Hope you are all enjoying your holiday.

What’s going on with the Hornes?

Well, the good news is that I just got a check from adsense (google) for over a hundred bucks. Of course, the “bad news” is that little bit of infusion was highly needed right now…

The fact is, even though the business has gone better than I had any right to expect, we are not making it yet. I really need to acquire more paying clients, preferably consistent ones.

And that’s the elephant in the room. It is just about time to apply to school and we are not sure what we are going to do. The school the kids attended for the last two years is way way out of our financial reach. Furthermore, Calvin did not thrive there. This was unexpected because, the year previous, thanks to a diligent teacher to whom we owe a great deal, we saw him make great strides. This year it was a nightmare of trying to get him to keep up with his different assignments in different classes (he had different classrooms in the fifth grade) and deal with the automatic consequences that accrued to any missed assignments or tardies. By the time the year was almost over I realized how much I had deconstructed him by what I had put him into. I couldn’t really help him because I could only get a vague idea of what the expectations were. And while they seemed reasonable (as far as I know the school wasn’t having problems with other students) the bottom line was that these were conflicts that were not helping him mature and were issues that, if it had been in my power, I would have delayed for a later time when he was a little bit more grown up.

The worst of it is the Stockholm Syndrome. Calvin wants to stay with what he knows. And the friends he has. The above picture isn’t him just tired. It is him depressed because we had to meet in the school building last week.

Frankly, my number one wish is that he could be homeschooled. But as much as Jennifer and I want her to be able to stop working, we simply don’t see that as a possibility. She has a pretty flexible job right now where her work is valued. There is a much cheaper school we will probably use, though in truth we really feel now like we are gambling with the unknown.

And it all comes down to money. I hope to add a full-time job of some sort while I continue to try to build my business.

I should add that the other side of my life, my ministerial vocation, is doing quite well for a non-payed position. My weekly Bible study has grown (we moved to a new time) and I will be speaking at the Biblical Horizons conference in a couple of weeks, as well as teaching VBS.

Oh, and one other thing: my iMac seems to have been permanently cooked for some reason. It shut down forty-eight hours ago and is doing a pretty good imitation of a plastic brick.

So, for all those reasons, we ask for your prayers. Thanks for reading.