New quote

I just changed my quote yesterday but had to change it again today. I signed up for an online seminar through Time Out For Women. Today I "attended" the first session with Sherri Dew. I really need this right now. The topic for this session is the Divine Influence of Women. In the midst of current challenges I often question my ability as a mother to guide the kids in the right direction. I love the quote from Abigail Adams about needing difficulties to form good character. It was a good reminder that instead of praying for things to be easier and trials to be lightened I need to pray that they find their true strength through their trials.

Newly employed

Since Kelly & Riley have graduated from high school and have nothing to occupy their time til college begins we have "forced" them to join the ranks of the employed. They have been fortunate enough to find jobs this week. Kelly will be working at Solare, a tanning salon. The question now is will she save for school or will she tan instead? Since it will be obvious to all of us what her choice is we hope she will opt for college funds. Riley is now working at Subway. She started training on Wednesday of last week and then had her first day on Thursday. Here's how it went: she was scheduled to work from 1:30-5 at the Raley's location. The manager calls at 9:30am & says he needs her at the Safeway location asap, she says "ok". She comes and tells me she needs to go to work but I am in the middle of a lesson with Kevin and cannot just drop it at that moment. Brian is up to his elbows in glue getting sets and props ready for that nights roadshow. Greg, Carinna & Katie are not at home to take her. She says it's okay since her one and only uniform is in the washer! I ask if she let the manager know it would be close to 2 hours before she could get there as they had just started the washer, she said she let him know she'd be there in "awhile". The washer finishes and we hear her starting the dryer with only her uniform. We ask her to put the whole load in so the laundry can be kept going. About 15 minutes later we realize she has disappeared. We finally find her in her bathroom blow drying her pants with the hair dryer. On the way to drop her off Brian asks what time she will be done, her response: "I don't know." She did not ask how long she was supposed to be there nor did she find out if she was still supposed to work at the other location in the afternoon. She calls me at 1 and tells me the manager just walked in and said he needs her at the Raley's location right now. Once again Brian nor I can just drop everything and run. About half an hour later I finally get free and head out for her (keep in mind the store is 20 minutes from home). She calls to let me know she is in front of Safeway and not at Subway. I ask if her boss is aware that she does not have her own car and that she would have to wait for a ride between locations. She says she's not sure. I let her know this is the one and only time I will be transferring her from one store to another in the middle of the day. By the time I get her to the Raley's location it has been almost 90 minutes from the time she called. Her boss thinks she went straight there as she left Subway right after he came in! That night on the way home from roadshow I ask if she works the next day, she tells me that she doesn't know. She has only been hired as a relief worker and will not have a set schedule. They will only call when they need her. As the conversation continues it comes to light that not only will she not have a regular schedule but he had asked her if she could do transfers and she said yes not knowing that he meant going from store to store during the day. Then she tells me that he told her he didn't need anymore employees but since she was honest with him about leaving for school in June he decided to "squeeze" her in as a relief person! Remind me again why I made her get a job????

Saying goodbye

It has taken me two months to be able to write this post. Over the years I have come to understand that there are pet people and non pet people. We are pet people, more specifically dog people and even more specifically English Bulldog people. The first night Katie met our family her impression was that we were a nice enough family but we loved our dogs WAY too much. That sums us up pretty well so when we lose one of them it hurts. Just before Christmas we had to put Brutus down. Anyone who knows Brutus knows that he was a bit psycho. He was definitely a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. He was one of the funniest and most loving dogs we have ever had but at the same time he could turn in a heartbeat and snap for no reason. At one time or another we have all been bit by him but we all accepted that that was life with Bru. We dealt with it because it was such a small part of him and the rest made up for it. However, as the numbers in the house increased he got more touchy and unpredictable. Having a baby in the house we just could not risk anymore problems and since he has a bite history we had to put him down. So here we are two months later finally able to say goodbye without completly breaking into sobs (just a few tears now). We miss his happy dance when we walk in the door, his soulful eyes as he silently plead for attention, his pushing himself between Joe & I or Brian & Katie on the couch, his mischieveousness as he dumped the toy box all over the floor to find his favorite ball, his invitation to play bow, his thinking he was a lap dog and plopping himself on us to watch tv, but most of all we miss his company. He brought lots of love and laughter into our lives and we miss that.

Off to school

Talking with my mom this weekend she asked about Riley's college applications. I thought I had sent an email or put this info up already but apparently in the midst of shoehouse chaos I did not. Riley has been accepted to both BYU Idaho and Southern Virginia University. She has decided to attend BYU-I. She put down that there were no restrictions on her schedule so they assigned her the spring/fall semesters and gave her a start date of April 16th. Since Alex is getting married here on the 18th Riley will be deferring her start date until June. We are all very excited for her.