Family Updates

I feel as though I am really slacking on my blogging anymore. I really don't want to be a slacker. I want to keep this blog going so that we can have a blog book every year to share, document and remember what things were like someday. Since I am horrible about scrap booking pictures, I have to rely on this as a means to document what is going on in our lives. Here's a quick post to update/document what has been going on. Unfortunately there are no pictures!
John is doing well and constantly working. One of the things I admire about him is how hard he works for our family. He gets up everyday and goes to a job that carries a lot of stress along with it. Although he would like for things to be different and the situation to be better, he does it without complaining. He knows it's a job and times are tough right now, so he needs to make do with it and provide for his family. When he's not at the pig farm, he is busy with the rabbits. The rabbits seem to be going ok. Lot's of work, but going well.
Libby has resigned from her job at the pig company. January will be her last month there. Things have been really slow. She is only getting about an 1 hour a day if that and needs more than that. She decided to go back into substitute teaching, only to discover that the school districts are not accepting subs right now because they have too many. There is one district about 15minutes from us that is accepting subs. She has applied with them and is waiting to see what happens. In the meantime she was offered a job 2 days a week working at the Almond Huller in the off season, so she will be doing that.
Ashlee just turned 10. It's hard to believe she is 10 already. She seems to be doing well. She is getting good grades in school and is looking forward to doing swim team again this summer. Her teacher says she doesn't know what she would do without Ashlee to help her out in class!
Mikayla is doing well in school too. School isn't as easy for her as she would like it to be, but she does well. Mikayla is in the process of having lots of orthodontic work done (the whole process will take like 8 years). Her mouth is a mess. On December 23rd she had an expander put in her mouth to try to widen the top of her mouth. Every night her mouth has to be cranked with a little key like device. After 3 weeks of turning she started experiencing lots of pain and a gap in between her front teeth. The orthodontist made us stop. He said he only has one patient a year go through that kind of pain ( go figure, and it happened to be our child. I am telling you I think we have the worst odds). He said that kind of pain is not normal. He thinks John may have been turning the key too fast and caused her mouth to get inflamed. She is taking a two week break from turning and will start the whole turning thing again in two weeks (this time with dad turning much slower)!