Lots of Blessings

We've had some great occurances here lately. For one thing, the return of our cat. We also finally got the results from Lowell's test. He did very well. And he's on the list for the position with the City of Phoenix. He isn't very opptomistic about his liklihood of getting the job because he thinks the job will go to someone already employed by the city, but I'm just glad that he got a good score and so will, hopefully, feel more confident in his hire-ability. A third big event was that I got my diploma in the mail. :) I actually feel like I've accomplished something now! I graduated Cum Laude!!! Woo Hooo!! I also had the last meeting of my first class. And, while I don't have my official grade, yet, I will definitely get an A in my first Masters class! :) Also, we got 2 ferrets for the girls. Their names are Creepy and Honey. One is brown and the other is, well, honey colored. The kids love them. Our next door neighbor loves them too! Instead of Nathan going over there every day, our doorbell has been ringing every morning at 8 on the nose. Cody loves to come over and play with the ferrets. His mom, however, hates them! :) She's completely grossed out by the little babies and thinks they are too rat-like.

Another wonderful thing, my sister-in-law, Linda, had her baby! She had a beautiful little girl named Kate Emily. Mother and baby are both fine. Lowell has also just recently made another trip up to California to get more of our things and our second car. It will be fabulous to have a second car! We went to MVD (DMV for you CA people) and got our AZ licenses and registered the car. It passed smog without a hitch and, for everything, licenses and registration, it was under $100!!! It feels a little more real - that we're living in Arizona permenantly - now that we have Arizona licenses.

I have been working more on the house. I've decorated Nathan's room and I've finally gotten our books set up. Before, I had our huge tv shelf stacked three deep with books and movies. Now, I've gotten everything organized and set up. Lowell thinks I'm nuts, but I saw one of those tv decorating shows and got the idea to put my books on the shelf by color... I know, nuts, but it really looks pretty cool. :) I made a couple of exceptions, like putting all of one or two authors together and sorting them independently. All in all, I'm really happy with it. Nathan is thrilled with his room and I also hung up some curtains in my bedroom.

The job market is still slow but Lowell hasn't really been looking. That will start this week, so please be praying. I've been struggling with the logistics of finding a job because my schedule is limited both by my school schedule and by the kids. Of course in the summer, the kids are home and so someone has to be here with them. The during the school year, the charter school doesn't have school on Fridays and they want to charge for Preschool for Jillian. I haven't been able to find a state program that offers free pre-school yet.. I'm still looking. Otherwise, I'll be working just to pay for day care and pre-school. The only way that I could work and not pay for those things would be if Lowell worked graveyard and watched the kids while sleeping... I really don't want him to have to do that.. But we will probably need the extra income. Also, he's worried, and I admit, I am too, a little, about when I start doubling up on my classes in the fall. Starting in September, I'll be taking two classes at a time. That will require a lot of work with homework and research... So, I'm really praying for wisdom about what I should do. Lowell could stay on unemployment, be a stay at home dad and let me work, but he doesn't like that idea. He wants to work. In an ideal world, I want to be able to be a scrapbooking consultant and work from home. I'd like to make scrapbooks for people, so long as I can find people and I can get over charging what I need to charge in order to make it worthwile. I've been doing research from others who've done the same thing. The spectrum goes all the way from $10 a page to $30 an hour to $300 or $500 a book. So, I'm not sure what I want to do... And Lowell is pretty sure that he wants me to work a real job first and ease my way into the consultant job. It makes sense because I need to have more contacts and know more people in order to make the scrap thing work but I don't know how getting a real job will work either... So, I'm praying, applying and waiting. And being thankful for the big and the little blessings that we experience so frequently.