This little piggy...

The sun was out for about 2 hours yesterday, and then the rest of the day was grey, windy and COLD ! We had a fairly icy winter, and now we have the season of snapping tree limbs. Damaged limbs survive the winter storms, but come summer with the renewed growth cycle of the trees they lose their hold and the strong spring winds break them off. Between the damp and the dangers , it makes the idea of going to the woods not very appealing. So we had a day of lie low and retail therapy.

Started the day off with Pumpkin oats for 3. (Rolled oats cooked with solid packed pumpkin, cinnamon and brown sugar) We each take ours with slightly different toppings, just like the Three Bears. Baby bear had coconut, flax, crasins, butterscotch bits and toffee bits, Papa bear with cocnut, flax, crasins and goji berries, me with the same as papa plus wheat bran. It is one of our favorite ways to start the day !

Papa had to go sing at the Memorial Day services at the cemetary, and son and I stayed home to do our own things. First was some work with the stability ball and hand weights, and then our own intrests. Son was involved in some marathon on TV and I started combing the net for homeschool materials and lesson plans geared for special needs students. This is my 14th year of doing this, ( we began with two years of preschool and continued on since then) and I now know enough to spot something that is going to involve major work for me, and this year is going to be major prep work for me. Depressing ! Son was looking for a snack somewhere around then so we had our morning usual
Good ole yogert with fruit salad. It is so simple to toss together and so satisfying ! Then back to work for me. I was just starting to investigate math options for the year , and I realized a basic list of school supplies that I was going to have to assemble to make this all happen. It seemed very overwhelming to me, and by the time hubby got back my head was spining with a list of things I would need at Staples and places of that nature. We decided it would be a good day to go shoppingand hit out for lunch at one of our favorite places to expidite matters. Sweet tomatoes, here we come !
For those who have never been, Sweet Tomatoes is an all you can eat salad and soup bar. The also serve some amazing breads, muffins and pastas. The great thing is , you first hit the vegetarian salad bar with so many veggie options that your plate explodes if you take just a tiny bit of a third of the options. They also offer very healthy salad dressing options. My salad had too many veggies to remeber, let alone list !
They also offer 4 "signature salads", which change every month for the most part. This weeks offerings that I chose were a spoon of a Thai brown rice salad, Broccoli Madness, Strawberry feild forever and Wonton Chicken. Strawberry lemonade accompanied. So many veggies !
Then I made a pass at the soups and breads. I got a bowl of Chicken and 8 veggie stew/soup, two peices of whole wheat red pepper foccacia, and two little fat free fruit oatbran muffins( these guys had big chunks of real strawberries in them ! So good ! Another plus is the soup bowls hold about three quarters of a cup in total and the plates for the breads are saucer size. The portions are small, so it looks like a whole lot more on your plate. After this I was totally satiatied and knew that if I skipped all veggies at dinner I had still gotten in my goal of 5 veggies a day !

So then off the the stores and I got some of the supplies I needed. We decided to just come home because my knee and back was having a really nasty arthritis flare up because of the damp. Tylenol and arnica gel were not cutting it this time, and every step made me feel like my knee was going to snap in half. So we came back and I continued doing my surfing and word processing chores. Now mind you we had just eaten a feild of salad, and in normal human beings this would keep us. Not my son, the Autistic Boy who Must Live By Scheduals. If it is posted, it shall be. He got all confused because lunch did not contain the grilled chicken burgers as posted, and it was now snack time and we HAVE to have a snack.Uggh. To bloow him off would cause a melt down and a week of hard work to get him back to the schedual ( if it says we will have spinach, you must eat spinach) and every meal may turn into a meltdown. So I told him we could do things a little different because it was a holiday
So everyone got a cup of cherries and 17 cocoa dusted almonds. I am probably pushing my own tolerance level with the nuts, but with this everyone could just kind of graze on this if they did not eat it all at once. Sort of making the best of a situation if you will.

Now if that was not stimulating enough, 5 pm rolls around and dinner was not ready. This fact caused him a good deal of anxiety, and I could tell from my mommy sense that this second meal hiccup would cause a meltdown if not dealt with. Undersand that it is not because he is acting like a brat, but rather in the mind of an autistic, the world hits them as if everything in life happens at a painfully intense level of sensory perception. Routine allows them to keep a kind of tether to the world. If they know exactly when to expect what, they can deal with the stimulation better and find their own flow through it so to speak. Things not following the schedual are sort of like 9/11 happening in their brains( remeber the shock you felt ?). So, inner was assembled and served
Heartland Omega 3 Plus pasta, california Blend and Pork Ribs in the crock pot. The guys have a real thing for ribs, where as I have never been a fan of them. They always make me feel kind of sick to my stomach from the grease, but when you live in a home with others, you have to sometimes eat your least favorite things.

Looking back, somehow it felt like all I did was eat this day ! Eat , and develop sincere butt calouses from looking over homeschool possibilities !