This Is Us

  We had to drain the water out of the pool this year so we could put clean water in and adjust the support poles. Nick ended up having to go out of town for work so I needed some help getting some more bricks put under the poles. Xander and his best friend Cairo went to the hardware store, bought the bricks for me, and then put them under the poles. It may not seem like a lot, but for me it was a huge help and I grateful appreciated them taking time to help me.

 All Bulb flowers; like gladiolus, lilies, tulips, daffodils, etc.; can’t be cut or get broken or they won’t come back.  These flowers send all that they have, nutrients and energy, into growing flowers. So, if you cut them or they break off, the flowers take everything with them. Leaving nothing for the bulbs. In order for them to get it back, the flowers have to die while still connected to the bulb, which sends everything back into the bulb so they can grow flowers for many years. We wait until the flowers have turned brown, hard, and are easy to pull out.

  In researching flowers we have come across these articles. They show and state health benefits that flowers can provide for us. Here are the articles that we found... This one  talks about a couple health benefits of certain flowers/plants and even about gardening. This one  talks about research done in Japan about reducing chronic stress. As we find more articles we will add them here. The photo is of flowers from our yard.

How would you like matching recipe cards? How would you like to not have to fill them out? The new item we just listed in our Etsy Shop:  Laminated Recipe Cards  we do all the work for you! Here is how it works: Go to our Etsy shop and buy laminated recipe cards. Email us your recipes. We type them up. Laminate them. Mail them to you. How awesome is that? We save you so much time and you get matching laminated recipe cards that will last for awhile. If they get wet, dirty, just wipe them off.  No more ruined recipe cards because you spill on them. YAY!! Here is an example of them. Can you read the ingredients?  HAHA!

  We are so nervous, but we did it!  We have an Etsy Shop! You can go through the link in our Instagram (Hechfamfarm98) or click here:  HechFamFarm98 Etsy Store As of today we only have 2 items on listed.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will have other things completed and can get them listed. Thank you in advanced for your help and support!

  I found an easy way to make sure there are no clumps in Mac & Cheese! I’m talking about the boxed kind that you get from the store. We have had Kraft, Kroger, and WinCo brand. We’ve had others once or twice before, but can’t remember their names. Our favorite... WinCo brand! Yep! We love their brand. It’s the best tasting to us. Back to how I make it. So I cook the noodles. Then I add the butter and milk to the hot pot, and put it back on the burner I cooked the noodles on (with the heat turned off). I keep it on there just long enough to melt the butter and warm the milk. Then I take it off the burner and add the noodles back to the pan. I stir the noodles in the melted butter and milk, until they are all coated. I then open the pouch of cheese and add it in. I stir the noodles and cheese until it’s well mixed. With the noodles coated in the butter/milk mixture, it helps the cheese not clump. Hopefully making it this way helps you from having clumps. There is nothing worse t...

Here is our November dinner calendar. The picture isn’t very good, but you can still see it! If you’re using it for ideas, I’m sorry it’s late. I e had a bad headache the last couple of days.

  Last year we were told that the elementary school that the kids go to might end up being shut down, because they didn’t have enough students attending. They would have to go to a different elementary. One reason, there are 5 charter schools within 5 miles of our house. Anyway... I emailed the school board and told them why they should keep our school open. There are several reasons we wanted our school to stay open. One is that within the boundaries of the school they would keep open and our children would have to attend is there are 21 child sex offenders. YES! Twenty-one!  Also, the school has a security system. They said that it was a good thing because then the kids would be safe. Um... that doesn’t make me feel safe! We don’t feel comfortable sending our kids to a school with that many sex offenders in the area and them having to have a security system. The school board ignored my email and everyone else’s. They decided to close our elementary because the other school h...

  We have the kids do a chore every week day.  I made a chore chart, but after a little while I think they got bored of it and didn't want to follow it anymore.  So we just let them choose which chore they wanted to do, but that got confusing and they tried to pick the same chore everyday.  Either one they didn't mind doing or one that was easy.  So the harder chores weren't getting done and then it wasn't fair to the kids who were picking last because they were always getting the "left over chore".  So I created a new chore chart.  It gives each of our kids a different chore every day, and they have to do everything in one week. In this post  Staying Organized  I talked about how we have our calendar, chore chart, school schedules, etc. all in one place.  It's our command central. In this chore chart I color coded the different chores, included when they clean the litter box, feed the chickens, and feed the cats. It's only for Monday th...

  With our family of seven we need to stay organized. With all that everyone has to do, we need some way to remember everything. This is one way we do it. This is our “command center”. We have it by our garage door so we see it all the time. There is our monthly calendar, dinner calendar, chore chart, and school calendars. I will go in more depth on each one in their own posts (although I have talked about our dinner calendars in other posts:  September 2020 Calender  and here:  How We Meal Plan ) Here it is: Here is the link to our  Chore Chart

  When I was little my mom would braid mine and my sisters hair before bed. This kept it from getting tangled while we slept. It also made our hair “crimped”. Yes, I have naturally curly hair 👩🏻‍🦱, but it wasn’t curly until I was in I think about kindergarten and then it went curly and was so hard to keep from getting tangled. So when Brichette was younger, and even sometimes now, I would braid her hair after her bath or shower and it wouldn’t be so hard to brush in the mornings. Now with Lydia, even though her hair is curly, I braid it every night before bed. In the mornings we take the braid (or braids) out and just run my fingers through it. If she wants it curly, we get it wet and put a little coconut oil in it. It helps so much with brushing their hair in the mornings, especially before school.  Most nights we just do one braid, but sometimes we do two or three, which makes the “crimp” smaller. This is what it looks like from one braid.

  In our daily scripture reading we came across this scripture: There are lots and lots of powerful scriptures, but at this time this scripture really stuck out to me. Let’s break it down some... “If all men (meaning everyone) had been, and were, and ever would be (so everyone from the time Adam and Eve left the garden to the time Jesus comes again), like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken FOREVER (I capitalized this); yea, the devil (satan) would NEVER (I capitalized this) have power (so he can’t persuade, influence, seduce, etc.) over the hearts of the children of men (everyone on earth). WOW!!! Can you imagine this? How wonderful would that be? Think of all the love, caring, help, ministering, charity, kindness, peace, etc. there would be in the world!!! No one thinking they were better than anyone else. No violence, rage, anger, hatred, cruelty, etc.  So please, as you go about your days, weeks, months, years, think about this scripture! Th...

  I have always had a hard time deciding on what to make for dinner. When I would finally decide, then it would either take to long to make, or we didn’t have everything we needed. So then I’d have to make something out of what there was, or go to the store and end up spending more money because we would grab lots more things.  So several years ago I decided to make a dinner calendar. I found a template in Excel, you can change the year and the days automatically change, and the squares are blank so you can type in the meals. Then once a week we would go to the store and get everything we needed for that week of dinner meals (and anything else we needed). It helps out so if the dinner takes time to make (crockpot, make bread, etc.) then I can start in the morning. Also, we are only going to the store once a week so we spend less money. We are all picky eaters (in one way or another) and some of us have allergies (shellfish and garlic) so it limits our choices. When we find a m...

If you want to see the caption with the picture you just have to move your mouse over the picture. :)

Okay, So this is my first post here. So I guess I'll start my blogging with my kids Ballet class last night... Brichette and Xander are taking a ballet class. It's only a 7 week class, and then they have a performance. The class is only 1/2 hour long, so that doesn't give them much time to learn their dance before their performance. They do really good at first, but then they loose interest (the ADHD) and start staring at themselves in the mirror, and following the other kids and not the teacher. We try to help, by yelling (not to loud but loud enough they can hear us) their name and telling them that they need to follow their teacher and do what she does, but we disrupt the class when we do that. Then when they go to get a drink, we have them come over to us and we tell them that they need to be watching the teacher and not themselves or the other kids. That works for a minute, but then they are goofing off again. We are trying to think of other ways to help them listen in...