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    I Bought A Set Of Dishes For Katie

    I stopped at Target the other day to pick up  a few things I needed and while I was there I thought I would look at crock pots to see the sizes available and see how heavy the smaller ones were. I was thinking about buying one for my Mom. As I walked down the aisle I saw that they had a set of dishes that Katie likes that we were waiting to get when they went on sale. The dishes were on clearance for $13.98 and I couldn’t pass them up, they were the last set and I snatched them right up.

    When I brought them home I started thinking of what buying that set of dishes means for me. Katie just graduated college and she already has her teaching job lined up and now she is trying thinking about all of the items that she needs to purchase for her first apartment. This set of dishes reminded me how soon she will be moving out.

    I am not unfamiliar to having her move out, she did live in the dorms her first few years of college. The first year was very difficult for me. Katie is my companion, my partner in crime and my up for anything girl as long as she is home by 2 p.m. on Saturday so she can have the rest of the day to relax and to prepare for her job on Sunday. She loves movies and I alway have a movie buddy as long as I am paying. She loves to shop for clothes, makeup and even groceries. She is the first one to say, for example,  “Mom Jessica Jones starts soon, looks like we need to binge watch it on Netflix”. She looks forward to watching sappy Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel with me. And she is always ready to go out to eat, doesn’t matter if it is breakfast, lunch or dinner.

    My husband and son are very quiet men and even though they are pretty different, they both absolutely hate going to the movies, The Hallmark Channel, clothes  & make up shopping. They tend to let Katie and I do whatever we want without them unless it has to do with a meal. They will tag along for a meal out.

    When Katie moves out she won’t be far, but still it won’t be the same. Even though her apartment will most likely be within 1o or 15 minutes of our home, it won’t be the same.  She jokes that she will be here every day so that we can babysit her dog for her while she works, it still won’t be the same.

    Even though I joke with her that she should consider moving out sooner, and even though I joke that she is my tornado. I will miss her. She is a wonderful companion. It’s funny that the older she gets we have many of the same mannerisms, the same expressions, the same personality and we laugh at the same jokes. We can be watching a movie and at the same time we both shout out the same thing, or look up at each other and have the same expression on our faces. It is so funny to us both.  When she was little she and I couldn’t have been more different except for in looks. But now that she is grown we find that we are so very similiar…

    Katie 18 years old
    Me 17 years old

    I know that I will have an adjustment time for a little while and then I will be fine. But thinking about it right now all I can think of is all the things that I will be doing without her. Being a Mom is hard, especially when one of your babies is finally ready to start her life.

    No matter how sad I may feel at times, I am so happy that she is ready to start her life. It is so exciting to watch her walk through Ikea and say I love this couch, I love this duvet cover, I love these curtains, I love this dining room table, etc…

    She is ready to take the next step in life and she is so happy about it. It’s hard to believe she once was that little baby who arrived 2 weeks early and came into the world screaming her head off.

    She learned her ABC’s before she was 8 months old by watching Wheel Of Fortune reruns when we lived in Iceland (simply because there really wasn’t anything else on tv) and spoke sentences before she was 1 year old.

    She was and is an amazing big sister and she loved her baby brother more than anything else in the entire world.

    She loved school from her very first day. She cried when her very first day of preschool ended when her friends told her they would be there tomorrow and she wouldn’t (she was enrolled 3 days a week and the other kids were 5 days a week, we had to sign her up for 5 days because the other kids would be doing things without her), she used to cry when she was sick and had to miss a day, she loved Dr. Who and she absolutely adored Harry Potter (she still loves Harry Potter, she will never outgrow that).

    Where does the time go? Now she is a college graduate and this fall will be teaching 9th grade Algebra at the high school that she graduated from.

    I will be taking advantage of these next 6 months. I will help her shop for all the items she needs to set up her first apartment. I will try to enjoy every minute even the ones where she is makes me crazy.

     

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    Welcome To Our Simple Days

    When I was thinking of starting a blog I really wanted to share with you all how I try to incorporate natural and simple living into our daily lives. The more I thought about it the more I realized that natural and simple living have meant many different things to my family over the years and I can only imagine that I am not the only one who has ever experienced this. The internet is full of such a wide variety of people looking for ways to live a more simple life. There are people who struggle financially that living a natural life seems out of their reach, and there are people who are financially stable and are looking for more ways to live naturally.  I want this blog to be for everyone no matter your age or income. I hope homemakers, single parents, full time working parents, men, women, young adults, retirees and people in their middle years feel equally at home. I hope that we can share something that is relavent to everyone in part or in whole.

    My goal with this blog is to share what I have tried that works for my family, things that I am hoping to try, and things that we have tried that really don’t work for us. I hope that as I share things you will also share with us.  I know that I have alot to learn but I also know that I have alot to share.

    I am sure many of you have read my “About” post located here I would like to share bit more about myself and my family than I touched on in that post. I hope that through out my posts you all can get to know myself and maybe bits about my family too. I may share more about my daughter than my son or husband, as the men in my life are very private and I have to respect that.

    I grew up in an very small town in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. My Mother was a single mom with 4 children and even though she always worked, we were very poor. My childhood was spent thinking Kool Aid was juice, and government cheese made the best grilled cheese sandwiches. We were on governement assistance and even though my mom didn’t really talk about it I think she had W.I. C. also for a time. I remember going to the little store near our home that had a butcher shop and asking for 1/4 lb of hamburger and when money was a little better we could get 1/2 lb hamburger to put into the Hamburger Helper.

    My brother’s and I were very fortunate to have had a wonderful Grandmother who loved us and did so many wonderful things for us, like giving us a dime and taking us to pick out Penny Candy at the Ben Franklin store and explaining that some candy was less than other candy and if we really watched the price we could get alot of candy for that dime. She would treat us to ice cream at the Dairy Queen, and to this day my favorite item from Dairy Queen is her favorite hot fudge sundae with Spanish peanuts. I remember fondly her taking me to the little diner she used to go to with her friends and treating me to a grilled pecan sweet roll that I could enjoy while she got to chat with her friends. Pure Heaven!

    Growing up poor really made me understand the value of a dollar and how to make money stretch. I learned so many ways to be able to feed my family for very little money. I double couponed, I stocked up, I learned to make things from scratch, I learned to make substitutions when I didn’t have the items I needed.

    These skills have served me well throughout my life. It enabled me to be a stay at home mother for several years, and even when the kids grew and I started working more and more it still helped me to be prepared.

    So if any of our readers are struggling and are afraid to ask questions or ask for advice, please know I understand. I will never judge you, I will offer support and advice anyway that I can. You are not alone.