Craziness

It has been a crazy last few days. We found out that Jeff's unemployment benefits ran out last week. He tried to file for unemployment, and it was denied. We had been told that his previous company would pay unemployment for a year, and then he would file for unemployment through the state. Well, the year thing wasn't right. It was stopped after 7 months. He was able to file with the state (praise the Lord for that!), but the time limit is pretty short. So it is crunch time now. Instead of looking in our area, he is now looking nationwide for jobs. As of today, he has sent out close to 500 resumes. Wow. Unless he gets a job here in the area by March, the house is going on the market in March. I'm okay with everything. I know God has a great plan, and a great job. I'm actually okay with moving too. I have no idea where we are going to be, but I know God will take care of us.

We are trying to have some sense of normal during all of this. We took Evie sledding the other day, at the same place where I broke my rib last year. I was a bit nervous going down the hill, but went down an easier one this time so it was better. Evie had a blast. She found a group of kids there (one was homeschooled too), and she had fun sledding with them. Jeff and I got to sit in the warming house and watch her :).













On a funny note, I wanted to share this picture. Yes, I know, it is just a bunch of shoes. If you click on the picture, you will notice one thing they all have in common....they all have laces that are half gone. Our kitten (who is almost a cat) Daisy is a sweet little thing, but has one weird habit. She loves chewing on shoelaces. Not just chewing them though. She EATS them! I went to exercise the other day, and found my tennis shoe had 6 inches gone from the laces! We have had to buy 3 pairs of laces in the last few weeks. So we are having to hide our shoes from her. Whenever I have caught her chewing on them, she has this look of ecstacy on her face while she is chewing them. Kinda like she is getting her drug fix for the day! She fits in with all of our other strange pets. Like Dolly, who drinks water with her paw and meows at you like she is talking a blue streak. And Sierra, who will bark at everything that moves outside, but if a stranger comes to the door she just wags her tail. Yep, Daisy fits right in!

Winter canning

We are pretty much snowed in right now, with about a foot of snow on the ground. It sure is beautiful! Evie has been going out in the snow all bundled up, playing with Sierra. I have been busy trying something new...canning beans! We have a whole bunch of dried beans that I haven't been using because it is so much of a pain to prepare them. I started looking online at how easy they were to pressure can, and so much easier to use after they have been canned. So today I canned kidney beans. I did 7 quart jars, and I have 10 pint jars in the canner right now. I am soaking 5 pounds of navy beans to can tomorrow, and after that pinto beans. So I should be busy for the next few days! Beans that I have soaked and cooked have always given us some digestive issues, but for some reason the canned beans from the store don't seem to bother us. I'm hoping the home canned ones will work the same way as the store bought canned ones for us.

No job news at all. We were blessed with the biggest tax refund we have ever gotten, which was such a God thing. It will help us a lot. We have been living on 401K money, which isn't ideal, but at least we are able to keep our house and stay here until Jeff gets a job. It has been almost 8 months now. That seems unreal. The jobs in this area have been pretty scarce. Jeff has been looking elsewhere, but we still believe God could bring a job for us here. The waiting is hard, but I really do enjoy having my husband home with me :).

Needing a little humor

It has been an interesting last few days. All of the job leads in our area basically were closed shut for Jeff today. He got a call this morning that the one job he thought would work out didn't. They chose someone else. He had a phone interview today with a job near where we used to live. We would definitely have to move, so that makes me sad to think about. At least we would know people though, because we would move back to the area where we were before. We are just waiting to see what God has in store for us, and trusting that He has a good plan. We are having a realtor come tomorrow. We want to see what she thinks we can sell our house for. If she prices it way below what we owe on it, then we will take that as a sign that we need to keep looking here for a job. We spent the day overhauling the house, getting it ready for the realtor to see it. While we were cleaning stuff, throwing stuff out, and hauling stuff out to take to Goodwill, we found a doll of Evie's. The poor doll lost her hair (it was like a wig). Evie wanted us to give the doll to Goodwill because she didn't like the doll very much. Well, Jeff and I decided to have a bit of fun before we put the doll (and the wig) into the Goodwill bag.....

New Hair Toys

I have really fallen in love with Flexi-8 hair barrettes. They are super comfortable, hair-friendly, and so pretty! For Christmas this year, my wonderful hubby got me two different ones. One is a small size for partial updos, and another one is for ponytail type updos. I now have 4 of the Flexi-8's and use them all the time. As I am sitting here typing this, my husband just saw my blog title. He said I should have a picture of some rabbits with some toys around them. Get it? Hare toys? Ha ha :).

Remodeling

It is going on 7 months since Jeff lost his job. He has had several interviews lately. Last week he had 2. We will find more out about them probably this week. One nice thing about him having all this "free time" is that he is getting lots of projects done. Before he lost his job, we had bought everything we needed to remodel both our bathrooms. The main bath needed some small remodeling, but our master bath was UGLY. This first picture is what it looked like before. Actually this first and second picture were pictures I took before we bought the house. The previous owners really liked pink and purple in the house. Not my thing. I hope I don't offend anyone who loves pink and purple in their house, but this just wasn't me. The floor was just plain gross, and the vanity was way too huge for the room. The mirror was huge, and way too big for the small room. The whole room was one of those rooms we hated. We had the bathroom like this for 3 years. I'm amazed we waited that long. I ripped the shower door off about a month after we moved here. It was horribly dirty, and the room was way too small for a door. Here are a few "before" pics of the bathroom...

And here are the "after" pictures. We did a lot of "design on a dime" type stuff. We got the tile floor from Jeff's parents. It was leftover from their kitchen. For the vanity, Jeff took an old dresser of mine from when I was a kid, and rebuilt it to be the vanity. I accidentally left one of the drawers cracked open, so it looks like it isn't perfect looking but it is :). He did such a great job with it. He built it a lot smaller than the other one, so it makes the room look so much bigger,. Plus with the drawers I have more room than I had before! We got the vanity top at a store on clearance for $20! We had planned to buy a new vanity, but he lost his job so we had to improvise. I'm so glad we didn't buy a new one. I love the one he made me! We had planned to buy a new light, but we didn't want to spend money on that either. So Jeff painted the gold one we had, and it looks really nice. He used old paint that we had, and mixed it to a color he and I liked. It is sortof a sage/tan mix. We already had the mirror and faucet, so we didn't have to buy that :). I love, love, LOVE my new bathroom!

Can you say, "Awwww"

I haven't posted much on Daisy in the past few months. She is such a sweet cat. She has been a very fun addition to our family. She gets along famously with Sierra. I wish I could say the same about Dolly. Dolly can't stand her, and hisses and swats at her whenever she comes near, but Daisy really wants to be friends with her. We just had Daisy spayed last week, and she is doing very well. We didn't declaw her, and she is doing really well with not using her claws. Usually you can find Daisy curled up on Evie's lap, or laying beside Sierra, or running wildly through the house. You could say by looking at this video that Daisy really "kneads" Sierra as her friend :).

Catching up

This is probably going to be the longest blog post I have ever done. I figure why not just try and recap the last month and a half all in one blog post :). I have gone through a bit of bloggers fatigue, but am feeling better now. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years!

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents at our house. We had a wonderful meal with them, and had a special time. The placemats on the table were ones Evie and I made. It was one of our fun homeschool assignments!












We went and cut our Christmas tree a few days after Thanksgiving. That is always a super fun family outing.












Evie found this crazy tree. We thought it looked like it had bull horns!












Here's our tree!












Evie's birthday was the first week of December. We went with my parents and Jeff's parents to a Mexican restaurant near us. Here's my two most favorite people in the world :).









Evie kept talking to the waitress, and the waitress thought she was pretty sweet. She came out with a huge sombrero and put it on Evie's head, then the workers all sang "Happy Birthday" to Evie in spanish. Then they gave her a heaping plate of fried ice cream. Normally you have to pay for, but the super sweet waitress just gave it to us for free. Evie wore the sombrero for the rest of the time...












Except for when I wanted to give it a try...












Then we went back to our house and Evie opened her gifts. She got some wonderful gifts. She truly was blessed this year.












One huge blessing came in the form of our fabulous neighbors. They have pretty much adopted Evie as their granddaughter, and she calls them Nana and Papa. They blessed her with some amazing gifts for her birthday and Christmas. I was blown away at how much money they spent on her. It was humbling, and such a gift from God during this season in our lives.












We have gotten lots of snow this past month, and we were able to make a snowman while the snow was packable. This poor snowman did the limbo before he fell over. For 2 days he looked like he was going to tip backwards. He finally did on Christmas day. We haven't been able to make another one because the snow has been too powdery.

















On Christmas Eve, we went to my parents house. We had a wonderful dinner.












Then we celebrated our Christmas with them.












Christmas morning, Evie was up bright and early! She had fun opening her gifts. Notice the Barbie camper in the background (that big pink thing). That was one of her gifts from our neighbors!!












Here's our beautiful tree. We learned this year that the Christmas tree is a symbol of Christ's death and resurrection. When you cut it, it symbolizes Christ's death. When you put it up again in your house, it symbolizes Christ's resurrection.

















Here Sierra is getting in the Christmas mood.












Jeff's parents came for lunch on Christmas day. We had a great time with them.













The birds have been coming like crazy this year, especially the cardinals. My dad has blessed us big time with bags of bird seed. He keeps buying it for us so we can enjoy watching the birds. I thought that was so sweet of him.

















So that is a month and a half in one blog! Whew! That was one long blog post! I hope you all weren't bored to tears :). I missed all of you!