Here We Are

This is our official family photo for our adoption application. Not bad for grabbing someone after church and saying, "Will you take our picture?"

VACATION
We just got back from our "mini-vacation". We went to Crossville for a week. Tim's folks have a trailor at Fairfield Glade, and his sister lives in Crossville. So we spent the week sleeping at FG and spending almost every waking moment with Beth and her family. One surprising moment was when we took the kids to the pool, and I met a lady there with her husband and 3 daughters. As she put it, one daughter was "home grown", one was from China, and one was from the Philippines. The youngest (from the Philippines) had just turned 2 the day before and had been home for 1 year. They were so precious.

YARD SALE
The yard sale begins this weekend! We are planning to be open Friday and Saturday this weekend as well as Friday and Saturday of next weekend. We have a lot of stuff, but if you have any items you would like to donate, that would be great. Let us know so we can plan to pick it up or be here for you to drop it off. In addition to actual yard sale items, we are going to have our pizza cards (more later), and I still want to have snacks like maybe candy bars and bottled water. Anyone have a suggestion on that?

PIZZA CARDS
If you like pizza (especially Papa John's), you've got to get one of our pizza cards. We decided to claim one as our own and use it while we were in Crossville. Yes, they honored it. We can officially say these are accepted outside of the Murfreesboro area. We saved $11.38 (for a large 1-topping). The card already paid for itself. Let's see...if you got the same free large 1-topping each time for the full 20 uses of the card, you would save $227.60. After subtracting the $10 you spent for the card, you would come out ahead $217.60. Not bad! If you don't live nearby, we would be more than happy to mail them to you. See if you can sell a few at work or in your neighborhood.

JOBS
I'm still seeking bookkeeping clients. My babysitting career will be ending soon, so I need to replace the income. Tim is still seeking laminate jobs. We are going to meet with someone tonight to look at his house and talk about doing his floors. Hopefully, this time things will go well, and we will actually be able to lay this floor.

NEW PRAYER REQUESTS

• Pray for Tim as the new school year begins. He isn't sure if he needs to stay in teaching or find something else. We are praying through this now but could always use a few more warriors on our side. On one hand, public schools need Christian men in them (and the kids love him) and being unemployed all summer allows him extra time with his family, especially for taking trips. On the other hand the stress is taking a toll on his health, he has almost no time for family from August through May, and the expectations handed down to him are humanly impossible to meet 100%. Tim has such integrity and such a strong work ethic that he gets all the extra assignments that the "slackers" don't do. It seems easy to say, "Well, quit. Go do something else." But when his income is by far our main source of income, it would be difficult for him to walk into a total different field and start out at the same level of income (even if it is just a teacher's salary to begin with). He wants to be where God wants him, but he would also like to love his work and not stress about it.