When it rains

Rob and I feel like our life the past couple of weeks has been one of those "when it rains, it pours" times!

First off - our business. .. After a lot of sleepless nights, prayers, fasting, anxiety, frustration, discussion, and some tears .. we have decided to sell our portion of the business to Rob's partner (who is still not one of my favorite people). We are going to take a bit of a loss but it's at least a recoverable one. And we really feel like it's the right thing to do! It's not really fair how it is all ending out but I guess that's just life. Rob should be home more and should be happier now that he is not waking up at 4:30 a.m. every morning with people yelling at him and hopefully won't be working 12 hour days anymore either. We are very disenchanted with the construction industry in general and then owning our own business. And Rob is ready to have a job with regular paychecks (instead of having to fight for our money from people that he's done work for), have more of our benefits paid for, paid vacation/sick days, etc. So now we are on the job hunt! If you know of any good jobs in the Phoenix area - keep us posted. For now we feel blessed that he is able to work with his brother until we find something a little more permanent!

To add to our fun stuff going on lately - Rob's truck decided not to work! Rob was worried it was a whole engine problem but lucky for us it was just a water pump and something else. Still not a cheap repair but considering our luck as of late, I fully expected us to have to replace the whole engine. Another blessing for the week was that his brother was out of town the days that our truck was in the shop and we were able to borrow his vehicle.

We decided to have a garage sale on Saturday morning and get rid of a bunch of stuff in our house and maybe make a little extra cash. I've had a goal the whole summer to get rid of a lot of excess items in the house and have made monthly trips to DI to donate things. But we had a few bigger items so it was the right time for a garage sale. Anyway - I made a bunch of very large signs to post on the major streets to let people know that we were having a sale. And I put an ad on Craigslist.com. We made a little bit of money but it was overall a slow traffic day. Rob went to go and pick up our signs and we figured out a big reason why people never made it to our house . .. when you turn into my neighborhood you can either go straight or take a left. We live on the part that you go straight. Well people that lived on the left turn street were having a garage sale too and had used our signs to point people in their direction!! Just our luck, huh?

My aunt that has lung cancer isn't doing very well and the doctors/hospice nurse don't really have much hope at this point. We went to see her today and to see my cousins Jed & Steffani and their new baby Alyssa (and other daughter Hailey) and it was depressing. It just brings back too many memories of how my mom looked towards the end of her life. It's been hard for me to go over and visit the last few months because of this! Not to mention there is just a feeling of helplessness because there is not much to do at this point but pray for her comfort.

After having breakfast with my relatives this morning - we headed off to Stake Conference. We were able to sit in one the side rooms which was really good since Ellie was just having a rough time and not wanting to sit still (I can't imagine how it is going to be when she can really move around). I went to feed and change her and while I was changing her very full diaper - she decided she wasn't quite done and peed all over herself and her dress!! Just my luck. She had a really cute dress on but off that came and on went the spare onesie that I had thankfully remembered to grab before we left the house this morning.

Oh and can I mention how unbelievably HOT it still is here?! I think my air conditioning in my car needs some working on because it takes a good 20 minutes to get good and cold. But I keep thinking it's almost the end of this heat so we can hold off on getting that one looked at (not to mention the money that it would take to do that). I'm getting really sick of being holed up in my house most of the week since it's too hot to go anywhere and when I do leave the house I just want to spend money!!

It's definitely been an event-filled last few weeks. But the best thing about going through trials - is that you appreciate and notice any sort of blessings! So for that we are both very grateful.

I think I have written enough for today! This is basically my journal so I needed to write this all out. I will leave you with one picture of Ellie in her sundress with the matching hat. It makes her cheeks look even chubbier!