The craziness of it all

I'm sitting here in our rental house as I type this. It has been an interesting week and a half! We moved in a week ago Saturday. The house wreaked of dog smell, so we shampooed the carpets in hopes it would help. It didn't. We bought an air purifier, which has helped quite a bit. My first day here, I wanted to go home SO badly. I almost packed my bags and left. The memories of this town came flooding back, and not in a good way. This town held some seriously bad memories from me. I lost my babies in this town. I got really sick in this town. I went from being super full of life to being a shell of who I was. When we moved from here 4 years ago, it was such a healing time for me to leave. I feel like such a different person now. I'm not sure why God has us here. I have had to really work through a lot of feelings. I know that God is a healing God, and I believe He is wanting to heal my heart in the areas where there is hurt. One seriously crazy thing is that Jeff has had 2 interviews with a company up where we are from, and where our house is. He has a 3rd interview on Friday. This one is supposed to be the final interview. If they offer him the job, we will probably be moving back home! I can't tell you how much I want that to happen. I also want to be where God wants us to be, so I'm trying to be open to that. So that is the story of our life right now. We are spending the weekend up in at our house, and it may be a really interesting weekend!

The house is listed

We listed the house on Monday, although the realtor hasn't gotten it into the computer yet. We already have someone coming this coming Monday night to look at it, and it isn't even in the computer! We are excited about that. We have de-cluttered like crazy, and everything looks great. We are probably going to rent when we move, until we find a house we really like. I'm still hoping to do a garden, amidst all this chaos. My little seedlings are going to town, and I can't wait to get them in the ground! I have been able to enjoy my flowers this spring. Here is a picture of my azaleas and my lilies. The lilies smell SO good!

On a seriously crazy note, Evie and Sierra have been running around at Jeff's parents property every day. We have been going over there to break up some of the monotony of Jeff being gone. I decided to check Sierra for ticks yesterday. As of today, the count is up to fifteen...yep, you read that right... fifteen! One was the size of a grape, and another the size of a raisin. The rest were all small. She has so much fur that it is really hard to find them. Yesterday, the huge grape one just fell off her and we found it on the carpet. I didn't know what it was because it was so big. I thought it was some weird beetle! Normally when they are small, they are brown with a funky design on their backs. This one was light gray. When I checked her and found the smaller raisin sized one attached to her, it was light gray, so I realized that huge one was a tick filled with blood. YUCK! I pulled the raisin sized one off, then found 10 more. Today I found 3 more. One was only about 1/4" above her eye, embedded in her scalp. I felt SO bad for her. We just keep finding them on her! I guess we aren't going to be able to let her run out there for awhile. The ticks here can get bad, but I have never seen them that bad before! I bet I just gave you all the heebie-jeebies didn't I :)?

It's a real zoo around here

Our life is a bit of a zoo, and we went to the zoo :). I guess I should give an update on our wild life. Jeff ended up quitting his job a week ago to take another job that starts tomorrow. What is interesting is that this job is a former employer. He worked for them 4 years ago before we moved back up to be near family. They were really wanting him to come back, and actually called HIM! At first he wasn't open at all, but the more he prayed about it, the more he felt like God was leading him to take the job. So it looks like we are moving back to the small town we moved from 4 years ago. It is 2 hours away from family, which isn't too awfully bad. I will really miss our families though. I have really enjoyed being so close. One nice thing is that we know lots and lots of people in the town we are moving to, and it is a small, rural, safe community. There are quite a few people we know who homeschool, which will be great. Evie already has friends there, and she is actually super excited to be moving back. We are putting the house up for sale in about a week. Jeff planted grass seed in our garden area and covered it with straw. I did a lot of groaning when he did that. All that work for nothing! Ugh! We are looking at renting a house that has 1 acre of property. It is a log cabin that is in a very small town near the town Jeff will be working. We went through it, and talked with the owners who were super nice people. They have been trying to sell the place for a year and can't sell it, so they are open to renting it. There is a huge garden area already on the property, so if we get to move quick enough, I will still get to have my garden. We really need to sell our house first before we rent. We are praying that our house will sell super fast.

Friday, Jeff and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. We took Evie to the zoo, and had a lot of fun. The flowering trees were absolutely gorgeous, and they were planted all along the walking paths all throughout the zoo. The lilacs were in full bloom, and smelled SO good. The animals were really interesting this time! Here is the white Bengal Tiger. She was pretty relaxed, as you can see :).














Makes you just want to scratch her belly doesn't it??













Here is a picture of Evie and I by one of the huge lilac bushes. I wish you could smell how wonderful it smelled!















































We got quite a laugh out of this portly Prairie Dog. He or she just sat there like this, on his behind with his feet out eating for quite awhile.














And here is a wild domestic shorthair....oh wait, this isn't a zoo pic. Lol. Don't you just love the way Daisy is sitting??

Daisy was being really cuddly this afternoon, so Evie wanted to take my picture with her. Daisy turns a year old in about a week. Dolly turns 11 tomorrow, and Sierra turns 7 on May 1st. My pets are getting older :(.

It is going to be a very busy week, as we take stuff to storage and get the house ready to sell. We know God has a great plan!

Lots of changes

I haven't been the best blogger in the world lately. Maybe because my life is in a bit of an upheaval. Three weeks ago, Jeff took a job that is about 2 hours away from where we live. He was near the end of receiving unemployment, so he felt like he had to take the job. We have been seeing each other on weekends, but that is pretty much it. We are really thankful for the income, but it has been a really hard time. He is looking at the job as temporary, partly because he hates the job, and it is a big step back from what he was doing before. We are talking about possibly moving, as he interviewed for a different job in the same area. We are waiting to hear about a job he interviewed for here. They told him he is their top contender, but they are taking their own sweet time making their decision. The guy who is making the decisions in on spring break this week, so we are praying that next week he will be ready to make a decision. Otherwise, there isn't much available where we live. Even though we were unsure about what is going to happen, we decided to go ahead and get a garden ready. If he gets the job here, then we will have a great garden. If not, we will have to put sod over the garden spot when we go to sell the house. We did a 15' x 38' plot. It doesn't look that big, but it is pretty good sized. Plus I am still going to plant stuff in the back yard where my garden was last year. Jeff planted the arborvita's along the road after we planted the garden, so that we will have some privacy as they grow. The garden is in part of our side yard. We have a huge side yard, and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste! We are going to have to fence in the garden because the bunnies are all over the place here.














The weather here has been pretty crazy. All last week, and the beginning of this week it was in the 70's and 80's. Now that everything is blooming and coming out, it is supposed to snow! UGH! We have lived here 4 years, and not once have I ever been able to see our magnolia tree in full bloom because this happens EVERY year! The magnolia has about 5 open blooms that are a deep purple, and tonight it is supposed to frost :(. Evie went out yesterday and played in the rain. I had to take her picture because she is wearing Jeff's big rubber boots and Jeff's rain jacket :).




















Here are some pics from Easter. I hope you all had a nice one!

A trim

I decided to trim my hair this past weekend. The tangles were getting crazy, and I was having trouble wearing my hair down. I am trying to find a good length where I can wear it down without it getting matted. I was at about an inch above my tailbone, and I trimmed about 2 inches off. I also went from having it rounded to having it cut straight across. I think it makes my hair look thicker when it is cut straight across, and updos are easier. So far, at this length, I am still able to do all my updos without any problem. I was amazed though that when I used my Wrap, Snap and Go rollers, my hair was so much shorter! After I took them out, my hair was bra strap length! I kept grabbing at my waist to feel hair that wasn't there! That seemed really short to me. After awhile, the curls stretched to waist length. I would like to grow maybe another inch and stay at that length and see how I like it. I really wish I had hair that did well at tailbone length or longer. If the tangles weren't an issue, then I would probably be a classic length girl. Here is a pic of the new trim. I tried to get a picture from the back, but they all looked hilarious. For some reason I can't seem to take a straight picture of myself from the back! So the side pic will have to do :).

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 :).