My Birthday was Thursday for those of you who forgot. Ha Ha Just kidding!! It was a very nice day. My husband got up early and went out and got me flowers and a cake. It was a very sweet surprise, and the roses were beautiful. Then I got phone calls from people like my mother in law, grandparents, and sister. I then got to go out to lunch with a friends without kids, Garratt kept the girls at home for me. After lunch I went home to relax. When I got home there was another set of flowers on the table, these ones were from my Grandparents. They were beautiful too, it was a rose and carnation combo. They are both now on my entertainment center and I love them. After hanging out with the kids for a little while I made dinner. Faith and Brooke played while Mommy sat on the couch after dinner. We put Faith to bed and then played a game while Brooke just kinda "hung out." Then we went to bed, (Garratt had school on Friday). Then yesterday Garratt took me out! We went bowling and then out for dinner. We also went shopping for a couple of things we forgot. Oh well! That was my birthday. I also recieved a few birthday cards that were all very sweet and very considerate. I appriciated everyone of them.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Great American Dine Out
This week is the Annual Great American Dine Out (20-26th). The purpose of this event is to help with ending Childhood hunger. Here is the scoop:
THOUSANDS OF RESTAURANTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY ARE HELPING TO MAKE SURE NO KID IN AMERICA GROWS UP HUNGRY.
The first annual Share Our Strength's Great American Dine Out rallied nearly 4,000 restaurants across the nation—from coffee shops to fine dining restaurants—and millions of consumers. These restaurants participated in a variety of ways— donated a percentage of sales, promoted select menu items, collected money from suppliers and guests and much more. The funds raised from this campaign will support:
Increasing participation in school food and nutrition programs
Increasing the number of community gardens
Food banks and food pantries
Increasing access to fresh produce
Increasing utilization of federal child food and nutrition programs, e.g. food stamps, school breakfast, etc.
Advocacy around Child food and nutrition-related programs
So do your part...go eat out this week. For a list of participating resturants in your area go to
http://join.strength.org/site/PageServer?pagename=GADO_homepage
From here you can input your zip code and it will give you a list of resturants that are participating. You have to eat so why not eat and make a difference.
When will it end??
Ok..so some of you know that we had problems with our car finance bank like a month ago. I took care of the everything and paid off the car or so I was to understand from them. There was the possibility that there might be a "SMALL" balance but the girl reassured me that it would be minimal if any and that I would get a statement telling me my balance. So today I get a phone call from the bank telling me that my monthly payment is LATE. How the heck is that even possible. I paid it off according to the girl I talked to on 9/2/09. Well apparently that girl was slightly new and misinformed me...story of their life around there...and so now there is a "LATE" payment. So I asked why I had not recieved a statement telling me that I have a balance anf that it is going to be due on X date? Her reply made me want to hit the roof...she told me that the way there system is that the issue we had cause the system to "mark" our account and that "marked" accounts do not recieve statements. WHAT??? That is just the way it is, was her statement after that. Ok so now I was pissed and she could tell so she went and talked to her manager and her manager is offering us a "settlement" on the account. She is willing to discount the $400 we owe down to $275 if we can pay it by the end of the month. CRAP. That is a fairly decent deal, but no I do not have a job. Basically the girl said that we have the option to take the "late" fee and make our monthly payments until we pay it off or we take the settlement but we have until the end of the month to do it. I am so frustrated right now because neither option is very doable at this moment in time with me not working. Just when I had things figured out so that we could "float" by until I find a job. There is always something. I am really starting to wonder when it is all going to end. If it is not one thing it is another. This whole process of deciding what to do about this and that and everything in between is really getting more and more trying. All I want to do is get my Career Certification in Event/Wedding planning and start my own business so that I can make a living and support my family and be able to make my own schedule so that I can be home when I need to be and be able to make enough money to pay our bills, put a little in savings and be able to go out on a "date night" with my husband once a month. Is that asking too much? Apparently so because it is not happening. Oh well here is hoping that something comes up in the Palouse Job Market soon because right now the only jobs are ones that require extensive degrees or are aimed at College students who are willing to work "ANY" hours. GRRRRR to life!
Friday, September 18, 2009
Loss of Job= Lots of Problems...GRRRR
Besides the obvious fact that a loss of job = the loss of income there is another very important factor that we have to deal with now. What is that?
LOSS OF JOB=LOSS OF MEDICAL INSURANCE
LOSS OF MEDICAL INSURANCE= VERY BIG DR BILLS FOR 2 GIRLS THAT NEED IMMUNIZATION SHOTS & 1 MOMMY THAT NEEDS BIRTH CONTROL PILLS
Yes ladies and gentlemen, when I lost my job and we lost our medical insurance I realized that this is right at the wrong time. Faith is scheduled for her 2 year check up and lots of immunizations (she has 2 to make up from when I was pregnant.) and In 2 more weeks we have Brroke's 2 month follow up which includes her immunizations too. Lovely. Plus, when I went to the OB last week He gave me my prescrption for my BCP and told me that because of the infant in our home that the other 3 of us all need to have both flu shots this year. GREAT! Now I am in a hard spot. I really need to find a job or come into some money and quickly.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Now What?
So I found out last week that somewhere along the line I lost my job. This was completly a shock to me. So at the beginning of the month a friend of mine who is a professor in the department I worked for called me and asked me if I had heard that the girl who was "filling" in for me while I was gone had gotten a permanent position in a different department. I said no and decided to email my department director and find out what that meant for my job. 3 days later I got a reply from him saying that they had already "posted" the job online to be filled and that I was more than welcome to apply for it. I emailed him back and asked him why it was posted when I was under the impression this whole summer that I would have a job to come back to after my maternity leave, as long as the money was in the budget for it. A few days later I got a response from him telling me that He was sorry but they had to act fast and they had already hired someone. He also told me that he did not realize in all our corespondances that I was "definatly" returning and that he assumed I was not. Then he proceeded to apologize for any inconvienience and said that he would be more than willing to write me an excellent reference letter if I ever needed it.
Needless to say I was rather pissed off and fumed over it for awhile and then I realized that obviously there is a reason that I "lost" this job. I know that God has something for me since he allowed for this to happen, I just wish I could figure out what. There really are no jobs here for a person like me with no degree and while I have the "financial aid" to go back to school I do not have the "financial" means to not work. I would love to keep the girls home and go backl to school. I could take some online classes for now and then eventually take some traditional classes later. I am still not sure what I want to do. There are 4 different things that I am really interested in and I do not know which way to go. 2 of the options would be "traditional" schooling the 3rd would be an online certification program, and the last would be an inbetween. The first two would involve traditional financial aid to pay for and the 3rd would be a monthly payment plan of $40-60 per month and the last I am still figuringout but I think it would invilve some sort of loan or payment plan, but it would be more exprensive. What are the options? 1) Nurse, I have always loved the field of medicine and the thought of helping people. 2) Teaching, I love working with kids and I think this would a great field to work in. 3) WEdding and Event Planning, this has been a passion of mine for a long time. I started the schooling for this back like 6 years ago and never finished it. Now I feel like I could get back into this, there is a real need in this are for that type of person and I could work from home and be able to set my schedule around Garratts. 4) Cosmotologist....I have thougth about this one for a long time. I wanted to fo this originally when I got out of High School but was told by a specific family member that it was a dead end and that I could not do it. So I guess at that point I gave up. This is also a carreer with a need and I think again I would be good at it and I again could work my schedule around Garratt's as needed. So now what? I do not know. I guess I put all this on hold and focus on tring to find a minimum wage job that will help us "float" by as much as possible and then maybe in 3 -4 years when Garratt is done with school and his internship and he has a good job then I can consider these options again. I guess that is what I have to do, be a supportive wife and mother and place everything else on the back burner.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
And that's another...COUGAR FIRST DOWN!
So we may not have won but we sure had a great time.
Faith was all ready to go, she loves her jersy and her hair pom pom. We had to wait for Daddy to get home from work so Faith hung out by the door, opening it occassionally to see if Daddy was coming down the hill.
Brooke was all ready too in her Cougar colors, although you can't really tell in this picture.
Faith was facinated watching the players warm up, then she spent most of the game in this spot because she could watch the players run and she could watch the Marching band play, she was very excited about the band.
Speaking of the band here they are at the beginning of the game, approx. 5 mins prior to kick off. There are approx. 240 people in the WSU 2009/10 Marching Band.
Butch making his rounds at the game, making sure that everyone is cheering on the Cougars!!
Here is a picture of football players running...every together now..."ohhhhhh" "awwwww"
Garratt and Faith pause during 1/2 time to take a picture. We all had a great time. The Cougars lost to the Cardinals 13-39. This is the same amount that we lost by last year, although this year our team is showing SIGNIFICANT improvement. We are in our rebuilding years and we are hoping to have a better season this year than last year. Last year we won 1 game, the Apple Cup. We will keep you all posted on future games!! GO COUGS!!!Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!!
OK Now the good news with my Mom's health. They finally may have solved the year long "mystery" of what is wrong with my mom. The diagnosis is...peristalsis...what is this? Basically it causes a decrease in the digestive systems working ability. You see it takes the average person 55 minutes to digest a meal, through a special gastric test they determined it taked my Mom 11 hours to digest a meal, hence the pain and the lack of desire to want to eat. How would you feel if food sat in your stomache for 11 hours? The good news is that there are ways to help this. There are 2 different medications. 1 she has already been on and it did not work. The other can only be gotten from Canada, thank you Canadians!! SO she has to ship it in from Canada. If this second medication does not work there are a couple of more drastic options to consider. I am praying that the medication works.
The last item I will discuss is my anger with the Financial Aid system that our government has set up. One I think that they do everything in their power to screw the little people. Second, I think that thet purposefully decieve the people who are trying to get assistance for school. THat is basically what has happened to us. We recieved half of the money needed for Garratt's schooling for the 09-10 year and we had to take out a loan for the 2nd half of it. The problem is we were mis-lead into thinking that we would recieve the entire amount of the Private loan, instead they put it through the school to certify and then the governement got their fingers involved and it became a split loan do we only got 1/2 the money, and we will get the rest in January, which is great for January but sucks for December. Oh, well...there goes our Christmas!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
OUR MASCOT
