Ain’t LIFE GRAND????

Okay so for the love of Peter, Keith is FINALLY home!! It’s like you go along and think your circumstances will NEVER change… and then in the twinkling of an eye, everything changes almost overnight….let me back up…..as many of you know, my husband and best friend Keith has been an “over the road” truck driver for the past year. (INTERJECT HERE – this card is from one of SU’s new stamp sets, Flower Fancy – stamped and watercolored on Shimmery White and the background is the new Classic Stripes stamp turned both ways to make a plaid…..easy peasy..) Back to life’s true stories….we had been praying and pleading and all but begging God to help us find a job for Keith where he would be close to home – either local driving or hey, we were about ready for him to work at Starbucks, or Burger King…. the separation thing had gone on long enough. I sometimes felt like a widow. Not fun, though tolerable when you using it as a means to an end…but there seemed to be no end!! Several jobs he applied for got no results….it was getting REALLY discouraging. We literally saw eachother for less then 20 hours a week, it was awful. SOOOO….being the shopper that I am, I often check out patient’s employment space at work on their files, and if it says they are truckdrivers, (as are 3/4 of the male population around here) I would often ask them how they liked their job, and find out as much as I could about different local trucking companies. So late in August, one of my patient friends who I had often talked to about his company was leaving after Tangie checked him out. He turned to me and said, “Karen, is your husband still trucking?” and so I proceeded to tell him our tale of woes, the terrible injustice of it all….poor us…. etc etc and he came over with the name and address of his company and said, “Karen, tell him to go apply NOW because I happen to know they are hiring right now” – Okay- this gave me goose bumps because of all days, Keith was home this day – it was a Monday. I called him up and said “Go, like NOW and apply” and he said, “But Karen, I have checked this company out and I know it’s one of the best ones around here but I know you have to have 2 years experience to get in” to which I replied, “Keith they are looking for people now, go NOW and tell them why they should hire you now with one years experience ~ go sell yourself.” So the rest is history. They decided to check with their insurance company since Keith had a perfect driving record to see if they would make an exception and they did and he’s been there since just after Labor Day weekend!! It was a GOD thing…because it meant he also got to go to our family reunion with Bekah and Jon and I…otherwise he would have been driving but he was just between jobs. God is GOOD…even though your circumstances can look so bleak and you can be thinking nothing will ever change….God can reach down, move a few things around, shake a few things up and the next thing you know, the whole fam, Jen and Davis and Tovah and Lami and Gramma Karen and Grampa Keith can spend Saturday morning out petting llamas and goats and picking out pumpkins. That card we just passed is emboss resist….just like the one in my last post…..sorry my blog is more like an illustrated story book but that’s me, tutorials are boring but real life is an adventure, ya know? Keith’s new hours are alot like mine which is just wonderful. He has all weekends off and is home most weeknights. We feel like we have turned SUCH a corner in our Ohio life. YIPPEE YAHOO!! Okay ~ so here’s a wild thing that happened on one of our first weekends home together…..LAST WEEKEND, hurricane IKE decided to blow thru OHIO, – actually right down our street. I have NEVER EVER seen weather like we had, almost NO rain, but winds that were incredible. We sat out on our front porch with a sort of morbid fascination as huge chunks of trees fell down around us. The wind took shingles right off peoples roofs, siding blew off the whole end of the townhouse Bekah and Jon live in. We had the pretty white awning that Bethany and Brian got married under on our deck over our picnic table, and when we came home from church it was the first thing we noticed, twisted and mangled beyond repair on top of our hot tub, (or the big hot baff as Tovah and Lami call it) OKAY CARD BREAK – Brandy new 2 step stamping set called A Rose is a Rose – I just love this shabby shiek card – isn’t it pretty? That’s the new Baja Breeze color in the background and Riding Hood Red and Kiwi Kiss on the flowers…..Okay- back to life, it was THE most INCREDIBLE wind storm I have ever seen. Today as we drove to the pumpkin farm we saw a tin roof that had blown into a tangled ball off of someones barn, and a huge tree uprooted dirt and all that looked like the base of the dirt that got pulled up with it was like a big huge swimming pool size!!DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WEATHER GETS THAT WEIRD???????? There is a good side to what can otherwise be devastating. Neighbors meet neighbors, people are just hangin out on their porches and everyone is friendly and taking the time to talk to eachother because we had no electrical power – we had none for 3 straight days!! So there were no electronic distractions, time stood still and we got to meet some of our neighbors who we had never met before!! Anyway, today – almost a week later all is back to normal albeit chunks of trees still line the streets waiting for the town to remove them…..but it’s a beautiful, sunny, warm, Indian summer day…..But that’s how we spent one of our first Saturdays in Ohio together…..that Keith wasnt’ either cleaning models or driving truck – pretty exciting!! This card to your left now – it’s just watercolored and the background embossed white polka dots – see how I used my white gel pen to make the watercan polka dotted too? How CUTE is THAT??? Other family news…. Jen and Davis bought a house one road away from us. They probably will not live in it until after they go to the Congo for two years and at that point if they stay stateside for 9 months or so they will live in that house. Even then it will be a stopover between mission assignments Lord willing, but somehow just knowing they own that cute little white house which is actually very similar to ours makes me feel like they will be closer to us even when they are gone…..but lets not talk about THAT yet, they don’t leave till November 10th…..way off. 🙂 By the time they come home again, Lami will be Tovah’s age and Tovah will be almost Chloe’s age………lets not think about it. But the happy thought is this – Tovah and Lami will be old enough to let mom watch them cross the street and then go thru the alley and come right into our yard….how utterly SWEET will THAT be?????? Over the road and thru the alley to grandmother’s house we go…..isn’t there a song like that? Isn’t life sweet with grand daughters around? Isn’t life sweet even when they aren’t around but you still know they are out there and they love you – and you can hear their sweet little voices on the telephone and see them on the “web can” as Layla calls it? Ain’t life grand? Ain’t it? Come on now, Ain’t it?????