Monday, April 21, 2008

New Colors

I gave my little blog a face lift today...do you like it? It took more time than I care to admit, all of which should have been devoted to the landslide of laundry directly behind me. Right now, the computer desk is renting space in the laundry room. You can imagine how easy it is to get distracted when I am supposed to be matching socks. "Oh, I'll just check my email while I wait for the drier to be done." An hour later, the clothes in the drier are dry and cool, and I'm still tapping away. Oops.

I promised you an update on my hair. Remember my last post? The color is...I'm not really sure. The box says "Carmel Glaze" but that sounds yummier than hair is supposed to look. I took a picture for you, but it doesn't look quite this red in real life. The evening sun is shining down on it. Here ya go anyway: I like it well enough. I'm not in love, however. My favorite part: no more grays!

We have some good family news to share with you. First of all, Rob has finished his classes, and after repeated emails to his two professors and the registrar's office personnel, the powers-that-be are allowing his grades to be posted by the earliest posting date: April 26th, and it appears that Rob will be able to pick up his transcripts on April 28th. The professors actually have until something like May 8th to turn graduate grades in, but Rob had to humble himself, explain to them our family's situation, and everyone he spoke with has been understanding and accommodating. Thank-you, Lord!

The second piece of good news is that after only ONE day of looking, Rob has landed a summer job! Yeah, it's pretty amazing. He actually starts TOMORROW! He's only going to be making minimum wage, but if you do the math, it's still a whole lot more than zero! He'll be doing grunt work at a boarding stable that offers an English riding and jumping camp. Unfortunately, he won't be working with the horses too much but doing yard work, clean-up, minor repairs, painting, and so on. He may have to muck some stalls and take care of some of the horses during their busy times, but they have other hired help who take care of the animals. It's a blessing, and the lady did a double-take at Rob's resume (which he actually left many of the academic parts out of!) and offered him the job on the spot. We both feel good about it, knowing that it's temporary. His new boss is also going to be flexible with the hours, guaranteeing him 40 hours a week, but allowing him to take time off if needed. Believe me when I say that any job landed in this part of Michigan is golden.

When Rob and I first got married we really, really wanted to start a therapeutic horseback-riding camp for under-privileged kids. We both find it bizarre that Rob is going to be working at a riding camp now at this time in our lives.

I'll leave you with a couple of fun pictures from this week. The second picture is my mom with all her granddaughters, and the bottom one is my dad with all his grandsons. They have two sons and two daughters, and now they have eight grandsons and eight granddaughters. They're very blessed!







2 comments:

jeny said...

first of all, I love your new colors (on your blog and then on your head) How did you do it? (not the colors on your head.) Is that one of the blogger templates? Way cool!
Second - I've been meaning to ask, what are you going to do with Susie? I wish I could say that I would keep her for you . . . wink, wink. But I don't think she would be very happy on this very tiny 1/4 of an acre and I don't think the neighbors would be thrilled about it either, hee hee hee.
Third - I love the pictures of the kids with your parents. I don't know how this can be, but your parents don't look like they've aged a day, while all the little faces around them are not so little anymore!!! Those kids are huge!
Who's the little punkin your mom is holding? Did I know she was on her way? I cannot remember.
I am praising God with you for Rob's summer job, and just a tad bit envious that he will be working at a riding camp, even if he won't have much contact with the animals.
Now, how are things with getting the house ready?

jodyfoznot said...

Jeny,

Thank-you for all your kind and lovely words to me. You are balm for my chaffed soul. I just sent you an email before I saw that you had left me this comment, so forgive me if I sounded somewhat dense or repeated myself!

The baby in my mom's arms is Travis and Tabitha's little surprise: Jessica Marie. She made her appearance at the end of March. She is quite the cutie with two delicious dimples and deep brown eyes.

As far as my blog goes, I'm still learning as I go, and I really wish I knew how to write HTML code. I tried for the longest time to change the whole layout to something completely original without using one of blogger's templates, but I'm just not literate enough. What I did was use some of my digital scrapbooking files and created a layout. I saved that as a jpg, and then uploaded it to blogger as my new header. Many of the digital scrapbook websites offer free samples and other freebie kits, and I've downloaded quite a few. Then I use Gimp2 to "crop" and create new images. Gimp is free shareware that you can download; but you can use other photo editing software if you have it. Gimp has a lot of features, but it is NOT user friendly, which is why it took me so long (like 3 hours!!!) to do that little bit.

Our house is still on the market, and we've only had one showing early on. We're looking at all our options at this point, knowing that we have to move regardless--we just don't know when. We can't wait for the house to sell. Thanks for asking! I'm trying to pack things up a little at a time...it's slow-going. My friend has several barn sales throughout the spring and summer, and she offered to take the things I wanted to get rid of to sell for me. I'm very happy not to host my own garage sale.

I'm excited to talk to Rob tonight to see what he thinks about his new job. It does seem like fun to me,too! Oh, and Josh is going to keep Suzie for us. We're very grateful not to have to give her up.