Vacation pics

I don't remember if I mentioned this or not, but Will and I went to stay at a cabin in Eureka Springs for a couple of days this week while everyone was on spring break. The kids went to stay with my folks. It's the first time we've been anywhere without the kids since Dana was born, but we felt like they were all finally old enough to be without us for a couple of days. We had a lovely time.

We stayed in a private cabin about ten miles out of town. We were right on the edge of a valley (that statement pretty much describes our location no matter where we went, LOL) and I bet that later in the spring when the trees are green and blooming it's really beautiful down through there. It was so nice and relaxing to sit out on the porch swing and listen to the wind blow through the trees.

Here's a picture of the neighboring cabin, looking out from the right of our wrap-around porch. See how some of the trees have limbs that are snapped off and/or damaged? That's from the ice storm last winter. The damage up in that part of the state is staggering. In some places you would look out and almost every single tree - no matter how big - had the top snapped out of it. It's no wonder it was months before all the power was restored in some of those areas.

Here's a picture of our heart-shaped jacuzzi tub. Ahhhh. I miss that tub.

While we were there we visited the Christ of the Ozarks.

Next to the chapel there is an actual section of the Berlin Wall.

Very powerful to stand there and touch something that held so many people in bondage for so long. Loosely translated, this section of the wall says: And it goes even into the darkness. I have no anxiety! Psalm 23.

My husband, as some of you know, can't go anywhere without geocaching at least a little. Here are some deer who really wished we'd just move along already.

And here are a couple of pictures where you can get an idea of the ice storm damage.

This is the last 'vacationy' place we stopped at, the War Eagle Mill. We had a fabulous breakfast there (I had a whole grain waffle with blueberries and whipped cream - YUM) and then bought a bunch of yummy slow ground corn and wheat products, cherry butter, pumpkin butter, raw honey and sorghum, toys for the kids...lots of stuff.

OK there is a notice that blogspot is performing maintenance in a few minutes, so I'm going to post this while I can. Thanks for looking!

Wedding pics

You may recall my sister got married this past weekend. Just thought I'd share a few of the pics. :)

The ceremony was in my parents' house. There was probably 50 or so people there. Everything looked very nice.

One of her friends made the cake. It was fabulous, and I'm not much of a cake person. I wish now that we would have brought some of it home, heh.

Here's the minister, Bro. John, and the groom, Russell.

And here comes my sister, Pam, and my dad, Charles. (That's my oldest brother Robbie there to her right. And the picture on the wall behind him is my grandmother, who passed away in '92.)

Here's a picture of all of us together. L to R: My dad Charles, brother Robbie, sister Pam, me, brother Victor, mom Marie.

And here's a picture of Will and me under the arch. Nathan took this one, I thought he did a really good job.

All in all, everyone had a great time I think. I spent the night there Friday night so I could be up early Saturday morning helping them get the food and stuff together. We served finger foods - sandwiches, pigs in a blanket, fruit and veggie platters - along with the cake and punch. I told Will to be sure to get there on time, but not to be too early because I didn't want the kids tearing up the house, LOL. The pastor's wife and son did all the flowers and decorations. He owns his own floral shop and has such a great talent for it. They did the flowers for my wedding too.

Ha ha, after the ceremony I told Pam that she now holds the title in our family for the shortest wedding ceremony. Will and I walked in to ours at 2 pm and were walking back out at 2:10, but they managed to beat that. Just my kind of ceremony! Heh.

I'll post pictures from our vacation next, I want to make sure this all posts right.

Will applied for a Voluntary Severance at work yesterday

They had been hoping that work would pick back up in March (he has only worked a full week once since before Christmas - the rest of the time he's worked 0, 1, or 2 days per week) but it's not looking any better than it was, so they started offering a voluntary severance package. Based on the length of time he's been there, if he gets approved for it he'll get ten weeks of full pay with benefits before he's officially unemployed. That puts him at having a steady, full time paycheck again until after he GRADUATES IN MAY, plus he won't have to pay back any of the tuition reimbursement he's received (if he was to get another job and leave, he would have to pay it back) so we really feel this is the best course of action for us right now. The dept manager spoke with him for a while yesterday before he turned in his paperwork, and said they could work something out so that he could come in and work two nights steadily during the week (the reason his work has been so hit and miss is because he works the weekend shift and they just don't have enough work to keep it open right now) but he couldn't give him any kind of timeframe for when work would pick back up and he could get a full week's hours in again. So he'd actually be getting paid more by taking the severance package than by working.

He's got a lot of resumes out there for an engineering position, and has been to several interviews, but so far hasn't gotten an offer for anything. But, many places have expressed interest and are just waiting for him to GRADUATE IN MAY, so we aren't too worried about his ability to find something else. If worse comes to worse, we'll have most of the tax money in the bank still to tide us over for several weeks.

It'll be nice to have a semi-normal schedule with him again, instead of having to wait until Wednesday or Thursday to know if he's going to be at home on the weekend. The kids behave sooooo much better when he's here on a regular basis. He has daytime and evening classes both this semester, so even though he doesn't have many classes he's gone a good portion of the day and evening during the week.

He should find out next week if he was approved.