Yah, We Had Spring Break This Week!... :P

As you can tell from my lack of posts that not much new has been happening since our big trip west. That is until this last week...

It all started with Sami a week from last Sun. when she suddenly became sick with a horrible cold and ended up staying home from school for 3 days, 2 of them with a temp. well over 100 degrees. I was a little concerned about getting it but when the weekend came and all was well and Sami was on the mend I figured we had dodged the bullet...Boy was I wrong! Jozie started us off on Fri. night and by Sat morn. had a temp. of 104 point something or other. I was a little concerned but gave her some Advil and within an hour it was down to normal so I took them out to a movie (we went to see Over the Hedge with some friends from our homeschool group) and then to Michaels for a craft day they had that was free for the kids. Well, by the time we got home both kids had raging fevers and were dead to the world laying on the couch in all their snot and coughing. Fun. I didn't take them to church on Sun. so I could prevent farther infecting other peoples children and we had Mon. off from school. Tues. morning I woke up in pain. Pain in my head and sinuses and just aching all over my body. I laid on the couch all day. We didn't have school on Tues. either. Wed. I was feeling a little better and so was Joz but Luke seemed to have taken a turn for the worse when he was feeling better the day before. So, we ended up not having school Wed. either. Today, for the first time all week, we seem to all be feeling better but because of the lack of laundry and housework that happened over the last week we haven't gotten any school work done because I have been cleaning, laundering, and packing for a trip that I am going on tomorrow with the ladies from the church. So, I guess we had our spring break this week and next week while Sami is out of school we will be continuing our education in regular fashion.

What a great Spring Break! :)

Love my Rocket Dogs!

I did get to do a bit of shopping in Omaha. Lisa and I always have a great time bargain hunting while I am there and this time we hunted out the Goodwill's and other thrift stores in the area. My favorite one was the Goodwill Outlet in "South O". I guess it was in the ghetto, it wasn't much different than being in Gary! :) Anyway, everything there was on it's way out so you paid by the pound for it! I could have went nuts in that store! My theory is that if you had like $50 - $100 dollars as a clothing budget to go in there and get clothes for your family for the year! There were a lot of really nice things in there, even some with tags still on them. I did read a review of one in Illinois - because I was looking for one around here - that wasn't too good. I guess it must just be like all other stores. We must have lucked out and got to a good one. The clothes were all thrown into these huge plywood bins that you had to sort through - I had a gallon of hand sanitizer! It was actually kinda fun. Jozie and Sara ran around finding things they thought were cute and throwing them into their own cart. It was cute to see Jozie with another girl for a few days in a row. I don't think they fought at all the whole time we were there! I knew I didn't have a whole lot of room in the trunk of our car so I didn't go hog wild - but could have gotten more along the lines of things the kids could grow into if we had the room!

I got my Rocket Dogs finally! My loving husband gave me some money for valentines day because he knew I would be shopping in Omaha with Lisa (my sister-in-law) and I found the perfect gift from him to me...LOL :) I got the Jigsaw model. I love them and I have a hard time not picking out my clothes to match them! LOL At least they go good with jeans so it's not that hard to do. :)

We're back!

Well, after 2 days of being snowed in and the third day of the expressway still closed, we finally were able to make it home on Sunday. There were tons of cars in the ditches along with several semi trucks and tankers rolled over, smashed, and on their sides. The roads were dry though and the sun shining so it was a good trip overall.

We spent a day in Watertown - the kids stayed with Grandpa and Grandma - and we toured the hanger where Bob will be taking classes and he liked it a lot. There were quite a few airplanes there that they actually get to work on and classes are from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm Mon. through Fri. with no homework unless he has a test to study for. They do all of the FAA testing right there at the school so once you are done with the classes and testing you are ready to go straight to work. They have a great job placement program with more jobs available than graduates each year. So basically, if you are good, you get the pick of where you want to go or what you want to do. Even if you aren't that great you are almost guaranteed a job when you graduate. That is a wonderful thing!

We looked at apartments that we applied for and are waiting for results from our applications on them. I wasn't exactly thrilled about one, it was really small but pretty clean. Which is rare for income based housing. The second one that we applied for was a townhouse style apartment. It had a fairly large living/dining area, a small kitchen (sorta galley style), and a half bath down stairs and then three bedrooms and a full bath upstairs. Not a whole lot of storage. We ended up applying at income based housing because we don't expect to have jobs immediately when we move there. Bob will also not really be able to work full time while he goes to school full time...probably. We will have to see once he gets started. We also applied for a Section 8 grant but that takes about 4 months to get and we want to be out of here as soon as possible. We've been kicked out again and told we need to be gone by the first of April. Happy Spring...

It was nice to see Bob's family. The kids loved spending time there with their grandparents and cousins. We had Christmas Dinner with Bob's sister and her family and his mom. Excellent food and a great time with family. That was the day that it started snowing like crazy in SD. When we got to his sisters at about 10 that morning there was no snow and by the time we left around 4 in the afternoon there had to be almost a foot of snow on the ground. We ended up staying at Bob's dad's house an extra night because the roads were terrible and it snowed all the way through Iowa where we needed to drive. So we didn't get to Omaha until Mon. at about noon.

We had a wonderfully relaxing time in Omaha but unfortunately because of the weather we weren't able to see the school there that we wanted to. The kids had so much fun with their cousins they didn't want to leave. Poor Jozie had a stomach ache for the next 2 days because she just didn't want to be in the basement with only her brother again.

We are finally starting to repack our stuff to move again. Where too, we really aren't sure yet. The plan is Watertown or bust but sometimes our plans don't happen the way we want them to. In that event we may be forced to go and live with Bob's brother until we can find a place of our own but we REALLY hesitate to do that because as we look around us here that was what this was supposed to do and here we are "temporarily" two years later still looking for a place of our own. I don't want the same thing to happen with his brother too. Though the house across the street is for rent to own. $1050 / mo. $3000 down would include the first months rent. The only problem is we have never had that big of a commitment to anything and we aren't sure we could do it. It's more than we could imagine at this point, especially since we don't have jobs in the area. I guess it's one of those wishful thinking situations...

Our big problem is our credit. We have one major credit card that is our problem, but nothing major, it's under $10,000 (which is way too much for us but from what I understand it's not that great as far as debt is concerned). There are a few other small dental bills and a phone bill that has been in dispute since before we were married because Bob's roommate took advantage of the fact that the bill wasn't in his name...So, my question is, what would bankruptcy do to our already horrible credit? I don't know anything about it but I do know that some friends in Michigan were in way over their heads - to the point that their house was repoed by the bank and sold under their noses to the guy down the street before they had moved out. They declared bankruptcy and within months they were buying another house and a used car. How is this possible? The first question that these people ask you is if you have had a bankruptcy and I have always assumed that was a bad thing but how does that make my friends situation make sense? I don't understand. I am at the point that I know it's not right but if it would help us get out of the mess we are in - I am desperate. We need to get in a good place for our family and we believe that Bob going back to school would be the break we need. We lived here for 2 years in a basement, I can certainly live in a small apartment for 2 years if it meant something better for our future.

Snow, snow, and more snow...

Just wanted to give a short update about our trip. We won't be home today. This is the second major storm that we have been through on our trip. The first one was in SD last weekend and we were unable to leave for Omaha until the roads were cleared on Monday. There was no snow when we got there and when we left there was about a foot. Today we planned on going home this afternoon but again, the snow came. It started last night with rain, then freezing rain, and this morning when we woke up there was about 6 inches of snow with ice under it. The schools and day cares are all closed and the interstate, which we need to take to go home, is closed both west and east. So, here we sit. I'm using the kids computer in the basement just waiting to be able to go home. But we probably won't be able to leave until tomorrow...at the earliest! So, when I get home I will give more details on our trip.

Jamie, I tried to comment on your blog earlier this week and couldn't so I just wanted you to know that I am thinking about you and praying for you still.