This week, by contrast to my last entry, has seemed very unproductive. I guess i need to look at it all in perspective too.

Jonathan's work situation has been quite a roller coaster, and i'm not sure i should share all the details here, but i'll try to summarize anyway.

He was trying out the new (welding) job for a few days already, and planning to make a decision by last week Friday. His boss at the farm knew he was welding part-time, but Jonathan hadn't clarified he was "trying out" for a new job. Part way through the week, we heard that the other key employee had given his notice to leave by the end of December. We had no idea he was planning to leave, so it really complicated the idea of Jonathan giving his notice too... but eventually Jonathan did need to let them know and it didn't go over very well. Fortunately Jonathan & the junior boss (it's a father-son team) were able to talk things out so that there shouldn't be any hard feelings between them... but i'm not sure what the senior boss is thinking (or his wife). Of course part of it will be "my fault" for wanting him home more. Apparently though, they gave Jonathan a raise last month. They don't say anything, and it's not clear on the pay stub, so we didn't notice. And to encourage him to stay, they talked about another raise in January.

Jonathan has been agonizing over this decision (all the way through really, but again when the farm is willing to increase his pay to keep him ~ why couldn't they do that a LONG time ago?? ~ they've said they can't afford to pay more). But he's talking like he's still leaning toward taking the welding job. I think he's a bit stung by the fact that people starting after him have been getting paid more than him ~ how do you feel training someone who's getting paid more than you? (altho he didn't know that at the time) and maybe some other issues too. But I'm leaving the decision totally up to Jonathan! The big thing for me was getting paid enough to "get by" with a normal 40-hr week... and i guess starting off, the welding job might not be quite enough, but with time it should work out. The added bonus of having evenings (early evenings!) and weekends off, stat holidays, some kind of health benefits, etc. are whip cream on the cake.

Adoption ~ our next homestudy visit is on Monday. I'm looking forward to it. One step closer...
I guess i still have a few questions to answer on my personal info/history forms, and Jonathan has several pages to do yet ~ lol ~ but he's got the weekend off, so hopefully we'll get those done then.

It's been a busy few days again... we had a Bible conference at church from Sunday through Thursday. I only had Logan & Maison a few hours on Tuesday & Wednesday, but on Thursday I ended up watching my nephews Robbie & Andrew for a few hours. That's always an adventure ~ but it was pretty cute to watch when Janique "helped" him clean up. He likes to dump the bucket of blocks on the floor, but doesn't usually play with them, so we insist he cleans them up after a bit too. So Janique started singing a preschool song and inserted his name... "Robbie come and clean up a little bit..." and because he LOVES when anyone is singing, every time she came to the end of the song he'd say "more." Eventually Andrew joined in the singing/game and they must have sung it 20-30 times while handing Robbie the blocks to put back in the bucket. Brenden was getting tired of the song but i pointed out to him that at least Robbie was staying out of trouble, and all three were having fun... so we let them keep singing.

Friday the kids & I went to a science workshop at the school division (our homeschool facilitator put this on for those who were interested). We had fun... my favorite experiment was the soap one... try this... take a piece of bar soap (compare two kinds ~ Ivory is really good to try)... cut a small piece about 1" square or smaller. Place it on a paper towel and microwave it for about 40-80 seconds (really depends on the microwave, but you want to WATCH it anyway, so you'll get an idea when it's "done."

When we got home, there were a few messages, one of them about baby-sitting on Saturday. I figured out it should work out ok, so sure. A bit later my sister called to see if i could watch her five boys that evening, and 4 of them on Saturday. Lol... sure, why not?

Then because i was already busy and for some strange reason feeling ok with it all??? I decided to plan to have friends over for Sunday lunch. This does NOT come easily for me... if i ever feel like i've got food ready to serve, my house doesn't get tidied... or if the house is ever nice enough, i don't know what i'd serve. So then to get it "together" for a Sunday lunch when our Sunday morning is usually pretty short just getting ready for Sunday school/church???... i'm not sure where the idea came from, but there it was. LOL... So we made plans before i could change my mind, and then i just had to work toward that. I had a poor night when i finally got to bed, and ended up with a nasty headache by 2am that's been lingering on and off all day yet too, but we had a wonderful visit as i knew we would.

Update on Jonathan's new job possibility... he seems to be enjoying it ok, or at least he said he was surprised? or pleased? with how easily he was picking up the welding again. He's also seeing some potential?? opportunity to eventually take it out on his own (the boss here mentioned something about sub-contracting some of the welding work that Jonathan is working on now)... who knows? Jonathan is hoping to know by the end of the week which job to keep.

Here's some pictures of cakes we did for a cake auction (for Gospel Echoes Prison Ministry) earlier this month (just a little part of their benefit auction weekend). I helped each of the kids with their cakes (Darwin did most of his on his own), but i tried to give them the fun of doing as much of the decorating on their own as possible. I was very pleased with their work, and altogether their cakes brought in about $100 for the ministry (a bit over $100 i think).

I'm not sure if this will post the way i'm entering, but i'll try...

First one is Reagan with his snowman cake. This one was so easy to make for how nicely it turned out!

Janique was determined to do a "horse" cake. The day before doing the cakes, we still hadn't found exactly what we were looking for in toys, so we decided to build the fence with pretzels and royal icing (the stuff you use for gingerbread houses) and just go with toy horses. The fence totally "made" the cake... but it took a few attempts to get it holding together. I made a few extra fences to replace the ones that broke... and it all worked out ok.
Darwin's is pretty self-explanatory ~ smarties were the best candy we found with all the colors (well, for blue, indigo and violet we settled for blue and purple). Clouds are marshmallos. We hadn't thought ahead to make sure the frosting we bought was true WHITE so it was hard to get a "blue" sky (did you know when you add blue food color to "vanilla" frosting, it goes green?? lol).
Brenden's cake was fairly basic too, but the fruit/yogurt roll-up things (can't remember what they are called) were so soft and sticky that it was quite a chore making the bow. Otherwise it was easy to do. The candies are rainbow chocolate chips ~ they are great for smartie/monster cookies too (don't break up the cookies like the big smarties do).

Jonathan is at a job interview ~ i'm excitedly waiting for him to come home (or call) and let me know how it went.

Aside from that, today looks rather relaxed and low-key (being a holiday). I'm asking the kids to do a bit of school anyway, and hopefully i can do some correcting ~ i've been getting kind of behind in that.

I'm feeling rather tired from too many late nights... but really enjoying a book i've been reading "There is No Me Without You." It is an amazing story and eye-opener about Ethiopia, HIV/AIDS, orphans, etc.

Anyway, just a little update...

Yesterday morning we had our first homestudy meeting. It went really well, and we are working on our "homework," trying to get appointments for medicals (somehow Jonathan no longer has a family doctor?? because he hasn't needed to see one for too long?? and my doctor will be trying to fit me in since normally i'd be waiting about a year to get in for a complete physical. We've got 17 pages to fill out about ourselves (each of us)... :-)

It's exciting to be moving ahead! Our next appointment is almost a month away because our social worker will be away for a bit... but i guess that gives us a little more time to get our stuff written up.

This morning, one of our kids chose to pray about Jonathan's work situation. He's feeling ready to move on. (Several reasons for that and i won't get into it all right now). Anyway, this afternoon, we got a call from a place he applied a while ago. He'll be talking with them on Monday (hopefully) and I guess we'll see where it goes from there. We had been talking about him going to New Holland (they've been desparately trying to hire people for a while now), so if this other one doesn't work out he'd be trying there. I just thought it was REALLY neat how we just prayed about it, and there was the phone call... even if we don't know yet that it's an "answer to prayer" it is encouraging!