Praise The Lord!

It's been a LONG 17 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days (but who's counting) since Bryan was laid off from Gould Evans. But today, Bryan has received a full-time job offer from AWG to design their grocery stores!



There were many times over the past year and a half that I cried myself to sleep, wondering "why is this happening?", "how were were going to be able to pay all our bills?" At times I even started to question God's faithfullness. I know He says that he will never give us more than we can handle, but He sure does like to push us the edge. And now as I look back, I fully realize my ignorance and can see that He was always there with us and never let us fall flat on our faces.



For example:



When Bryan was first laid off in October of 2008, we didn't have much in our savings. We invested a lot of it into our new house. But as we rang in 2009, Bryan started to receive a lot of contract work. With every check we received, we kept adding to the months that we could survive. But as summer rolled around, the work and the checks stopped coming in. He was able to get a litte temporary job doing lake patrol at a nearby development. While this didn't help our finances all that much, it did keep Bryan from going insane from cabin fever. But that job would end in September and we would be back to square one. Our bank account was nearly depleted, we put our house on the market, and wondered just how we were going to pay our next mortgage bill. But just when we were at our wits end, one of Bryan's friends helped him procure a job at Brinks as an armored courier. The pay was so-so. He worked a lot of overtime which allowed us to pay all our bills, but that also meant time away from his family. As we rolled into 2010, a large contract opportunity came into play. We were faced with a decision. Does Bryan quit the security (and benefits) of Brinks or do we sacrifice part of the fee to farm out some of the drafting work. We chose the latter, but his other job soon started to become unbearable. There had been several robberies along his route - one of which he missed by mear minutes. He was risking his life for a mear$13/hour. It soon came to the point where he just couldn't take it anymore and quit. This was a very tough decision for us. Instead of being forced to be jobless, he's taking it upon himself. But what made it easier is that because of this latest contract job, we had a lot more money in the bank to get us by for at least 6 months. Well, wouldn't you know, the day after his last day at Brinks, he gets a call from a recruiter to come in for an interview. And now 4 interviews later, they are offering him the position. The benefits are great and the salary is nearly what he was making at Gould Evans.



So I thank God for all that he has blessed us with during the time of Bryan's "unemployment" - even though I may not have taken note of it at them time. I am also grateful for all those who prayed for us during these tough times. We are truly blessed to have such great friends and family.

Tiger Surprise

My work has season tickets to the Royals and every so often, they'll raffle off the tickets at the last minute. I always put my name in the drawing, but I never win. Well yesterday I WON! And it just happened to be for a Tiger game. The seats are really great - 5 rows behind 3rd base (plus a parking pass). Unfortunately, the weather wasn't quite as great. It rained during the first 3 innings, then was cold and windy for the rest of the game. The first 8 innings were pretty boring. Only the Royals had scored in the 7th. Then in the 9th, Cabrera hit the foul pole for a home run which tied it up (it looked questionable from our angle.) While I was excited that we were back in the game, it forced us to go into extra innings. 10th inning - no score. Top of the 11th - Guillen hits an RBI to put the Tigers up by 1. Now it's the Royals turn. They hit a homerun to tie it up. Half of the 50 people there went wild (the other half were Tiger fans). I's exaggerating. There were more than 50 people there, but not much. I told Bryan, though, that if they didn't score again, they'd have to play another inning and we're already cold, wet, and tired. Well, they did score again on a line drive to right field to end the game. Oh well, at least we were able to go home and warm up.

I did have a lot of fun, but it would have been much more enjoyable had the weather been better. I was heckled by Slugrrr (the lion mascot) a couple times for wearing a Tiger hat (over top a Royals stocking cap), but I didn't care. It was fun and the several Tiger fans that surrounded us didn't mind either.

Easter Part II

Easter Part I

Since we are heading up to Michigan to spend Easter with my family, we had an early Easter Egg Hunt at Bryan's parents' house last night. As you can see, the weather was GORGEOUS!