A Memorial Statue for Snootz

I got a memorial statue for Snootz today. It's an angel kitty. I'm going to figure out how to make a concrete slab with her name on it, and then I will use some kind of epoxy to cement it to the slab, making a pretty headstone. On a lower level of the headstone is going to be a box where I will put some waterproof photos of her for anyone who should come out to remember her, or whomever may happen to come across her grave.

The Kids Went Crazy For My Deep Fried Chicken!

Tricity styed home sick today. She was running a fever last night, so I gave her some Nyquil and let her sleep in this morning. We thought we were over it because it done made it's rounds once already, but when Devin stayed the night at my Mom's house, they both were sick and he brought it back to us. Now we're going through it all again. I've had it, Adam had it, Tricity has it... Then the girls, Khloe, and probably Devin again!

Anyway, for dinner I made fried chicken. (I keep wanting to type "friend chicken"! *gnaws on naughty fingers*) I haven't made fried chicken in over 10 years! I remember hating it because the breading would always fall off and it just took FOREVER! But now that I'm getting more brave with the deep fryer, and my fried fish was a success, I thought I'd try deep frying the chicken. Maaaaaan... I'm glad i did! The skin was so crispy and the kids just loved it! I couldn't help taking a bite of it before I took a picture! lol They said this is how they want the chicken made from now on.

I also made broccoli with cheese, and mashed potatoes. The potatoes got slightly burnt in the Instapot, but after fixing them up with some butter, cream, sour cream, and salt and pepper, the kids said they actually tasted really good, and they want them like that for Thanksgiving! haha It made me laugh. They weren't wrong though!

Meet Barry the Sleeve!

I saw this on Amazon and HAD to get myself an early Christmas present! It's a bariatric plushie! I love it  (When Adam finally has his kidney surgery, I'm going to get him a kidney one to mark the occasion lol)

 

I'm 5 pounds away from 100 pounds gone! I'm just feeling frustrated because I've been on a stall for a couple of weeks now, and it's so close! I just want to be at that point where I can celebrate this HUGE milestone! I also have a 6 month appointment coming up next month, so I'm hoping it will break soon so I can lose more before I see my surgeon again. In other words - Guys! I lost 95 freaking pounds!!! How awesome is that? :-D

The Next Plans For Our Homestead

So for now, I've got my little projects I'm been working on like like repainting the house, gardening (like when I planted all the bulbs), animals (taking care of the cats, dogs, quails, rabbits, etc.), but the next step is to expand the home with adding on an additional manufactured home so each kid can have their own room! We originally planned on Devin and Khloe sharing the summer kitchen. We were going to build a wall between the two sections and fix it up, but plans have changed since then.

Now they want to be in the main house, and I don't blame them! They don't want to have to walk across the snow in the winter just to come over and have dinner. I don't want that for them either. They also want to have access to all the cats, and I agree. I don't want to do without Junko. He's a sweet big boy! So now we're keeping an eye out for a cheap mobile home that we can move out here and connect to the main house. Then the room that connects the two will be a sun room for the cats, and I'll build little structures on the walls for them to climb and hang out. There will be a little seat hanging from in front of the window that they can jump into and soak up the sun.

Then since every trailer comes with a living room and a kitchen, I was thinking of maybe turning the living room into a gaming room, and the kitchen into a gym? All we need is at least 2 bedrooms. If it's 3 bedrooms, maybe we can put Allison or Jazmin in that room, or turn it into a spare bedroom for when someone comes to visit? (To be honest, it would probably be a room for one of the girls so that as they get older, they will have their own space, instead of it being a spare room that sits there for months unused.)

So it would look maybe something like this?

As for the summer kitchen, it would be great to turn that into my studio! I could record stuff out there, and it could be a huge craft room for me and the kids, and a gardening space as well! We could keep all that stuff out there so if we wanted to go paint and get messy, we could make a mess without worrying about destroying the main house.

Next year, I still have projects I want to work on as well, such as building a deck for a pool, a firepit sitting area, the remembrance gardens, the vegetable garden, the animal pens, the bus stop for all the kids in our area, and the playground. It's going to take time and money. Money is the biggest problem... but I sure can't wait to fix up this homestead and shape it into the home we always dreamed of!

Then it should be more like this:

And yes, that includes a bus stop for the kids in our area. All the kids catch the bus here at the end of our property, and so will Jazmin for the next 12 years, so I think a place for them to sit and be sheltered would be nice for me to do  We plan on having a cow, pig, chickens, maybe a goat or 2, and some other variety of livestock. Then there's going to be the huge garden where we will try our hand at growing everything, even if it doesn't turn out right. At least we'll try. I definitely must have a fruit orchard, which may take a few years to grow fruit, but at least it'll be there. Then there's the dog run for all our pups Adam wants to have. The playground will be for the swingset, trampoline, and any other play stuff. I'd like to build a deck out on the creek so we can just sit and enjoy the sounds of the water if we want to. The remembrance gardens will have one area for family and friends, and one for pets. Then in-between those, I'd like to eventually have a gazebo. Then there's the deck extension that wraps around the house to the pool, and the fire pit area, and a turtle pond will be right by it. Those are just some basic plans anyway. I've always dreamed big. Now let's home I can come up with the funds to make those dreams come true!

Doppelgänger

Sometimes I wish I looked like somebody famous so I could use that to my advantage by doing cosplays and making that person's fans really happy. I see these people on TikTok that look exactly like Hermione, Harry Potter, Loki, Robin Williams, Harley Quinn, Lucille Ball, and even a female Jim Carey! I just think it would be awesome to market on that and really make people feel just that much closer to their favorite character or celebrity by embracing it. Do you think I look like anybody???

Adults Love Bluey, Too!

Some time back, the girls got me into watching the cartoon Puppy Dog Pals. I'd say it was back in 2019 when I used to babysit Jazmin before we got custody of the kids. I thought it was adorable! And I loved that one of the voice actors was also the kid who voiced Catbug. I didn't mind cuddling up and watching it with her.

Now there is this cartoon that they watch that I ABSOLUTELY love called Bluey! I originally saw it during the time when we were staying at my in-laws house, and I had to find cartoons for the kids to watch. Allison saw the name on the channel menu and said they REALLY wanted to watch it, and even Tricity said "Yeah, I've seen it before, it's a cute cartoon" so I said sure, I'll give it a shot. I'm glad I did! I love how the Dad does a lot of the playing around with the kid, like Adam does with the girls, and how the Mom does more of the work around the house like me. Now when the opening comes on, instead of the names they say on the show, we say "Aunt Candice, Uncle Adam, Jazmin, Allison!" If you have little kiddos, I highly recommend watching it with them. So cute!

They Knocked Our Fence Down!

The well guys showed up today! One of the first things they did was knock our fence over... Did they bother to fix it? No... Did they offer to take anything off of the bill for it? No... I'm high-key upset. I loved this fence! It's part of the charm that made me fall in love with this place! It's very rustic-looking and I love how it went with the aesthetic of our homestead. GRR!

Anyway, the got to digging. It's an artisan well, and they have to dig until they get to it, then they have to run the pipes, and then they will set up the tank and get it all hooked up and going. Then they're going to tap off the line that runs to the neighbors house so we will be independent from them. How awesome is that? If you didn't see why, be sure to check out my last post (here https://themultimom.blogspot.com/2021/11/well-well-well.html ) where I explained about our asshole neighbors... It's expensive, but if we're going to be living here for the rest of our lives, it's the best decision.

The truck is huge! And it goes so high into the air, about as tall as the tress! It's very loud, too. I have to almost yell for Adam to hear me sometimes.

There's also a guy coming today to pick up some junk and take it off. he's charging $20 but for all the stuff he's taking off, it's a great deal! In Perryville, they would have charged $10 for each item. he's taking 2 stoves, a washer, a big bbq grill, and a mower deck that the woman left here who used to own this place. Then he's also taking 2 dryers of ours that quit working. I kept one of the dryer drums though, because I'm going to use that as a base for my fire pit when I build it next year. Just knock out the fins inside, build bricks around it, and there we go!

Well... *deep sigh* looking on the bright side of things... since the diggers knocked our fence down, I was wanting to do something like this along the driveway anyway with rose bushes and Italian cypress trees. The only issue will be coming up with the money to make it happen! Maybe space them further apart, though. But won't it look so fancy??? ♥

Well, Well, Well...

Before we get started with today's blog...

Purple... Blue...

The well guys were supposed to come today to start working on our well. Our house came with well water already, and when we moved it, it was our understanding that we were supposed to pay the owner of the well between $5 to $25 a month for our share. Well it didn't turn out that way... He said the contract no longer held up because it was his Aunt who lived here, and the contract only lasted as long as both parties agreed. Well he didn't agree with it any more, and we had trouble with the water shutting off nearly every day.

The first time it happened, we asked why, and he said because the main switch to the well was on the property next to us inside the trailer. The problem with that was that he was renting that trailer out to people who weren't paying their bill, he couldn't get them off the property, and they were just being assholes. I guess they expected us to pay THEM for use of the well? There wasn't any way that was going to happen... He said we could either have a meter on the well over there that would run a line to us and we would pay for it, or we could have our own well dug.

The problem with that is that there was still no guarantee that they wouldn't shut it of. The meter would be just to monitor our usage and decide how much we would need to pay, so that wasn't actually an option in our opinion. I think he was just trying to get more money out of us, to be honest. So the only other option was to have a well dug of our own.

The asshole neighbors keep turning the water off almost every day while the kids are in school. When the kids are home, or it's the weekend, they leave the water on. So now we're having to pay $13000 to get a well dug! Adam was able to pay $3000 of it so far, but his parents are paying the rest, which means we are going to have to make payments to them until it's all paid off...

On the bright side - no more shut off, and once we pay this off, we will never have to pay for our water again! The kids were home today. The school called today "fall break". It was only one day, but that's 1 day I am happy for! Hopefully they will be here tomorrow though. I can't wait to get this done! I hate that it's going to cost so much, but in the long run it's the better option.

Get Off My Property

I found a sign today that I REALLY want to put next to our door! It fits our family's personality perfectly! It's a little metal sign and it says:

Adam wants to get one that says something like - Forget about the dog, beware of the owner - which makes a lot of sense for him! haha  But I think "hippity hoppity get off my property" fits us perfectly as well. It's just the right about of both goofy and threatening :-p

Thanksgiving Dishes

So I saw this today...

For me, it depends on who's cooking them. If I am doing the cooking, then I like 2, 4, 6. If someone else is cooking, I'd go with 2, 3, and 6. Why is there a change??? Because I'm picky.

If I'm cooking the stuffing, it HAS to be Stove Top cornbread stuffing. That's the ONLY kind I like! To me, anyone else's stuffing is soggy, it's mushy, it's just disgusting... Stove Top's cornbread stuffing is crumbly and doesn't just sit like a lump in your mouth. So as I said, it just depends on who is cooking.

I've already started picking out what I'm going to cook for Thanksgiving this year. This year, I want to be better prepared! So far, the menu consists of:

turkey

ham

gravy

mashed potatoes

corn on the cob

stuffing

cranberry sauce

deviled eggs

green bean casserole

mac and cheese

Hawaiian sweet rolls

German chocolate cake

and hopefully pumpkin pie with cool whip if I can afford it. I think I have all the ingredients to make everything else. It just wouldn't be a Thanksgiving dinner without pumpkin pie, right???

I know it seems like a feast, but we've got 7 people, 7 dogs, and 5 cats to share with! lol Either way, it should be a nice Thanksgiving in our own home! I'm so excited! What's your favorite Thanksgiving dishes? What foods are you excited for this year?