THANKFULNESS

I am going to start writing something everyday that I'm thankful until thanksgiving so that I will think about it. There are only eight days till Thanksgiving so I will count up each day, so today is number one.

FRIENDS

My Friends are so fun! Every day at school we always have fun. When ever I'm with my firends I always forget everything I was worrying about earlier. My friends always make me Smile. If I could get everyone to do one thing each day it would be to Smile. :D

More Unemployment

During the past year, our family has experienced more unemployment.
Lee and JP are the only people who are employed.
Lee quit assisting our neighbor installing blinds. Soon he started working with another man in the ward settting up audio visual equipment for short term meetings.
That started as a 1 time trip to California, and then another 1 time trip. Eventually, they had him working nearly full time, but Lee was still working for the wheat shop. He did not want to quit either job, so he found friends who would work part time and job share with him. Lee's job sharing has been a blessing to both of those boys. Now not only is Lee a granola bagger, but also a baker and eventually has become the manager over all the granola. He is also still doing the audio visual job.
JP's job has not changed, however he would really like to be working in downtown Salt Lake instead of up the canyon at the Vault. If he worked downtown, he could ride the bus to work and Marie would not have to be home without a car.
At the end of the school year, Marie decided that she did not want to continue teaching the orchestra at the charter school. She is now teaching many violin students.
John came back from BYU Idaho in December and since he was "off track", he went back to work at Robinson Armament. Things were going great. He was made the shift supervisor and he was very happy until his supervisor decided to take a job elsewhere. They hired a new foreman and things went downhill from there until John (as well as most of his co-workers) was let go in June. He didn't mind too much since he wanted to finish working on his porsche before he left on his mission.
Emily finished at BYU Idaho in April and went on tour with the Jazz band and Jazz choir to Southern California. Immediately upon returning, she started working as a flower girl for Bountiful City (again). She was very appreciative of that job. She was glad that they were willing to hire her immediately when she wanted to start and give her full time hours and allow her to leave when it was time for her mission. But all good things must make way for other good things.
Rick is still unemployed. He has tried a few non engineering enterprises but none have paid much money. We are still trying to figure out what is the right thing to do for him and for our family.

passports

Our family will be doing a lot of traveling this year, so we needed to get our passports in order.
Julianna and Angela are going to visit their cousins in Canada this summer. They have been very excited ever since we booked their flights. So in January, they started getting interested in getting their passports. Since it had been only about a year since I had helped Lee renew his passport, I remembered most of the information about where to get photos and the application. We took the girls to Inkley's to get their passport photos. That was done in a flash. Then we went to the post office to turn in the application. Woops, you need an appointment to turn it in at the post office. But we could do it at the county without an appointment and the office would be open for another hour. We were able to get the girls passports ordered in one afternoon. It felt so good. And their passports came back in about a month.
Emily had a current passport, so we didn't need to worry about getting her a passport.
Then John found out he would be needing a passport this year also.
Now, since we will have 2 children out of the country, Rick and I are considering renewing our passports since they have both expired. It seems that a passport is a pretty important thing.