil and canola so the fats that they are getting are the healthier kinds.

School work

We are working through the summer this year with our homeschooling. This school year has been hard with all that we have had going on. So Ross didn't get as much done as he should have and it showed in his test scores. He is not that far behind but he is far enough in math that we are going to work on that all summer. He is doing great in reading but is not really good in spelling and his language art skills are off abit. But that is ok. I chose to test this year to see where we were. Of course, when I paid for the testing at the first of the school year I was not expecting to have all these road blocks. I will now work with him and will probably test again in 5th grade to see where we are before he starts middle school.

I am trying to make this next school year very cheap because we do not have the money to spend on curriculum that we usually do. I am looking for free resorces on the internet and there are some good ones out there. http://hillbillyhousewife.com is where I am getting some. If need some that is a good place.

Getting up early

Well this morning I got up at 5:15 for me that is very early. This year I am struggling with getting organized. I have never been completely organized but I have been very unorganized for about 3 years now. I was hoping after we moved that I would get better but I am truly struggling.

I think part of it is due to the fact that I feel so overwhelmed. My mind is so bogged down that I can't seem to get it together. Well, my whole point here is that I want to get up early so I can get things done. This morning I have already had my time with the Lord and have a loaf of bread rising to put in the oven. Plus now I have this quiet time to blog and get my sons school work together for the day.

I have been so depressed is the only word I can think of that would be close to how I have been feeling. I just couldn't seem to get up in the mornings and get going. I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders.

Well, God has really been working on me to just let all this stuff go and let Him deal with it. I can do that but sometimes there is just so much that I can't even seem to sort through it. So this morning I have done that and I feel much better.

Stains and fabric softener

I use vinegar as my fabric softener and it works really well. The smell goes away when dried even if you hang them outside on the line. It takes the soap and softener buildup off your clothes also. My towels are much more absorbent now.

I am also using octagon soap to put on stains on the clothes. Just wet the item and then rub the bar on the stain and scrub. Throw it in with the regular wash and most of the time the stain is gone. Works just as well as stain removers but much cheaper.

Laundry detergent

I have started making my own laundry detergent I like it quite well.

1 bar zote soap
1 c borax
1 c washing soda
1 5 gallon bucket

Grate your soap and put in pot with 6 cups of water. Heat this until the soap melts. Do not boil it, I stir it unti it is read. When melted remove from heat and add borax and washing soda. Mix well then add to 5 gallon bucket. Fill the rest of the bucket with hot water and stir well. You can no tuse for 24 hours let it set then stir and use. I use 1 cup per load.

This lasted us about 6 to 8 weeks I can not remeber when we made it for sure. There are 6 of us so that is alot of laundry.
We have 3 kids here so this time I add more borax and soda to see if that will help with all the stains.

cinnamon rolls

I have been learning how to make fresh bread and things. So I tried cinnamon rolls and they were actually pretty good but they need a few changes. I am going to have to roll them thinner and bake them less. Everyone loved them so that was a good treat for the family.

I have never baked much so I am learnin gall kinds of new things. When I find my camera I wil put pics up of all my baking projects.

Introduction to our lives.

We live in a rural area on 1 acre of land. We just moved here in February since then our lives have been turned upside down. I will be writing on here about all the changes going on in our family. My husband was diagnosed with cancer in February also so we have been dealing with that also. God has moved so miraculously in our lives this year and I will be talking about that on here as well.

There is my husband John, our son Ross who is 9. My daughter from previous marriage Stephanie and her two children Isaiah 3 and Kaitlynn 2. We all live in a 16 x 80 single wide mobile home. Our income is very limited since my husband has not worked since February. So I am learning to live quite frugally. Really that is not a bad thing. I am enjoying the learning.

We homeschool our son. He has never had to go to public school and we feel so blessed by that.

This blog will be kind of like my journal. What I am learning, how we are dealing with different areas in my life.
I am really excited to share what God in doing in our lives.