Halloween fun!!!!

Tonight we did a little trick or treating in a random neighborhood we found and had a great time. The kids loved it. Then we went to my friend Rachel's ward and had fun at their little Halloween carnival.

Halloween fun in Apt 219

I just wanted to share with you all pictures of my decorated apartment. Jamie, Kristen, and I had a lot of fun decorating a couple of weekends ago. The amazing pumpkin carvings were done by Jamie and Kristen, I just watch them work. We have received many compliments on our decorating, and we are really enjoying the overall effect. Sorry I am taking up so much space but I don't know how to get the pictures in a horizontal row instead of a verticle row. But anyway, enjoy the pictures!

I just found out that if you double click on the posted pictures they will blow up to a bigger size. It's nice for the smaller pictures because you can see more detail in the blown up version. Sorry if you already knew that, I just thought I'd pass on the info. for those who didn't.

Halloween pictures

Here we are in our costumes. Alexis is a spider queen, Merrit is Batman, Makayla is a princess, Chelsea is a giraffe, Jaxson is Tigger, Charlie is Superman and I'm a punk rocker. We also carved pumpkins and I thought I'd include a picture of that too. We love Halloween at our house.

Here I am

I just wanted to let every one know that I have a family for three to rent my house. So in two weeks I am moving to West Virgina with Les. Les and I are doing OK. We miss one another a lot and we are both happy we will be together soon. One of my co-worker is trying to get me a job with service master in West Virgina so I can keep the job I love. Les is working at Cable's and loving it. We hope that he will be hired in at the end of the season so he can keep his job. i love you all and miss you. Jocelyn

Hannah, any more dates with Tom?

I did it!

Today I got my acceptance letter into the elementary education program! I will be starting in the winter. Yea for me!!!!!!

Funny Jaxson

Jaxson has come up with this little thing he likes to do with the pockets in his pants. He came up with it all by himself and thinks he's quite clever because of it. He pulls out the inside of the pocket and says, "See my bubble?" He calls the inside of the pocket a bubble because it kind of looks like one when you pull it out. These pictures are him showing off his bubbles.

Welcome to Rubberville!

I had the first visit from my visiting teachers yesterday. They are a mother/ daughter team and are very nice. The family has 7 kids. They had five and then got pregnant with twins. I don't know if it was an "oops" but can you imagine if it was? What an "oops" to have!They informed me that we live in an area known to the locals as Rubberville. I guess there used to be a factory close to here that was the Rubberville factory. This neighborhood was where all the workers at the factory lived. The factory isn't there any more, but this neighborhood still remains a pretty cheap place to rent. This, we all know, doesn't attract the most cream of the crop bunch of people.

We already knew we weren't in the best part of town, but my visiting teachers confirmed that to me. What's sad is that this neighborhood isn't as bad as a lot of the neighborhoods in Flint. I'd actually compare this one to the one that was just a few blocks over from our house in Flint. Not really life threatening, but not really a place I'd like my kids to get to know people in. We are facing that right now in this neighborhood. Our kids are getting to know the local kids and wanting to go over to their houses and stuff. It's hard for me to know how far to let them go. I really want to keep them safe, but not over-protected and sheltered. I just pray hard that Heavenly Father will keep them safe.

Our house hunting weekend

http://public.mlswis.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?20071010155631153554000000&id=1

If you go to this link you can see the houses we looked at on Saturday. The ones we liked the best are the third (614 Randolph St) and the fifth (2635 Maple Grove) houses. We didn't get to see the one on Green Bay Rd., but we'd like to. Our realtor just couldn't get it scheduled for that day.

The house on Randalph St. has an extra lot next to it that we could buy with the house. The contractor that owns the house owns the lot and would be willing to sell the two together, for more money, obviously. The house was just finished being built this year and looks great! If we bought this house we would build a garage in the back of the house and turn that one car, attached garage into more living space, probably another bedroom. The down side to this house is that it is across the street from a railroad track and there is a proposal in the works to bring a train station to that area and it would be right across the street from that house. That is also where the bus terminal is, so all the city busses make their transfers there. That means that there will be a lot of people in that area, and most may not be the greatest of upstanding citizens.

The house on Maple Grove is an older home. It's very similar to the house we owned in Flint. It's been well cared for and is bigger. It has a decent sized yard, not as big as the other house's side lot though. The yard would be about the same size as what we had in Flint before we bought the side yard. It is in a nicer neighborhood, from what we could tell. Probably the worse downside to this house is the yard is smaller than the other house. There isn't central air in this house either, where as the other house does, but we've lived without central air before.

We are going to try to go to the temple soon so we can pray about these houses there. We feel like we may just keep looking for the time being and go back to these houses in a little bit. We just really want to pick the BEST house for our family, in all aspects of it.

Cute Pics

Here are a few pictures of when we took the kids to the $ show the weekend before school started.

House hunting

We are going to check out a bunch of houses on Saturday with our realtor. He has about 6 scheduled and is waiting to hear back on a couple more. With any luck we'll find our dream house this Saturday. Then, hopefully, we'll be able to buy it if we find it.

The Job

Sorry it has taken me so long to do this but I had to remember how to get on. Some of are just slow, no comments please.
Anyway on October 4th Grandpa (Chuck) had a face to face interview with a company name Borg Warner (I think that's how you spell it). On Friday, October 5th they called and offered him The Job!!!! Acourse he said yes. There is only one thing to this yes, it mean a move for us after 22 years in the same home. We get to move to Cadillac, MI three hours north of where we are now. We had the wonderful opportunity to visit Cadillac this past Sunday and Monday. It was beautiful because the trees were at their peek of color and the weather was just great. I wish that I would have had a camera to take some pictures. Cadillac has a branch of our church there with about 35 to 65 people attending sacrament meeting. We met a few of them when we attended general conference there on Sunday. We spent Monday morning driving around and getting phone number of places to rent. Grandpa will rent a place until a home can be located for the rest of us. Right now I and the grandchildren will be moving at the end of January of 1st of February.
I know it sound funny to some but I need to be here for the kidding season of my goats. Nobody takes care of them like I do and I do not want anything to happen to them. Will the goats be going with us? As of right now we do not know. A lot depends on the 4-H program there and what type of place we find to buy.
Grandpa will be going back up on Thursday for his physical. At that time we hope to find out his start date and about insurance. He will also be going to the MSU Extension office to find out about 4-H and looking around more for places to rent, I hope he will also talk to people and find out about different school district.
My sister and her family have a cabin about 37 miles away from his future work sight that he probably use at first but when the snow falls he does not have any snowshoes to track back to the cabin with, so we are sure he will need to find something closer. That's it for now.

Thought you might like to see the kids on their second day of school. I forgot to take pictures on the first day. This is also the house that we are living in right now. When looking at the house, we live on the right side. It's not perfect, but it works for us right now. Sorry about the sideways pictures. That's how they download off my camera.

DAD, CONGRATS ON THE NEW JOB!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please tell us about your life

It's nice to hear from Kristi, don't get me wrong, but it would be nice to hear from eveyone else too. I know Hannah writes from time to time, but I'd love to hear from Mom and Dad and Jocelyn. Come one guys, even if you don't feel like you have anything important to write about, just write and tell us "hi" or that you love us or something. Thanks!

The house report

We got into the house today to check the plumbing. The main guy from the water department came and hooked up a new water meter and turned the water on for us. Right away there was a leak in one of the pipes in the basement. It started to squirt everywhere so we were unable to even pressurize the whole system. So we were unable to check the rest of the plumbing. The inspector looked at the pipes that he could see in the basement and there was a good amount of corrosion on many of the shut-off valves and connector pieces. He guessed that the whole house needed to be re-plumbed. With that news Charlie and I decided to back out of the deal and withdraw our offer. We go sign the withdrawl papers tomorrow to get our earnest money back. Our realtor is going to try to get the money back that we paid to have the plumber de-winterize the house. He didn't actually do the job, as the water department guy informed me, so we should get that money back. So now we are just going to keep looking and see if we can find anything else we like and that will work for our family. The kids are pretty upset about not buying that house. They really liked it, especially Merrit, since one of his classmates lives next door. But we asked Heavenly Father to let us know, without a doubt, if it was right for us and we felt like the shower in the basement was pretty loud and clear.

This world is scary sometimes

I just read a story on Yahoo about a brain-eating ameoba that enters a person's body through their nose and eats their brain. It's called Naegleria fowleri. Obviously, since it eats the brain, it is deadly. It's extremely rare, but 6 people have died from it this year. The report said that that number is a spike from other years. They warn that it's more common in warm, southern states. The cases of deaths were in Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Sometimes I think it's really scary that there are so many kinds of things are out there that can affect you or someone you love without you being able to do anything about it.

Hope eveyone is having a nice day :)!

Birthday Shout out!!!!!

Just wanted to give a little birthday shout out to MaMa Hicks. We hope that you have a great day! Love and miss you tons.

Feeling good

So I'm feeling pretty good about my interview that I had last week for the elementary education program. I actually enjoyed the interview and I was pleased with my writing sample. They get a week to grade the writing smaple so I'm hoping to hear whether I got in within the next couple of weeks. I'm not feeling so good about all the test I have to take this week. I have tests in 5 out of my 6 classes. So I will be real busy this week. I love you all!