Confession time..... & Thank you!

I know this is terribly late and way overdue but I just wanted to throw out a BIG THANK YOU out to all of you who came to our going away gathering and put together care packages & activities for the kids.
I must confess, however, due to a miscommunication about what stays with us in the vehicle and what gets shoved back in the nether-regions of the truck and trailor all of those precious bordum busters got placed in the truck and we were unable to get to them during our journey! There were many times I was bummed about that but now I am kinda glad that it happened this way.
As time ticks away and the kids begin to miss their home, family & friends from the Tri-cities, those sweet loving genstures have become a neat reminder that they are loved and that someone cares enough about them to wish them well!

Since school started quite a bit earlier here than it did in the Tri-cities we have already begun our studies. Unfortunately there is a bit of work that we did not finish from last year so we are trying to get caught up on this right now. When we found out we were moving, while homeschooling did not completely stop it slowed down quite a bit. Now that there are not tons of folks to do playdates with I guess this will help me to buckle down and get stuff done more often! Homeschooling laws here are not more strict as far as WHO is capeable of homeschooling but it is more intense as far as record keeping. This is one thing I do not enjoy but I have to keep a portfolio of all their school work and report into a Homeschool liason from the district a couple times of year. No pressure! UGH! There is a lady in our church who has 6 kids and has homeschooled them all in the state of Florida so I really need to get together with her and pick her brain. There is an option of doing umbrella schools or charter schools as well so I need to my homework and pray about what option is going to work out for our family! Sounds a bit too much like California to me which makes me a bit nervous but as with everything else in our lives...... God will cover us where we are lacking!

NOISE!

I am not sure if the camera's small mic will pick it up, but here is a typical day in Florida. It usually rains, thunders & lightenings at least once a day. On this day in particular there was a constant rumble of thunder due to the consistent lightning strikes. I got a couple strikes on film but I was fascinated with the constant rumble. I had to film through the screen so sorry for the poor reflection. Maybe if you turn up your sound real loud you might here it too?

Here is a picture of a turtle I almost ran over sitting in a puddle on the roadway. I figured someone else might mistake him for pavement as well so after snapping his pic I moved him to a safe place since he was so little....... as you can tell he is a bit shy!

SO far all the other animals have been hiding real well which is a bummer. I really want a pic of an armadillo & racoon to share but I may have to wait till the weather is a bit better?

I tried getting a short video of the noisey neighbors! Whatever they are, birds, crickets, some other bug I would care not to meet? They live in this tree and while you may not be able to hear them in the video I can hear their constant buzzing from inside my house! They tend to get a little quieter once I started taking an interest filming. GRRRR! John says that once I get used to the buzzing I will miss it if it ever goes away? I suppose he is right as it is the sounds of the country!

For those of you wondering about how John did on his test, well we are not sure quite yet. All of the guys that went up together to take it, came out from taking the test with the same dread...... Each felt as if they couldn't have prepared any better than they did but that they might not have passed. We shared this on Wed. night at church as our prayer request. A lot of the sermon talked about how it is not anything that we do in our own strength that bears fruit but only what the Lord does through us. I figured it would be neat if God reveals himself through John passing that it is not in John's strength/wisdom, but that the Lord did it through him.

John got to go to the core facility today and tour the place. He met some other folks that lateralled over from state facilities and are taking some of the same intro courses. Tomorrow he has a training called verbal judo that teaches you how to communicate effectively/professionally wiht the inmates. I guess this is a training John has always wanted to attend and here everyone gets it before they start working! Next week he will have to be sprayed & tazed so as you might of guessed, he is real excited about this! :o) He is having fun and just praying that God will expedite his test results so he can stop waiting with anticipation...... Tis all for now! I hear you all in Tri-cities are experiencing and early fall. I am jelous! TTFN!

The next thing

As of Friday John has 'officially' passed the academy. YIPEE! Now he just has to pass the exam to become certified on Wednesday the 27th. On Monday and Tuesday this next week he has to report to the academy to study from 8-4. Some of the other guys he has been in class with for the last 2 weeks will also be there so they are going to use this time to quiz each other. After the exam, John will then have to go through another qualifying certification with Lee county. He will have to qualify shooting and some other areas before being able to work in the jail. I guess you do not get your test results from the exam back right away so after Wednesday, until they find out he has passed he will be qualifying in those other areas. He is doing rather well on the practice exams so please pray for his nerves not to get the better of him! We are also praying about replacing his small car and are shopping around and praying so if you could pray for God to direct our paths that would be awesome!

John had to go to the Doctor this week for an infection in his right index finger. Of course this is on his writing hand so after he was qualifying with shooting last week it really began to bug him. I am thinking it may have happened initially when we first moved in because he kept jamming/smushing his fingers like crazy. By Wednesday this week, it was throbbing and quite swollen and since Satan REALLY doesn't want us to experience our first Wednesday night at our new church, we had to get him to the urget care. They said it wasn't severe enough to lance it just yet and sent him home with some pain killers & antibiotics. By today, the swelling still wasn't going down abd it had begun turning white, so he went in and got it drained. Hopefully, God will allow it to heal fast enough so that when it comes time for him to qualify (shooting) it will be strong enough to do so? I think John is just glad that it isn't a bite or something more severe! He was getting taunted by the instructors at the academy "Welcome to Florida, something bit you!"

Some have asked if we are experiencing any of the flooding that is going on down here and PRAISE GOD we are not! There is a lot of standing water in the gullies, drainage ditches, undeveloped land and other lower lying areas, but they are pretty far from where we are at. Thereare some big puddles in parking lots around town but I guess this is pretty normal for Florida in the rainy season.

We checked on renters insurance since we had not had time before Fay, to get that taken care of. I was amazed at how much of an expense this was, Just to cover our property and NOT even the house it was $1100 per year. The lady said I guessed really high on our personal property value but it would still be pretty spendy. I remember paying $30 a month for renters insurance in Tri-cities and I am not certain, but I think we only pay $60 per month for homeopwners. We do not live in a high risk location though, but still this was rather surprising to me. I can't imagine what homeowners insurance rates goes for around here but I guess if you are going to live in a hurricane zone there is a high price to pay. All homeowners/renters insurance is covered by the state of Florida's own company. Sounds kind of unusual to me since this means you can't really shop around for the best rate, but I can only assume that private comapanies have pulled out since it is pretty high risk! In order to get our car plates switched we have to get Florida car insurance as well so this too is on my to do list.

With all the new things that are more expensive down here one thing that we do get a break on is gas. I know it is going down all around the nation right now but BEFORE we started seeing decreases we were paying $3.65. Now we pay around $3.55. Sales tax is only 6% but the cost of food is a bit more! I have my spreadsheet put together to do some price comparisons but I have a feeling that the outcome will be that I will have to increase my food budget by at least $100-$200 until I get used to the area and figure out how normal families on a budget make ends meet.

Ever since we got here our dog has been fascinated with the lizards and frogs that are everywhere. Last night she finally caught and ate one (we didn't know this till after talking with John's daughter Sarah today). I guess these lizards and frogs have a toxin in their skin that is poisonous to other creatures and can make dogs act liek they are kinda drunk. After she ate it she became nauseated, vomited and became very lathargic. I had to carry her from outside to her bed as she wouldn't/couldn't walk to come inside. After about an hour & a half of being very lathargic and scaring me into thinking she was dying...... I asked her if she had to go outside and she jumped to her feet and was anxious to chase more lizards. UGH! Maybe she will learn? Until then we are trying to break her of this interest!

I guess that Florida is in a drought........ I am not sure if this has been lifted now that there are so many places that are flooding, but you hear Floridians talk about it and it is quite a real thing. This absolutely boggles my mind coming from a location where drought was a pretty visual/realistic thing. A place where you rarely get real rain fall & have to dig for many more than just a couple feet to hit water. I remeber when Peg and Dan moved into their new home before they had put in their yard...... the boys were getting idle so Peggy sent them out to dig a hole in the front yard. Since they were pretty bored they dug quite the hole. I think when it was all said & done, their hole was about 8 feet deep........ If my kids did that here they would drown in their new pool!

Drought is unusual concept to accept here when standing water is fairly normal in undeveloped/untouched land. If you dig down just a foot deep you may make yourself a quaint little pond, and a location where it rains A LOT on a daily basis....... This is just not a drought to me? Kinda crazy! Hope all is well in your neck of the woods! Love to all!

House, FAY and some pictures

Many of you asked for pictures of the house we are renting so here it is. I took these last night before the storm began. I will get inside pictures once I am done painting.



Fay has now passed on and the house still remains looking the same. Most homes here are one story ranch style homes and ALL are built out of concrete blocks. It is against code to build out of anything else as all structures must be able to withstand a category 4 hurricane. Most of the homes are stucco finished but I think it is funny when someone puts wood siding on the outer parts of a concrete home. Especially since the siding does not stay in very good shape. What is rather interesting is that it is against code to build a structure out of wood, but you can have a mobile home or MFH at your own risk. I would guess insurance rates would have to be outrageous! They set up shelters at the local schools and I would assume that these folks are the ones who might weather the storm at the shelter?

The storm that just passed by our area was really no bigger than a good old Tri-city wind/rain storm WITHOUT the mudd! I guess there are other areas throughout the county and other counties that have lost power though so some areas got a bigger brunt of the storm than we did!

We are still getting some rain but I guess that will continue into the night.

Here is the back of the house. Back in Tri-cities we might refer to this screened in area as a back porch but as I have been corrected many times, it is a Lanai here in Florida. NOT A PORCH? Floridians are so funny! OH BROTHER!

I threw this piture of my neighbors house in so you could see what hurricane shutters look like. In order to pass code you either have to have stubs on the outsides of your windows for shutters OR hurrican windows that can withstand debris and huge wind gusts. We have hurricane windows on our home so we had no need for shutters. John got to go over and help him put them up. We met them before this and they are very friendly although they think we are pretty unusual for having more than one child, me staying home and not working AND to top off the weird factor, we homeschool. John got some opportunities to witness to him while they worked and the kids played.

There are several other homes in the neighborhood, however they are abandoned and owned by the bank.

Here is an amazing tree that caught my eye. It is places at the entrance to a cemetary by John's academy. It is very huge and as you look at the close-up shot of the trunk it has many, many trunks. It was just really neat picture to me of growth through adversity. Each of those trunks are so crammed together you know each has to share its nourishment with its neighbor as there is cement & asphalt surrounding it. As you can tell from the picture above...... they have grown together to create this huge HEALTHY tree. Many times, we as Christians chose to NOT grow through adversity and then wonder, when the 'dry times' come, WHY we are so dry? Refusing growth is a way of refusing the Nourishment that only the Lord can give. This can also lead to withdrawing from fellowship & putting off time spent with the Lord....... At which point we become parched. It is so awesome that when we realize how far distant we have become, God is always faithful to pick us up, dust us off and help us look up and grow towards Him so that we don't get parched.

I have learned here in Florida to keep my camera close by since there is just so many neat things to take pictures of. When we take walks along our developement there is still so much untouched land so there are armadillos, raccoons, turtles, bunnies...... If I get some pictures of these as well I will pass them along! HUGS TO ALL!

John's job so far

To say the least John is pretty stoked about his new job. About the only thing he has complained about was that it was difficult to do 8 hour shifts but this is only temporary while at the academy so it is short lived!
One of the best things about his new work environment is he finally feels like he is respected for what he is doing. At this agency, the corrections officers go through the same academy as the police officers with the exception of EVOC training (driving skills). They take different tests according to the job specifications but pretty much have to know many of the same things. Much of his time spent at the 2 week academy has been studying the laws of Florida and learning the different definitions/verbage of their laws as it will pertains to his job. Due to the fact that he is learning the same things as the road deputies, if he ever wanted to go to the road he would NOT have to attend another academy but just take some courses on his days off and take a test to become certified. If he is double certified as a deputy and in corrections this means he can really “have his cake and eat it too”. Meaning he can work in the jail on his regular squad, but then be on the overtime list for the road. The pay scale for both road deputy and corrections are the same so this is how they can be able to do this.

Pretty much from day one of his orientation, John was very impressed with the integrity of the department. Let me give you some examples of why this is…..

IA (internal affairs) was one of the presentations at orientation. One of the main things he emphasized was that there a no tolerance rule for the 'gossip train' at the department. If you are caught causing strife by spreading rumors or discontentment, you will be caught and disciplinary actions will be taken. The sheriff puts out a memo each month to share what is going on 'behind the scenes' with any officer that is under investigation so that that officer does not create a mutiny and cause discontentment in the ranks. It is also in an effort to get out the whole story so that officers are not duped by misinformation that is slanted.

The sherriff and undersheriff came in and spoke to the new recruits. They were extremely approachable eventhough it was an election year. They told the new officers that they will occasionally see them working the jail and patrolling on the road. The way they put it was that they would not tell any of the officers to perform a task that they were too ‘busy’ or politically minded to continue doing. They are very hands on the the departments as well to maintain a cohesive work environment and also provide officers opportunities to approach them with concerns.

Their gun range is no joke. It is an indoor range and they have a viewing area for family members to watch....... no pressure there but it was fun for the kids to watch! John was issued a 40 caliber Glock as all the officers are required to qualify. At Benton county he is used to qualifying with his 9mm Beretta. The Glock has a bit more punch and in order to qualify you have to hit both still & moving targets along with qualifying for day and night shooting. He also had to qualify using a shotgun. Their standard for qualifying is much more stringent than those that John was accustom to. Due to the fact that he was doing this with new weapons & a holster that wasn’t broken in, he almost didn’t qualify. In the end, although he was one of the last ones left, God was gracious and helped him qualify. He does have to qualify again though, once he gets out of academy and passes the state exam. Then he will have to do it again for Lee county so please be praying for this. That he will get plenty of time to practice and perfect his abilities.

The way this academy works is they don’t do a lot of lectures, but just give you a lot of practice tests to get used to the verbage and help you learn from your mistakes. You have to get an 80% in order to pass the state exam and John has a date to take this on the 27th.

From talking to many of the employees at the department, John discovered that the jail is a more coveted job than that of the road. Since the officers in the jail are treated as equals with the officers on the road, there is no discontentment or animosity among the corrections officers. They have their own workout facility that family members can use. They are fed on complete meal each shift they are on duty. Due to the fact that the corrections officers already are respected and are not treated like a ‘red-headed step child’ of the department, the desire to leave or achieve ‘road status’ or deputy, just to receive respect, isn’t an issue. This is really great because instead of working with people that hate their job you are working with folks who genuinely appreciate their job! You see, in Florida, in order to get certified in this state, you have to PAY to go to academy if you have no work experience. This gives the officers a greater appreciation for paying & earning the right to become and officer.

Many of the road deputies come back to the jail due to fact that there is more promotability in corrections than there is on the road. Promotions are achieved not based solely on seniority, experience, testing or oral boards but another factor added is education. If you are interested in advancement you need to be proactive and take them up on their offer to pay for college. You have to complete the courses on your own time but they pay for books and tuition.

There are four jail facilities in Lee county in different locations. There is a facility just for booking, a facility for work camps, the NEW main facility where a majority of the prisoners are kept, and John is not sure what the other facility is for yet. We will keep you updated once John passes the test on where he gets stationed and how he likes it.

PS. If anyone wants to lateral over here, NOW IS THE TIME since they are having a difficult time getting people to pass their backround checks. As you remember from when John was doing his, the backround checks are very thorough so passing can be difficult! We would love to have some familiar faces around here but understand that this would have to be a decision made prayerfully!

Where we ended up.....

After staying a couple days in Naples and finding out our only real options for renting there was an apartment.......... with 3 kids and a dog, we really didn't have peace about signing a one year lease, which is standard and required for most places, for something that really wouldn't be a good situation for a John on graveyard! We therefore began looking closer to John's work in the most affordable & safe city, which was Cape Coral. This city is much closer to John's work and with him being on shift work for quite a few years it would be best if he was getting enough sleep as well as NOT driving 40 miles away at 5am after a 12 hour long shift.
Cape Coral was developed around Huge waterways that run in the backyards of many of the homes here. When it was first explained to me that these were considered water front properties it made me laugh as I figured these were much like out irrigation canals back home.......... until I realized how big they were and that people actually boat through them. We opted not to have one since Ben would probably try to jump in! Where we live, in the county, the waterways are more woodsy and unkept much like that of wider irrigation canals. You might be able to run a fan boat through them but they are'nt really deep enough to dock a boat. You shouldn't really swim in them either since alligators are known to live in them as other wildlife like snapping turtles, frogs & other fish.

Here is a picture of the ones by us so you can get an idea:

Due to the housing crisis there are a lot of forclosed properties out here that investors have bargained with the bank to get a steal of a deal. The owner of our home offered the bank 100,000 for this one and they took it out of desperation! Unfortunately some people pose as owners of these forclosed homes they are trying to rent out, but after you move in you cant contact them & they just take your money and run. We had one guy that was trying to get us to rent 'his home' but there was just a lot of red flags in dealing with him. When we looked up the property address on-line we found that it was still owned by the bank........

The place we got is a pretty nice place and will be very nice once we get it all painted inside! It is called a 3/2/2 and is 1700 sq feet with 3 bedrooms + den & 2 bathrooms. It is only 2 years old, however the previous owners either sabatoged the place before they lost it or they just didn't treat their stuff well. The carpet was a mess so the owner replaced it 2 days after we moved in. In exchange for not having to pay the last months rent up front I will be painting the place (the owner will pay for the paint and I get to pick the colors)...... Kinda funny that it took me 2 years to paint the house we owned, but I am immediately painting the house I don't own! Crazy but it really needs it!!

Unfortunately, on Monday the septic system backed up into the house. Luckily it wasn't too bad and it didn't get into the new carpet, but it left quite a mess for me to clean up. What is it with me and flooding? When the septic guy came out and fixed it he unclogged a ton of grease from the pipes in the house. Either the previous owners didn't know not to put grease down the drain of a septic system or they did it because they were losing the house? Who knows but now it is working just fine.

Here is the Welcome to Cape Coral sign on the way into our housing developement. Very excentric/eclectic if you ask me? John says it looks like something out of the middle east.

Here are some pictures of the waterways in the city. I can't even fathom how much their home owners association fees are to keep these in good condition? The picture doesn't even give you a good idea how beautiful they are!

We visited the Calvary here in the Cape. The church is for the area of Fort Meyers and Cape Coral but it is located on the Cape. It is fairly small but very welcoming. They have about 30 regulars but in the seasonal time I guess their numbers go up. They actually just moved to their first building in a strip mall. Before this time there were meeting at a school, but when we were first trying to find the place, we passed by it several times because of what was next door. Right next door, there is a Castle superstore, no joke! It is much smaller than the one back in Kennewick but when I asked about it, I guess they moved in AFTER Calvary was there and within a month it closed. GOD IS SO GOOD!

The pastor & his wife have a daughter in between Michaela & Abby so the girls made fast friends. Ben is just very excited to be 'big enough' to be in class with his big sisters and all the other kids up to 5th grade. WE haven't quite made it to Wednesday nights yet because last week we were moving into this place and this week time just slipped away from us!

I will blog more about John's new job later...... the quick version is he is loving it! Gotta get to bed so I can take John to work in the morning...... tomorrow they are doing DT's so I am sure he will be very sore!

Pictures from our road trip

Here are some pics of the kids & dog along the car trip!

Here is a picture of those that came to our going away party. Such a fine group of people we are leaving behind!

This is one of those peaceful serene valleys that were just a neat setting. Lots of these pretty backrounds from Utah! Amazing rock formations. Many of these were taken as we were driving by so sorry for the lack of clarity!

More of Utah....... just gorgeous there!

The "Your in Wyoming" sign...... lots of desert and pretty much nothing picture worthy!

This was at a very neat rest stop . It depicted the way that the Native Americans and the English folks would greet each other and what they would trade! Cool homeschooling moment!

Neat hisory lesson about the highway we were traveling on and WHY the highway system was developed..... Thanks to Grandpa there was a pretty accurate history lesson.

Here is a pretty amazing rainbow that came during an intense lightening/rain storm in Kansas. It was the most dramatic rainstorm and amazing lightening display I have ever seen.....

Here are some picture of the big metal arch that they built in St Louis! Grandpa says the Arch is a gateway, symbolizing the fact that St. Louis was the gateway to the west in the old days...... as a matter of fact it is called the Gateway Arch.

Side view; it is quite enormously huge!

This picture was taken in St Louis....... the reason I took it was because the building is abandoned except for the plants growing out of the bricks! CRAZY weird!

Here was a very pretty setting somewhere.... Kansas City, maybe?

Here is a "welcome to Kentucky" sign.

Our eventful car trip

Our Trip to Florida was nothing short of eventful. We appreciate all your prayers though as we know it could have been so much worse!
The drive was pretty amazing. Each day we scheduled to drive for 500-600 miles. Some days were shorter due to time zone changes. Our first stop was Bringham City, Utah. While driving through Utah was beautiful it was pretty funny that the only graffiti seen on old abandoned buildings was not gang related at all but was simply to welcome home the good mormon boys who had come home from their missions. Everywhere we went we saw mormon books, LDS literature, directions to the mormon temple or LDS, ect.

After the first night Abby started complaining of nausea. Due to a mixture of nerves & car sickness she was sick the next morning so we were off to a pretty late start waiting for her tummy to calm down. I figured for sure we would be in a hospital somewhere that day getting her hydrated but God was faithful to help her keep enough liquids down that she remained hydrated. Once we figured out she needed to be in the front seat of the truck and NOT WATCHING TV in the car, she started doing a little better. Due to her fear of the unknown and coming to terms with the fact that this isn’t just a short vacation away from her friends and family……. We think this was the majority of the problem. Despite our best efforts to help her ‘digest’ what was happening, she continued to have trouble throughout the next 2 days of our trip. WE began praying with her to help her understand that God would help her make new friends and that He would be faithful to take care of all our needs when we got to Florida. Now that we are here and not on the road for long periods of time, she has not had any problems.

Benjamen has had bloody noses like no other throughout our trip as well. Before we left he was having big troubles with this, but after getting on the road he would start bleeding like a stuffed pig! After making sure to put Neosporin in his nasal passages on a daily basis he stopped having this kind of trouble though. Now that we are in the south where moisture in the air is plentiful he hasn’t had any trouble.

For those of you that were interested in where we stopped along our journey:
Day 1: WE drove through Wa, Oregon, Idaho and stopped at Brigham City Utah.
Day 2: We drove through Wyoming to Big Springs, Nebraska
Day 3: We drove through Nebraska & some of Missouri to Blue Springs Missouri
Day 4: We drove through Missouri to Clarksville, Tennessee
Day 5: We drove through the rest of Tennessee to Lake Park, Georgia
Day 6: We went through the rest of Georgia and then down to Naples, FL

On many occasions I was asking the Lord WHY we were moving during the hotest months on the year........ as we drove along the highway in the midwest we saw WHY. Each side of the highway had snow fences. I had never really seen them before but my dad was the one who told me those were to keep snowdrifts from covering the roadway. I guess, like always, God's timing really is perfect!

Besides these little deterrents going on with the kids, I lost our primary cell phone somewhere in Tennessee. Praise God we bought another cell phone before the trip and Dad brought one as well so we could communicate between the van & Truck. Our new cell number is (239) 404-1078 for those that would like it. I also lost my wallet at a gas station bathroom in Missouri somewhere. Praise God we bought gas there and had the receipt with the store’s phone number. After realizing what took place several hundred miles later at our next gas fill-up I called the store and the nice lady at the counter had found my wallet. Her manager said he would send it to my PO Box in Florida. Although all my cash was gone (which was a very minimal loss) it seemed as though all my credit/debit cards & drivers license was still in there. PRAISE GOD! Sorry I hadn’t updated you all till now. We have just been so busy trying to get a rental that it has been consuming all of our time & energy. As I sit we are still in a hotel and John is at his first day of work today. We are hoping to sign a lease today & be in our rental by tomorrow. John has to go to academy this weekend so moving in might be rather hurried!

I still haven't really mourned for what we have left behind....... I am sure once my schedule is cleared and we actually have our things in another home I will begin to feel it! Once we get to our rental I plan to get a long distance service so I can call people back home more often. Sorry to those of you who may be wondering why I haven't called very much but our cheapy net 10 phone minutes have been mostly used trying to obtain a rental. I really do love and miss you all so please do not be offended!
Thank you to all have been covering us in prayers.