This is where we are tonight.....a treat for the girl and torture for the boy! lol

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Lots going on! Signed a teaching contract today, family n from Florida, father-n-law's 70th birthday lunch and preparations for a week of youth camp in Florida!

I have an interview Tuesday afternoon! Please pray!

FWD: From my cell

Trying out a picture message from my cell...This one was taken on Fathers Day.

I did have to come back to Blogger to delete a lot of "extra stuff" that Verizon sent along with the picture...don't know if I'll send pics from cell or not, but like knowing I can! :)

Does anyone know if u can send a picture message to blogger from your cell??

Email Posting

Just wanted to check out the email posting option on Blogger.

checking out the "posting from phone" devise on blogger...

Timothy's Baptism, Bible, Exercise and Prayer

Well, when you think about the fact that I haven't been "here" in a long time, I have a lot to say, but I will try to make these posts "short & sweet".

Timothy was baptized this past Sunday. He was saved a while back, but we wanted to make sure he knew what baptism meant before he was actually baptized. He was beside himself once he found out that his Daddy would be doing the baptism. Maybe I'll get around to posting pictures soon!

As a gift for him, Carlton got him a new bible, a really nice bible, an actual leather bound study bible. Timothy loves this bible. He spent most of "nap time" reading it yesterday and has started reading it this morning already. He just said to me, "I wish we had some kind of 'quiet room' so I could go read this without getting distracted." (I'll tell you all in another post his interpretation of Romans 3:23-31 the other day....wow) My prayer for him is that he continues to hunger after the word like he is right now!

Pray for me! This job thing has really got me stressed. I am feeling all the heartburn and chest pain I felt back when I had the ulcers. I do not want to go through that again. I decided yesterday that some exercise would help, never mind the fact that I NEED to loose some weight! BUT yesterday, I did nothing! (imagine that!) This morning the kids and I headed to the track. We got there a little after 8 this morning to "beat the heat", made three laps and a group of boys from the high school and their coaches showed up. They took up 1/2 the track, so I loaded up the kids and left. UGH! I don't need excuses to not exercise, I have plenty in my arsenal already!! :)

Keep us in your prayers! The buyers for the house are still looking for insurance. They need the insurance before the Lender will start processing their loan. We did get someone to write us a "vacancy policy". So we are covered now. I praise God for that blessing and removing that piece of stress! Now if He'd just take that house off our hands and find me a job! I know He will!

Thank you all for your prayers!

I think I'm Back!?!

Let me say, this has been a CRAZY 3 months! It has been a very trying time. My patience, endurance, faith and health have all been tested.

From March til the first weekend of June, I was in Nederland and the rest of the family was in Blanco. I continued to work there so that we would have my salary through the summer in case we still had the house in Nederland to sell. Carlton and the kids came to Blanco so he could get started at the church. We made the decision for him to bring both kids because we knew there would be help for him here and we wanted them to stay together for their emotional well being. At the same time, it was very hard on them for me to be gone. It broke my heart each time I had to leave. All but the time I got sick, I came back each weekend. The drive was terrible at times, but it was worth it when I got here.

I am a "worrier" (I know we aren't suppose to worry). I worried about the kids, about Carlton, about my family....

Later I could really see the hand of God in our decision. I had some really hard things to go through that neither of us would have ever foreseen. I know I mentioned a while back that I was asked to take on the task of starting a class for students with Autism at my school. As soon as I got back from moving the family to Blanco, I was informed that one of the parents had given a list of complaints to a supervisor. Only 2 of the complaints had anything to do with the classroom and were things that were fixable, but there were many more against the district. Because of these complaints, the parent didn't want me left alone with her child. This really hurt me on a personal level since I had spent a lot of time with this parent and felt a "bond" of sorts. BUT I went on with teaching and making the suggested changes.

The student's behavior was a difficult one. One that was very trying everyday, and MANY times throughout the day. Behaviors escalated, rumors were started, the aides in my classroom were not supportive, and all this led to a suit against the district. Not against me personally, but against the district.

In all my years of teaching I have NEVER been in such a situation. I have had trouble with aides before, but never malicious, backbiting, hateful aides. FORTUNATELY I had a very supportive administration and several co teachers who knew the truth. But through it all, the driving back and forth, the worrying about the family, the mess at school, I ended up in the ER one night to find out that I had developed an ulcer. I was very sick for several weeks.

I am now in Blanco with the FAM and I am loving Blanco. I am still looking for a job and we are still trying to sell the house. We do have an offer on the house right now, but due to some insurance issues, we are having a difficult time getting it sold. As well as, because of these issues, our insurance company dropped us in January, I thought another one picked us up in March, but they didn't and now the mortgage company has slapped their own insurance on the house and our payment went up $600.

God has got to intervene here! We can't afford that increase and the stress of it is killing me! I have been so ugly to my kids over the past couple of days and this is NOT me!!

OK....I am rambling now...I have SO much on my mind and this is really turning into a book! SO, I think I will stop for now. Please pray for us...those of you who haven't given up on me ever posting again! :)

Praise God!

What a crazy few weeks this has been! Now I feel I can share more of the details with you about what God has been doing. I have been pretty silent here because;


1. I have been using this time to pray.

2. I just didn't feel I should share too many details.

3. I was waiting to see what God was going to do.

Well, He is showing Himself to us in so many ways! As of this past Sunday, Carlton is the new youth minister at FBC Blanco. If you don't know where that it is...you can google it, but it's in the Texas Hill Country....beautiful! I still don't have a job there so things are going to be a bit strange for a little while.

Two days after C was asked to resign, a friend of his sent him an email. That email read something like,

"hey man, I don't know if this is something that will work out or not, but
my home church in Blanco is looking for a youth guy. I called the chairman
of the committee and shared a little of your situation with him. He is a
Godly man and I think you will enjoy talking to him. I will send them
your resume. Not sure if this will work out or not, but I think it would be
a good fit."

That was back on Jan. 13th or 14th and now we are here. God has really blessed us through all this. We spent some time one day in our living room with the chairman of that committee. We had a really good visit. About a week later he called and asked if we could come there for an interview with the committee. So we packed up the kids and headed that direction. It was a BUSY weekend (of which they teased the chairman about for a while...we had something scheduled for every waking moment of the day!) :) Then in about a week, he called again to see if we would come back "in view of a call". So, once again, we packed up the kids and headed to Blanco.

That weekend we met with a few more people, Carlton shared his testimony and his philosophy of ministry, we had lunch with some of the youth, then headed home. The church waited a week (because that's what their bylaws say to do) (good ole' church bylaws!) then they voted. The vote was 106 for and 4 against (you almost always have a few against...those that always vote that way... :) ) That vote took place this past Sunday!

During all this, God has allowed us to grow closer as a family. He has allowed us to teach our children about faith, His provision and His protection all at a personal and up close level.

Movers will be at our house TOMORROW to pack us up and move us out and we are excited. Well, there are some glitches.....I still don't have a job there. SO, I will go to Blanco this weekend to help unpack (the kids rooms and the kitchen are my MAIN goal), then I will go to church, have lunch with my family, then get in my car and make the 5 hour trip back to Nederland.

I am getting a lot of advice/opinions on this right now. "How can you be that far from the kids?" "I think you should just quit your job and go." "You can make it on his salary alone." "How are you going to do this?" "What about the kids?"

Trust me, those are all things we thought about. But the truth is, we have always been a 2 income family, and you can't just go from 2 to 1 within a couple of weeks. The sell of our house is going to almost delete our debt, with the exception of one vehicle, and possibly part of the other one (but not much of it), and after that, we could possibly surrvive that way, but to be honest, if I have a job, I want that job.

I struggled with that for a very long time. (being a SAHM) (over a couple of years) Did I want to stay home with my babies? ABSOLUTELY....but as they got older, they loved the daycare. They loved playing with the other kids, and doing all the things they did there. Did I love some of the behaviors they picked up while they were there? NO, but we used those things as teaching tools. I don't want to get into the whole "working mom vs SAHM" thing....I admire those women who do stay at home. I use to envy them! But after my summers at home, I need to get back to work. My work, at school. Its what I feel called to do. How many people do you know feel CALLED to work with Special Ed. kiddos; kids that kick at you, yell at you, hit you, bite you, curse at you, call you evil(even though you are far from it), jr. high and high school kids that need help going to the bathroom, that have a tracheotomy or a feeding tube, that seize 15 to 20 times a day. Not many people feel CALLED to do those things, but I do! I love these kids and they deserve to have some to love them.

Please don't get me wrong....MY FAMILY COMES BEFORE THEM, and if God opens something up there for me, these kids will quickly become a memory to me, but until then, I will serve them.

OK, that's enough of that.

God is working so fast. We put a sign in the yard on Monday evening. The realtor took pictures Wednesday morning. We had one person look at it yesterday and 3 are scheduled for this afternoon. God is so good! His timing is perfect! I just know that this house will be sold in no time. SO, now I need to pray for a place to stay in the meantime!

Through all this I will say that God has allowed at least one of us (Carlton and myself) to remain calm. In his moments of panic, I am calm. In my moments of insanity and near breakdown, he is calm.

God is good! I can't say that enough!