New Fridge and Dishwasher

We won the appliance lottery! Well, sort of. Our dear friend Nathan had a brand new fridge and dishwasher that he no longer needed due to his new home providing appliances. So we ended up with them! The dishwasher is a wonder machine! We can actually get through the day with all nine of us without needing to run 2-3 loads! Thanks Nathan, you made my week!

Busy Busy!!

Oh, how I love the sound of jars sealing coming from my kitchen! These last few days have been super busy as I have bottled 36 quarts of peaches and 27 pints of salsa. Reecie and I have also been batch cooking in order to freeze some meals for during fall semester. Having the ability to pull something out of the freezer and pop into the oven was so nice when the work load was high during summer semester. Mark and I also baked 10 dozen cookies, and put 6 dozen balls of cookie dough into the freezer to pull out at a later date.

Layed Off

Mark was layed off a few weeks ago, much to our disappointment. Even worse, NO ONE within a two hour commute is hiring electricians. So far we are holding things together financially, but emotionally it is an entirely different story. We have so many things going on right now between the lay off, Mark's legal issues, both of being in school, having the Glanvilles live with us (not that we aren't happy to have them!)and just the normal issues of life. There have been many days recently when I have just wanted to pack things up and run away. I am so overwhelmed, and I just don;t know where to start in order to straighten things out.

On the other hand, we do have a few good things going for us. Mark is about to start his last year of school. Well, maybe. He is actually looking at pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, so he may well have many more years left, but we'll see what happens. I am back in school after a four year hiatus, and I am enjoying the challenge. During fall semester I am taking seven classes in order to get done faster. Once I do that, all my general eds and prerequisites will be complete.

So all in all, some good, some not so good. We are just plodding along and we'll make it work no matter what comes!