Posted some fun pictures on my photo blog yesterday of my cousin Joel and his brand new fiancee Sarah! We had so much fun at the beach together last weekend, just walking around in the heat. Even Joel started getting all sorts of ideas for poses by the end. Had a great time and these are some of my favorite engagement pictures I've taken in a long time. Plus, it's family and I love shooting weddings and engagements for my family. I'm excited to shoot their wedding next June in Indiana!:)
so, what's happening around here, you ask?
jake's job
Well, Jake's had some good leads on jobs this week and a few interviews. One that's pretty promising. We're praying something comes of it. Pretty much the only jobs he's finding are factory positions, but this one would be more of a management position. So we'll see what happens. If nothing then we know it's not what God has in mind for us right now.
the bills
They're still there, but I'm feeling a little better about things. Our priority right now is to pay the essential bills (house, car, phone, electric, water, etc.) and deal with the others as we can. God is providing little by little so I know it's going to work out. I have to give a big shout out to Anya for mentioning
Dave Ramsey to me in the comments on my blog the other day. Thanks Anya!!! My dad tried to get Jake to go to see Dave Ramsey when he was in Grand Rapids earlier this year but it didn't work out because of Jake's class schedule. And I never really looked into what he was all about until Anya mentioned him again. I think this is exactly what we need to help us establish a good budget and work on paying down our debt. I asked my mom to get it for us for our anniversary this year instead of giving us money to go out or buy ourselves something like she usually does.
So I can't wait to get it and start going through the program and changing our mindset about the way we deal with our money. I'm very excited about it.
the kids
I mentioned school the other day and Zach immediately told me how much he hates school. I really hope he does OK this year. He has trouble finishing his work when there are other kids around. We had such a hard time getting him to finish his worksheets in class last year. His teacher had to talk to us several times about it. My fear is that it's going to be even harder for him this year. He doesn't like a lot of noise and can't seem to work when there is chaos going on, which was one of his problems last year. They would have a time during the day when they were supposed to work independently on their worksheets and he would never get them done because he said there were too many kids talking around him, distracting him. I've been praying all summer that God would give both of the kids just the right teachers to help and encourage them this year. I'm going to be a disaster when we drop Chloe off at school. I just know it.
healthy living
Still holding at the same weight. I ate terribly pretty much the entire month of July so I'm really thankful that I didn't gain any of the weight back. And this week I'm finally back to salads and chicken and green smoothies. I feel better already!
summer
Well, I'm looking at my calendar right now and I see that this week is almost over already, which means we only have three full weeks of summer break left before school starts. I'm sad about that. I always have these great plans of things we'll do with the kids. This year, nothing really turned out how I thought it would. I guess I should just stop planning and let things happen. The kids are in no way disappointed with the summer they've had. They got to swim and hang out with their cousins and spend the night at all their grandparents houses. They've had fun and that's what's most important!
an organized browser
I read so many blogs and was checking each one daily for updates. What a pain not to mention a waste of time, especially if there are no updates for weeks. So I finally gave in and signed up on Google Reader. Oh my … why did I wait to do this? There were only a few of my daily blogs (mostly those with passwords) that I wasn't able to put on the reader. Now, I just wait until it tells me what sites are updated. Voila!
Then I discovered
iGoogle.com. My own little Google dashboard and you can customize it with your Google Reader feed and all sorts of other things and cute little pictures at the top. You can customize your own picture, but I just chose a cute little whimsical drawing with the word "happiness". Here's what mine looks like right now. On the left is my google reader feed and a Twitter feed so I can keep up with all the people I'm following on there. In the center, I've got an iFrame Gadget that I found under the section where you can customize the page that allows you to embed a webpage into your igoogle page. I chose my Ta-da Lists page so I can keep track of all the stuff I've got to do each day without logging into Ta-da every day. On the right is a box to find Mapquest driving directions – very convenient since I use mapquest all the time – and a few games to keep me further distracted.
I love it! It's keeping my internet nice and organized and I'm able to see everything I usually check daily right there when I open the browser. And there are a ton of other things you can put on your iGoogle page if you click "customize this page" in the upper right corner. The whole thing makes me happy. I guess I chose the right header picture, huh? :)
my weekend
I'm really looking forward to this weekend. Mom and I are going to see "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" tomorrow. yay! I've been waiting for this all summer! Love those books and I'm excited to see how they translate them into this second movie. From the preview, it looks like they combined the last three books all together into one movie. Not sure until I see it. (Speaking of Sisterhood, I'm selling all four of my Sisterhood books over on
our Half.com shop. If anyone hasn't read them yet and is interested in purchasing them at a discount, head on over.
Then on Sunday, Chloe and I are going to Ohio with my parents for a family reunion. My cousins will be there with their kids so I knew Chloe would love it if I took her along to play with all the girls. Plus, I just need to get in a little more time with my girl before she's off at school without me.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Hope I haven't bored you too much with all my rambling today.
AJAXed with AWP