Goodbye Dear Friend

Have you ever been ghosted?  Have you ever been ghosted by your best friend?  That is what happened to me, twice.  And I want to preface that I hold no ill will towards my dear friend.  I am only writing this for my own peace of mind, and to openly say goodbye!

I have been friends with a sweet lady for going on 32 years.  We have been through a lot together, marriages, divorces, loosing loved ones and the trials and tribulations any other female in America could have.  Her second marriage, moved her across the country from Florida to Washington state.  Her mom and brother live here in Florida, so she did travel to visit & so we'd see each other while she was in town, but I guess our friendship started to dwindle over those long years apart.

I tried to reach out as much as I could, and sometimes was left on read-which is fine, I get it, we are all busy!  When she first moved, she was still raising her girls & me, still raising my kids.  But a couple of years ago she just disappeared off social media, wouldn't answer my texts or answer my calls.  I tried for several months, maybe once a month for over a year but heard nothing from her.  Since her youngest daughter was still active on social media, I knew she was still on this earth with us-so I tried not to worry.

In 2023, she finally reached out-and I was so excited, she was planning on coming to Florida and we were planning on meeting up.  But she disappeared again, and I hold no hope that we will see each other again at this point, and I am truly heart broken by that.  But I have to move on, get over myself-my pride and say goodbye to my dear sweet friend.  I'll remember you and always think fondly of you.  You are a lovely person, and I miss and love you very much!

xoxo, Lela

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1st Week of Homeschooling Update

 When I decided to homeschool for the year 2023-2024 I also decided I wouldn't post so much about it on social media (Instagram/Facebook.TikTok) really giving me and my daughter a chance to find our groove before we started sharing our journey with the world.  Also, I have not totally decided if I am going to share any of our experiences on those platforms.  Not for any particular reason, but I do find when I focus on trying to create that type of content I am not focused on what is the most important & which is learning with her.

Anyway, having said that I did want to come and update my family journal/blog as a record of our homeschooling experience, for us & what little family follows my blog.

Now let's get into our first week.

We started our first week of school on August 1, 2023, which happened to be a Tuesday.  Monday I used to prep for our first week.  Which didn't really prepare me at all.  Tuesday was great, we stuck to one hour for each course that we were doing (Math, Language Arts, History, PE) and we were done with school rather quickly, but then on Wednesday I felt like we had to catch up and do all the work that didn't get done the day before since we stayed on a strict one hour schedule so then we did school until about 3 or 4 which may be typical.  I don't know, this is my first time.  So then on Thursday, we did computer game math and other subjects to give her a break from all the hard work she did the day before.

Friday was going to be a day off for us, but we did science - which was a lot of fun.  We did two experiments.  One was on the currents of the oceans and one was on the buoyancy of the water.  She enjoyed them both.

I took most of the morning before we started science to work out a better schedule that I thought was more realistic, knowing a little more about how a day should or could look for us.  Our new schedule looks like this:

Math
Language Arts
Science/History (2x)
Creative Writing/Cursive Writing (2x)
Art, PE, Computers, Music (1x)

We will give that schedule a shot for a few weeks and see how we do.  So far we love it, even though we struggled to find what works for us that first week.  I mean, I am sure people who have been homeschooling for years are still fine-tuning their schedule (right)?  I hope so.  Anyway, we love y'all, and thank you for all your support.

xoxo, Lela & Olivia

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Home School Freebie - #1

Interested in some free learning materials for your little one?  This material is a free coloring and activity book called "Get Excited About the Brain"!  We already received our copy, and Olivia is excited to learn more about the brain and mental health!

You can get yours here:  https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/get-excited-about-the-brain.  You can download a PDF version or a physical copy.

Happy Homeschooling!
xoxo, Lela & Olivia

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Homeschooling - First Post

 Well, due to many issues we were having with our school last school year, we decided to pull our daughter out of public school and start our homeschooling journey.

My son, Xander's bio mom currently homeschools her other children and she was a great help pointing me in the right direction and encouraging me to just do it, and that everything would be ok.  I still don't know what I am doing yet, but it isn't as scary as I thought it would be.

I have found tons of resources and have even now narrowed down our curriculum mostly.  I have figured out the basic subjects at least.  And despite being introverted and having anxiety (&ADHD) I am excited to go on learning field trips with her as well.

I hope to be able to share our journey on this platform in the hopes it will help out another momma (or daddy).

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Chicken Taco's Recipe

I am not trying to be dramatic, but when my youngest sons were small and you'd ask them what was for dinner, they would always want tacos-which were never my favorite.  I guess because I just was never really crazy about ground beef.  But since starting my weight loss journey for the 100th time, I realized I could use other ground meat like turkey or chicken (which is what I prefer).  Now, I am wanting to have tacos all week long like the boys did.  I finally get it.  Ok, well I am not one of those bloggers that just go on and on about stuff before we get to the recipe.  So here goes.

What you'll need:

1 pound of lean ground chicken
1/2 yellow or white onion, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 orange or green bell pepper, chopped
1 can of salsa verde
1/2 package of low-sodium taco seasoning (or use your own blend)
(1 tsp of each: onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, salt & pepper)
Pam

What you'll do:

Spray your skillet with some oil (3-4 sprays), and add in your peppers and onions plus seasonings.  Season with your heart, you can add more or less of really whatever you want.  Once the veggies are tender, make a center and add in your meat and season your meat as well.  Chicken doesn't have much flavor - so go crazy.  Keep an eye on your meat, and keep chopping until well crumbled.  Once the meat is cooked, 5-7 mins-add in the can of salsa verde and simmer on low until thickened.

Heat your corn street tacos in a separate skillet until browned up a little.  And assemble.  At this point, you can eat them however you like, adding lettuce, avocado, sour cream, or cheese-whatever your taco-eating mind can come up with.

I did not create this recipe, you can find a version of this all over TikTok, YouTube or online.  I have four of these at a time, and without the toppings it is 3 Weight Watcher Points :)

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Half a Century

Today, I am fifty years old.  Today is my birthday!  During my 40's I didn't love myself very much.  I was constantly editing my photos to take out most of my imperfections, well if I am being honest I did that in my 20s and 30s as well.  I can't tell you why, insecure is my guess.  I don't know what I was ever insecure about, I am a normal and natural-looking person with no major disgusting parts.  The older I got, the more I thought I didn't care what people thought about me, and allowed myself to be photographed more and allowed them to be shown off on social media.  But the facts are I do care, I do care what people think - but mostly I care about what I think.  I think I shouldn't care so much about how my face and body are aging and really embrace them all.  So I decided to stop over-editing my self-portraits, and though this was edited for artistic purposes (wanted a more muted tone) it is not edited in Facetune or anything to alter the way my face looks and smooth out the skin.  I wanted to look at myself and leave behind photos that really reflect who I am at this moment in time because I am so incredibly grateful for this time on earth, so grateful for these first fifty years honestly.  This 50-year-old body has done so much for me.  It has allowed me to give birth by c-section to three amazing humans.  It has allowed me to retire after 30 years of working for the University of Florida.  It has allowed me to hug, to love, to make love, to read, to write, to eat, to walk and talk.  I have been blessed with three gorgeous grandchildren.  Today, instead of being sad that I am getting older and being sad that I am 1/2 a century old I am so fucking happy about it, and so graciously excited to see what the future holds for me.

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Update & SOFA PURCHASE

Well, this experience with purchasing a new home has not been the fastest or the easiest.  We have waited months for a building permit, which should normally only take a few business days.  We have been told "oh yeah that's happening next week" one to many times.  Now, don't get me wrong, I do not care if things take a while, if there is no choice or option in that-but I cannot stand being led on or lied to.  Anyway, tomorrow is the day our house should start being "installed" on our property.  That's the plan anyway, if that will happen, who knows!  When you've been told 10 stories and told 10 times something was going to happen, and all 10 times it didn't happen-the 11th time you're told something you are just a small bit skeptical lol!

Anyway, because I am still a hopefully (silly soul) I did go ahead and purchase our new SOFA.  Here she is, gorgeous right?  I purchased this from Albany Park & this photo isn't mine but this is the exact set up we got, and color.  Cannot wait for her to arrive & hopefully by the time she arrives the house will be ready for her!

Fingers crossed y'all!

 

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