Change of plans

So when I get back from Hawaii I will be working more hours at my campus job, I will not be working at the MTC. I thought I would be able to handle working till 10pm and then work again at 4am, man was I wrong. It is just too exhausting for me. By the time I get to my night job I don't feel like doing anything and I just want to go home and sleep. I think this new arangement will be better for me. I leave next Tuesday for Hawaii and I am so excited!

Charlie's car

Charlie's car has been making some funny noises for a couple months now. We've been thinking it's the clutch and really haven't wanted to fix it, so we've been ignoring it. Yesterday we took it in to find out what is really wrong. We figured that we should probably fix it especially if Charlie is going to be driving back and forth to Michigan for job interviews. So we get to the transmission place and Charlie goes into to talk to the guy. They come out for a test drive. The guy gets in the driver's seat and Charlie in the passenger's. They drive for maybe 10 feet, not even out of the parking lot and the guy stops the car. He says to Charlie that he isn't going to drive it any farther because he's afraid the car will blow up. He told Charlie that if it blew up while he was driving it he'd have to fix it. He told Charlie not to drive it any farther than he needed to and not to put it into 5th gear. Needless to say, that isn't really what we were hoping to hear. So we brought it home and parked it. Now we are looking for a new car for Charlie. We knew it was inevitable, we just were hoping to put it off a little while longer.

What makes the story more interesting is that we were planning a temple trip for Saturday night. I had already gone to get the babysitter and Charlie and I were just about to leave when he felt prompted to check his recommend. He did and saw that it had expired at the end of March. We were pretty bummed, but felt very relieved that we hadn't driven all the way to Chicago to find out our recommends were expired. We thought that was the blessing. Now that we know Charlie's car might blow up at any time, we know that was the bigger blessing. We are very thankful that we didn't try to drive to Chicago and have the car blow up on us on the way. Plus, the stake presidency was at our building on Sunday for the Kenosha ward conference so we were able to have our recommends renewed rather quickly after noticing they were expired. The Lord sure looks out for us even when you don't know it.

So we think we might trade in the windstar for a nice car for Charlie. We are hoping to get one that has great gas mileage. We'd actually like to get a Toyota Yaris, but unfortunately they are so new still that they aren't really in our price range. Charlie has been walking to school since the weather has been nice to help save gas. So we aren't really in a super hurry to find a car just yet. Although, it would be nice to have one just in case he has an interview scheduled that I can't make it to. So we'll see what happens

How tired are you?

So I read this article on Yahoo about how napping in the work place is becoming more acceptable. They had a link in the article that has a sleep questionnaire. These questions will help you assess your sleepiness. This was my result:

I was a 15, so on the border of this and severe sleepiness.
A score between 11 and 15 indicates moderate sleepiness. People scoring in this range should be concerned that their sleepiness may be interfering with their daily activities, concentration, relationships, and so on. (FYI: People receiving treatment for obstructive sleep apnea score usually about 11.7.) A nap will be an essential tool for the creation and maintenance of a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

I thought it was interesting and so passed it along. Check it out if you like.
http://www.takeanap.info

New posts

I have a lot of new posts on my blog. Check them out!!!

My Dad suggested to his kids that they use their extra tax returns that we should shortly be getting to build up their food storage. Then I found this article on Yahoo! this morning and thought that it probably was an idea to pay heed to. I think it's interesting that the reason for food storage might be because we won't be able to afford to buy food, not that it won't be available. I never would've thought that.
So I'm passing on the idea and hope you might consider it too.

Load Up the Pantry
by Brett ArendsWednesday, April 23, 2008 provided by Wall Street Journal Online

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.

Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.

The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.

A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.

You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.

If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.

The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.

The bullies are back

Lexi had another run in with a couple of the bullies who have bugged her in the past. She has been telling me that they have continued to bug her since that last big run in but not as bad. Yesterday, however, one of them asked her what she would do if she hit Lexi and then another one actually hit Lexi in the back of the head while Lexi was turned around. Now the girl claims it was an accident, but Lexi doesn't believe her. So I called the principal today and left a message with the one girl's mom. I don't have the other girl's phone number and the principal can't give it to me. I haven't heard back yet from the mom.

Lexi said she talked to the school social worker today and that the other two girls did too. The principal told me that if the girls touched Lexi again that she would suspend them. I might have to get the police involved, but the principal said they usually won't do anything unless things happen off school grounds. I'm pretty frustrated with the whole thing. I wish they would just leave her alone. They don't have to like her, but just ignore her. If they continue I might just pull her out of school and home school her for the rest of the year. Unfortunately they have escalated to threatening her personal safety and I won't keep her in a place where she can't be safe.

School's Out for Summer!!!!!

I just finished taking my last final and now I am done with school until the fall. I am so excited to not be taking any classes this spring or summer! I got a second job and I will be starting it tomorrow morning at 4am. That's right, I said 4 am and I will be working until 8am. This job is also custodial work but it is at the MTC. I am not excited to be working so early in the morning but I am excited that it is the MTC. So my plan is to sleep for about 5 hours after I get home from my night job then go to my early morning job, then come home and sleep for a few more hours. The tricky part will being able to find time to have somewhat of a social life. My main goal for the summer is to not die of exhaustion. I get tired just thinking about waking up so early in the morning, it is going to be a long summer.

2 YEARS!

It is still Sunday here in Utah, which means it is April 20th. I have been home from my mission for 2 years now. It is so hard to believe, the time has really just flown by! Well, on to a different subject. Finals are this week and I think that I will do fairly well on them. But still wish me luck.

Jelly Bellies

We went on a little family excursion today to the local Jelly Belly factory. It's about 20 minutes south of us and they do free tours of the factory. All you really see is their warehouse and they drive you around in this little train and have you watch different videos that explain the process of making jelly beans and other candies. It was interesting to me, but not as much for the kids. They liked riding on the train though. We each got a hat to wear too, which our kids liked. At the end of the tour they hand out thank you bags with jelly bellies in them and then you exit our through their gift store (nice planning huh?). It's amazing the stuff they have in there. Overall it was a fun FREE family thing that the kids enjoyed for the most part. Here are some pictures of us.

This is us waiting in line. There was actually quite a few people there.
This is us with our hats on the train.

This is the kids standing by the train engine. I know it's kind of dark, sorry.

Hannah, what's the news?!?!?!

So Mom told me that you went to see a movie at a boy's house this passed weekend. Give us the scoop! Was it a "date" or not?

Another weekend in Michigan

Well we went back to Michigan for a weekend to take care of the van we wrecked. Because this weekend was stake conference for us, we took advantage of not having any Sunday responsiblities and went. Charlie took Friday off from work and we took the kids out of school and left Thursday after school. We bought another aerostar off of Ebay and needed some parts from our wrecked van for the new one. Charlie worked most of Friday to switch the parts. He did a really good job for one who doesn't know much about cars. The biggest job was swapping the mufflers and he did great. Then we took the wrecked van to Charlie's parents' house. They said we could keep it there for a little while. We are hoping to hang on to it in case we need other parts from it. Charlie actually drove the wrecked van to their house, on the expressway and all. We were impressed with how well it drove. In fact, Charlie's dad might use it to drive back and forth to work instead of using his truck which guzzles gas. When we got back to Mom and Dad's house we noticed the stering wheel was whining real bad. Charlie popped the hood and found the engine sprayed by something that we assumed was power steering fluid. So we called Walkers where Dad takes his cars and explained that we needed the car by Sunday to go home with. They fit us in on Saturday morning and found it to be a hose from the power steering pump had come off. They replaced it and it was good. Then we were driving the van to Flint that afternoon and the van started to wobble. So we took it to Muffler Man in Flint and they balanced the tires and it was good again. Man, I didn't plan on having to take our van in to be fixed so many times while on vacation. It was a pain. It's a decent van overall and the inside is so much roomier than the van we bought from Mom and Dad. It was nice to not have to cram everything for a trip inside.

We enjoyed being back to see family though, and we accomplished what we needed to. We are still considering moving back to Michigan. I'd like for Charlie to have a job though, so we'll see what happens. We are praying for guidance.

New post

I have some new post on my blog!!!!! Sorry, I don't feel like retyping it.

Something funny

I was just looking at the blog and something funny happened I thought I'd share with you. Charlie is sitting next to me and he let a really bad smelling fart go, really, really smelly. Jaxson is sitting on his lap and when he smelled the fart he tried to pull his shirt up over his nose but couldn't get it up there and said, "Please help me," to Charlie to get help getting his shirt over his nose to find relief from the stench! We all laughed and I thought maybe you would to.

My sister's baby

Here is a picture of my beautiful sister Lisa and her new baby boy Jacob.

I've seen it all!

No joke, I opened up Yahoo! yesterday to check my email. The home page normally has short tid bits of news stories. Every once in a while one or two will catch my eye and I'll read the whole story. Yesterday the story that caught my eye was about a pregnant MAN! No joke! I read the rest of the story, it wasn't long though, about a transvesdike (spelling?) man who is 6 months pregnant. He claims his wife had a hysterectomy (spelling?) and can't have kids or he wouldn't have gone through with this. He is legally a man but has a uterus. How weird is that? If you want to check it out, the story I read was at People.com.

Our family challenge

So during fast and testimony meeting on Sunday a woman from the ward got up and bore her testimony about how her family had unplugged their TV for 4 weeks. They got the idea from an article in the ensign a couple of months ago. She talked about how different her kids acted toward one another and how much better they got along. She figured it was because they actually had to do things together to entertain themselves. She loved the ways she found to fill her time up, mostly being with her kids more and doing things with them. So Merrit turned to me and said maybe we should try that. So Charlie and I talked about it and introduced the idea at FHE lastnight. We decided to start today and go to the end of the month. Alexis complained the loudest and said there is nothing to do around her if we turn the TV off. So Charlie has turned our challenge into a scientific experiment: to prove or disprove Lexi's statement. We'll let you know how it goes. I think it may just be the hardest on me. I like to turn the TV on at night to decompress after the day. I guess maybe I just might start to read more (which is not me).