Autumn Greetings

Autumn Greetings! I hope this finds you all well and that you aren't totally shocked that I'm actually updating my blog! haha. I'm finally giving you pictures of the girls in their Junior Civic Theater play this summer, "Willy Wonka." As you will see, they were the cutest squirrels ever, and the whole play was colorful and tons of fun. We are proud of not only our girls, but all the kids involved. Our little town has a lot of talent!



So I know I've been a bit MIA...learning about a million different things, getting a sore behind and probably getting a bigger one too, since I've been sitting around all day on it!! I have been enjoying the job, though. I love the people in my office and am glad I've gotten to spend some time there. They did drop a bombshell on me, though, when they told me last Friday afternoon that one of the other case managers is having surgery at the end of Oct. (three days after my "graduation") and I will be taking on all of her cases for 6 weeks! That's about 30 kids that I'll suddenly be responsible for! Scary! I've had some interesting experiences so far...going in the stinkiest house I've ever set foot in, removing a child due to slap marks all down his face, sitting in court over and over, doing an interview with a prisoner in jail, and more. :) Give me a call and I'll have tons of stories to share!

As for the family, Stephen has been doing a great job taking care of the girls. He's becoming quite an excellent cook, and has even canned many quarts of tomato juice/sauce with the tomatoes from our garden! He's also very good at banana bread. I'm proud of him for taking on this role. Now that my training is almost done, he's starting to look really hard for a job for himself. I hate the thought of both of us being out of the home, but we could really use the money right now. Thankfully we have some good supports to help us with the girls. We're praying a job comes to him soon. He's actually applied for a job writing for a blog. You can vote for him to advance in the application process by following a link and clicking on "vote" on his profile... you can catch the link on my facebook wall or on Stephen's. Stephen painted our bedroom on Saturday while he listened to conference (he's just like his Dad! haha) and it looks 100 times better! Plus, we rearranged it and found that our room is actually much larger this new way! Maybe it even has room for a bassinet..hmmm.... haha.

The girls are doing great. Eloise LOVES school. I wish I had her first day pics on the computer...they are on my mom's camera. Someday I'll get them developed and scanned or something. :/ She is really thriving in school, though. She's so cute to talk to about it. She knows who the line leaders are everyday...she loves when she is the line leader on art day. Her writing has improved and she is reading a LOT of words now. She opened her Book of Mormon the other day and was looking for words that she knows. She's trimming down and getting tall. She's almost tall enough (though not heavy enough, by far) to sit without a booster seat...she just needs about 2 inches in height. She is loving dance lessons more than ever and doing so well. She wants me to start teaching her piano, though I told her it would have to wait until training was over. She's really singing a lot now, and getting pretty good at it. It's so fun to see her grow and learn!

Lydia has an imagination the size of Africa. She is constantly pretending and constantly on the move. She's still really into dressing up. She made me laugh not long ago when I got out some size 4 pants (used to belong to Eloise) and showed her and she gasped and said, "They're LOVELY!!" Sometimes she'll hug me and say,"You're the best mommy ever." She's so sweet. But she can really be a stinker, too. She loves pens and stickers, and if she gets her hands on them, she uses them wherever her little heart desires. Her dresser is covered in stickers, as is a closet door in the dining room...argh. And she took a pen and drew on the rug in their bedroom! If she gets mad, everyone knows it. She can be ornery and drive us crazy, but she puts on that sweet smile and melts our hearts too. Oh how we love our "Little Lydia." :)

Well, I hope to add a lot this month, with both girls having a birthday in the next week or so. Can you believe Eloise turns 6 next week? And Lydia turns 4 this Saturday?? We better get cracking on another one! haha! We really want to, but it would be so much easier if we were in Utah and could just go to Dr. Gourley who knows my history...we miss Utah...we love it here, too, though. :) I'll try to get lots of birthday updates and other various events of the month...Happy Fall, Y'all!

Workin' Woman

Just a quick update...
Well, I'm a workin' woman now...I've been busy at training and am in my third training week already! Where has the last two weeks gone? I'm glad it's gone quickly and hope it continues to do so. I've been so busy since the mid/late July that I have hardly had time to blink. I'm enjoying the job so far...it's hard to see bad things happen to little children and families breaking up, etc. but so good to know how we can help. It's a lot to learn and I have a long way to go, but I look forward to learning.
Thank you to everyone for prayers and support. As soon as I get them posted, I will get pics on the blog from Eloise's first day of school yesterday. :)

New Adventures

Well, July has brought much change to our family...during the second week of the month I was offered a job with the State. I'll br a family case manager for the Dept. of Child Services in Miami County, which neighbors our county. I was totally surprised to be offered the job and shocked that I'd have to pray about it and make a decision. After doing so, we knew this was a blessing we should take advantage of, so I accepted.
Training for the job starts this Monday morning...in Indianapolis. Since we live more than 50 miles away from Indy, they require me to stay in Indy at a hotel throughout the business week and then come home on weekends....they pay for the gas and hotel and food, etc. The catch is that this may go on for up to 9 weeks! Stephen and the girls are coming with me this week and probably next week, too. But then Eloise starts kindergarten on Aug. 17, so their time with me down there will be over. I'm sad about that...this is going to be really, really hard for me. I've always been with the girls and part of me feels like I'm abandoning them, though I know Stephen will take good care of them.
So Stephen will be Mr. Mom...he'll still be able to keep his business and if he needs help with the girls, my Mom and our friend Josh will step in with the girls. Josh has even offered to take Eloise to and from school, since we have only one car and he'll be going up there each day to get his own daughter. We are blessed to have great friends and family, thank goodness.
So this adventure begins in two days...I don't feel ready, but know it's here and I have to be ready whether I like it or not. Prayers are appreciated, that's for certain. At least I know I will be trying to make life a little better for the children of Miami County. :)
By the way, when I told the girls the other day about getting the job, Eloise said to me, "But Mommy, girls don't work!" haha...I explained that sometimes they have to when daddies can't find a good job and reminded her of our great friends, Josh and Cassie...(Cassie will be my boss!) Josh stays home and takes care of the kids and house and Cassie works full-time. Eloise said, "So Daddy will stay home and take care of the kids like Josh does??? That's FUNNY!" So at least she can see some humor in it. :) More to post as soon as I can with pics from the girls' play!!

Life is Hard

Life has been tough around here lately...trying to get jobs and nothing working out for us. Money issues, etc. Now baby issues resurfacing. I have been pretty down, to be honest, as has Stephen at times. We figure good things will happen but it's hard to wait and be positive sometimes. It feels like our life will never be comfortable. I know the Lord has good things for us, but I'm really tired of waiting for them.

I'm not looking for sympathy or whatever...I just felt like journaling my feelings.

Lydia's Post

I promised a while back to post a bit about Lydia, since I had done so about Eloise. Don't want to break a promise!
Lydia is now 3 1/2 years old, and full of spunk. She can be the sweetest child ever sometimes but don't make her mad! She'll let you know it! She's lots of fun.

Recently, when asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Lydia responds by saying, "Rock-tar" (She still can't say the "s" sound very well). It is so cute because sometimes she'll act like one for us...getting up on the couch, rocking out to music on TV or just her own singing. She loves singing "The Best of Both Worlds" by Hannah Montana...and it's just too cute to hear her little voice and see her bobbing her head and getting into it. She's serious about doing this as her profession...it's adorable and we love it.

Lydia is becoming a proficient singer...she's loving singing time in Primary and she learns the music quickly. It's precious to hear her sing all the way home from church.

Lydia is trying to do everything Eloise does...counting, ABCs, etc. She adores her sister and I think it will be very hard for her when Eloise starts all-day kindergarten in the fall. If the two get separated for any reason, Lydia cries for her sister...it could be a fun school year. :)

Lydia also loves her older, teenage cousins...as soon as she sees them, she has to run up to them and be doted on. :)

One of her big accomplishments this week is that she has learned to open the screen door. I wish I could have captured her reaction to figuring that one out...you'd think she won the lottery. She was so proud of herself and kept telling me that she's a big girl now! She is a big girl and it's hard to let go of my baby, but she's such a precious, intelligent girl and I'm so proud of her!!

I love my little Lydia!!

Caution: Bragging Mom Ahead

So I have to brag about Eloise. She has always had a love of learning, and she is so excited for school this fall. But she did a couple of things yesterday that amazed me. After church and lunch, she told me, "Mom, how do I count to 100?" (She had mastered counting to 30 recently and is a tad obsessed with counting) I told her it would take her a long time and would be hard, since she's never done it before. She said she wanted to try it. I told her to go ahead and start and I would help her when she needed it...I thought she'd give up after a while. She counted to 100 with help from me only about three times! I couldn't believe it! I was so proud of her, and it was fun to see her so proud of herself.
Then we went to my parents' house and I had her telling my family that she did it. My sister Jonni, a kindergarten aide, thought that was really good and then told me what she said to her at church. Jonni has this picture peg thing she brings because Eloise LOVES it and she lets her do it during Sacrament because it's a quiet activity. (My sister is so nice...she brings things for kids even though her children are all at least 14...the girls love it because it's something different from our stuff) Anyway, Eloise was trying to make her own design with pegs and showed Jonni how far she had gotten. Jonni told her, "You have 8 pegs, but you need 10 for that." To which Eloise immediately responded, "I need two more, then." I am so proud of her...not even in school but is grasping mathematical concepts so well! Beyond that she reads a lot of words on her own and just amazes us all the time with how quickly she learns something. It will be fun to see what she does in school!
Thanks for letting this proud Momma brag a bit about her baby. :)
I'll post about Lydia later.

Criminal Mischief!

So last night we had some crazy stuff going on around here. It was about 10:30pm and I was on the computer, which is in the back room (dining rm) of our house. There are some big window-patio doors back there and we hadn't shut the big curtain for the night...we usually do that at bedtime.

Anyway, Stephen came in here with me and after a few minutes, we heard kind of loud footsteps, but muffled. We watch a lot of those ghost investigation shows and people are ALWAYS hearing footsteps, so we were making jokes about needing to call a show, etc. Stephen did notice our security light on our garage come on, but it has been stormy and the wind or debris often turns it on anyway.

Then Stephen suddenly said he saw someone with a flashlight in our backyard! So he turned on the floodlight to the back yard and it was a police officer. He opened the patio doors and the officer said there were two young guys who had been seen at another officer's house across the street, running out from back of it. That officer was not home (he's on vacation) so they were canvassing the area. (So the footsteps may have been the guys, or may have been the police...either way, gives me the creeps to know someone was so close to us here!!)

The police were here forever! They parked in front of our house with a flood light on the street and were out there until after 11:30 or so, then they left.

Today, in the newspaper, I read kind of what was going on. My neighbor told me this afternoon that she saw a car parked down at the end of the street with a lady in it and she was the driver for these guys!! Apparently, they found out who the guys were by questioning her and threatening to take her baby, who she had in the back seat!! At 11pm!! While acting as an accessory to burglary!!! What are people thinking???
Anyway, here is the link to the news story... http://www.pharostribune.com/local/local_story_120104636.html