Thanksgiving & December Update

Happy Thanksgiving! After the fact anyway. We had a great Thanksgiving celebration at my parents' place. Because it was a holiday weekend and hunting season, we ended up being down there for 5 days. (We were glad to get home to our own bed yesterday!) We had quite the weekend of feasting, including making different pies for each day (apple, pecan, turtle pumpkin and peach). Matt saw some action while hunting but unfortunately missed a big buck that charged by his deer stand. Another hunter in the group got 2 doe, so Matt "helped" to gut them. He didn't pass out, so that was encouraging. He also helped butcher the deer my dad got last week. He did OK, but he said that if he didn't like meat so much, he'd probably become a vegetarian after that!

Madison has been talking up a storm, and in the last 2 weeks her vocabulary has taken off like crazy. There were a lot of words she could say but we didn't hear them very often. Lately, she's begun regularly using all the words she knows and picking up new ones. Just over the weekend the latest were 'squirrel', 'goose', 'up-up', and 'I love you' which sounds like "ah-thoo". It's amazing too that not only is she saying words but in the right context. With 'squirrel', I had pointed out a squirrel in the tree that the cat was looking at. Two days later she was standing at the door, looks out and sees a squirrel in the tree and says "squirrel". Wow! She's just getting to be quite the smarty-pants. She's also getting bigger and looking more like a little girl and not a baby. She's into her 18-month clothes now and graduated out of many of the 12-month already. The poor thing has had a cold for about a week and has been crabby as all get out, not napping well (or not napping at all). That's been a challenge for me, but hopefully the cold is near an end.

And then there's the job situation. One month down & still no job. Matt's only been called for a couple of interviews but the jobs were not offered to him. Less than a month to go -- and half of that is basically holiday season so not a lot of time left for business to be conducted. Being December 1st with no prospect in sight is definitely discouraging. We're kind of at a loss as to what to do now -- other than wait, which feels like wasting time & doing nothing. But we feel we've exhausted all of our options - we've literally applied to anything and everything we can think of and find... What else can we do at this point if there are no jobs open & the ones that are open you don't get called on? So we continue to wait and pray and keep our eyes open. We would covet your prayers! We know the Lord will provide for our needs, but man, it sure would be nice to know how & when!!