Our new pool and stuff about my job

Last week it started to look like we weren't going to be able to buy our house. The underwriters decided that they weren't going to count Erick's income from the church because they didn't want to count the signed statement from the board as proof of income. We finally got that figured out, but had to reapply for the loan since they had denied it. They've also required a few piddly repairs to the house, which we've finished and we're just waiting for the appraiser to come back and say it's all good. Anyway, in the process of all this, the closing costs were recalculated and are much less than we thought they were going to be.

Since we had some extra money that we'd put back for the closing, and since most of the public swimming pools and beaches around this area have closed down (an accidentally drowning death prompted a new law specifying safety features that a lot of pools just can't afford to implement), we decided to buy a pool for the kids. I bought it off Walmart.com and got an 18 foot pool for $199. I'm pretty sure we paid more than that for the smaller Easy-Set pool we had a few years ago when we were at Shiloh.

So the kids have been having a blast with the pool. The water isn't warm enough for me to try it out yet, but maybe soon.

In other news, we are thinking of trying out the Civil Air Patrol for the older kids. We have to attend a few meetings first before they can join to see if it's right for us, but according to the website, they would have the opportunity to fly an airplane. There seems to be a lack of good homeschool groups in this area, so this might be something we could do instead.

At work, I had an interview the other day for department manager at the pharmacy, and I'm supposed to interview soon for another CSM position. There weren't any CSM positions opened when I transferred so technically I'm at the service desk, but I've been doing a lot of CSMing and cashiering as well as service desk.

I'm also trying to get on at the State of Illinois. The government jobs pay quite well here. Of course, I'm also still looking for jobs in the communication field, since that's what my degree will be in when I graduate this fall (woohoo!) I only have one more Spanish class, my capstone communication class, and I'm also taking Intro to the Animal Kingdom to fulfill my last science requirement.

But I'd better go. They are going to watch The Amazing Spiderman without me if I don't.

My new china cabinet

Today we got a beautiful china cabinet for our house. A couple from our church were getting a new dining room suite and gave us their old one. It's really pretty, and even lights up. Here's a not-so-great picture of it. (Since the patio door is opposite it and it's a really bright day, I had trouble getting the lighting right. It's also just a smidge blurry.)

I wasn't really sure what to put in it at first. I've never owned fine china. I do have eight plates that match for special occasions like Christmas, but they aren't even fancy plates. There really isn't much point in trying to obtain fine china when you have kids, in my opinion.

But I had to put something in it. I do have a little figurine that was my Grandma Haley's. It's a little girl who holds a spool of thread in her hands, wears a pincushion hat, and carries a pair of scissors in her porcelain pocket. I was fascinated with her when I was a little girl. When she was in Grandma's care, she never got dusty, but since I've had her the scissors and thread have both disappeared and she hides dust in the creases of her dress. Still, she reminds me of my Grandma, and I love her even though Grandma would be probably not be happy with the way I've cared for her.

I also added a couple of small buildings fashioned from scrapbooking paper. Joy made these for school. One is a pueblo and the other is St. Basil's Cathedral. She's very talented with her hands and has a great eye for detail.

I also added various pictures of family members--my family singing Handel's Messiah, another of most of my siblings and my parents striking a silly pose in their winter coats, a lovely portrait of Grandpa and Grandma Robertson (Erick's maternal grandparents) and his parents with his younger siblings that still live at home.

On the top shelf I put plates that my kids made for homeschool co-op last year. It was a Pinterest project involving Sharpies on plain dishes, then baked. They aren't as fancy as fine china, but since I know the artists personally, they are a lot more special.

I haven't filled the drawers or bottom cabinets yet, but I think that school books are going to go underneath. I may eventually just turn the whole thing into a display for school projects.

Our new house (with video blog)

I decided to make a video blog about our new house this time. Right now we are renting the house we are living in, but we are in the process of purchasing it. Enjoy my video!

My sister's wedding and other misc. things

Good morning! I am taking a few minutes to update my blog, because I promised I wouldn't get so far behind again.

Last week we went back to Indiana for my sister Susie's wedding. It was so sweet.

While we were there, we also picked up our van, which was in the shop because it had died two days before we moved. The guy had called and said it was finished while we were on the way to the wedding.

Last week I spent most of my free time switching all of the accounts that were set up on automatic bill pay to come out of our new account instead of our old one, as well as catching up grading from Jay and Joy's high school. Jay is behind on his again, because I don't think he did anything the entire month of April. So he's not allowed on his iPod until he finished his schoolwork.

I picked up a bunch of extra hours at work, because they were still scheduling me on my old availability. I had cut it down to only sixteen hours last semester because of my internship, and somehow it didn't get changed even though I had said I could work anytime except Sunday mornings. I was starting to get kind of worried when I wasn't hardly getting any hours, but now that that's taken care of, I should get plenty.

Today we are going to visit with some new friends we met at Illinois District Council. They have kids about the same ages as ours, and they homeschool, too. They just recently took a church about a half hour from us, which is one of the churches that Erick had applied to. (He was their second choice.)

So, I think that's about it for now.