So much to do, so little time!

This is an ever present problem around here! There's never enough time in the day, and if I could add more hours into the day, then I'd have to also add more energy into this ol' body of mine!

Here's a sample of my schedule today:

	Mom's Thursday Schedule
05:00 pm	Devotions with D
05:30 am	Quiet Time
05:45 am	Make Bed/Tidy Bedroom/switch loads/collect and sort D&R's Laundry
06:00 am	Sew Nursing Pads/boil
07:00 am	Wake Kids Up/switch loads – Nursing Pads with Whites/
07:30 am	Breakfast and VITAMINS
07:45 am	Pocket Quarterly and paypal for Michael
08:00 am	Taxes (Switch Loads – Jessica start her laundry)
08:30 am	Sew SL Fleece Pockets
09:00 am	Sew SL Fleece Pockets/Switch loads/Ship Nursing Pads
09:15 am	Snap SL Flece Pockets & Fleece Covers
09:30 am	Switch loads –fold kids' laundry
09:45 am	Curves
10:00 am	Curves
10:30 am	Stock Fleece pockets
11:00 am	Stock Fleece Covers
11:30 am	Switch Loads fold laundry
12:00 pm	Lunch
12:30 pm	Emails/Switch Loads
01:00 pm	Stock S4L
02:00 am	Stock S4L
02:30 am	Stock S4L
03:00 am	Shopping Lists
04:00 pm	Kids Chores/Hot Spots
04:30 pm	Dinner prep
05:00 pm	Dinner cooking/table set
05:30 pm	Eat Dinner
06:00 pm	Devotions
06:30 pm	Seamstress bins
07:30 pm	Family Time
08:00 am	Brush Teeth/Pajamas
08:30 am	Read Story
09:00 pm	Lights Out!

Looks great eh? Too bad it doesn't go as planned most days!

I've gotten most things on the list done so far today - just a few gliches I didn't expect - like:

not being able to find my log in information for doing my sales tax quarterly online,

and having to wash one of every size of trainer to recheck sizing (it turns out that our new FOE doesn't shrink as much as the old, so they are now running a little larger than before!)

and not being able to go to curves today because of the aforsaid unplanned events

and two toddlers having WAY too much fun eating chocolate chip cookies and the playing in the sand - chocolate and sand is hard to clean up without removing skin - so they had a bath

like waking up too early, so I spend the time doing email and miss my morning quiet time - which I really needed today!

and so on....and so on...

My schedule for tomorrow is just as bad...Calgon...Take me away! NOT! The problem with escaping is then when you return you are that much further behind than you were before!

Well, it's 4:30 and we I haven't gotten to anything on my schedule that is listed after 2:30 - and here I am blogging - maybe this is my new escape?

"This Schedule was brought to you by..." Renee or "A Baker's Dozen" blog fame (see link on the right" as I was talking to her yesterday about my schedule and a few other large family type things and she thought it would be a great idea for me to post my schedule that I make for myself most days!

She also wants me to blog about our dishes - but I need a photo for that one - maybe tomorrow when I need another escape!

We did it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With a little help from a few sources, we will have enough money by later today!

Our DS in Okinawa sent us some help, and our other son is purchasing my bike!~

Plus some funds from Daryl's pay this week to round it out!

So we made our goal!

If I wasn't so tired today, I'd be doing the happy dance (and my kids would think I had totally lost it!)

Thank You God!

We couldn't do it without him pulling a few strings for us - like the thing with Jeremy - he was waiting at the airport to go to Korea for a month where he will probably not be able to contact us at all, and I happen to mention our situation to him and he sends nearly everything he has to us - and only asks that we spend it on his truck when we are done "using" the money! What a great kid, eh? But just in time - if I had not mentioned it, or waited like 20 minutes longer, he would have never known and would not have offered to help! Amazing!

Now to de-stress a little - anyone got some serious chocolate they'd like to share???

LOL!!

Here's a few fun shots!

Here's a few fun/funny things from life around here:



See - I told you he'd sleep anywhere! Here he is asleep in the kitchen on an old office chair!



Here is "Sacajawea" - she is named this because she is so adventurous and determined - she was the first to walk, first to get out of the box, and the first one out the door - always looking for the next adventure! The little boy from this litter is usually right behind her, so we named him Lewisonclark, of course!



And here is our bathing beauty - looks like she should live in Whoville! Jessica was having fun with her at bathtime and came up with this "Who-do" - maybe she should try out for playing a roll as Cindy Lou Who's baby sister!

Building Update...

The appraisor came out Monday, real nice gal, and she is working on it this week. She should have it finished and at the bank by next Monday and then we'll be heading for the final paperwork phase and back into building around the 7th of August.

We also found out that the Mobile Home has to be removed before we can live in the house! ACK! We will be homeless! Well, not exactly, but close! Depending on the timing, we will be living in Daryl's shop (we'll pull out camping trailer in there so we'll have a kitchen of sorts) for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. It's a nice shop as shops go - heated, insulated, sheet rocked, and has a bathroom too and that's big plus - but no shower, washer/dry, and even smaller than our mobile home - will make for great memories and expanding our appreciation for the new house when it's done even more! I'm hoping this will be very short term!
Maybe this delay will be in our favor then - originally we would be finished with construction right around Christmas - not a nice time to be living in a mechanic's shop! With this delay, it will be close to February or March. Still cold, but with the possibility of the kids playing out of doors anyway!

Miracle, part 2

Well, it may not seem like a miracle, but it's close - I got the refund on the charge from the banker today! Yeah! After all I went through, I really didn't trust that it would be credited until I saw it with my own eyes! But it's there today, so we are that much closer to our goal!

We did find out yesterday that we really need to show the funds in the back by the first of next week - so that gives us 2 weeks less than we thought to have it there. We are getting close, but it looks like we will be short unless God sends another miracle or two our way.

Daryl's truck didn't sell on Ebay, bummer, but he is talking with a guy about it and it sounds at least somewhat hopeful.....He also has some wheels and car parts we are going to try to sell as well.
I am going to be contacting local music teachers to see if any know of students looking to buy violins or cellos as we have a VERY nice cello that is no longer in use here (Jason is on to more important things now, like working full time and restoring his 70s era camaro), and several violins as well (1/8, 1/2, 3/4, and a fullsize) - we are keeping one just incase, but we just aren't into the strings like we used to be - you know, phases of life and such!

We are also going to list my recumbent tricycle on Craigs list - that bike cost us more than some of our cars - we bought it last summer! But I found a great deal on another recumbent at a garage sale this past June that is easier for me to use, so now I don't need the first one.

So we are praying that a couple of those items will sell and then we'll be all set!

Miracle...stage 1

Well already God is showing what He can do!

My brother has been wanting to purchase one of our cars, but due to some problems, couldn't come up with the money for it. Well. God worked it out that he will be able to purchase the car and we can get the money for it this week! Funny that it worked out just right now when we have been talking with him about this car for nearly a year!
So we are 1/3 the way there to our goal already!!

Yeah!

When God Closes a Window!

You may be wondering how progress on our new house it going...well we hit a road block. We had been working with a mortgage company for 8 months and we finally came to our senses and realized that it just wasn't working! Every step of the way was slow and painful - wrong paperwork (one sheet was for the state of Illinois, another was for a mobile home (we are NOT building a mobile home1), and confusing forms. So last Saturday we finally made the decision to bale out and find a new mortgage company.

We decided to go with what we know and went to the bank that holds out current mortgage. Wow, what a difference~ I spent 1 trip and about 1 hours with Jennifer at WaMu, and and she gave me just 3 sheets of paper for our builder to fill out (very easy to understand and fill out), and she called me just 2 hours later to say that we had been pre-approved and that the underwriter had even looked it over and gave his approval as well!

We hadn't gotten that far in the 8 months with the other guy!

Our builder faxed in the paperwork the next day and he was approved the next!

The appraiser is coming out on Monday, and once the appraisal comes back and is approved, we can begin to build again and that means we'll be back in business in less than 2 weeks! Basically we got more done in 4 days with Jennifer, than we got done in 8 months with the other guy!

Boy, I tell you, getting that close to building (ready to pour the footings) and pulling out on the financing was a very scary thing, but we prayed a lot about it and knew that if this house was meant to be, then it would all work out in the end. There were just too many signs that we should switch tracks - so we took the plunge and stopped beating on the door - and **poof** a nice big window opened up and boy does the fresh air feel good!

When it rains, it pours!

Boy, sometimes you gotta wonder!

In the last week, we were asked to help someone out financially, so we pulled together everything we could (didn't add up to much, but it helped), even to the point of shorting ourselves last week on groceries (by payday we were completely out of bread, butter, popcorn (our bread substitute), sugar, vegetables, and many other staples!). Then due to a misunderstanding, our bank account was charged over $400 for a service we no longer wanted done for us (they are processing a refund, but it will take about a week for us to get that money back)! Mortgage also came due this week! The day before payday we were in the hole and no way out!

This month the Malden Mills store closed, and I can not afford to run short of microfleece or windpro, so I took advantagetof the closing out prices and stocked up on both. We also put together over 250 yards of prints and sent them out to get laminated as we have completley run out of prints for the diapers and trainers - and the price of lamination has also gone up considerably! Also last week we ran out of hemp FT, and Hemp fleece and found out that there had been a substantial price increase in both! I also began running extremely low in Burley Knit Terry (we go through about 40 yards of this every month), and Snap-EZ Labels! Talk about heavy hits on the bank account!

So we couldn't get any help from the business, we might even need to not take any pay for a while! And on top of that we found out we need to have 2 months worth of mortgage payments at the time of closing for our new home! OUCH! That gives us less than two weeks to come up with that one! That was going to take a miracle!

I'm open to miracles - and God has come through! We got a call from a friend who told us that he would help us out to make the right amount of money in the bank at closing, if we would just return the funds after it is no longer needed! What a God send! We hope we will not have to take him up on his offer, but at least we have that to fall back on!

So for now, we are trying to sell off anything that is of value that we no longer need - DHs old truck is on Ebay, I sold off all my kid's diapers that I wasn't using anymore, I'm going to try to sell most of our stringed instuments (no one is taking lessons right now and we have 1 cello and 6 violins). That is were we are starting anyway!

Wow, I remember times like this - one of those times is what was the start of Snap-EZ - income reduced, so I went back to cloth diapers, then found out about pocket diapers, made some for Dayton, had some material left over, so I sold a few diapers on Ebay, and now 3 years later here we are with two home businesses, a workforce of WAHMs, shipping all over the world, etc...!

So I'm waiting to see what God is doing...I have a feeling He's up to something!

One thing we are going to do, that we have been talking about for a while now, is branch out with Snap-EZ and set up a fabric selling store - I even came up with a name last night - "Snap-EZ Surplus"! We might make this an online fabric supply store - selling materials that we have to purchase in larger quantities than we need or can store! So maybe this is where God is pushing us right now! It's worth trying anyway!

So stay tuned - and see what God is doing - It's going to be exciting that's for sure!

Silence.....

but you could feel his smile it was so big!

This was in response to my asking Him if he had fun - after he had spent about an hour doing this:







He had never driven one before and he did great! Our contractor was proud of him - he said he was doing great - not driving it at full speed was good! He took it nice and slow and did some leveling!

Way to go Jonathan!

Building Has Begun!

We have broken ground on our new home! We are sooo excited - I can't put it into words!

Here's a progression animated gif - I'll up date this as things happen!



Here's what's happened so far:

June - Tree's down, building area and future backyard leveled,

July 3 - House site scrapped, footing troughs dug

July 5 - footing forms/rebar in place

Now if we can just get our banker to get a move on I'll be able to sleep at night again! LOL!!

Hope you enjoy this adventure with us!
Ruth