1 Happy Birthday NATE!

Nate turned 32 this week!








Here is an email I sent to a friend yesterday. It summarizes what we've been up to lately:

We are all doing fine. As you saw Allie is LOVING school. Kylie is growing up so fast. She thinks she is as big as her sister. Only 7 more weeks till she can go to nursery and church will be so much more enjoyable.

No, I’m not teaching this semester. They canceled the night class I usually teach due to low enrollment. I was offered another class, but it was Tuesday-Thursdays 10:30-11:45 and Allie has preschool those days 9-11 (I didn’t want to change it after finally getting off the waiting list). After much thought and prayer, I turned it down –it would have required too much juggling the kids. Instead I was able to increase my work-at-home hours through a second grant the Epi Center just got awarded. The main grant I get paid on is up in November, so we have our fingers crossed that it gets refunded (won’t know until November). Working 30 hr/week seems like an impossible task, but somehow it gets done. I’m not the housekeeper I would like to be and I always feel like I’m neglecting something (myself?). BUT at least I’m home with my kids (my office on campus does call my name at least once a week). I constantly have an internal debate about spending quality vs. quantity time with my girls, but deep down I know that even if I’m distracted I am the best one to be caring for them. I just have to keep telling myself that when I’m up against a deadline, the dishes are piled high, Kylie doesn’t want to nap, and Allie want me to color with her.

Today is actually the one year to the day after Nate was laid off, so that is something (I really need to post about the journey the past years has been). Funny, he remarked on it yesterday saying when it happened we didn’t know how we would survive and now here we are a year later: still in the same house, driving the same car, with more in our bank accounts than this time last year. Nate is still doing tractor work, but the scrap metal market prices are in the toilet after soaring all summer long (all prices drastically fell at the first of the month). We are working on the old adage: ‘buy low, sell high’. Nate is buying up everything he can at these low prices. He’s stockpiling junk cars and all kinds of scrap metal out at his Dad’s farm in hopes that the markets will come back up soon (hopefully months, not years). Ya just never know how things are going to turn out. Our financial future is anything but stable, but we just keep doing all we can do, working hard, and pay our tithing so the Lord can do the rest. So far, so good.

Well, I best get back to work,
Sarah