We are so grateful for our many blessings.

Many of you know that DJ has been consistently working out of town since July 14th, 2008. Since then, progress on our house has been slow and inconvenient. Who wants to work 5 12 hr days to come home and work on a house all day Saturday, then turn around and leave Sunday right after church. I know I wouldn't want to, and neither did DJ. So we've been waiting (sometimes not very patiently :)) for an opportunity to spend more time on our house. I think our needs have been pretty great. We bought the house knowing that it needed a total face lift. The house had been a rental for over 30 years, and not maintained. The kitchen was covered in grease stains, the bathroom was covered in mildew and hair (totally gross), the basement featured a toilet in the middle sitting on a 3 x 3 x 1 ft. throne (that's means it was on a wood box about a foot off the ground), and our personal favorite - the death stairs. With a lot of help from both of our families we cleared out the basement, put in a new stairway, put up new walls in the basement, put in a drain system for a basement bathroom, and re-wired the basement. So its been almost a year and this is all we've accomplished. So last month we made a effort to ask for a specific blessing.

For a long time we prayed that DJ's job would place him on a job in town, but since he chose the first out of town job, the company transferred him to another out of town job. With winter coming up, we knew his job would slow down. So we started praying that DJ would get laid off for the winter season. He finished a job last week and on the way home he was asking the foreman where the next job was. The foreman was telling him about a bunch of jobs they have contracted, but that they weren't starting till the weather warms up a bit. So he warned DJ that he was going to be laid off for a month till the jobs started. He immediately texted me letting me know. What a blessing this is for us. My job is sufficient for our needs, what we have been lacking is time. As I type this, he's at home putting up a wall. My dad has the next few weeks off so my parents are going to come over for a couple of days and help. So by March 1st, we should have a finished basement and a part of our home finished! I'll post up pictures as the work progresses for you all to see.

We know we were supposed to move into the ward we moved into, that we were supposed to buy this house, and that we would be blessed.