Work and School

I start work tomorrow. I'm a little nervous and completely excited! :) I am a little nervous about being away from my babies so much but I know that having the extra income is crucial to our survival. And I am completely confident that God has given me this job and so my time will be blessed. My schedule will be Friday through Tuesday from 3 - 11:30. So, I won't be home with the kids get home from school and they'll obviously be asleep when I get home.. The upside is that the kids have a half day on Wednesdays and so, one of my days off, I'll be able to spend a lot of time with them. Also, since I don't leave until 2, I will be able to hang out with them Saturday mornings and go to church with the family on Sundays.
One part of my job will be leading groups with the women who live in the shelter. Lowell loves to tease me by reciting the part of 28 Days (the movie about rehab with Sandra Bullock) "Together we're better, we're better together. Yeah, us!" Anyway, he thinks its funny. I will also be working with the children in the shelter. I'm sure I'll also be helping out with housekeeping, intakes and will have tons of paperwork too.
We didn't go to church today. Neither one of us slept very well... Yesterday we discovered a wildlife preserve about 10 minutes from home and so, today, we're going to go take some water bottles and sandwiches and go hiking around. Lowell said we'd take our Bibles too and we can read a story to the kids and talk about it; our own little version of church. It is a little cooler today, only around 100 degrees. Chloe is sitting next to me, reading Pinkalicious. She has grown in her ability to read sooo fast! She's quite astounding! :) Nathan is reading the Hardy Boys books but still does better when he's reading to either Lowell or I. There are quite a few vocabulary words in those books that he doesn't know and, if left to his own Now that he's understanding and appreciating the story, he really likes these books. I'm impressed with his reading ability too.
I finally found a program that will take Jillian and who has funding assistance available for us so that we don't have to pay for her to go to preschool. In about a week, we start all the application process and she can't hardly wait! I have one more class and then I'll be finished with pharmacology. My next class is Intro to Chemical Dependency Counseling and I'm taking Ethics online so, I'll be taking twice the class load and working too... :) Can't be too busy, can you? Intro to chemical dependency counseling is different from pharmacology because, right now, we've been learning about the physical effects of drugs and how they work in the brain - affecting chemicals and creating addiction. In this next class we're going to be studying different ways to treat addiction and addicts. I'm looking forward to it. In Ethics, we are (obviously) going to study the different ethical issues with being a counselor.
We're continuing to be blessed, again and again... :) I am thankful for all your prayers and letters! Keep em coming! We still haven't really gotten a social network setup here yet... So, I get a little lonely sometimes... Thankfully, my kids are never at a loss of things to do to entertain me. I just adore them, you know... they're amazingly wonderful, precocious and sweet. Blessings all around.