Weekly Roll

 Pecan Banana Coffee Cake - I made this week and it was delicious.

Shrimp Sheet Pan Recipe - This teriyaki sheet pan shrimp was a winner at my house. This is from Brunch with Babs

Inappropriate Thoughts

My son called me out on a project I have been dragging my feet on. The project is a china cabinet in my kitchen. It has turned into a much bigger project than expected. The drawers are silently judging me.

Deep Thoughts

Dead People Files Project Update

 We have reached the 6 months check in for my project. Details about my project are below.

Goals

Research 15 ancestors and present that information on the blog. I will be using some of the 52 ancestors in 52-week writing prompts. Below is the start of the ancestors that I will for sure be researching. (5/15) I have written 8 biographies out of 15.  

    Lulu Pearl Howard Liston (Hoyt/Liston Tree) Complete- link

    John Lendman (Lendman)

    Eliza Greene Perkins Doane (Hoyt/Liston ) Complete- link

    John Christian Brenneman (Hoyt/Liston)

    Ida Shadwell Lendman (Lendman) Complete-link

    Charles Bourck Liston - link

    Hannah Hopkins - link

    Mary Carver Knight - link

    Abel Sutliff Jr -link

    Great Grandma's - link

Do a DNA test on myself - I am interested in learning more about this

Improve my genealogy research - I plan on reading some genealogy books that are from the required reading list from the BYU and Boston University Genealogy programs. I think a good goal would be at least 3 books. I am actively searching for books on Quakers and the book below is one my library had. I have a bunch of Quakers in my tree. I hope that helps in my understanding of Quakers.

Do one genealogy field trip? I think this might be open to interpretation.

Kinda of completed. I attended two library meeting on Family Search and Genealogy. However, I would like to do a for real field trip of some kind. I also attended Roots Tech 2023 virtually.

find a better way to share or present my genealogy research. work in progress

write better genealogy stories. work in progress

scan more photos and become more proficient in this.  

DIY Bookcase

 I asked my husband to build a bookcase for Heather's Oasis in the Desert. It only took him a couple hours to make it. I think it turned out wonderfully. I picked a blue stain for the bookcase. We had a good time staining it together.

We stained it at the end of a hot day and the stain dried almost immediately. It was the first project we made a top of our slab for the workshop.

North Sea is the stain color.  I can't wait to show you the mostly completed oasis.

Wordy Wednesday

 ....loneliness

tells us we need

social connection- 

something as critical 

to our well-being

as food and water

unchecked loneliness

fuels continued 

loneliness by keeping

us afraid to reach out

I found this post it note as I was cleaning my desk yesterday. If you know me, I collect quotes and I will write it on a back of an envelope etc.  This one just felt really profound today. I literally found it at the bottom of a pile of papers so I don't know when I was prompted to copy this quote. I don't know the origin but that is some truth. 

Weekly Roll

 

I tell you what the help I am getting putting together this blog post is incredible. Picture above is Rhett helping me. I am typing this from Heather's Oasis.  

Linky Love

My Version of Spring Cleaning - Jen Hatmaker. This is excellent.  Read this!

Cousins by Blood - Totally sucked into this podcast and have been binge listening.

Got a chance to hear Jonathan Haidt speak to our book club. We read The Righteous Mind. It was toughie but interesting read. Book review to come. See pic below for my great zoom set up.

Classy paint can set up am I right?

Deep Thoughts

Annual State of Autism at Our House

April is Autism Acceptance Month. Here is my annual state of Autism at our house. My autistic son is an adult.  I write this his permission.

I have written a lot about autism awareness, but inclusiveness is what I seek not just for autistic people for all. Belonging shouldn't be some special club.  Human connection is important. When we remove barriers for disabled people, we are really removing barriers for all. 

We moved in the past year to New Mexico. This is a place low low on services for disabled people. We knew this before we moved. We live in quite a rural place.  The New Mexico model for disabled services relies on Natural Supports. I had never heard that phrase before I moved here. The people around you family is just supposed to support you and they provide very little in funding to help with that especially if you are at the higher end of functioning. All supports from the government come with many strings attached. I knew when we moved, I wanted to be less attached to government services because it demands a lot from caregivers and those receiving services in the form of red tape.  I like that their autism plate clearly states for autism month should be about - Acceptance, Understanding and Awareness.  

My son is doing well here.  He would like to work so that is a goal we will continue to work on. Meaningful work is important. He would also like to go back to school. My son has been teaching himself blender (3d modeling). He continues to receive SSI and has a case manager for his Medicaid that is pretty helpful and also named Heather. The weather here in New Mexico has been perfect for scootering more. He has route around our neighborhood that he does several times a day. We try to scooter one our local parks several times a week and once a week we take him to the local skatepark. 

Sunday Skate Park Church

 I have had this post written for a while now. In honor of Earth Day yesterday, I thought I would post.

The most unusual item we retrieved from 

the skate bowl.

I just call this church because it is something we do on Sunday.  We usually go to the skate park with my oldest son.  He does circles in the bowl and my husband, and I pick up trash. It started because there was trash in the bowl, and we needed to make it safe for my son.  It is also very boring to watch someone make circles in the skate bowl.  So, we expanded our area of clean up to the park.  We have TONGS!  There was a lady in my old neighborhood who would walk the whole hill with a trash bag and tongs.  She didn't do it for recognition. I think she wanted her walk to be productive.  I know us picking up the trash won't change the world. It just a small thing we can do.

One week we picked up SO many plastic caps. It was definitely over 30 caps.   I only comment on this because it seems like we go through phases where we pick up a certain item.  One week it was half full bottles or sauce packets.