Valentines Craft!

Since I didn’t get my Christmas Crafts photographed for you all to see, I thought I better get my Valentines ones done!  I was blog surfing the other day, instead of cleaning (but my house is WAY cleaner than it was a few days ago, so it is ok!!!) and came across a super cute post by “tatertots and jello”

This is my version of what she made (sorry for the crooked pictures…)

 These are going to either sit on a shelf, after I move it from the entryway to the living room, or hang on the wall.  I really like the way the black, red, white, cream, and grey came together!

These are actually fake grapes that I had bought a while back for something, and never used them and when I pulled out the marbles I noticed the grapes were the same color and thought I would through them on a paper and see what it looked like.  I actually like that sheet the best! The love hanger is part of the scrapbook paper, and super glued in… I really wish I had some plain black ribbon for the bow on this “0”, but the black is white is ok too…

 

These next couple pics are my first ones, and they turned out a little more country, or folk, or something than I wanted, so I tried the black and red…  I still like these, but not for my house!  If anyone else wants them, let me know!!!

House…

This is another post about the roughness of my life right now, but then I am done!  For a while anyways. 

Some of you have heard me talk about how our basement is.  With the cement blocks cracking, and the walls are tipping…  Well today I went down stairs to put some clothes in the washer and hang up the load that was in there.  (We have a dryer, but not the right power hook up.  We are pretty sure we are going to have to redo all the wires to hook up the dryer, so for now it just sits in the middle of the basement and gathers soot, and dust, and junk…) I had to take the loads down that were dry, and while doing that I saw this… (Yes I did go grab my camera…) and YES THAT IS SNOW inside the house.  Not just ice crystals like we have seen before, but SNOW.  So then being the wonderful person that I am I went outside with the camera to show you the wall from another angle (take into consideration that it is –26 right now) This picture does a horrible job of showing just how indent this wall is.  What you can see is the wood wall is supposed to be sitting on the edge of the block, like a normal house.  Instead the board (pointed to by the yellow arrow) that supports the whole wall, is falling out.  Just another couple of views of the wall.     When facing the “snow” in the basement this window is about 3 feet to the left.  See how the board at the top of the window is crooked?  That is the board that was pointed out in the previous picture…This is another wall in the basement the back wall of the house.  The cracks are all at ground level and the top part is all leaning out. 

This is what you see when you come down the stairs.  The window and “snow” are on the wall at the end of this one.  This one just started to show a larger crack, but once it starts it has to go somewhere right???

The house was originally built by John’s Grandpa Russell.  John’s dad’s dad.  He built it in the lowest spot that he could on this part of their land.  Plus there are no gutters on it at all, and I have been told that is the majority of the problem…  After Russell passed away, Idella, John's grandma, sold the house to Linda and Lavern, John’s mom and dad.  They added plumbing, and electricity.  The outhouse turned into a shed, and is still in the back yard!  Anyways, they built a basement, jacked the house up after their kids got a little older and they needed some more room, and moved the house back about 20 feet (where they had dug and built the basement.)

We really want to build in a couple of years so we don’t really want to put much money into this house, but I don’t think these walls are going to take much more…  Any tips to get us by until we can afford to build???  Anyone want to come help us fix the problems with this house?!?!?!?

For those of you out there…

I haven’t been on here much lately, partly because it is winter and I have once again hit a little depression that is associated with the season.  Last year it started later, so I am little nervous about how this will go, especially considering other circumstances that I will share later.  And also partly because of the circumstances that I will be sharing later (no we aren’t pregnant.) And partly because I have become addicted to blogs and facebook, and was trying to limit my time on the computer and so blogging go pushed to a back burner.  I actually went as far as to keep the internet off (read, it was totally shot off from the providers end)  for a while to keep my self from being on the computer too much. 

On to the more info that you all want!!!  Anywho, most of you that read this know that John was laid off in Oct. of 2008 when the construction company didn’t have enough work for him.  That job was a huge blessing and we are grateful to Dale for providing the job as he was able.  He did do some plowing of power substations over the winter, and mowed them all during the summer, but for the most part he was unemployed.  We even had to go as far as extend his unemployment for awhile because he wasn’t working.  John was waiting for a pipeline job.  Lynn S., a friend and previous boss, works for them and said that he could get John on with him (this has been going on since Aubrie was born…) Originally he was supposed to start in April of ‘08, that didn’t pan out so we waited, then it was June of ‘08, the Sept of ‘08.  Then they shut down for the winter.  Then there was some political this with the reservation over some land that they either wanted the pipeline to buy, or didn’t want to sell, sorry I am not really sure of the details.  Anyways, John did make the trip to Duluth to join the laborers union and was told that he would NOW start when ever the pipeline got the go ahead.  This was another wait, and another wait, and another wait, and another wait…  You get the idea.

I was working as much as they would schedule me at Autumn Lane, the adult care home that John’s sister owns.  So that helped some…  But we were still struggling.  If we didn’t have such WONDERFUL landlords (John’s mom and dad) we would have been homeless once again.

Finally in the end of Sept/beginning of Oct he STARTED!!!  I will admit I was kinda sick of having him at home ALL THE TIME!!! Now I am kinda sick of him being gone all the time.  He gets up between 4:30 and 5 AM and is out the door a little before 6 AM and doesn’t get home until between 5:30 and 8, depending on the night.  A normal work week for him started out as Monday thru Saturday.  Thanksgiving Day the guys were told that they wouldn’t get another day off until Christmas, (thankfully that didn’t happen, but it was still pretty bad) Between Thanksgiving and Christmas break, He had 1, yes I said 1, day off.  Christmas break started the Saturday before Christmas and ended the Sunday after.  That was nice to have him home.  Nice for him to get some extra rest.  He took naps, opened presents, saw his brother, put up a door and wall (ask me about that later, after I have taken pics and I will show you!!!) and then went back to work this past Monday.  He told me that morning that he heard they were going to work every day now until the project was done.  So that could be March, or April, before he gets another day off.

So, while him working is a GREAT thing for us financially (I am working on a post about that as well, because I NEED HELP) him being gone 6 or more often 7 days a week is hard on him, me, and the kids.  So please pray for his health and wellbeing, my mental and physical health, and the kids during this winter.  We are already starting to feel some of the side effects of Daddy being gone so much, I don’t have as much energy to do stuff with the kids, the kids have too much energy, they are acting out more, I am yelling more, John sleeps pretty much the whole time he is home.  It isn’t fun to be in the house some times.  So we need some thoughts and prayers.  And invites to do fun things this winter so we DON’T GO CRAZY!!!  I was glad for this past week, where there was no school, no Cubbies, no MUMS, nothing to do really, but now I am ready to be moving again, and have places to go and things to do.  Just to keep us sane!!!

So pardon this VERY long post, but I wanted to share some of the goings on in our house, and ask for prayer.  So please remember us!!!