It's been awhile!

I haven't been very good at keeping my blog updated. As it turns out, I did get offered the job covering the mat leave, and I accepted the position. I ended up getting 1 week of training (but only the equivalent of about 4 days due to her leaving early one day and me leaving early another) for a position that I would say needed a good 3-4 weeks of training. So that first week was very stressful, but by the Friday, I thought I would do ok.

And then the next week started. It was awful. People seemed to not realize that having just started, I didn't just know what they were talking about when they asked me something, and that it was taking me longer to get things done because I hadn't been doing it for 3+ years like the last girl, and that I just needed time to learn and become comfortable. And I was having all sorts of things come through my office that I had never seen before and had no idea what to do with them, and there was really no one I could ask for help for alot of it...Just had to figure it out on my own. I spent the better part of Wednesday afternoon crying at my desk, and even that didn't seem to deter people from their crazy demands.

At about that same time, Jamie spoke to his foreman and the owner of the company he was laid off from, and they wanted him to start back pretty quick. So after discussing it to death, Jamie and I decided that when he went back to work, I would go back to staying home with the kids. Not just because the job was seriously not working for me, but because we found out that to get subsidy for child care, they go by pay stubs, so if we got subsidy, it likely wouldn't last long. And if we weren't subsidized, we'd be paying up to $1200 a month in child care when I was only making $1500-1600 a month. I'd basically be working to pay a babysitter, especially taking into consideration the cost of gas to drive back and forth to Veg, and wear and tear on the car. So Jamie got called back to work on Tuesday (Monday was Victoria Day) and I am now back home with the girls and couldn't be happier about it.

And as if the job itself wasn't bad enough, one of the girls I worked with had chicken pox while I was there, and it got passed onto Lexi. She is covered in spots (although strangely enough, none on her face, just her torso and limbs) and is crabby, crabby, crabby.

The girls did get spoiled with having their daddy home (and I must say I quite enjoyed it too), and they are really, really missing him now (again, as am I). He is working all day shifts, which means more hours and he's not home at all during the week when they're awake. And they also are going to need him to work some weekends to load trucks, so he is going to be busy and the girls and I will have to adjust, but I think we'll all do just fine.

Our house is still on the market and we unfortunately have not had much interest. I'm actually quite upset, because in a span of less than 2 weeks, 3 comparable houses sold (and 2 out of 3 with our realtor) and we didn't even get a showing. So I'm not thrilled about that, but I'm still confident that we can get the place sold.

Our credit unfortunately did take a hit with Jamie being laid off for so long (and his EI taking well over 2 months to come in) so we figure when the house sells, we will just worry about getting as much of our crap paid off as we can (obviously mortgage, but our personal loan we had to take out, Jamie's car loan, the credit card and some other stuff we have financed) and spend about a year saving up for a down payment and building up our credit to the point that it was before. We really hope to be able to buy some land (probably around 10 acres) and put a house on it (although we'd have to go factory built and not custom). I grew up on a farm and living in town, even a small town, is just not where I want to be.

But at this point, we are just taking it one step at a time and trying not to think too far ahead. We don't have any control over when the house sells, so we don't want to get too ahead of ourselves. I am definitely a planner, so this is hard for me to just play it by ear, but it really is all we can do at this point. But I am still hating that it's all unknown and I have no control. LOL