Oh what a web!

Some of you may have found my last few months worth of posts interesting. First I discuss in detail how we are having Matt focus on school full time then I freak out that we don't have money and discuss me getting a job full time and then I say thats not working and say we are looking into the military...you must think we are a house of crazy people that don't know how to make decisions or stick to a decision once we've made it. But I beg to differ. The thing is that this is how Matt and I work with the Spirit. When Matt lost his job we realized this was the prime opportunity for him to focus on getting his helicopter lisences. And it is. We looked at our options and decided that having Matt go to school full time was the best option available and we started working towards that. As we were praying the Lord was saying 'yes, that is right for what you know...' and letting us continue working toward our goals. Once we realized there were issues with our original plan we made out another list of options and began exploring those. We began working toward our next viable option (me getting a job) and praying about it as we went. Again it seemed the Lord was saying yes but he was saying 'yes, according to all the information you have, this is right'. But He was waiting for us to learn even more before he could confirm our next path. Moving on from me working toward the military we again recieved the confirmation that 'yes, this is right for what you know'. We started heavily exploring the Army and we were excited for the prospects and the opportunities but then again, we hit a road block. **Here I get to brag a moment** Matt got a really really good score on the ASVAB test. It is not an intelligence test but an aptitude test. The better you do the more jobs are available to you in your chosen field. You are given an overall score as well as scores in different aptitude areas (mechanical, electrical, etc). This is on a scale of 1-99. Its scored more or less like baby weights are as well. If a baby is in the 75%, that means she is heavier than 75% of all other babies. So on the ASVAB, if you get a 75% that means you did better than 75% of all people who take the ASVAB. What was Matt's score? 98%. His score was awesome and is so awesome that he can do any job he wants to at all in the military (as long as it is actually open). Okay so back to the story. Up until yesterday we were expecting to join the Army and go into the Aviation branch so eventually Matt could be trained as a pilot. He came home from testing with a list of open jobs and only two of the jobs seemed even remotely interesting to either of us and neither were in aviation. We spent about an hour discussing the pros and cons of both jobs and I went to sleep tossing and turning all night. When we got up this morning we realized that the Lord was saying 'Now that you have more information, its not right anymore, look again'. And look we did. We went to talk to the Army recruiter again but he ended up not being there. Matt talked to the Air Force recruiter instead. According to the Air Force recruiter, Matt's incredibly high score on the ASVAB puts him in a category called 'Extremely Well Qualified'. Because of this, he can choose his top 3 job choices and he is guaranteed one of those jobs. From what I could tell, everyone else gets 4 choices and an 'aptitude area' and if one of your top 4 aren't available you'll get plopped into any random job that becomes available in the aptitude area (mechanics, electrical, administration or something else). So we are suddenly feeling good about this again and we can tell that we are again on the right path. We feel the Lord saying 'this is right for what you know now.' Hopefully this is the last of those and we can continue on with joining the military without any more setbacks or glitches. Matt's top three choices would be: 1. Flight Engineer (he would be riding in helicopters and doing data analysis) 2. Helicopter Maintenance (he would do all the repairing needed for helicopters) 3. Imagry Analysis (he would analyze images from all aircraft, report on ememy bases ect) He LOVES the idea of the first choice, thinks the second choice would be pretty cool and is willing to do the third choice (he actually loves that as well but it doesn't have anything to do with helicopters) if the other two aren't open. We have a whole packet of information to fill out and turn in Monday, the have to do a physical and everything on Friday and by Friday afternoon Matt will be an official member of the Airforce. I think the point of this whole thing is that the Lord does answer our prayers and guides us to where we are supposed to be. If he had told us outright on March 1 that we needed to join the Airforce immediately, I don't think we could have done it. But we were given the opportunity to explore our options and learn how to make the best choice for our family.

Shadows and Curls

After Emmaline's bath yesterday we were noticing how much her hair is curling. I decided to 'help' it and put in a little mousse. It made the back of her hair way way curlier and the top of her hair actually stayed curly for most of the day (generally the top goes really flat after a while).

And here is a shadow video:

Afraid of...

Ever hear the term 'afraid of your own shadow'? Generally it means that you are a skiddish sort of person and are jumpy at everything. But have you ever seen anyone who actually did get scared of their own shadow? We were walking home from our mailbox and the sun is strong behind us and its evening so the shadows are really long. Walking to the mail box of course, we didn't see them because they are behind us. But walking home, Emmaline discovered hers. Most of the walk she was experimenting hitting all the for-sale signs and walking from the grass to the pavement but suddenly she noticed her shadow. She had been walking behind us so I turned back to check on her and suddenly saw her backing up with a look on her face that said she was going to start freaking any moment. She tried side stepping and backing up but nothing she did would make the shadow go away. It only took her about 8 seconds to begin freaking out and about 4 seconds for me to realize why it was she was looking scared. Matt picked her and and we played around with waving at our shadows and lifting our feet up until we thought she would be okay but the moment Emmaline's fee touched the ground and she saw that shadow there again, she started screaming and clamoring up Matt's leg. Now, I don't exactly enjoy torturing my daughter but it was hilarious and I was considering grabbing the camera, putting her back on the pavement and getting a video but ultimately my good mom sense kicked in. So thats our funny story for today. I wonder how long we'll be dealing with this shadow issue...hopefully not very long. Otherwise she'll never be able to walk with the sun at her back (or side I'm sure) and we'll have to constantly keep track of her sunglasses.

Pictures!!!

Yesterday was a great day at the zoo. Emmaline got to ride some frogs: And we pretended to be otters. I sorta wish we could've snagged someone to take a pic of all three of us at the same time:

This was some fun she had in the children's area:

And Emmaline is begining to be a copycat! At the zoo I started singing 'The Ants go Marching' and marching as I sung and she started marching along with me. And then later Matt was doing some pushups and here's what happened:

Orangutans

Matt and I took Emmaline to the zoo today because the weather is nice and its far better to go during the week than on the weekend. We all had a lot of fun- Emmaline got to pet the goats and brush their fur. I thought she would be terrified of the goats like she is of dogs but oddly enough she wasn't as nervous about them (occasionally she would beg to be picked up out of a bit of fright but nothing like dogs). Anyway, the cool story is about the Orangutans. Unfortuantely I didn't get any pictures. Sorry. We were walking by the monkey exhibits and saw a few Orangutans swinging along when suddenly this old lady with a cigarette comes up and starts ranting about the Orangutans breaking the glass! We looked across the exhibit to another window and sure enough, the glass had broken into thousands of little pieces. Luckily it was still in the pane and not scattered all over the place. As we were watching, we saw the orangutan that had broken the glass lollup back over and started banging on the glass with a drill bit that had to have been at least a foot long! Thats how he had broken the glass in the first place! We went over to where the broken glass was and saw that the piece of glass right next to it had also been broken recently because it was covered up with a huge piece of metal. Luckily Matt and this smoking woman chased down a park ranger and they very quickly had several people clearing the path and I was hearing 'emergency' all over the radios and from workers nearby. So I keep wondering about this orangutan. Did he have an anger problem and once he finally found a way to get out began trying? Or was he just having fun with the things he could find? Did a worker leave the tool in the exhibit? Was he in trouble for having done so? Did some random, horrible man decide to drop the drill bit into the exhibit and see what would happen? Is someone going to get in trouble? And what are they going to do with the orangutan? Does he get counseling? Or is he going to be shipped to another drill-bit-proof- zoo? All of this has me so interested that I might have to call the zoo later this week to see how everything turned out. I wonder if they would talk to me about it?

Ahhh, thinking.

So the ultimate goal is to get Matt a helicopter's license. Obviously I have talked about this quite a few times. Here are the four options: 1. I get a job that pays $44,000 a year, obtain a loan for $50,000 and be paying on the loan until we somehow get enough to pay it off. Matt starts his schooling right away. 2. Stretch out the next two years of Matt's schooling into four years, get the maximum stafford loans every year (over 4 years that would end up being around $50,000) and then have him get his licenses and get onto a career. 3. Have Matt change majors (career goals) to something entirely different- and obviously cheaper. 4. Join the military with the 'guarantee' that Matt is placed within an Aviation field and hope he can work his way into flight training at some point in his career. We can't think of anything else that is realisitc (we did consider that maybe one of us has a yet-unknown rich uncle that is going to pass away within months and give us his entire fortune which would obviously be enough to pay for his schooling and let us live in luxury for the next 10 years...but we are trying to think realistically). So, we explored the idea of Matt changing his major but we really feel that it is important for him to be a pilot. Strike that one off the list. We discussed him taking four years to complete his major but we feel like that is wasting his income potential. He would go back to work but with only an associate's degree wouldn't be qualified for much more work than just over minimum wage. And, taking four more years to accomplish something that only needs to take two will put a lot of strain on our family both mentally and physically. So we explored the idea of me getting a job. I started looking, writing my resume and trying to network. But I quickly realized that getting a job that pays $21 an hour requires a lot of experience- something I don't generally have- or a specific degree- which I don't have either. Although we haven't ruled this option out, it is quickly becoming less appealing to go through all the stress and effort when I don't qualify for what I need to be earning. But I'm still looking. We then started exploring the last option: Matt joining the military. He is meeting with a recruiter on Monday to get some questions answered. I never really thought of Matt as a soldier and I don't like the idea of him being away for boot camp, officer training or even for his deployments. But the more we learn about it, the more benefits we see that would help our current situation. Matt's family has a lot of military connections- his brother in law is currently serving, his other brother in law is getting in shape in order to join, one of his brothers served several years back and his biological father was part of the military for a period of time. So with all the experience, its odd that he never really considered the military before. Anyway, we'll keep you all updated. And if anyone has other ideas that we didn't think of to get him the pilot's license, please tell.

A Video Tour and other stuff

School got out last week! I'm so happy! I ended up getting a 77% on my final for British Lit (thats good considering my midterm I got 49% on...) and the teacher emailed the next day saying "I've decided to bump every one's grades up a full 10%. I have no reason, I'm just insanely nice." So, I ended up getting an 87%. I'm pretty sure I pulled an A out of the class. My other class- the one with the magazine, also ended and was quite anti-clamatic. But thats quite alright. I'm pretty sure I have an A there too. Whoohoo! My days since school got out have been interesting. Friday- Monday I sat around watching TV all day long and I told Matt that he needed to help me get onto other things. Tuesday we ended up rearranging our bedroom and cleaning it. That was very much needed! And we got pictures on the wall- something that always makes a room feel better. Then Wednesday we got sucked into the tv again so today I put my foot down, 'captured' Matt and told him we were going to organize and clean until Noon today. That means I got a full 4 and a half hours out of him. We started with our storage unit on our patio and ended up eliminating three boxes worth of stuff either sending it to the garbage or the thriftstore or inside for use. Then we moved onto our bedroom closet and organized all the boxes sitting around in there. We got that room looking quite nice as well. When done with that we moved onto Emmaline's closet. Although we didn't get rid of anything there we did rearrange and make everything look better. Then last but not least, we tackled our diningroom table- which had had everything piled on it during the course of the morning. We ended up finishing everything about 11:47 and Matt was very ready to stop. So now my house is really clean and really organized. I was trying to figure out what to tackle tomorrow and I'm thinking I'll clean out the bathroom cupboards. Emmaline is getting another tooth in. She sprouted almost all of her teeth really quick and all at the same time but her four 'fangs' have not yet arrived. I'm expecting them to all come in at the same time but we are only seeing one peak its way through. If it comes in and the other ones don't I think she'll look funny. I'm allowed to say that! I decided to take some videos of my house and show all the neat cleaning I've done. As I went to download, I mistakenly assumed that the earliest video was also part of my adventures. It was a huge video and took a long time to download. So I think I'll leave it.

This is our Storage Unit, the begining of our 'adventure'.

Then here is Emmaline's closet (I just realized I should have done a sweep of her room so you could see that too. Sorry. Maybe next time).

This is our closet/pantry.

This is our bedroom.

This is our living/dining areas (the camera died as I was finishing the dining room so the kitchen went into another video).

And lastly, our kitchen!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my house. I'm very pleased that its almost completely done being decorated. Heres a thought...how 'bout some of you come visit me? That would be fun.

No More Diapers

I wish this title truely meant what it indicated...that Emmaline is potty trained. Not impossible at her age but we haven't even started (we are still working on teaching her how to pull her pants on and off...)

No, this title acutally means something entirely tragic. We went to Walmart yesterday to buy more diapers for Emmaline and they didn't have the brand we've bought for the last 18 months. We generally buy White Cloud because its cheaper than the name brands but realitively quality compared to the Parent's Choice (walmart-brand) which leaves little balls of gunk all over her after a wet diaper.

So when I say there weren't any, I don't mean they were out of stock, I mean there weren't tags indicating where they would go, there were no residue packages of a size that she wouldn't fit, there was absolutely no trace of my favorite brand of diapers. They are no more, they are gone.

I'm not one for change. I find change difficult. Maybe God knows this and decided that by making me change brands of diapers I'd be taking a step in the right direction. I don't know. But using a brand new brand of diapers is daunting. Every diaper has a different absorption level and it always takes a while to figure out if a diaper is really wet or not. And the weights indicating sizes, they are always different for every brand and then they all fit different regardless of the weights...its just a mess and I'm not looking forward to the day when we run out of White Cloud diapers (which is actually within a matter of days :(

On a different note...our 'brilliant plans' may not happen the way we were expecting them to. Heres the story:

Matt wants to get his Bachelor's Degree in Aviation Science. This would involve him getting a helicopter pilot's license and doing so relitively quick (because he is out of work and we need him to get a job). But...for some reason I thought- more or less, I didn't think because if I had actually thought about it, what I was thinking wouldn't have made any sense at all- I thought that we could get government subsidized loans for the entire amout of his license (around $50,000-$60,000) all within 9 months or so. We'd use that money to get his license, he'd then get a job while finishing his schooling and after another year, he'd be done and then we'd start paying back the loan.

The problem comes in that I didn't realize that the govt will only give out $12500 in subsidized loans per year. And, that'll be broken up into semesters so we can't even ask for 12500 for summer semester then 12500 for fall semester (we did think that for a little bit). That leaves us with getting a private loan for around $50,000 (because we can qualify for some subsidized loans that would help with the rest of that).

The problem with THAT is, who in their right mind would loan us, unemployed as we are, $50,000? And, unemployed as we are, even if we got that loan, how could we afford a payment of $400+ a month untill he got a good job? (Just so you know, thats half the cost of our house...thats a lot of money!)

So, now is the time to go back to the drawing board. Matt can't honestly see himself changing his career choice and we don't really want him to. But we have to do a lot of thinking and praying to make sure that this is what GOD wants us to do and if so, we need to figure out how he wants us to get there.

But, pretty much regardless of what we decide needs to be done to get him his schooling, it looks like I'm going to be getting a job sooner than later. Sigh.

On a happier note, I promised pictures. Here are several:

Emmaline has formed an attachment with her bath towels. She wears them on her head and wraps them around her and runs around playing peek-a-boo. Its really cute. This time she was getting mad that I took it off for her to eat so ultimately, we let her wear it in her highchair. Doesn't hurt anything and made a great picture! I think in this next picture that she was trying to kiss her baby doll. She has only just recently gotten the idea that kisses happen with lips closed (I swear she doesn't get the open mouth thing from Matt and I :)

Matt took this picture only this morning. He took a video that was adorable too but the computer isn't recognizing it for some reason. I'll have to get someone to figure it out. She put Matt's shoes on and walked all over the house with them on.

The Last Week

This is the last week of school. I have one big paper that is 75% done and another paper that is not yet started. And then a final that I've only gone over half the study guide for. But the big paper and the final aren't due until Thursday and the other not-yet-started paper is due Wednesday midnight. So I have some time. After this week, I have some IS classes that need to be done but I've decided that I will do no homework unless Emmaline is in bed. I am so tired of feeling like I need to work so much that I don't get time with her so I've promised myself that I won't do any homework while she is awake. It'll take longer to get the classes finished but I think my sanity and my relationship with my daughter will benifit in the long run. I am creating a list of books that I have to read as soon as I'm done with my degree. Over the past two years I've put off reading almost everything non school related (and I'm ashamed to admit that includes Twilight- I've been chastised severely) and I need to do a lot of catching up. If you have any ideas of great books that you feel I just have to read because I'm missing out, please let me know. Do keep in mind that I love historical fiction, fairy tales retold, and very light science fiction. Classics are good too- I'm going to finish the rest of Jane Austen's books that I haven't read, Great Expectations (I'm half way through and have been reading it over the past two years), and Dracula. I was told that one was really good. I'll have to put several pictures in my next post because there haven't been any on the last few. You deserve pictures for being so diligent in reading all my 'musings'. Thank you.

Melancholy

Things here aren't going the best. Not that anything else has gone wrong, its just a matter of dealing with the things that are happening. I love Matt being home all the time but it causes other issues such as who does the dishes or changes Emmaline's diaper. And somehow, even though he manages to be gone only a few hours a night for class, I manage to have my most needy moments while he is gone and can't do anything. That leads into the other issue with Matt being home all the time- I think I'm getting far to dependant on him and when he finally goes back to work, I will have some serious issues. Emmaline hasn't learned very many new words but we have heard her string some words together. Stuff like 'ba, go?' (Where did the ball go?). She asks for her shoes all the time (we may need a bigger closet when she grows up!) by saying 'choo!' I don't think she can say the shh sound so it comes out ch instead. We are gearing up for her first Easter. Last year she was too young to do anything but this year we are going to have her look for eggs. She has a cute Easter dress, hat and bows and we are piecing together an Easter basket. Thats difficult. I'd rather focus on the religious side of Easter than on the presents side of it but how do you do baskets without putting all the candy and presents and such in it? So, still working out the kinks. I know my mom has picked up some unnamed things to put in her basket and I got some fruit snacks and I'll buy her a necklace/bracelet set as well. Hopefully it'll be fun without being overwhelming. Matt is doing some cool stuff in his ceramics class. He made me a really tall vase and the glaze turned out SO well. Thats always my least favorite part of clay, the glaze. Things rarely turn out as well as I want them to when I glaze them. But this turned out so beautifully. He is also making some fun things- a few piggy banks, a ceramic castle, a sphinx. He has to come up with two more projects to make and I'm not yet sure what he is going to do. I suggested a planter box but one of the size I want would be too big for the kiln. So we'll see I guess. We are plugging away at keeping things in order here...dealing with a lot of post-employment issues as well as school and a few other things. Each individually is fine and easy enough to deal with but all together, things are a bit overwhelming. Hopefully next time I write there will be something good to report.