November wrap

So November has been a crazy month for me. In October I received my RNA or registared nurses assistant certification. The end of August I started working with a family who has two disabled children. One has a feeding tube, so I have been certified and trained to be able to feed him. I enjoy my work there. I never sought a career as a caregiver, in fact, I was kind of pushed into it. Isn't that the way with a lot people. But I am enjoying it. I find my work relaxing and rewarding which has enabled me to do more than I thought I could do.
Halloween week was an eventful week for my adopted family. My client was in and out of the hospital as things just got worse for him. I don't want to say anything that would violate privacy contracts here, but it was a scary couple of days for all of us. He is doing much better now. But in the mess of all that was going on, we had a caregiver quit. There are four of us that work with these two children. As a result, I have been able to pick up a lot of hours. Most of them are temporary. Although I think we will see my hours go up in the long run. It's hard to say just yet as we are working through the headache of getting a new schedule made.
Todd has had to take up a lot of the slack. He comes home early to watch the kids. He has even watched my daycare kids for short periods of time. He has helped keep up on the house. And he has been amazing. My mom has also helped to watch the kids when she can, so Todd can study, and I can work.
The week of Thanksgiving, the Tri-Cities was covered in snow--right as I tried to fight off a cold. Todd picked up the slack, and he allowed me to sleep. He also ran the paperroute on the not ideal roads. He has more experience driving in the snow than I do. He has been amazing. And I appreciate him. The extra hours are huge blessing. We have a lot of work we need to do on our cars--and so any extra will go into them. We have some repairs and a lot maintance work to do.
We have also realized that the last time we spent Christmas with Todd's family, I was pregnant with Karla. So it's been a while. We feel it is important to spend this Christmas with the Nef's. It's one prompting we are very excited to follow!! And we have seen the Lord's hand in making this trip possible. My co-workers have moved most of my hours to before the trip, so I am not losing much by going there. We have found a subsitute for the paper route that is excited about making the money--he may not be excited about doing papers again. We feel very blessed.
The other news for November was parent teacher confrences. Karla is hitting exceeds expectations in reading, writing, and math. Most of this is because of preschool. She is also good at following directions, working in a group, and the other social parts of kindergarten. She needs to work on being responcible for her backpack, her homework, and her coat. We are working on this at home as well. Kylee is doing very well in preschool too. She gets along with her classmates better than expected. We have set some goals to help her vocalize her needs to someone who can help. We are also working on letter recognition and realizing that 4 correlates to . . . . 4 of something. I am excited for both girls. They have been asking to go back to school with this long vacation.
We love you all and wish you fun, family, and safety this holiday season.