'Tis the season to be Sadie

Sadie brought in quite a haul for Christmas this year. Yes, that is one of the advantages of having parents who are divorced...you get presents from two sets of families! Woo hoo! Unfortunately for her, since her B-Day is about three weeks after Christmas, she probably won't get much for her B-Day (not that she knows the difference right now). Either way though, Santa was very generous no matter how you look at it :)


























She loved most of her gifts as you can see in the pictures, but it was getting her to unwrap them that was the challenge. Most of the time she was wondering off to play under my sister's table or entertaining herself with various present accessories such as bows, ribbons, etc.







































Doggies (or "puppies" as she calls them) are also her favorite things. She's holding a baby one in the picture directly above and got a Mommy one to match it from Grandma Jones (Zine!) She knows all of our dogs by name now, Molly ("Mowy"), Sandy ("Nandy"), Milo ("Miyo"), and Maggie ("Maee"). Grandma figured that if we got Sadie "puppies" of her own, that maybe the actual dogs could get some relief from her chasing them :)


Just like her Mom when she was little (and many other children I'm sure), Sadie loves babies. She now has three different ones that she plays with, puts to "sleep" and feeds her "sippy" to. She calls her cousin Brinley, "The baby", even though she's only about six months younger than Sadie :)


I'm grateful that I could be with my baby and my family during the holidays. That's the only real present I need, although the digital camera I got to take pictures of my loves ones was pretty sweet too ;)

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2008 just keeps getting better

Wouldn't you know it, the exact day I make an offer on a condo, I find out that I'm getting laid off! I've been having flashbacks to the day I got back from my honeymoon and got laid off then too. I pretty much have the worst timing in the world. If you know of any openings for an IT/Desktop person, I would greatly appreciate any information you could pass along. I'm here until the end of the year which basically boils down to three more days since I'm taking the Friday, Monday, and Tuesday after Christmas off, then coming back New Years Eve for my last day. 2008 will officially go down as one of the worst years in our family's history and my individual life as well. Just about everything that could have gone wrong has. The year can't end fast enough.

I was hoping to stick around at Franklin Templeton longer as I was just starting feel comfortable in the position and to get to know the people. I knew it would be a contracted position when I took it, but was hoping that the contract would last much longer than it did. Frankly, considering the fuss that my boss made when hiring me about me being "committed" and seeing "the advantages that a contract position can provide", I would have expected it to last quite a bit longer, but I now realize that that BS was just the beginning of a steady stream from her and from Franklin Templeton (my contracting company Milestone Technologies has been great). I feel really bad for the remaining customers in this building, who have to get a new IT person every 5 months and are the victims of the IT departments ridiculous processes, procedures, and management blunders. If it wasn't for those people, this job and all the nonsense associated with it would have been unbearable. I now fully understand why there was 5 people in 10 months in this job prior to my arrival.

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Stuck in a rut

As the end of school is just about here, I'm unfortunately still no closer to getting to Boise than I was at the start of the semester. My goal was to be there by the start of Spring Semester '09 at BSU (starts Jan 20), but right now there are no serious job prospects on the horizon. At this point, I'm really questioning whether I truly want to move there or not. There's no question that I want to be closer to my baby and it would be awesome to see her every week. Every time I have to give her back at the end of the visit, it seriously breaks my heart. To go from seeing her every day just recently to a short visit every couple of weeks is really a difficult adjustment for me. The prospect of missing parts of her life and not being able to see her grow up is almost unbearable sometimes.

On the flip side, Utah has always been my home. I'm sure if I gave it enough time, I could grow to enjoy Idaho. I don't think it will ever feel like home though. I only have one family member there who I'm not really close with and a couple of good friends. All the rest of my family is here, including my immediate family that I'm closest with, and most of my friends as well. If I move to Idaho, it's likely that most of the people I'm closest to won't get to see my daughter much at all. Also, if I move to Idaho and eventually marry another woman from there, that will practically ensure that I have to stay there, especially if we have more children. If I happened to get another divorce, that would be even more children in Idaho keeping me there. If I'm being honest, no offense to Idaho residents, but I can't say I'm thrilled about my children growing up in Idaho. From what I've heard from people who've gone to school there, the public school system is behind what it is in Utah. Plus, every time I visit there, I feel like I've gone back in time about 30 years. I just don't really want to make a life there.

Perhaps the biggest problem I'm seeing especially right now is that the job market for IT people like me is less than ideal in Idaho. There's plenty of jobs, but they're all entry level, $10 an hour jobs that one just can't live on, especially trying to support a family. The best salary I've seen for a desktop support person over the last three months is approaching $19 an hour, which is good, but not good enough and not what I could get and am getting in Utah. With HP and Micron recently laying off a ton of people, I don't see a saturated market getting any better in the Boise area any time soon. Most likely, in order to get to Boise, I'd have to "settle" for an under paying job that would barely keep me afloat after the child support, alimony, etc. bills. That doesn't factor in the cost of any new spouse and/or children that could also enter the equation. Chances are, in this economy, any relocation assistance would not available, so I'd have to pay for a move too. Financially, at least for the time being, it just doesn't seem feasible.

So what does all this mean? I wish I could say for sure. I'm really torn between my loyalty to my daughter and the reality of the overall situation. Right now I'm leaning towards staying here, even though I've already paid for admission and to transfer records to BSU. I haven't fully decided yet though, this is just what's been on my mind pretty much daily lately. This is the one of the unfortunate results of divorce and I hoped that I'd never have to deal with this. I don't wish this on anyone.

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The rise after the fall

So I decided to resurrect the previously short lived "Keeping up with the Joneses" blog. I deleted the previous one due to the impending break up of my family, which as you may or may not know was finalized at the end of September on our exact six year anniversary date. I decided that even though I lost a spouse, I still a have a "Jones Family" consisting of me and my baby, and hopefully someday I'll find another spouse, so therefore a blog tracking my current type of family was still warranted.

I'm taking a marriage and family class at SLCC right now (ironically) and after reading about the prevalence of various types of families in today's world, I felt like the non-traditional or non-nuclear family (which our book says is pretty much any family that doesn't have the original Mom and Dad) doesn't receive nearly the recognition and support that they deserve. Some perceive this type of family as what an Our Lady Peace song calls "the new enemy" or at least morally wrong, which I find reprehensible to say the least. It's funny how divorce can change your perspective on these things :)

So even though I'm hoping to find a spouse eventually and make a return to the more traditional form of family, I wanted to bring this blog back as a form of dedication to single parents and non-traditional families out there. I've witnessed firsthand the devastation of divorce and the shattered lives it leaves behind and in a spirit of love and compassion, my heart goes out to them.

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