Heard at our house this afternoon.

Emily: "Mom guess what?!"

Me: What?

Emily: I got my imagination back from the pirates!!!

Arrrrgh!!!

Feeling better in some ways.

Trying not to be frustrated in other ways.

The bank refunded all but one charge.

This means I can still take Aly on our trip this weekend. It's just a back roads photography trip with one overnight stay. But it's huge to her. We get to travel slowly,stop frequently and take pictures together. Z will be there too of course. We will have packed lunches and snacks and hopefully take lots of great pictures and laugh lots of great laughs. I am grateful we get to go. We have to say no so often.  I was devestated for her when it looked like it wasn't going to happen.

A new journey has begun.

I asked myself two days ago. "What if everything I think I know about God is wrong? What if what I have been taught totally missed the essence of God? What would it hurt to empty out what I think I know and begin to search again?"

So yesterday I checked out the book "Conversations With God"

12pages in and I knew the questions the day before were the right ones to ask.

The new journey has begun.

The problems are financial. They are always financial. They have been for 14years. It seems that no matter what we do we are always the ones in need.

I'm exhausted. I'm tired of playing the game.

I'm tired of hearing the Christian answers to our problems because quite frankly right now I think they are a load of crap.

We have done what we are supposed to do.

We took a better paying job and we were paying off debt and paying cash for things. We didn't spend more than we could make.

That job was taken from us due to restructuring of the company. My husband wasn't the only person to lose his job.

We kept the faith, my husband even bought us a plaque that had some spiritual saying on it that was, at that time very encouraging.

Since then we have lost 20K in salary, been cheated by two Christian companies and now we work for a small company where it's the owner and my husband that are the designers.

No one is buying landscaping right now because of the economy. It's May. By May in a landscaping company you are usually full till fall and then by June you are into the first part of the next season.

No sales means no commission. His salary isn't enough. We accumulated debt in order to live not buy a tv.If someone is let go it will be my husband.

And see in all of this I am trying to see how this is good for our family. How I should be thankful for always being the one in need. For always needing help. For being the poor ones in the family who just don't know how to stop having kids.

What's really funny is that the bottom three have only increased our food bill. I haven't had to buy clothes for any of them since they were born. I use cloth diapers, I nurse them until they can "ask" for it.

I'm frugal till my head hurts. We work to keep our errands to the same day during the week. I shop Goodwill, consignment, garage sales etc.

I don't want a hand out, or a bail out. I just want to be back in the position we were in when we were in Georgia. I want to be able to help someone else. Even when we were making good money we still did Goodwill, consignment etc. That won't change because that's just the way we do things.

Then due to a banking error we are overdrawn in our account and of course the fees snowball quickly. So now I have had to take money that I had for dental work and the money for a photography trip I had planned with Aly this weekend and put it in the bank in hopes of keeping us from having more fees than we have paycheck.

I'm angry, very angry.

I'm tired of the struggle.

My kids are scared.

I'm scared.

And my husband is just about as depressed as I am.

We have resumes out.

We hear nothing.

The only thing that is good right now is my marriage and our relationship with our kids.

I'm tired of watching dishonest people continually get ahead. I see people who lie and cheat and steal from their customers, their family and their friends and they always have what they need financially.

Like I said before I don't care what is going to happen after this life. I care what happens to me and my family this side of heaven. Here, where you can't eat for free and where being the good guy is a bunch of bull shit.

So there you have it.

I do appreciate the care and concern. I'm sorry if I scared anyone. It wasn't my intent. I am just done.

I'm tired of hearing "God will bless if you tithe." or "God is your provider." or "Look what Job went through." I'm sorry for what Job went through, I think I would die if I lost a child. But I'm not Job and his story really doesn't do anything to get the bills paid and get us to a place of enough.

Right now I don't think that God cares and I really feel that life if about who you know and a whole lot of luck thrown in with some out right dishonesty.

 I QUIT!!!!

Screw the economy, screw life, screw God.

I haven't blogged in a while because I just don't feel like it.

Right now the financial aspect of life just sucks and it doesn't look like it is going to get any better.

I'm tired of being in this place.

I'm tired of thinking things are getting better only to be knocked down.

I'm really tired of hearing that things will work out.

We have always been in a place of need and the one time it looked like we were finally crawling out of a hole we got that rug snatched out from under us.

I hate watching crooked people who don't believe in a God or even just treating people right, continue to gain in life.

And please don't tell me that they will get their's in the end because even though I do believe in a heaven and a hell that doesn't make me feel better now while I am in the midst of this.

It is May and Jorry hasn't had a sale of a job yet. Neither has his boss. Guess who will get the axe if they need to cut back?

One customer said to come pick up a check and then called the very next day to cancel the whole project.

Another customer called and said they wouldn't be able to do anything. When the market took the plunge in response to the stimulis plan another customer called to say that they wouldn't be able to do anything because they lost half their retirement.

Now I hear that if this cap and trade junk gets pushed through then our state will be one of the hardest hit. Our family would see a $3900.oo a year increase in our utilities.

But wait we are getting that extra $11 a week in my husbands check that should help.

It's not about being able to buy clothes from a department store or to have a new vehicle.

We shop consignment and goodwill and we did so even when we were making the good money in GA.

We were also snowballing our debt and our van is paid off.

It's about being able to pay our bills on time. It's about having a job where we can make ends meet with out depending on assistance.

I don't want to be here anymore. I'm tired of always needing help. I want to be able to offer the help.

We are good people and yet for some reason we don't seem to count enough.

FO= finished objects

Pictures of Z's wool longies. She looks super cute in them.

I found a pattern for this kidlet bag and was so excited to start making some.

Our space is small, a little over 1,000sq ft. plus a garage. I don't count the garage as in the square footage because it isn't livable space. It's great for storage though. 

Since our space is small I have to be creative about storage. I am always looking for ways to store things off the ground and on the walls. The kidlet bag is prefect for that. This first one will hold my most used recipe books on the wall in the kitchen. This will free up counter space which is at a minimum.

The next ones I make will be for the toys in the living room that doubles as the play room. I am always decluttering so we don't have a lot of things but what we do have between three little girls uses four baskets that sit on the floor. I have silks that can go in one, musical instruments in another etc and then they will hang on inexpensive hooks at easy to reach heights around the livingroom. The fabric will come from my stash and the only expense in making these is the interfacing and the cotton webbing.

For the most part my hands are always busy and it usually has to do with children. However I am really good at finding time to busy my hand with other things that I enjoy.

A soaker for my friend L's brand new baby girl E.

My first embroidery attempt

My first pair of wool longies for Z. I will have pics of them finished another time. They aren't downloaded on the computer and I am not going in the bedroom to risk waking the littles to get the USB cord.

I started those longies 5 different times. Thought I would never get them done! Thanks Pam for helping with the legs!

Fingerless gloves for SiSi. She waited so very patiently for these and now wears them all the time.

One of the fingerless gloves for Aly. She might wear them more if she could keep up with them.

Cloth napkins from my fabric stash. My mom sent me a big box of fabric she managed to get at an estate sale for free. This fabric was in there and while reading the Sew Mama Sew blog during their fat quarter idea month I found a tutorial for cloth napkins. Now I know napkins are not hard but I like having a pattern to follow for most of the things I do. And here is the result.

My soul has been longing for spring for what seems like a very long time. I know most of you will understand that feeling. Now that it is here I feel like a heavy burden has been lifted.

With the nicer weather four of my five girls and I have gone on a couple of walks down a path that runs through our town. It was great to be out getting some exercise in. I wear Z on my back, Ace rides in the stroller and Emi and SiSi ride their bikes.

We have also spent a lot of time out in the back yard soaking up the beautiful rays of sun. We have ben running, skipping, jumping, playing with finger puppets and even warding off pirates.

Ahhhhhhh!

I really think it is totally unfair that each child does not come with an owners manual.

I also think that it is totally unfair that when you think you have them figured out they go through a hormonal shift and all that you thought you knew is out the window.

I also think that you should recieve a life time supply of chocolate, caffine, or whatever is your legal fix, at the birth of your first child. So that when you are trying to figure out this individual who has no owners manual and changes at the drop of a hat you can at least lock yourself in a closet with your fix and pretend that everything is ok.

 I am writing this blog so that when I am old and gray I can come back here and read about the speed in which Zoe has been growing. I keep looking for the pause button but she only seems to have a fast forward.

In a week and a half she went from being up on her hands and knees and doing the belly flop crawl and working on her first tooth to crawling non stop, sitting up on her own, cutting not one, but two teeth, pulling up and saying da da da da da.

Woah Nelly!

She brings smiles to all of us everyday. She is like a drop of sunshine. I watch her older sister's bad moods melt away with just a flash of her sweet smile.

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.
~Angela Schwindt