Family Pictures

Pictures we had taken on Labor Day...

Question: What do you get when you mix...



















...two cute girls...

...two aching backs...












...a bit of attitude...

...four smiles...

...and a whole lotta love?

Answer: US!

The End of Unemployment (this time around)

Here's the latest from Unemployment Land!

Brian has a new job! He was checking out the Union website for the calls they had out this week, and there was a call for 8 Journeymen from a contractor that wanted people for a job that's only about half an hour away. He went into the Hall yesterday morning to see if he could take one of the open spots, and he got one. He's very excited to go back to work - it's hard for someone with a work ethic such as his to sit at home and feel like he's not providing for his family.

He will start with some prelim job stuff and training on Monday and go out to the job site on Tuesday. It will be nice to have a shorter drive, much better than the hour (sometimes more) drive out to Hanford every day and back.

It's been one of the most enjoyable summers I've spent in a long time, since Brian was home with us. We got to take some long weekends and travel, as well as spending afternoons in the park with our good friends and next door neighbors, and getting house projects finished.

We were richly blessed by our finances working out perfectly during the layoff, so much that we even got to pay off our last credit card during the time he was out of work. How cool is that?!?

So now, we get to figure out a new schedule again. It's probably good that we have to stay on our toes, otherwise we'd get really bored.

And we can't have that, now, can we?

Getting the Message

It all started with an instant message.

Brian sent me a message at work a couple weeks ago, telling me that the principal at the girls' school had called him. Apparently there was an overload of kids, and since Rachel was one of the last to be registered, she needed to go to a different school so they could even out the enrollment over the schools in the district. We registered her later than we normally would have because the early Kinder testing was in Mid-August, and we registered as soon as they let us know we could.

So she switched to a different school. She still rode the bus with Emma to her old school, and then transferred to another bus that took her to her new school. I kept wondering why this was happening, and there were many other little "issues" with the situation, but realized that it was going to be OK. Rachel got settled into a routine of going to a different school, and had a good time in her new class. She's pretty easy-going, so it wasn't too much of a drama.

Yesterday (2-1/2 weeks later) I got another call from the principal, telling me that a spot opened up in her old class. Since I had requested that they let me know if that happened, we needed to decide if we wanted to move Rachel back to her original class at Emma's school. After some thought, we decided it would be nice for her not to be on the bus so much and to be able to be at school with Emma - fun for them and more convenient for us - we asked her what she thought about going back to her old class. She though it was a great idea, so Monday she will start back at her old class again.

Quite a lot to go through for an almost-5-year-old in Kindergarten. Wow! She doesn't bat an eye at any of it, which is a blessing. I was kind of wondering what it was that we were supposed to learn through this little scenario. I'm still not completely sure, but I think this Message (not an instant one, mind you) had to do with giving up control of things and just trusting God to do His job -- take care of the way He always does...the best way.

Hopefully next time I'll remember that.