These Three

- Are here each morning at seven.
- Figure out how to blame the other guy for tracking grease in the office.
- Can fix some of the biggest problems on a truck.
- Work like crazy.
- Are learning to fill out their work orders with every part they install.
- Help keep us from going insane.
- Work late into the evening to get a job out if it must get out.
- Search Craigslist every evening after work for tool boxes.
- Are determined to out-do the other guy on how fast they can pull out a transmission. (And they're steadily getting faster. Gotta love good old competition!)
- Do not like working on Fords.
-Go home black, to the point where their mothers surely must despair over the grease they bring home on their clothes.
- Work like their life depends on it.

Did I mention these guys work really hard?! 

These guys are our employees and for them, I am thankful!

What Are We Up To?

Just work, that's why I haven't posted. We're not bored, it's just that our life is boring to tell about.

Blake is worried that I'm going to start making reusable toilet paper. He saw a blog post that I left open where a penny pincher was telling how to make it. Now whenever I say that "I'm going to make---" he interrupts me before I can finish my sentence and with panic in his voice says "Not toilet paper!".

His conclusion is that I read too many blogs. :)

I finally got pictures of Micah and Lanna's wedding. Yes, I will post them soon, Heidi. :) 

Last Saturday Blake and I tackled a big project at the shop. We cleaned out the collect-all bay and reorganized. It stretched our marriage communication skills just a tad. We learned about walking away from an argument and coming back later to start over. The area looks terrific- now if we can get the electrician there to wire up the jet washer in the new location, I will be one happy girl! 

This time change thing from a few weeks ago is great... I absolutely love going to work when it is light outside! It's a little bit of a bummer to go home in the dark and realize that the only daylight hours I really get to spend at home are on the weekends, but it's November. It is normal. I'll just enjoy not having to go to work in the dark! 

Food is a great problem for me. Any and all cooking skills which I once had, are now gone. Done, disappeared, over and gone. This leaves a great problem for my husband, who comes home hungry every night. So every week I write out a meal plan and I try again. Just to have the food come out bad and leave us hungry. This week... it's going to be different. This week, I'm going to learn to cook again. I'm determined. It's going to be a good week. :)

How It's Made videos on YouTube have held our fascination the past few weeks. We've seen everything from turbos to hot dogs to glass bottles to jelly beans be made right before our eyes. It's amazing! And as a side note, you probably won't need to remind me for a while that I don't want to eat hot dogs ever again. 

And there you have it. Those are the high points of our life right now. Oh there are other ones too, like the facts that I caught up on my laundry and my dishes are ALL washed and my kitchen is vacuumed, but everyone has that happen every now and then too, so that's nothing new! 

We talked to a guy this week who has cancer. He told us how it really changes your perspectives. When you say "I love you", you mean it. Although he never used to give hugs, he does now. Before he never prayed with his wife. They do now. 

I want to remember that there is more to life. That we are here for a purpose and that we are here for only a short time, so we must make a difference in the time that we are given. I want to not lose sight of the bigger picture which somehow gets lost in the little picture of every day. 

A Beater with a Heater

It's pouring antifreeze out of the head, 

the tires are bald,

 the title is salvaged, 

and the cab corner obviously was, 

the tail lights don't work (unless you flip a dangling, black-taped switch and then the right tail light works),

  the interior smells like smoke, 

and we tried to put the window down and now it won't go back up.

But!
It gets us down the road, 

it's not super rusty, 

the coffee can be washed off the dash, 

the stained seat covers can be removed, 

the window can be fixed, 

the lights can be fixed,
the smoke smell will eventually fade,

 it has a gooseneck hitch so we can haul scrap,

 it's a 5-speed (I won't miss the 6-speed in the last truck!), 

and it's ours. 

And we like that fact. :)

P.S. Someone already made an offer on it. Why do folks think they need our truck?!

Dollars for a Dodge

Well, we did it again.

We sold.

our.

truck.

It was our every day driver,

our faithful one,
a sharp looking ride,

the nicest vehicle we'd ever owned,

our truck.

There. I said it. I almost didn't think I'd manage saying that. 

I liked that truck. 

It was clean. 

It was smooth. 

It was quiet. 

It got me where I wanted to go...

 and it could do it fast. 

This was our truck.

But it's not now. A guy who really, really wanted it, is now the proud new owner of it. 

I felt a little sad when I watched this, knowing that it wasn't coming back in this driveway as mine again...

It's ok, I think. We deemed the check that we could get out of it worth more to us than the truck itself.

The only problem is... what do we drive now?

The Toolbox

This post title made me think of a little kid's story book where a great life lesson is going to be learned. I don't know why. This isn't exactly a little kid story, but the characters are just as happy, because...

Blake got a new treasure!

He'd needed a new tool box for a long time but just hadn't found the *right* deal to make it worth doing.

Before he started the business, he had found his first toolbox on craigslist for $2100- all the cash he had at that moment, but the first best investment he made. (Of course aside from the investment he made in trips to VT after deciding to date me! :P)  A retiring mechanic was happy to see it go to a good home. And it did. It served it's purpose well and was partly what prompted Blake to rent this shop in the first place- he feared if too many little brothers used it at home, the tools might start getting lost. That tool box is now too small, too full of more tools he's collected, and is beginning to show some real signs of wear.

When a friend mentioned that he had gotten offered to trade a Snap-On toolbox for the truck he'd been trying to sell, Blake starting getting interested. It took his friend a while to get the right deal since he had already sold the truck, but when it finally happened, everyone was happy, especially the new owner.

We've gotten to spend a lot of quality time together cleaning the two boxes and organizing them. The goal is to get usable sets of tools in both boxes and an employee who doesn't have a tool box can use the older box. It's still a work in progress.

It has been the obvious new toy in the shop and everyone who comes in gets to admire it. I'm proud of my husband. He may have had to put up with something that wasn't working quite so well for the last while, but because he waited, he now was able to get a good deal on a really nice box with lots of tools that should last a while.

*I started this post the day after he bought the box, which was at least three weeks ago. It's now found a spot up against a wall, is nicely organized, and fits in with the grease and grime of the place. I had planned to get a better picture of him with the box but when I stopped to think about that, I realized *that* wasn't happening so I might as well put this very long overdue post up! 

Compassion

Her name is Maria. 

Her family lives in Brazil in a community of about 26,000 people where most adults work as day laborers and earn the equivalent of about $165/month. Her parents sometimes have work. She has one sibling. She is a normal child with normal needs: food, clothing, schooling, etc. 

And we get to sponsor her. We get to read letters from her where she tells us that she loves us. We get to read letters from her that tell us she is praying for us. We get to invest in her life. 

And you could invest in a life as well.

How often do you buy a pack of gum? Or a cup of coffee? Or a candy bar? That dollar a day you spend on something extra...something small... can feed, clothe, send a child in poverty to school, and give that child the opportunity to get to know Jesus. For $38 a month, you can invest in the life of a child who otherwise would know nothing but poverty.

Compassion International works with over a million children in 26 different countries. They also rescue mothers and babies through their Child Survival program and have a Leadership Development program for older children.

If you sponsored a child...

Your support would provide:

• Food and clean water
• Medical care
• Educational opportunities
• Important life-skills training
• Most important of all, your sponsored child will hear about Jesus Christ and be encouraged to develop a lifelong relationship with God.

Right now, there are 1,500 children on Compassion's waiting list who have been waiting for as much as a year to be sponsored. The older a child is, the harder it is to get a sponsor. Being able to be a part of a child's life is not only an excellent opportunity for him/her, but gives your family a chance to learn about someone else's life in a poverty stricken country and to share one another's burdens.

To find a child to sponsor go to
http://www.compassion.com/sponsor_a_child/default.htm
Do it. Make one of these children a part of your life.
They need you!

An Amish Wedding

For starters, I must say: I will try my best to keep all opinions and sarcasm out of this post.

Blake says he's never gone to an amish wedding so I guess I have one up on him for a change, because that's what I did today. 

Of course there were no picture taken, due to the commonly known fact that the amish do not get their pictures taken. *A not so well known fact is that some of them have some non-amish friend or family member snap pictures of their special moments or their kids throughout their life. :)*

Here's a picture of my gift for them so my post wouldn't be completely lacking in pictures!

Amish weddings are large in the people and food department. They are simple in the fact that they are at their house, in their shop, or in their neighbor's shop, or perhaps a combination of all three. I had asked my neighbor a few weeks ago how many people they were expecting. She said that they'd invited 700 people. The wedding would start at 8:30 a.m. and the service would go until around noon and then they would eat lunch. People would hang around through the afternoon and then who is still there, will eat supper some time in the evening. Wow. That made me even more curious to go and since it's the girl who lives across the road, I could simply walk from work to attend. 

One of my non-amish friends suggested that I go later in the morning with them. Apparently it's accepted that if you're not a die-hard amish, you go later in the morning because you will get bored. 

They sure looked bored when I got there too. Women were lined up on backless benches on one side, men on the other. If amish are so family oriented, they sure didn't look it today. They pretty much even line up the ladies in age order, oldest women to young girls. When lunch rolled around I got happy for a few young mothers whose babies were getting taken care of in the house. These mothers are going to get a little date with their guys because their babies are being taken care of! Would you believe it though... once it was time to eat, the guys acted scared of the women and sat with the men and the ladies sat with the other ladies. When asked, they shrug that it is tradition. Well you wouldn't catch me sticking to that much tradition! Oh yes, no opinions...

And back to the service. My friend translated for me since, even though we live in good old America, it was in another language. There was a mix of High German and Pennsylvania Dutch. I understood a few of the Dutch words, but I really only took home a little even with what she translated.

The first couple hours the bishop just rehearses Old Testament Bible Stories. Here are a few snippets that stuck in my head. 

He talked a lot about a snake. And a lot about Satan. He spoke about how God cursed the snake and how he just about can't stand to look at the snakes at the zoo. He told a story about an old man who hiked a mountain and saw a snake, which asked him to carry her down to a warmer area. He told her that she would bite him but she promised him that she would not. So he agreed and just before he went to set her down, she bit him. He complained that she broke a promise and she said that he knew before he picked her up that she would do it.

He talked about David killing Goliath and he talked about Abraham and Lot. And Abraham and Sarah. And Isaac.

And then there was something about a bond and I got excited. Finally! They were going to talk about marriage something! 

The bummer was that it turned out to be a mistranslated word and it ended up being something about a covenant that one of the Israelites made badly.

He said "I'm talking to you plain. You have it right in the family." And then he talked a little about divorce.

About this time all the servers, dishwashers, cooks, and others, filed in. Lots of them and for a bit, you couldn't hear the bishop's droning story telling quite as plainly.

Then he said he had a story to tell that he didn't put much stock in but his grandpa says is in the Old Testament. He told the story from the Apocrypha about Tobias and something about 10 lbs of silver and a war in another country and he had to go bury the dead and he came home late and sat outside leaning against his house and someone threw straw out the window above and it got in his eye. He went blind and his wife had to spin wool to make a living. Then his son got there and there was a celebration...  I'd heard of the story but the part I had heard of must have gotten lost in the translation. I hear that story is almost always told at old order amish weddings. 

Then suddenly he said that if the couple still wants to get married, then to come forward. Everyone acted as though he was serious and no one laughed. Or chuckled. Or smiled for that matter. 

They exchanged a few vows, which if you'd dozed off for a couple seconds, you would have missed. And then apparently he said they were husband and wife by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but once again, I kinda missed that little detail since it wasn't in my language and there was so much  no clapping or smiles.

Then the story about Tobias started again. And the servers, and dishwashers, and cooks and others all filed back out. Solemnly, of course!

Then they all knelt to pray and then they all stood for more praying. When he said the word Jesus Christ, everyone bent their knees a bit and it looked like the room sunk about 6 inches and then popped back up.

I was told the reason they stand for some of it is because during the Early Ages when the Christians were persecuted, they stood for some of their service so no one would know it was a church service.

And then, just like that, four hours after it started, they sang four verses of a song (where every word gets an average of 8 notes) that gets sung at the end of every wedding (for about 20 minutes) and then everyone kinda milled out of there.

Then lunch happened and since I was in the basement, I couldn't even see the bride and groom. I suppose they were happy but they filed out during the song - and just before we all milled out- and it was hard telling whether they were happy. I wanted to clap for them. Due to tradition, I think, we all just sat and made sounds sang. 

And now I can say that I have indeed been to an amish wedding. 

When I got back to the shop, I stole a friend's quote and I told our amish employees:

"Walk over to the fence, and jump it".


*Editor's Note*
I have lots of friends who are amish and although I tell them what I think about their weddings, I do respect and appreciate their beliefs to an extent! Just in case you wondered. :)