Food
Helpful: Wednesday nights are the best nights for hot meals. We eat between 5-6pm on those nights.
As far as freezer "meal" ideas, prepped meat is best (tacos, sloppy joes, shredded chicken, pulled pork, shredded beef, meat sauce for spaghetti, chili, marinated chicken, etc.). We've done other freezer meal type stuff in the past, and I just don't typically have enough time to get it baked or cooked.
They LOVE veggies, specifically green beans, broccoli and cauliflower.
Gift cards would probably be the most helpful at this point. The places we tend to eat the most in Windom are Hardee's, McDonald's, Subway, Dairy Queen or Godfather's. We also enjoy meals out at Plaza Jalisco, River City Eatery or Duffy's in Windom. HyVee is the only grocery store in Windom. When in Mankato, the boys love Grizzly's or Red Lobster, and Kendrick's favorite is Olive Garden. I love sushi at Tokyo in Mankato if I'm ever there without kids, or Panera.
Not helpful: My kids just don't eat casseroles well, aside from lasagna or tater tot casserole.
Kendrick also has a peanut and tree nut allergy, so nothing with peanut butter or nuts of any sort.
Childcare
Disclaimer: I am almost ALWAYS up for a break from life. I'm pretty good at taking breaks, but if you want to help in this way, YOU tell ME what you're willing to do. If you think of it, text or call me and just ask what time works. I will likely never reach out, although I've been working on trying to for the past few years in therapy. I am currently working through issues of always feeling like a burden, so although I'm making significant progress in that regard, I'm still not good at it. Things like, "Can you drop off the kids at my place on Tuesday at 6pm and I'll feed them and you can pick them up at 8?" or "Would you be up for meeting me at the park Saturday at 2pm so I can play with the kids while you do whatever you need to do" would be very helpful.
Helpful:
- Short-window help to just sit at the house while I run a few short errands. Maybe an hour or two on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon so I can run to the gym or go for a walk or go to the store.
- Helper to come along when I'm taking my kids to events (once COVID lets up) to help keep track of them all.
- Watching kids in other cities. When I go to Sioux Falls or Mankato or Minneapolis, it's nice to have a short break from parenting and then get back to it. If you happen to live in those cities or along the route, it'd be great to be able to drop the kids off for an hour or two to decompress, and then move along and go do fun things with them before or afterwards.
My friends Trisha and Matt did that for us a lot while I went to visit Mark, and it was SO nice to not have to worry about being so far from them for so long. I didn't have to leave them at home with a sitter that way, but it didn't exhaust me from spending a whole day solo-parenting. It literally ended up saving me thousands of dollars over the years he was there.
Activities with Kids
Some ideas:
- Shop Assistant If you have a wood shop or are into fixing cars or what not and could use an "assistant", Cashel or Kendrick would LOVE to help you fix or build things. I can't count the number of times I've found them into the tools or have been trying to make forts out of random boards they found in the garage. I've taken them to the Home Depot thing once, and used to get them these little kits, but it just made kinda interesting toys that we ended up getting rid of after a couple months and seemed like a waste of money.
- Fishing
Cashel really is into fishing, and Kendrick enjoys it as well. If you're a great angler and are up for teaching them how to fish better (they know the basics), and wouldn't mind them coming along, that'd be wonderful! - Kayaking
Cashel got a kayak for Christmas and wants to take his kayak out, but he is the only one in our family with a kayak, so if you have kayaks and would like to let him tag along, he'd LOVE that! As it is right now, he asks if I can take him and his kayak to the lake about every 2-3 days. In March. In Minnesota. lol - Kitchen Helper
All my kids love to bake and cook with me, but sometimes it'd be nice to have someone else assume the mess lol If you're up for a kitchen helper, even just to make cookies or make some cinnamon rolls or soup or whatever it might be, they'd love to help. - Hunting
I know Mark would have been teaching them to hunt, and they have lifetime licenses in the state of Minnesota. He does have a gun that I've been storing at his Dad's, so I could get that if anyone would be up for teaching them the basics or something like that. I know nothing about pretty much any of that, but I know Mark would have wanted to teach them about hunting and what not. - "Girl Stuff"
Kinsley is the perfect mix of tomboy and princess, and she LOVES to do girly things. In a household with three brothers, we don't do the girly stuff as much as she probably would like, but she does enjoy it. I'm not even sure what "girly" stuff entails, honestly, as I was a pretty major tomboy myself, but maybe you Mamas of little girls have more ideas? We don't even have, like, Barbies or anything, so I don't even know. I just know that we maybe end up doing nails once every 2-3 months, and she doesn't even like for me to brush her hair, so obviously she'd totally let anyone else do it, right? lol - Aquarium Help Okay, I am BAD with fish. I'll admit it. My kids LOVE fish, and it's tragic that they constantly suffer demise at our hands. Cashel got started wanting to do a saltwater aquarium, and he bought the aquarium, we got the salt, he bought stuff to go in there, and we quickly realized that it was going to be a WAY bigger thing than we thought, so it just turned into this thing that sits on his dresser and we kinda glare at from time to time. He's mad that I haven't figured it out yet, but it's one of those things that I've just let go since I had to much more on my plate. If you are good with that kind of thing, it'd be really great to have some help. He's really wanting to have some saltwater fish and/or a crab in there, and it's one of those mom-fail things that really creeps up often and I feel bad about pretty much every night before bed.
- Games
Having the age gap between the bigs and littles is exhausting when you're trying to play games, because the younger ones are either too young to understand, or they get frustrated and throw the cards or game pieces around and get mad and run off. I know the day will come, but for the time being, if you'd like to come over for game night and help play with the little ones while I play with the big ones or vice versa, it'd be SO helpful. It has been too easy with everything going on to just let the big kids do what they want, which has led to WAY too much time watching YouTube videos of The Fun Squad or DB Cooper. I'd MUCH rather not be doing things with electronics.
I'm sure there are far more ideas here, but that's a general idea. If I don't know you well (or at all), I probably won't feel very comfortable with entrusting my kids to you away from me. If you knew Mark well and I'm at least aware of who you are and he had mentioned you before from time to time, I'd probably be more okay with that.
Sharing Memories
The kids LOVE to hear stories about their Dad back before he was sick, and while I've got a ton, they really enjoy hearing it from other people. Our world felt really small while he was sick, and although I reminded them often that when Daddy wasn't sick, he knew a lot of people and was very well-liked, it's hard for them to comprehend. I know there were times when he was rude and insensitive and unkind as the disease took hold of him, but it isn't often that we're reminded of how great he was before he was sick, and as such, the big kids have struggled to correlate the Daddy they knew before FTD and the Daddy they knew with FTD. They light up when they hear funny stories or things about their Dad, but to be honest, going through the struggles I have during the past five years of dealing with the fallout that FTD caused on our family with placement and education and finances and behaviors and grief, a full-time job and four kids to raise, a lot of it feels lost in my mind. I try, but even when sitting down with the funeral director, the only stories that I could recall in recent memory were ones about poop that made the kids laugh lol I kept hearing that after they passed away, those good memories would come flooding back, but I'll be honest and say that they haven't for me. Not yet. So if you have good (preferably wholesome lol) stories from back before Mark was sick, we'd love to hear them! You can email them to me at amyjohnson2006 at gmail dot com.
Self Care
I've survived the past five years by adopting a pattern of excessive self care. I'm finally reaching the point in life where the necessity for it is dissipating, and I've begun needing fewer massages by getting back to my gym the past couple years and really working on building muscle mass, however, I do still get them from time to time on those weeks where sleep has evaded me and my stress levels have been higher. Regardless, I've put together an Amazon list of items I use for self care, and will list below the places I go when I do employ self care:
- Massages at Pebbles Massage and Spa or Revitalize, both in Windom.
- Mani/Pedi at TQ Nails in Mankato or Professionail in Worthington.
- Hair cut at The Hair Hut in Windom
- I love Caribou coffee or Starbucks, and gift cards are always appreciated!
- I haven't been here since my wedding, but now that I'm not in Mankato all the time, I'd definitely be up for a visit again to Radiance Day Spa in Sioux Falls.
- Here is my Amazon self-care list.
- Please note that I have a flower allergy, which STINKS, but aside from lavendar products, I'm typically pretty miserable when the products (lotions, shampoo, conditioner, body wash) have floral scents or infusions.
Home Cleaning, Laundry and Maintenance
I'll admit that I'm pretty handy - My Dad and Mark had me trained in well. However, I struggle to get everything in sometimes. Most of it is minor stuff at this point - like getting a ladder tall enough to finish painting the top part of the wall I started back in May in my living room but didn't have a ladder tall enough to finish painting it and just gave up on the project. Or needing to re-do the trim in a couple rooms because I got the wrong kind and the doorstops wrecked it. I haven't yet made a list of stuff, but if you're up for being added to a list for stuff like that, shoot me an email or text.
Dislaimer: Yard work is probably not going to be on the list, because Kendrick would cut you if you tried to take away his lawnmowing or snowblowing duties lol If you'd like to help by just watching him while I get other things done (since I wouldn't leave him unattended to mow or blow snow at only 7 years old), that would be helpful!
I have already had a housekeeper for the past handful of years, and she's wonderful and comes on Thursdays or Fridays. If you'd want to help with that expense, contact Mel at 507-380-8656.
I do have a sweet lady from my church who faithfully would come fold my laundry pretty much every Tuesday for a couple weeks, and she has told me many times to just call her anytime I need her help again. That being said, if anyone else would want to help out in that regard so it doesn't always end up being her, I wouldn't turn down help. Sometimes all it needs to be is to just go switch laundry to the dryer in the middle of the day. I've been slowly trying to get the kids more into helping with it, so I do hope that between this and the housekeeping, I'll eventually be able to not need help, but right now sometimes it gets to be a little much.
I think that's about it for now! Thank you all again for all your kind words and outpouring of love for myself and the kids. Each day gets a little easier, as we settle into our routine again, but we've been having a lot of conversations lately, and I'm sure more will come over time.
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