A Gentle Reminder and a Formal Complaint Against the DMV!

I am not perfect and neither is my little family. I have been trying to do what we are supposed to do as far as FHE, scripture reading and family prayer. So far the only thing I have been consistent with is FHE. I don't know about you, but it seems like I can always come up with a million reasons to put off the daily things. FHE is easy to me because I just know I do it on Monday night. All the other stuff seems to fall by the wayside and then it takes little gentle reminders to wake me up again. Last Saturday morning was just that for me. In the morning I was trying to get the boys ready to take Luke to his basketball game and not be late. Luke looked at me and said all sweet like: "Last night you forgot the most important thing." I looked at him and said "what did I forget?" My mind instantly went to brushing, flossing, pj's, etc. when Luke said to me "You forgot to have us say family prayers. Don't worry though, I reminded Adrian and we said it together in our room so we could tell Heavenly Father goodnight." And then Luke went back to eating his cereal and on with life. I just sat there for a minute and realized how grateful I am for these sweet spirits to be in my home. I am so grateful for their relationship with the spirit and their willingness to share that with me and our family.

On to something more frustrating (at least for us!) In case I wasn't sure of it before I am now 100% sure of the fact that I hate the DMV. I don't use the term hate lightly here either. Luckily everything has worked out in the end, but I was ready to flip out! Andrew found out 3 weeks ago that the Air National Guard fire station where he works part-time is officially hiring for 2 full-time positions. The application was due May 2 and it had to be picked up from a State of Oregon employment office. So he went to get that a little over 2 weeks ago and started gathering the necessary documents and such. One of the things that was required was a copy of his driving record. Now this is where I start to get frustrated. He went in on Tuesday (2 weeks ago) to the DMV to request his driving record. In case you are not aware you are the only person who can request your own record, but they will not give it to you there. You either have to have it mailed to you (which goes through Salem and takes forever) or they will fax it to any number that you give them. Ridiculous, I know. So he gave them the fax number for the office that I work at and they said it would be sent the next day between 9-12. It never came. He said lets see if it shows up on Thursday, well it never did and it never came on Friday either. So on Monday he went back to the DMV and spoke to the lady there about it. She said that it shows that it was sent and she doesn't know why we didn't get it, she could have it sent again. Okay fine, well it still never showed up the next day. So on Wednesday morning Andrew called the DMV and spoke to someone who said it was sent, maybe there was a problem with the fax machine (which by the way there isn't) and so he gave them the number to a fax machine at the base. Well, surprise it never showed up. So on Thursday he called the DMV again and was basically given the run around and transferred to different people and then disconnected as well. He finally got a hold of a supervisor at the DMV who got on her little computer and said "yes, I can see here where this record has been requested several times in the last week and a half. however it doesn't look like the request was ever processed. Let me see what I can figure out about this and I will get that sent to you by tomorrow morning." Now, it wouldn't be such a big deal except for obviously someone doesn't know that to have a fax go through you have to physically put the papers in a fax machine, enter a phone number and push the send button. Or is it just me that thinks that should be an easy task? And also, not to mention the fact that without the driving record the application would be incomplete and Andrew would not be considered at all for the job. Luckily it all worked out in the end and the record came just in time and the application was turned in before 5 yesterday. Moral of this story: government run anything is a nightmare! I sure hope that we never have to experience DMV-like health care or anything else like it. Good luck if you have any upcoming interactions with everyone's favorite department :)