My Parents

My parents are what some people would call old fashioned or strict parents. Some people would call them run of the mill, ordinary parents. But I know quite a few people who would call them kind, caring, wonderful people.
My parents work as chaplains at our local meat packing plant. They also are life boat captains at our church (which is just another way to say they lead our small group on Wednesdays), and my dad also works at the youth center (A.K.A juvie). As you can tell they are pretty busy people. Both of them are also going back to college to get a degree in psychology so they can become licensed counselors. They work hard to earn the money that we need to support a family of five.

Their job as chaplains involves listening to people when they need to talk, helping people find community resources to help them with things like food, money, or clothes. They make hospital visits and go to weddings and funerals. Sometimes my dad writes columns to put on the bulletin boards for people to read. My mom also takes people to doctors appointments and things like that if they do not have transportation. It is a very versatile job.

My dad's job at the youth center is to just be there and watch the kids. I am not really sure what all he does because he only recently started it.

As small group leaders they study the Bible with a group of friends that come over once a week. Everyone eats and they talk. Really this isn't a job, it's more of just being a friend.

Whatever they do they work hard at. I appreciate them working for us and for making sure that we have the things we need.

school and work

So this week I started school. It's going ok. I'm glad Aunt Laura is teaching us this year because I'm pretty sure if she wasn't I wouldn't be getting any school work done this year. No offense to my parents but they can't seem to be able to check up on our school work whenever they are supposed to be teaching us. It was getting annoying. Hopefully I'll get caught up this year. And even if I do get mostly caught up I'm probably going to have to do school in the summer. Ugh!
I'm working this week also. If doing school and working gets to be too much then I'm going to quit working. School is more important right now. Today is really slow though, so I'm doing school in between answering the phone. And tonight my dad will hopefully be home, so maybe he can help me with math. Because that is most definiatly my worst subject. I probably should get back to work now.

No Air conditioning!!

So this week has defiantly been interesting ( to say the least). Uncle Steve has been seriously stressed out with the 2 weddings this week. Both of them are tomorrow. Hopefully the bride's will like the flowers because Uncle Steve and Rheana worked really hard on them. Today was kind of not fun cause the air conditioning was out in the shop. it was like 90 degrees in there!! Plus we had most of the flowers out of the cooler so they could see what they had. it felt like we were in the tropics with the humidity and the heat. It was awful! Thankfully the cooler was still working so whenever i got too hot i just went and stood in there for a while. It's 40 degrees so it felt gooood. But besides that it wasn't bad. I'm slowly learning more about how to deal with customers. I haven't messed up anything major...yet. ha ha. It would help if he would put prices on things!!!!! That's the only big problem i have. Cause i have no clue how much most things cost. I don't know how to price an arrangement. It's kind of complicated because it depends on what flowers are in it and how many of them there are in the arrangement. It's defiantly confusing! Tomorrow is our bball teams car wash. I pray we raise a lot of money. It would really help out, especially if we go to nationals again this year. I think the Varsity guys might be going this year too. That would be kind of cool. We'll just have to see. :)

Going crazy

So this week is absolutely crazy! Bobby is off camping with Mikey and Joey until Friday so I'm helping Uncle Steve in the flower shop all week. Things are crazy there. We have to big weddings on Saturday and a TON of funeral work! Apparently somebody really popular died because we have 13 orders for his funeral alone! So Uncle Steve is having to stay late tonight and do all those orders because he has to have them at the funeral by 1 tomorrow. It's crazy! And Today doing deliveries was fun. Two of the service elevators at BSA aren't working so by the time i got told that and figured out that the only one working was REALLY slow i had wasted 5 minutes. Then i got on the visitor elevators which are way faster. But the first delivery i had, the person wasn't there any more. So then i went to make the other one only to discover i had dropped the bow somewhere. So i called Uncle Steve and he found on the ground outside of the van. So I left the plant at the reception desk and went down and left the other delivery at the van and took the card back up. Then i found out it was in the new wing. But the nice nurse offered to take it over there for me because she was going that. I was so thankful for that. The rest of the time at the shop i was busy sweeping and taking boxes ans stuff out to the dumpster because we got a lot of orders in. *sighs* it was hectic. Tomorrow I'm Babysitting and Aunt Laura is going to help uncle Steve by taking deliveries after Kaytie's gymnastics. It will definitely be an interesting day and rest of the week. Oh and on Saturday I have a car wash for our basketball team ( it's at Chick Fil A the one by the walmart come by if you need your car washed!) the same day as the weddings. So bobby is going to have to help Uncle Steve with those. and then later that night we have to go to some kind of reach team thing. fun. I'm probably going to be so tired I'll fall asleep during it.

Flowers and Life

So i went to work today and learned a spiritual lesson. Uncle Steve was teaching me how to design an arrangement. I was a little nervous because i was afraid that i would mess up so badly he'd have to throw away the flowers ( i'm not very good at cutting the steams). So while i was trying to design a thought came to me " as long as i do the arrangement from the instructions he gives me it will turn out alright." And then i realized how true that is in life. If we only would follow God's instructions then everything would turn out alright. But so many times we try to design our lives the way we think they should be. when really the way we are designing it, it will fall apart in a few hours. Just like arrangements. If you don't put the flowers in right then the flowers will start falling out and then you have a big mess. I've made a lot of "designing errors" in my life. So many times I've tried to do something my way and then watch it fall apart. But then when i do it God's way, it's so much better. Who knew that you could learn something from flowers?

Ear pierced!

Today i got my ears pierced. YAY!!! It's pretty cool. It hurt when she first put it in my ear. But after about a minute the pain went away and it was ok. Getting them pierced was more expensive than we thought though. I thought that it was only going to be $14 because i'd seen promotional signs around the store before. So i agreed to pay $7, and my parents would pay $7. But as it turns out it was $38!!! So my parents wound up paying $31. Which kind of shocked us. We should've asked first how much it cost. But by that time my ears were all ready pierced, so it was too late. At least they're pierced now.
Bobby and I have been working at Zelsman's Florist for my Uncle Steve. We trade off days. We sweep the floors, scrub buckets, clean out the cooler, deliver flowers ( he drives we take the flowers in) and do whatever else needs to be done. It's a pretty good job. We get paid $10 a day. Which is more than i've ever been paid for a job. I'm learning a lot about flowers. They have the weirdest names! I can't even spell or pronounce most of them. You'd think they would name them something everyone can remember, but nooo! They have to think of THE most complicated names possible! Like on blooming plant names nepthitis. Who's going to rememember that?! The only reason i remember what's called is because it's a pretty popular plant and Uncle Steve uses it a lot.
I'll try to write more often now, but no promises!

Work

So lately I've been trying to decide where to apply for a job. I'm definitely NOT interested in fast food. I have some friends that work at McDonald's and they absolutely hate it. So i don't know if i want to apply somewhere at the mall or the library. They both have pros and cons but they are still way better that fast food. But since my uncle has offered my a job doing random stuff for him i don't think I'll worry about it too much. I'm soooooo enthused that Courtney gets to come! And it's only going to cost $232 for a round trip airplane ticket! We already have half that much. But Donations are accepted, we'll take checks but cash is preferable.