Before i even get "caught up" on all the other stuff that's been going on, here's another new twist...

A while ago (September?) i saw an ad in the paper for a service technician job... to install and service dairy parlours, including robotic milkers. Computer skills, welding, and farming background all assets. These are the 3 things Jonathan MOST enjoys in the line of work. The welding and/or farming has been a difficult decision and he said he wished he could keep doing both! When i saw this ad, i thought it might be a perfect fit for him... so i showed it to him, and he applied. But he didn't follow up or pursue it further...

NOW, this afternoon, they finally call for an interview!

We've agonized about the decision to leave the farm ~ especially after the way it worked out with the other guy giving his notice too, and after we find out the farm is willing to pay better wages to keep him (why did they wait til now??). Still, feeling bad about leaving them in a predicament... that wasn't our intention.

And we were kind of feeling bad about keeping the new welding job waiting (although they've been awesome about it all)... while finishing up the farm job. But also been looking forward to being there full-time ~ the people are great and the shifts are good. Sounds like they like Jonathan too.

So Jonathan's initial response to this latest possibility was, "I've taken a new job starting full-time on Jan. 2."

UGH!

After talking about it, he called back to see if they could give an idea what wages are... and even with no experience they would start him at a significantly better wage than what he's getting now.

Umm, he's taking the interview on Wednesday! (an interview isn't a committment... but could help make that decision).

Is this God's plan for us?

We have a few questions... who pays travel expenses? what kinds of hours? benefits? holidays? etc.

Please pray! We really need God's direction ~ again!

It would be really hard to tell the new bosses he's not staying after all the waiting...

Sorry it's been so long since i've updated here... i started a blog more specific to our adoption journey, and i guess i have just not blogged a lot lately. The website for the other blog is
http://harderfamilyadoption.blogspot.com/

I hope you've all had a great Christmas. Ours has been pretty good.

Jonathan was officially (or unofficially?) done his job at the farm on the 25th (well, the night milking, so technically that would've brought him to the early am of the 26th ~ lol)... and his new job doesn't start until Jan. 2, so we had he's had a few days off which has been WONDERFUL! He did a night shift at the farm on the 28th, and he's agreed to doing a few Friday or Saturday nights in January... not sure how long that will go on, but I think it'll be ok.

The whole job thing has left us (or me anyway) with some mixed emotions. Since giving his notice at the farm, they clarified that they had given him a raise the previous month, and offered him (i think have given him for December), another raise (to encourage him to stay??). Why did it take so long? Truth is, at this point, his new job will now be a cut in pay. However, we anticipate a raise at the new job fairly quickly too, so we are confident it'll all work out. And we ARE looking forward to the regular day-shift hours with ... um, weekends off?? Lol... eventually. Jonathan hasn't agreed to Sundays though, so if he's only doing one day or shift/week at the farm, it's not bad.

Christmas eve, the kids wanted to open the gifts they had bought for each other. We don't emphasize Christmas gifts, and we don't buy them for the kids... but it's fun to see them thinking of and buying gifts for each other. They had a few gifts for Jonathan & I too. In particular, one of their gifts just blew me away... they collected cash (probably Darwin's idea, and he contributed the most) and did up a note saying the money was for our adoption fund. It's a significant amount of cash for our children (they don't get much from us), but Darwin gave generously from his hard-earned work money. It blessed me SO much! Does that tell what they think about adoption? It's almost hard to accept money from my children... but how can you say no? And really, I don't want to rob them of the blessing God wants to give them for their thoughtfulness and generousity.

Christmas day i didn't feel great in the morning ~ woke with a headache and my tummy was a bit yucky. So I didn't go to church. We kind of left it up to the kids if they wanted to go with Jonathan or not, and they all stayed home. That felt different... normally if there's church, they would've just gone. But for some reason, i felt like Christmas morning often has too much emphasis on the gifts everyone got, and it was just easier to let them decide rather than try and have them get ready on time. My headache lingered until late afternoon/evening when i was helping Darwin make dinner. (He wanted to make Christmas dinner, but it was a bit much for him to do alone). When Jonathan got home, we had a lovely meal together. Then we watched The Sound of Music on tv. Jonathan had to leave again for work by 9 or 9:30, and the boys ended up trying out a new computer game (Oregon Trail), but Janique & I watched the movie to the end. I love that movie every time I see it.

On the 26th, Jonathan & I went shopping. We had been waiting for this day to hopefully buy a bed at a great price. It was a long day, and by the time we came home, we had actually "bought" two beds... we ended up cancelling the first one because the second one was a better deal. That's an interesting story too... when we went back the next day to cancel the one from "store 1," i was curious what their Sealy beds were selling for ~ just to compare with the deal we got at the other store ~ so we went to look. The sales rep saw Jonathan holding our bill/sale (which we were about to cancel) and was curious... when we told him about the deal we got, he said that was such a good deal he wouldn't be looking anywhere else. Basically "unheard of." (But being a sales rep here, in his words, "i didn't tell you that.") The cool thing was, i was able to tell him "we prayed about it before we went shopping for a bed, and God must have led us to the store (store 2) at just the right time. We thought we were done shopping, but happened to be in the area of "store 2" and remembered that store had crossed our minds earlier... so we thought we'd just check it out. We were there right about 5pm, and they just happened to be having a one hour sale ~ half price on all their clearance items in the back ~ from 4-5pm. Then when the bed we decided on seemed to be sold (no longer available in their computer), she offered us the same bed, but a "new" mattress for just $100 more." It was so neat to be able to tell this guy how God had directed us... he said "God bless you."

Hmm, it's getting very late... lol... why i don't blog often ~ i'm too slow at it because i spend so much time thinking through what to say and how to say it. I have more to share, but it'll have to wait...

good night.

We had our second homestudy meeting on Monday, and it went fine... but for some reason (maybe because we talked about my post partum breakdown in '99), i felt myself feeling a bit inadequate to adopt. Actually, i was building quite an inferiority complex during the week. After hearing (on Wednesday) that the proposed timelines have been extended, on top of everything else i was feeling, the thought crossed my mind to give up.

However, in my gloom yesterday, i prayed about it, asking God to show me something to clarify/confirm if we should continue ~ and I vaguely thought the Orphan's Hope grant would be concrete enough confirmation ~ maybe because i thought it was such a far shot ~ but what would be the likelihood of that? We had only applied in October or so, with no guarantee that we'd ever get anything.

Later that afternoon when I went to the mail, there was registered mail... from Orphan's Hope!

I don't think i can do justice trying to tell you how much this means to me! I felt such an enormous outpouring of God's love on me! I was in tears before i even opened the envelope (i did make it out of the post office and into the van though before the tears started ~ lol). It really humbled me too ~ that God would speak so clearly (with the one "confirmation" that i had considered), and with such a huge financial blessing too ~ ok, i just REALLY felt like He dumped buckets of love on me! And such patience with me!

So here's the writing on the wall for me... "God has qualified you!"

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...