First of all, apologies are in order:

It has been a long time since I have posted in my blog, other than through twitter. It has been 3 months, and I am very, very sorry. Life has definitely got in the way.

What has happened? It seems like everything.

Perhaps the most exciting thing for me as an individual that has happened recently is that I have continued to take my registration test. On Tuesday, June 30, I will take the last one of this first (and hopefully last) round. Out of 7 tests, I have passed 5, I am waiting on the results on one, and like I said, I’ll take the last one on Tuesday.

Isabelle continues to grow like a weed. She has a vocabulary of about 15-20 words, and is the picture of a normal toddler. I am very proud of her accomplishments, even when they cause me problems, such as her desire to climb on everything right now. However, being a normal toddler also means that we have entered the realm of temper tantrums. I hope that since it appears that she has entered the terrible twos early (she’s 18 months now!), perhaps we can expect an early exit? I can only pray, right?

I am also volunteering at my church. Data entry may not seem glamorous, but it must be done, and it fits my lifestyle—I can do my volunteering from the comfort of my own home! But it keeps me pretty busy. I am the team leader, so I am responsible for the work of five other people, too!

Finally, and the hardest thing of all is what has been going on with my mom. A few weeks ago, she had some concerns and they did a screening mammogram. They asked her to come back for an enhanced mammogram and a biopsy. On Monday, June 15, it was confirmed what we were fearing: my mom was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. It appears that they have caught it early enough, but it will be a long road for her, with both chemo and surgery. Please pray for entire family as we work through this, but especially for my mom, who is pretty discouraged right now.

I will try to be better in the future to keep up this blog.

Zach has found a new job! We are so excited! He starts on Monday. I have known the guys that he will be working for a long time. What a huge answer to prayer! Thanks for everyone who has been praying for us!

Yesterday, church was absolutely awesome! I was pretty frazzled when I came in—Zach wasn’t feeling up to coming, and I had already gone to a volunteer orientation for church, then back home to get Isabelle, then back to church. But it was well worth coming through all of that to hear what Pastor Furtick had to say. The title of the sermon series is “The Dip.” It’s about all those valleys in life that we go through, when we are discouraged, disheartened, and in disrepair! Yesterday, he spoke out of 1 Kings 19. Elijah has just come from a huge triumph—at Mount Carmel he showed all of the idol worshipers just who God was and what He is capable of. Then he receives a little death threat from the queen. You would think that he would have said “Bring it on! (snap)” But instead, he ran. The theme: when you are in a dip, don’t dig yourself deeper. One key thought I got through this sermon: The goal of the enemy is to get you to distort the dimensions of your dip. Another key thought: The opposite of prayer is worry. The last one: you need to have perspective. We think that our problem is the biggest problem ever, until we can step outside of it and remember that our God is bigger than that.

Wow. I am a self proclaimed worrier. I come from a long line of worriers. It was awesome to hear this sermon, with so much fear all around me right now. Zach has made little progress in finding another job, and it’s pretty gloomy altogether in the construction industry, where both of us have our careers right now, as well as our entire country. But the opposite of prayer is worry! If you are worried about what is going on in your life, or if you know you are going through a dip—I highly recommend checking out www.elevationchurch.org and watching Pastor Furtick’s sermon series over the last couple of weeks. It truly helped me gain perspective. Hope it helps you.

This week has begun in quite the crazy manner. After raining over 2 inches yesterday, it proceeded to sleet and then snow starting around dinner time last night. So we woke up to a winter wonderland this morning. The good news: since Zach has not found a job yet, he is home with Isabelle (her last day at the daycare was Friday), so we didn’t have to worry about the delayed opening. The bad news: I had to drive in the snow by myself to work. But I managed to get to work all right, no mishaps. Anyway, I was working away when Zach called me up around mid-morning. “I have to tell on your daughter,” he tells me. “Uh-oh!” I say. Turns out it was cute, not bad. He heard that she was awake from her nap, so he went in to get her up. She was sitting up in her crib facing her stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear, just chattering away. When he went to pick her up, she grabbed Pooh, so he brought her and Pooh to the bonus room. She ate snack with Pooh sitting there facing her, like he was a guest to tea. I know this is normal, but it was the first time we had seen her do something like that. We thought it was pretty cute.

After almost two weeks of calling and emailing engineering groups, Zach finally got to meet someone face-to-face with the prospect of a job. Virtually everyone here in town said, “Sorry, we aren’t hiring,” when Zach or I contacted them. The group that he met with today has let some people go, but it was mostly inexperienced people who were holding the company up. I have known the owners of this company for a long time—I worked with some of them when I first started following projects all the way through to completion, before they started this firm. I guess that is one of the advantages in a bad market of being in the same industry as your spouse—you both can network when one of you is looking for a job. I think that one of the reasons why they talked to Zach is because they know me. Anyway, it sounds like it went well—Zach was able to answer all of their questions, and he expressed his flexibility in salary and manner of work (permanent vs. contract work). Hopefully we’ll hear something soon. Unless we hear something in the next day or so, tomorrow is Isabelle’s last day of daycare. That is kind of bittersweet. I know that she’ll benefit from the direct attention with her daddy, but she has also grown so much, and I know that part of that is from interacting with other children in her class. I know Zach is a little overwhelmed from thinking about caring for her all day long, everyday. We’ll see how well that goes. In the meantime, I’ll just keep on trying to work hard and keep my job.

The good news is that I took my schematic design test this morning. I had practiced quite a bit, and was able to check both items before time was up. I even finished the building design portion early, even with checking it.

The bad news is that Zach got laid off this morning. He found out before I went into the test, but he didn’t tell me until afterward. He gets some severance, but it isn’t much. Hopefully he’ll find something else, but with architecture slow right now, I’m really scared with me being the only breadwinner for our family.

Please pray for us. I can’t write any more because I’m still crying.

Isabelle loves to drum on things. I know she’s at that age where it’s expected that a child will bang on things, but she really loves the music and loves discovering how different things make different sounds. Recently she’s discovered that her body makes noise if it is drummed on. This weekend, she had a jumper on and started drumming her legs and having a great old time. Then last night, for some reason we took her clothes off and didn’t put her pajamas on right away. First she started drumming on her legs, but then she discovered her belly made a great drum. And then, she started dancing to the beat of the drumming on her thighs and belly. Of course, she was encourage by Zach and I, who were rolling on the floor laughing. We were also using our bodies as drums. So we had a little naked drummer girl dancing around our house—quite possibly the best way to end a Monday that I have seen in a long time!

Isabelle loves music. There will be some random snippet of music on TV or on a video game, and she will stop playing and start swaying to the music. There have been a couple of times when she protested when a DJ has come on and interrupted the music. She stops fussing when we change the station over to one that has music on it. But just recently, I have noticed that she requests a song by name. It’s the alphabet song. She’ll be sitting with me and we’ll be cuddling or playing, and she’ll look up at me and sway back and forth and say, “Ah-bay?” We realized what she wanted when I had already sung the song and it was obviously that she was asking for more of the same. As soon as I start singing it, she smiles and starts swaying along. She also will dance and loves it when we dance, too. It’s actually a pretty sure-fire way to make her stop pitching a fit. I’ll start singing a silly tune and dancing around. Within seconds, she’s swaying and smiling, if not up on her feet dancing around soon. She’s obviously inherited her daddy’s sense of rhythm and joy in music, and she loves to play with my keyboard. Thank goodness it’s got an off button. It’s one she can’t reach—yet.

I found out Wednesday evening that I passed construction documents, the second test I have taken as part of my registration exams. I am excited to think that I am more than a quarter of the way done! It is taking forever, it seems, to get my results. Turns out NCARB and Prometric are having some “quality control” issues. It is rather crazy that the shortest amount of time it’s taken to get the scores from a computer test is 8 1/2 weeks. Next Friday (yes, it’s the 13th) I’ll be taking my Schematic Design test. I just got done with a practice vignette, and it took me 3 hours when you have 4 to do it. I hope that’s a good sign. I’ve really stuggled with getting ready with this one. If you think of it, pray for me next Friday!!

I got a new crockpot with my some of my Christmas money this year. It is one of my goals to cook more in my crock pot, especially since Isabelle comes home from daycare ravenous. I have discovered this site: A Year of Crockpotting. This lady resolved to cook in her crockpot every day for a year! There are some great ideas on this site…I can’t wait to use it. I’m thinking about the BBQ Chicken and Cornbread casserole for tomorrow night…