Hope for the Future

Former foster parent for over a decade. Now working mom of seven with a side hustle of cake baking.

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Went on a tour of the animal shelter for a 4H event, and left with five more foster kittens. The five we had been fostering went back on Tuesday and one has already been adopted by our babysitter. These babies are about four weeks old and were dropped off while we were there for the tour. Gosh, they are adorable, but clearly missing mom bc they follow us around like ducklings meowing. They have terrible diarrhea from the change in whatever they were eating to milk replacer and wet food. They have clearly never seen a litter box. We are setting them up with a smaller space and giving them a few days to adjust to food before getting too worried about any of it, but the shelter gives me their number so I can text whenever I have a concern.

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I’m barely surviving my life right now. After nothing has worked to treat DH’s depression, he started ECT last week. This is really the only thing left that he has not tried. We spent about six months thinking about it.

I’m driving an hour each way into the city and then it’s about three hours there. Today three of the kids had appts at the children’s hospital across town so I dropped DH off, drove another 20 minutes to the other hospital, and then went back across the city to collect DH. Now I’m waiting to get gas in the very long line at Costco.

H’s ADHD is the worst I’ve ever seen in someone. It’s actually debilitating. I don’t know how to help him. We are going to try a new med, but I’m not hopeful. We tried a therapist which actually made things worse, not better. I don’t know what else to do.

Three weeks until summer break.

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Chocolate on chocolate—classic and delicious!

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These are some of the many steps that went into making this four layer 6” chocolate giraffe cake. I initially baked three layers and after stacking it decided that it wouldn’t be tall enough, so baked a fourth layer and added that to the stack. Filled and crumb coated it all in chocolate buttercream and then iced it in a pale yellow vanilla buttercream. The brown fondant is chocolate. I had to cut out all of the spots. I didn’t have a cutter but used a combination of a circle and square cutter to achieve the look. Then I made the snout components and then the eyes. The ears and horns I freehanded and then put them in the oven with the light on to dry overnight. Thankfully, that seems to have done the trick. Fresh flowers, and voila! A pretty giraffe for my SIL’s bday. If I had to do this again, I think I would charge $300! I made this one for her just because I love her. ❤️

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I made a chocolate peanut butter cake for the church auction over the weekend and it sold for $650!

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I saw this author speak a few weeks ago. I had not heard about him prior to attending the speaking event. While speaking, he mentioned he authored two books. I checked this book out from the library over the weekend, and have managed to make time for it every evening this week.

It’s a tragic foster care story. He was taken from his mother due to mental illness at age seven and plunged into the Los Angeles foster care system. Prior to that, he had lived with his loving grandmother in Chicago.

He eventually grew up (in foster care), went to law school, and sued the foster care center he spent time in while in care.

It’s a worthwhile read.

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This was my fascinating book read over the weekend.

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One of my closest friends from high school died last week. The funeral was today.

Having mortality smack you in the face as a middle age person with a lot of kids at home has got me doing a lot of processing.

I’m really struggling. The funeral was packed. At least 600 people. We live in a small, rural county and he worked for one of the local cities, so he was well known personally and professionally.

We haven’t seen each other regularly in a number of years, but he was such a present person during my formative years. His wife graciously allowed me to come to his house and see him/say goodbye one morning last week, and he ended up passing away a few hours later. He wasn’t awake while I was there, but I’m so grateful I got to hold his hand and talk to him one last time.

Their oldest kid will graduate high school next month. I cannot imagine being widowed at this age. I am so very sad.

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Animal adventures over here…

E has a dog walking job that she does three days a week. That dog owner let us take her dog home, bathe him, dry him, buzz out all of his mats, and get his nails trimmed. She didn’t want him to go any shorter with his coat, so no need for an all overall haircut. E was very patient and encouraging to the dog, and did a great job despite the challenges. I was impatient just watching from afar. I’m continually impressed with her.

On our walk to school this week, we found that three baby squirrels got blown from their nest in a big storm we’d had the night before. Only one was still alive. We scooped it up and took it home with us, and kept it warm until we were able to drop it off at the local wildlife hospital. They said he’ll make it.

The kittens were weened to soft food. They are crazy messy! We adore them! H’s favorite is Mission. He got to name all five of them. They go for their first round of vaccines next week.

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H has been feeling pretty low lately. I think he’s depressed. He desperately wants to fit in and also feel like he doesn’t. He is such an incredible kid! I’m super concerned due to DH’s history of depression.

Idk if this is the right move or not, but in conjunction with other steps to help him out, we volunteered to take on a litter of foster kittens. We got them yesterday. I was praying that the shelter would call with a bunch that would work for us and us for them.

They arrived yesterday. Five. All girls except for one boy. So far we have Hank, Midnight, Mittens, and Shadow. We need one more name. H is in charge when historically it has been E at the helm with these things. I’m hoping taking care of something will help him feel capable and responsible and also good about himself. You may think this is the wrong move and you may be correct. Time will tell.

I’m also having a lot of difficulty getting him to write, so I’m hoping this will help with that too as I told him he can create a book about caring for foster kittens as part of a 4H project.

They are about four weeks old. Trying to wean from the bottle. We’ve not had kittens this young before so I’m learning a lot. E already knows mostly everything and is a good teacher. She’s also pointing H and I in the direction of solid resources.

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We have had an amazing spring break! We have gone to Florida every year for break since NB was born, but DH and I have different breaks this year, and I couldn’t do the drive to Fl on my own because we go straight through, and it was just going to be too long.

Instead, I pulled the kids out of school last week to get a jump on the drive, and took them to Kansas City. We met up with my former office partner from when I worked in MN. I hadn’t seen her in years. We got some famous barbecue for dinner and then stayed at a hotel before heading out the next morning for Texas.

We stayed in Granbury to spend time with a friend I’ve had since traveling to Romania in 2001. She has two boys and lives in acres of property. We had such a wonderful time being together. Kids played laser tag every night. E and one of the other kids played an involved Harry Potter board game and loved it. Just nice to be with people who are able to let us be ourselves.

On Wednesday, we drove about 1.5 hours to Highland Village to where my cousins and aunt and uncle live. My cousin recently bought a property that is incredible! They have farm animals, a pool, and are going to AirBnb the house. We stayed there and it was pretty impressive.

DH flew to Dallas after getting off of work on Wednesday. We are on the drive home. He had one day in the sun at the pool, and then last night we detoured slightly into Arkansas to see another cousin and meet her baby that was born last summer. The baby was adorable, and it was fun to see my cousin and her spouse.

We stayed in Joplin, MO last night and are almost to St. Louis now. We are going to grab lunch there and then make the last five hours home.

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I rage baked to take food to MN this weekend to visit my bestie, and now we are not going due to the winter storm. I made 1/4 sheets of brownies and cookie bars, a double batch of puppy chow, two cakes, and a dozen cupcakes.

I’m super bummed. I’m really missing my bestie and was looking forward to hanging out.

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These are the Harry Potter cupcakes I made for Baby to take to school to share with his classmates.

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Baby turned double digits this weekend! We are still very much into Harry Potter here so we did an HP themed cake. This is a triple layer hot cocoa cake with butterscotch icing. I made the butterscotch from scratch and added that into the icing. It was a pretty great combo!

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This is the other cake I made over the weekend for a customer. It’s a triple layer vanilla cake filled with homemade lemon curd and iced with lemon butter cream. I topped it with lemon curd as well. I made candied lemons to use as decoration for the middle of the cake. When I first started baking cakes several years ago, I really wanted to try my hand at a fault line cake, but this is the first time I’ve ever made one. I’m so happy with how it turned out!

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I made a couple of cakes for a client this week. They were the first ones in more than six months. I was given full creative freedom which I absolutely loved!

The first one was chocolate raspberry. It was a triple layer 6 inch chocolate cake and I brushed raspberry preserves into the cake layers. It’s iced with raspberry buttercream and then topped with fresh raspberries.

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NB had a birthday over the weekend. I sent him to school with Harry Potter cupcakes (rings as toppers) for him to enjoy with his classmates.

I also made him a HP themed cake. It was a hot cocoa cake filled with chocolate buttercream and iced with vanilla buttercream. It was my first time trying a buttercream transfer on a cake, and it went reasonable well. I wish I would have centered it a bit better, but now I know how to do it better next time.

I’m reading The Hiding Place with the kids. We are only about six chapter in, but it’s wild to me how it reads like present day America.

I’m in WI, but my bestie is in the Twin Cities, and I’m sitting in an online constitutional observer training tonight that’s MN based, but will certainly have application in my state when we are more aggressively attacked.

I waffle between making a back up plan to leave the country, and trying to gear up to stay and protect my neighbors. Immigration is challenging y’all. After spending some time looking at places where we could go, how to get a job, etc., it feels overwhelming and impossible. I have so much empathy for people that uproot their entire lives and make a new life in a new place. It has to be incredibly challenging.

I gathered all of my documents into one location. Next, I need to make a digital file of all of them as well as hard copies.

Is it this bad where you live? How are you coping? How are you planning? What are you doing to connect with and help your neighbors?