What a week. . .

There's a lot to blog about already and it's only Tuesday! I don't know if this means it's going to be a long week or not. Hopefully this week flies by fast!

Happy Birthday Kara! Yesterday Kara turned 16! She was excited but she isn't getting her license yet so it wasn't the Sweet 16 she was hoping for. DJ rode with her driving for the first time yesterday though and he said she was pretty good. Now Kara has to decide what birthday gifts she wants. She can either go to New York and see our new niece or she can get a snowboard - what a tough choice! DJ and I let her pick a gift from us so in a few weeks we are taking her to a Rockies baseball game when they get back into town.

There's also another birthday to talk about. Today is what would have been Andrew's (DJ's best friend that died in Iraq) 23rd Birthday. Tonight we'll be having dinner with his family and then going to the cemetery afterwards. Happy Birthday Andrew!

This was taken while he was stationed in Hawaii.

This might be a little graphic but I have to share the downfalls of being pregnant! It's a huge bummer when you can no longer see your feet or even your own belly button. Last night I was "admiring" my belly button in the mirror. I hate how weird it looks. I have a huge red blob above it thanks to having had my belly button pierced. Not only do I have the scars from the piercing, I also have a deformed belly button (popping out of my tummy or not) because they went through my belly button when removing my gall bladder. Because my belly button now has folds and such in it and I can't bend over to see it, I have an infection in it. Lovely!! So now I have to clean it with peroxide and watch all this lovely stuff come out! And to make matters worse, I now have the pigment line that runs strait down my tummy from the top the the bottom!

On top of celebrating my little sister turning 16, remembering Andrew and now an infected belly button life has been more stressful than ever. DJ's job is in jeopardy. In May he was still working part time for Coyote Motorsports. Pepsi announced mandatory overtime and DJ had to pick - working full time for Pepsi with benefits and stability or working for Coyote on commission selling motorcycles. He took the responsible route and stayed with Pepsi. The mandatory over time was not a regular occurrence and not until an hour before his shift was over would they announce if overtime was necessary or not. He hated that but the extra pay was good. That only lasted about a month maybe a few weeks more. He works in the refurbishment department and there has never been any layoffs since that department opened more than 20 years ago. Last Thursday they had a meeting after work and laid off 7 employees in DJ's area. They said the layoffs were completely based on numbers and that individuals productivity. DJ has some of the highest numbers so he was in the clear. They said layoffs would be a weekly thing and everyone needed to stay on top of things. The next afternoon they said a conference call was scheduled to take place and it would be decided if DJ's refurbishment division or the division based in Fresno California would be shut down permanently. We would know Monday if DJ still had a job or not. So far so good because he's still working. Today they had a meeting and here's what was discussed:

- Instead of the initial $144 that needed to be saved on each machine they now needed to save $380 per machine. This is the amount of money per machine that needs to be saved on labor, paint, hardware, accessories etc. This would mean an automatic 7 more layoffs.

- DJ's department will be closing in mid-November if they are able to cut the costs being spent on each machine. If they are unable to save about $380 on each machine they will be shut down sooner and will not get paid or brought back to work until the beginning of January 2009.

- They put it this way: "We are running out of capital dollars". And instead of having 1.1 million every quarter to spend on payroll, benefits, supplies, etc (basically everything needed for DJ to work) they are now getting $660,000/quarter. Today all the lights in the warehouse are shut off and they are working only off emergency lights.

DJ is frantically looking for a job but with the way the economy is not a lot of people are hiring or paying as well as Pepsi has been paying him. Please pray that we are able to find DJ any type of job soon!