a really amazing thing.

We had a really great experience on New Year's Day that I just wanted to share with you here.  

Here's what I posted on Facebook as we drove away...

The coolest thing just happened! A group of twelve of us went to Denny's for breakfast in honor of Marissa's birthday, and an older gentleman sitting at the booth next to us gave the waitress a $100 bill to pay for our breakfast!! It was considerably more than enough, so our great waitress got a very nice tip. 

 

 

 

Here's a photo I took of the group as we looked over our menus.  I noticed you can see the man who gave us the $100 in the right of the photo (you can't see her here, but his wife was there with him).  When Matt went over to thank him for the money, he said as he gestured toward the group, "These are all the kids we never had."  They asked if it was a church group and we said it was.  We were just so flabbergasted and knew $100 was quite a bit more than our total bill was going to be. 

It was so fun to leave a nice, big tip for our waitress, who was working pretty hard to serve all of us and with such a cheerful attitude, too.  This was really one of those experiences that I think we'll remember for the rest of our lives.  And a good reminder to bless others, too.  :)

 

 

family size.

This is a post I've contemplated writing for some time.  Years, really.  In fact, I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to hit the "Publish" button when I'm done writing out my thoughts here. It's just so personal.

With our youngest child nine and a half years old now, our family probably appears complete.  But the truth is that Matt & I would love to have more kids.  Whenever the topic of possibly having more kids comes up with friends, people look so shocked when we don't say something like, "Oh, no more for us!  We're done with that!".   So that's really why I wanted to write this post.

When I was younger, I always thought I wanted three kids.  I'm not sure why, but that was what I thought.  Somewhere along the way, by the time Matt & I got married, I didn't really have a set number but I think in my mind it was more than three.  Matt wasn't super interested in starting a family right away and since I was only twenty and both of us were students, that was fine with me, too.

We learned Natural Family Planning less than a year into our marriage.  I'm grateful that my mother-in-law had been an NFP teacher, because it made us aware of that as an option.  Over time we learned that all of the hormonal methods of birth control use hormones that *may* cause a newly fertilized egg (aka: a tiny little baby) not to implant, thereby causing a very early abortion.  Most of the time they don't do that, but because it *can* happen, we were very uncomfortable with the idea of using those ways of waiting to start our family.

So, anyway.  We had six babies, and it was so amazing to know exactly when I could get pregnant because I'd learned what my body was doing.  With most of them, it was like, "Hey, do you want to have a baby?"  and "Sure!" and a couple weeks later, we had a positive pregnancy test. 

When I was pregnant with Naomi, I started having blurry spots in my vision that led to a brain tumor diagnosis. My meningioma (normally a slow-growing type of brain tumor) grew more quickly because of the surging estrogen in my body during my pregnancies.  So after my successful brain surgery, it really scared Matt to think that I might have another brain tumor, and we weren't sure if we should have any more kids.

Meanwhile, I really, really wanted more kids.  I felt like God was telling me to follow Matt's lead and so I did.  After a few years, he felt more relaxed about the whole thing and so we just left it in God's hands. It's kind of like, "God, we'd love to have more kids but we don't know if it's the best thing.  So we'll leave it up to you."  

That might sound kind of crazy.  I mean, isn't a woman able to get pregnant every month?  Of course you're going to get pregnant if you don't try not to.  Right?  Or, does God really control stuff like that?  

I honestly don't know for sure, but I do know it's been over five years now and I haven't gotten pregnant.  It's been pretty emotional for me these past few years to realize that maybe my childbearing years were over.  I really didn't feel "done" when Naomi was born.  Over the past year, (I think) I've finally begun to accept the very real possibility that I am done having babies.  After I blew out the candles on my birthday cake in November, it occurred to me that it was the first year in a long time that I hadn't wished for a new baby before my next birthday.  And I feel like that's a good thing, to trust that God knows what is best for me.  Whatever that is.  :)

thankful.

I was reading something online the other day, I can't even remember where, that made me think.  It was talking about how we don't realize what good things are in our lives until we no longer have them.  Don't you think that's so true in our American culture?  It seems we're always wanting more, more, more, when we probably could use to stand back and take a look at what God has already blessed us with and be thankful for it.

Today is the first day of October, a month that really gets me thinking deep thoughts.  

Eighteen years ago this Thursday (October 3), our baby daughter Jessica died, suddenly and completely unexpectedly.  To say that was life-changing and the worst day of my life is probably quite obvious.  I can't even begin to tell you how that day affected us, and I wish so much that others didn't have to learn from experience what having a child die is like. 

Nine years ago, I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and learned I had to have a craniotomy (the fancy word for "cutting someone's skull open with a saw") to have it removed on October 26.  We had five kids at home, the oldest not quite eleven years old and the youngest only four months old.  This was for sure the scariest thing I have ever dealt with in my life so far.

So when Matt & I were facing this scary thing nine years ago, knowing I had to have neurosurgeons cut my skull open and dig into the middle of my head to get this tumor out... that they might not be able to completely remove the whole thing, that there were possible side effects that could affect me the rest of my life (including a slight possibility of death), what really helped us was looking back nine years and seeing how God carried us through that.  

(I realized today that it's been nine years since our brain tumor experience and we had been looking nine years into the past and feeling like it had been so long ago.  Wow.  Where does the time go?)

Being a part of the body of Christ is amazing... you don't have to go through things on your own.  The term "body" isn't a joke... when your thumb hurts, the rest of you suffers, too.  It helps so much when you're going through something you can't imagine having to deal with.

When Jessica died, family and friends came to our house just to be with us when we didn't even know what we wanted.  We collapsed in bed in exhaustion that first night after she died only to wake up a few hours later, not able to sleep.  It was so nice to have friends from Marquette show up just then, having driven through the night to be with us.  So good to have people with us when we had to make meals and plan for her funeral and to have extra noise when otherwise it would have seemed so much quieter and empty.  And then an older lady from our church that we hadn't met yet (we were still new in town then) came to our front door with a box of pastries and with tears in her eyes, told me that her baby daughter had died forty years earlier.

Grieving is a tough process, and it's not neat and organized like in the textbooks.  There are the so-called stages of grief, and with Matt working on getting his Masters of Social Work degree at the time, you can be sure we were well aware of those stages.  But they don't happen in order, neatly, like you read about them.  It's messy and unpleasant, and sometimes both of us were in different places with our grief.  I'd want to talk about Jessica and Matt didn't because it was too painful for him.  And a couple months later, his mom died, too, so that was especially hard to deal with at the same time.  Sometimes he would just go in the basement and cry out because it was too much for him.  I remember on New Year's Day 1996, just hoping the new year would be easier on us than the previous year had been.

But through it all, we truly felt God carried us and loved us and didn't judge us for being all messy and ugly inside.  I had thought at the beginning that surely God must have something really BIG for me to learn from this, but really what it came down to was much more simple.  Just, "I love you and I care.  It's okay that you hurt.  I love you."  No big expectations from God.  This wasn't some big assignment I was supposed to learn something from and share with others or else I had failed the test.  Nope.  Just that He loves me.  (Which I guess in itself is pretty big.)

So, nine years later, I felt like we were the Israelites being reminded of how God had carried them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, how He had parted the Red Sea and cared for them in the wilderness and brought them into their own land that He had given to them.

And the truth is, all our prayers about my brain surgery were answered in the way that we had hoped.  It seemed so perfect ending-ish, when I know many, many people's stories aren't like that at all.  (And sometimes I fight off feelings of guilt about how well my story turned out.)  My brain surgeons were able to get my whole tumor out, my vision was restored fully, I was able to get home five days later, get back to nursing Naomi (when I'd been told I might have to stop), I didn't need to be on anti-seizure medications, and within a few weeks, I felt totally back to normal again.  I had been told it could be as long as two years before I'd feel "normal" again, and many brain surgery patients never do.  We had lots of people from our church and from Youth for Christ helping, bringing meals, watching kids, and planning to keep it up for at least another month.  But after three weeks, I realized it wasn't necessary. 

It is truly mind boggling to think of all the things that could have gone wrong that didn't.  Or haven't since.  Every other year I have an MRI to keep a close eye on what's happening, and every time it's been clear.  I am quite aware that one of these years that could change.  As the neurosurgeon out here said to me when we asked him about recurrence rates, "Well, you've obviously shown that you have the ability to grow a meningioma."

So in October, I am reminded of a couple of the "bigger" reasons I have to be thankful.  There are so many others, and when I think of the people in my life and the blessings God has given to us, I am grateful.  

God, please help me not to get distracted by things that don't matter.  Help me to be thankful always.

a tale of two washing machines.

A week ago last Friday, our washing machine stopped spinning out.  Since it was just a rusty old machine that we picked up for $40 a few years ago, we figured it wasn't worth trying to get the parts and fix it.

So began the quest for a "new" machine...

• Craig's List, our normal source for appliances, was the first place we looked, but the cheapest I could find was $125 for an old machine.  (Not sure why, but it seems lots of people think they can get that much for a 90s era washer.)
• We saw a washer on the website for an auction company that (conveniently for us) has auctions every Friday night.  Of course, it was nearly the end of the auction before they got to that item, and it ended up that both the washer & dryer went together, putting the price higher than our $50 target.
• Saturday was Joshua's birthday, but we had to get a washer, so Matt & I went out on our mission.  Garage sales, estate sales, Goodwill (half-off day!), the Habitat for Humanity Re-store were all on the list.  We were coming back home with a working washer, one way or another!

So after seeing one for $350 at a garage sale, we decided to stop in at the closest Goodwill.  It was half-off day, and you never know what you might find.  Matt dropped me off at the front of the store while he got in line to donate a few items.  I quickly scanned the store, found nothing, came back out, hopped in the van with Matt, and as we pulled out of the donation line, we saw a man in a pickup truck driving in with a washer & dryer set!!  Matt pulled up behind him, asked if the washer worked and if he could buy it from him.  

So for $50 we got our "new" washing machine!  Yay, God! :)

And, to top it all off, it matches our dryer.  Just like a matching set.  Can't beat that, eh? :)

the magic letter.

So as you may know, our oldest child, David, finished homeschool early this year.  He really wants to go to Matt & my alma mater in the U.P. of Michigan.  And the goal is to do college with no debt.  So the plan was to live at home, attend community college (covered entirely by his Pell Grant) and then transfer up to the U.P. for his junior year.

Enter what I call the "magic letter."  So we arrived in Marquette and there was a letter for David from the state of Michigan telling him about this scholarship program that would cover his tuition & fees for the first two years, and then a significant portion for the last two years.  We knew before we moved to Arizona five years ago that he qualified for this program, because we had been on state assistance for a certain amount of time.  But we figured he no longer qualified, since we had moved out of state.

David filling out info at the NMU Admissions office.  Can I just say how surreal it was to be there as the *parents* this time, instead of the students!?!

Anyway, long story short, we met with financial aid & admissions people on campus, and all he has to do is establish Michigan residency, and the scholarship is his!  So, he plans to move to the U.P. in January or February to establish residency, and then start school up there in the fall of 2013.  This scholarship, along with the Pell Grant and another scholarship he qualifies for because of academic merit, will almost cover everything.  Along with a part-time job, he will be able to get through college without debt.  Amazing. :)

So.  We are looking at him leaving the "nest" a bit sooner than anticipated.  But he is ready.  And if there was a town 2,000 miles away for him to be in, we couldn't pick a better one than our former hometown, with a built-in support system of people up there who love him.  :)

encouraging verses.

Remember a few weeks back, how I said I was going to look up some verses about God's love for us?  Well, here they are.

As I said before, I struggle a lot with what others think of me.  I think that the efforts I've made to get my art business up & running have really accentuated that.   I have this deep-seated fear that people will look at my art and think, well... she's *kind of* good, but I can't believe she thinks she's good enough to *sell* her art!  I guess in some ways that's a good thing, because it's forced me to wrestle with this area in my life that I sort of vaguely knew was an issue and to cry out to God for help in dealing with it.

Anyway, I had a very emotional day earlier this month filled with tears, reading God's Word, listening to praise music, focusing on God's love for me.  And that is the day that I looked up these verses.  

But I didn't bother to post them here until I was reminded this morning that I need to focus on God's opinion of me, not other people's.  Today I read some words that I interpreted as hurtful.  Maybe those words were intended to hurt me, maybe not--honestly, I don't know.  But I can't dwell on it, because it won't help and it really doesn't matter, because God loves me unconditionally.  Whether or not everybody likes me and/or my art.

Spending some time in His Word this morning. :)

Okay, so I said there were encouraging verses.  Without further ado, here they are.  (I'm not sure what translation they're all in... I found them online in a flurry of needing God's encouragement.  So you can look them up in your preferred translation if you like, but here they are.)

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. ~Phil 1:6

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  ~Ephesians 2:10

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.  ~John 15:16
 
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast. ~Ephesians 2:8

Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you. ~1 Peter 5:7
My peace I give to you.  ~John 14:27
 
He comforts us when we are in trouble, so that we can share that same comfort with others.  ~2 Corinthians 1:4 

You are my fortress, my place of safety; you are my God, and I trust you.  ~Psalm 91:2

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything; you may have an abundance for every good deed.  ~2 Corinthians 9:8

So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.  ~Matthew 6:34

These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.  ~John 16:33

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.  ~Isaiah 41:10 

Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path. ~Psalm 119:105

Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  ~Matthew 7:7-8

And this is our confidence, that if we pray according to His will, He will hear us, and give us what we ask for, because our desires are in agreement with His thoughts for us. ~1 John 5:14-15

Yahweh is close to all who call on Him—to all who call on Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him: He will hear their cry and save them. ~Psalm 145:18-19

Come to Me, all you who are weary and weighed down with heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in spirit. Indeed, you will surely find rest in Me! My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. ~Matthew 11:28-30

Those who sow in tears will reap a harvest of joy; for though they may weep while going forth to plant their seed, if they persevere, they will undoubtedly return rejoicing—bringing their sheaves with them. ~Psalms 126:5-6

I have told you these things so that you would find comfort in Me. In this world, you will suffer; but be courageous, for I have overcome the world! ~John 16:33

You have put gladness in my heart, more than in the season that their grain and wine increased.  ~Psalm 4:7

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.  ~John 14:27

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities.  ~Psalm 103:8-10

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.  ~Hebrews 4:16

My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him.  ~Psalm 62:5

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  ~Philippians 4:6-7

Some loveliness from our back yard a few weeks ago. 

Aren't you *glad* He loves you?   I sure am!  :)

He is risen!

Did 'ya see that?  I changed my title to have a capital letter at the start.  (Lately I've been typing my titles all in lower case, in case you didn't notice.)

Anyway.  He is risen!  That is something that should change our lives.  Not just generate a fun day of celebrating spring, eggs and bunnies, chicks & the like.  Oh, and candy.

Here are some pics from our Resurrection Day this year.  I normally forget to take pics, so this is a real treat. :)

Our rose bush is going crazy!  Also, notice on the windows the cute little bird feeders Joshua & Jesse made at Home Depot on Saturday. :)

Here are the kids in the back yard just before our Easter dinner.  They actually still had their church clothes on when I remembered to take the pic!! Yea! :)  (And all but Marissa were badly in need of haircuts, which I didn't get to before Sunday but have taken care of by now.)

My feet.  Just because. :)

Just before digging in on Easter Sunday.

Part of our dinner.  Jello eggs are a tradition for me, having made them pretty much every year when I was a kid.

David & Marissa sang Hero (the Savior to the world), and I was so proud of them!  Marissa also sang in a ladies' quartet.  And the two of them plus Matt & me sang in the choir.  It's so fun to see them up front singing to God, not afraid of being up there.

That's our Easter in pictorial form.  Hope that you & your family had a wonderful day celebrating the fact that God's not dead!  He's surely alive!! (That Newsboys song was running through my head all morning on Sunday.)

big changes. :)

So Matt has had high blood pressure for the past couple of years, and his cholesterol levels were all messed up.  He was prescribed medication about a year & a half ago to help with the blood pressure, and there was talk of putting him on meds for the cholesterol if he couldn't get that lower.  Both of Matt's parents had heart disease, so it sure seemed that he was heading down the same road.

Let me just say that having open heart surgery is not fun.  I remember how hard it was on his mom when she had hers in 1994.  Not an easy recovery.  I'd prefer not to see Matt like that if we can avoid it, thank-you-very-much. :)

So anyway.

Yesterday Matt got the results back from this year's annual bloodwork.  Great news!  (The following stuff probably will look like a bunch of gibberish, but somebody out there will know what it means.)  What I do know is that LDL is the "bad" cholesterol and HDL is "good" cholesterol.  And having your triglycerides high is very bad and contributes to your HDL being low.

Cholesterol went from 197 down to 158. (ideal is below 200)

Trigylicerides went from 182 down to 107!  (ideal is below 150)

LDL-calculated went from 126 to 107.

Cholesterol/HDL ratio went from 5.6 down to 4.9 (ideal is less than 5)

VLDL-calculated went from 36 down to 21 (ideal is less than 30)

So, how did he do it?  Well... I've been waiting to tell you about that until after we got the bloodwork back, just to see if it made a difference... which it sure seems to have done!

Last August, our sister-in-law emailed a link to an article about the "Heart Attack Proof Diet", put together by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.  He works with people who are at the end of their rope, when it came to their heart disease... nothing more could be done for them surgically, and basically it was just a matter of time before their heart disease would kill them.  Dr. Esselstyn wanted to have them radically change the way they ate to see what would happen.  Their heart disease actually *reversed*, which is something most people would say is impossible.

What is this crazy diet, you ask?  Well, it's a plant-based, very low fat diet.  No meat, no dairy, no eggs.  No animal products.  And no added fat.  Low sodium.

We decided to try it last August. And although we aren't 100% on the diet (aka, *please* don't be afraid to have us over for dinner), we saw some big changes long before Matt got his bloodwork done this month.  For instance, he lost 20+ pounds, and I lost about 15 pounds.  We've both had to buy smaller size clothing.  People are noticing that we've lost weight (which, by the way, wasn't at all what we were trying to do).  Matt doesn't have heartburn or need his blood pressure meds anymore.  We both feel better.

And an interesting note is that the kids continue to grow healthy & strong.  They are definitely getting enough nutrients.  Which of course is a concern many people have about this new thing we're doing.  :)

So anyway, that's the news about our big changes we've been making.  There are weeks where we eat a lot of things not on the diet (think: birthdays & holidays), and weeks where we're a lot better with it.  But we're liking the better health a lot, and it's amazing how many *delicious* foods you can make without animal products or added fat!  

Mmmm....

oh, yeah.

The last time I posted, I totally forgot to mention another reason why life is good.  It wasn't that I had forgotten... I had already posted about it on Facebook.  I just neglected to mention it on my blog.

A few hours after my meningioma brain tumor was successfully removed.  Yea, God!! :)

Last Wednesday, the 26th, was the seven year anniversary of my brain surgery!  God was so amazingly good (as He always is), and the neurosurgery team was able to remove *all* of my meningioma brain tumor!  My recovery was remarkably speedy, and all of my follow-up MRIs have been clean.

That's the short version of the story.  Click here to read what I said about my surgery about a week afterwards.  It's pretty cool to see how God answered very specific prayers.   

(If you want the whole, start to finish, story of our brain tumor adventure, you can click in the "Labels" section to the right on "Meningioma brain tumor".  All my posts about it will pull up and you can read it all.)

twenty-one years!

Matt & me on our wedding day, May 5, 1990

Matt & I celebrated our 21st anniversary last Thursday, the fifth of May.  It's so amazing to me that I've been signing my married name more years than I did my maiden name!  An older gentleman in our church told us last week that we are just getting started.  It's just amazing to me to think that 21 years is just getting started... wow!  :)

I love being Matt's wife, how he's my best friend and has so much confidence in me and challenges me to push myself when I think I can't do something, or when I need a little "iron sharpening iron".  I love how he loves me despite my weaknesses and flaws.  It's so great to know that he loves me, despite all that.  (He says it isn't hard... but I know what I'm like sometimes!)  

And I am still just head over heels over him.  I love his eyes, the sound of his voice, well... you get the idea.  Twenty-one years haven't dampened any of that.  In fact, it's just gotten deeper and stronger in my heart.  

I am so very grateful that God brought Matt & me together, that I can be his "help-meet", his helper.  God knew just exactly who I needed and I am so thankful!  :)

Just for fun, here's a video of Dave Barne's song "God gave me you", which played a lot on the radio last year at this time.  I just love it! :)

easter weekend.

It occurred to me this morning as I read my sister Becky's blog that I didn't take one photo on Easter Sunday.  Oops.  Well, here are a few from Saturday.  I guess that will just have to do.

We had our friend Suzie's girls over a few days this past week while she worked and her mom is out of town.  Friday I succumbed to the sinusy/scratchy-throat thing that seems to be going around our family.  (David, me, Naomi, and now Joshua & Jesse have all been its victims.  So far.)

Saturday I had Marissa take over the preparations for Easter dinner, which meant she was in charge of our younger three kids and Suzie's two.  She did a great job, as you can see below.

Here's Marissa with Katrina and Naomi, explaining how to do the Jello eggs.  This was the first year I didn't help at all with them... being sick, I just put Marissa in charge.  They turned out great and the kids had a blast making them! :)

Kaitlyn is such a sweet little girl. :)  Here she is, taking her nap on Saturday afternoon.

Matt ran a bunch of errands on Saturday with most of the kids.  Here, Naomi looks for a book.  We had a nice quiet reading time while Kaitlyn napped.  :)

The kids with their decorated hard-boiled eggs, which incidentally made *delicious* deviled eggs for our Easter dinner yesterday!  :)

Yesterday, David & Marissa were in a drama that the teen group put on, Marissa being the main character.  She did a great job, and I was so proud of her. :)  Both David & Marissa and I were in the choir.  Matt was supposed to be, too, but Naomi was sick, so he stayed home with her.  

Marissa and I did our first duet together!  She has a very nice singing voice, I really enjoyed singing with her, and I look forward to more duets together. :)  We sang "Lamb of God", by Twila Paris, and it went pretty well, despite my having the sinusy thing going on.  My voice gave way at the second-to-last measure of the song, and I guess from a couple friends' remarks afterwards that the look on my face was quite hilarious.  Sort of like, "Really?  Now?"  I hadn't realized I had made a face.  Oops.

Anyway, that's that.  No pretty photo of the kids & me in our Easter clothes.  I always seem to forget those shots on Easter... I'm quite sure this isn't the first year I forgot.  

So I hope you had a good Resurrection Day yesterday.  I find words somewhat inadequate in trying to describe the meaning of the day.  Let's just suffice it to say that I am SO thankful God came to earth in human form and that He died on the cross for my sin!  Thank you, Jesus.  :)

just a quick praise. :)

Last Friday & Saturday, we had to dip into our "baby" emergency fund to buy the supplies to repair our van's brakes.  

A cool thing happened this week.  On Monday, we unexpectedly received early payment from one of our summer Beach House guests, so we can now get our emergency fund back up to $1,000!

Thank-you, God!  :)

Whew!

We have had a great turn-out of guests at the Beach House this month, praise God!  It has helped tremendously with paying the bills up there this winter, and also allowed us to buy my art supplies, as well as some curriculum we needed.

The guests this week helped us avert a potential crisis, too.

The thermostat in the Beach House. 

Yesterday afternoon, I got a call from the current guests about the temperature not getting above 63 degrees in the house and the fan not kicking on.  I made a few calls to pick people's brains, then Matt came home and joined the efforts.  We caved in and called the plumbing & heating people in Marquette, gulping hard at the extra $99 for an after-hours call.

Matt started thinking maybe the air filter was clogged and that would have shut off the furnace.  I called our guests, had them take out the filter, and promptly the furnace kicked on!!  We called the heating guy and cancelled the after-hours call.  All this on our way to fill in as Financial Peace University coordinators for somebody.  Boy, did that add to *our* financial peace, saving the $99 after-hours fee!!

We were all excited about saving ourselves an expensive service call, but this morning I got to thinking.  What if we hadn't had anyone at the house this week to let us know the heat wasn't working, with the temps below 20 degrees?

Wow!

Oh, and I just have to add that Matt has been after me to have Jenn (our friend who cleans the house/keeps an eye on things) change the air filter.  And I kept forgetting to ask her... so this is really MY fault.  :(  I will not forget the air filters from here on out!! 

Answer to prayer

After months of waiting and being "over numbers" for quite some time, Matt just got reassigned to three different clinics for work. :)  Don't get me wrong... even in the midst of the one-hour each way commutes, we were quite aware of the bad economy and very thankful for Matt's good job.

But this certainly is an answer to prayer for us and should help with the stress level for him.  One clinic is the closest one to our house, another is quite close, and the third is farther away but he will be paid mileage for that. 

This helps financially as we can lower the "gas" portion of our budget.  And I suspect we'll be seeing more of Matt now, too, with the shorter commute times and lighter case load.  :)

Thank you, God!

A reminder of God's provision

We have a 1999 Suburban that we bought at a Border Patrol auction last year.  It is, shall we say, "quirky".  Think: dents in the body; scrapes up the front grill, across the hood, and up onto the windshield (like somebody drove it through a barbed wire fence trying to get away); various doors/windows that either won't open or lock properly; one back door that won't open and a blinker/brake light that needs work.

But, it's paid for and I am so thankful to have a way to get around town when Matt is at work.  :)

Here it is, in all its quirkiness!  I am so thankful for my paid-for "wheels"! :)

Anyway, lately I've had to jump-start the Suburban every time I want to go out somewhere.  It's gotten progressively worse over the past couple of weeks.  On Saturday, after having to get yet another jump-start, I went to Wal-Mart and told them what was going on.  We still have another year and a half on the warranty, so they gave me a new battery!  :) 

I just ran out to the store, and it was so refreshing to have the Suburban start right away.  Another reminder of how God provides for us...

Which is good, since we need new tenants for our Marquette house, and I've been tempted to start worrying about that.  I keep thinking of the phrase, "I believe; help Thou my unbelief," in regards to the financial end of needing new tenants ASAP.

And, I just discovered that one tire on the Suburban is peeling on the inside.  Seems dangerous to drive it like that, so we will need to buy a tire soon, and those big tires are not cheap.

So the reminder this weekend of God's care and provision for us was very timely.

Life still happens when you're living on a budget... (aka: a prayer request)

This living on a budget thing is really fascinating.  It is *so* nice to have a plan for our money and to "tell it what to do", as Dave Ramsey says, before we get it.  Another interesting fact is that life still happens when you have the numbers all worked out, and the "plan" has to change sometimes to compensate for that.

A sunny February day when we still lived at the house. :)

Take, for instance, the news we got this morning.  Our wonderful tenants at our Beach House found out recently that the wife is about to deploy to Afghanistan via the National Guard, and they have to break their lease before Christmas.  :(

Besides the obvious "bummer" for them about wife/mom being gone for a whole year, we have some effects from this news, too...

• more than half of our budgeted Christmas money is now not coming
• a large chunk toward our debt snowball is not coming
• we are just heading into the coldest season in Marquette, and will be responsible for the huge (even with the heat turned down) gas bills & snow removal.

But, on the bright side:

• of all the months for this to happen, it is one in which Matt gets THREE paychecks instead of one, so all our essential bills will still be covered!!  :)
• there may be someone who wants to rent for Christmas week
• or New Year's week
• we can advertise for a 5-month lease
• God has a plan, and we know we can trust Him to make sure the Marquette bills will be covered... we've seen Him do it before!  :)
• oh, and let's not forget that Matt has a *very* good job that pays him well for his hard work.  I am very thankful for that!  :)

God provides... again! :)

Just wanted to share a couple of cool ways we've seen God provide these past couple of weeks...

We've been doing the cash envelope system for oh, about six or eight weeks now, I think.  Anyway, I knew going into it that this 2-week budget was going to be tight.  Turns out that we were short for one bill, and I'd already taken $40 from the gas fund to cover other essentials.  I couldn't find any other places to move money around to cover this bill... we couldn't "zero out" the budget.  It was at -$35.75.

It was gonna be tight, but we had some stuff to sell.  So it was cool because normally I tend to be a worrier, but I just knew that this deep cycle battery we had listed on Craig's List was going to sell.  God was going to provide.

I listed it *before* we needed the money, thinking I'd just put it aside for the shortfall on our budget.  But nobody called about it.  Not until right when we needed the money!  So the money was in our account by the time the automatic payment came out.  Thank-you, God!  :)

This week, the kids & I moved into our second term (out of three) of our school year and I realized we needed several books we hadn't budgeted in.  I found three or four at the library, and the rest were on amazon or ebay.  However, the money wasn't in the budget and I wasn't sure where it was going to come from.

Enter some toys that the kids hadn't played much with over the past few years.  I listed them on Craig's List the other day, and yesterday a lady came and bought our GeoTrax set for $20!  Last night, I bought the remaining four books online and we still have a little of that money left.  Yea, God!!  :)

I'm just constantly amazed at how God provides for us without having to dip into the emergency fund or go into debt.  I am *very* thankful!  :)

A good report!

I got my MRI report in the mail yesterday.  Everything looks good!  Or, as they say in neuroradiologist speak: 

"(Blah, blah, blah) Findings are not significantly changed compared to previous study. (Blah, blah, blah) There is no evidence of new abnormal enhancement to indicate tumor recurrence. (Blah, blah, blah)  This is stable compared to prior study."

Which translates to: I don't have a new tumor and there was nothing else abnormal on the current MRI.  :)

I'm working on not being online during the day, so I need to go. But I wanted to at least let those of you who are following my blog know the good news! :)  My next MRI will be in two years.

Adventures in Debt Repayment...

A "debt snowball"  :)

We have been having so much fun paying off debt lately!  Seriously.  We are currently taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University for the fourth time.  Yep, you read that right.  The fourth time.

Truly, we did learn a lot the first time we took the class.  For instance, we stopped using credit cards, stopped buying things we didn't have money for, we changed our life insurance to term policies, we wrapped our minds around the idea of selling things to help pay off debt, and we learned many other useful things.  The class really prepared us for our big move (that we didn't know we were about to make) from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Arizona.  I don't think we would have been ready otherwise.

The second FPU class we took was good because we had just moved and it was good to revisit the ideas with our new "numbers"... you know, new salary, new housing & utility expenses, etc.  We missed about half the third class we took, because Matt's work had him traveling to another town pretty regularly.

Earlier this year, we got lazy about finances... this year we actually got into about $2400 debt after avoiding it for nearly three years!  :( 

So we decided it was high time that we got serious and took another class.  This time, we are really doing it!  We have kicked in to using our budget and the envelope system.  We also are selling stuff on ebay and Craig's List.  We've been putting the extra money toward making extra payments toward our debt.  So far, so good.  :)

This week, we unexpectedly received a check.  In April 2009, we bought a pop-up and learned a couple months later that in its past, it had been stolen.  Long story short, even though it wasn't the fault of the people we bought it from, they returned half the money earlier this year.  They've been working on gathering up the remainder and sent us the check this week!  Unbelievable.  And so wonderful!  I went online last night and plugged that towards the smallest credit card balance.

We also had an insurance adjuster look at our van, both for the parking lot "hit & run" a couple weeks ago, and for the hailstorm last week.  The checks they are sending us are in all reality worth more than what we could sell our van for.  We can fix the damage for quite a bit less than that, and apply the rest toward debt reduction.

So, this month we should be seeing our "debt snowball" start rolling!  I am just in awe of how God has provided this totally unexpected money that my husband was trusting we could find somewhere to pay off this debt.  We still have some credit card debt left, but I am excited to see that debt snowball kick in.  :)

Okay, you might be wondering, "So what exactly *is* a debt snowball?"  I'll try to explain.  First, you make a list of all your debts, smallest to largest.  You get crazy about paying off that first debt (garage sales, Craig's List, ebay, extra job, whatever).  Anything extra goes toward that first debt.

Then, when it's paid off, you take the amount of that minimum payment and plug it toward debt #2.  So, for example, our first one is $20.  We will add that to the next one, which is $38, so you can imagine that it will get paid off sooner, right?  Then, when that debt is paid off, you add both payment amounts to debt #3, and all your debt gets paid off *way* faster.  Of course, during the whole thing, you're still working it like crazy (ebay, Craig's List, etc.) to pay even more than those monthly payments.

So, that is what we're about to see start happening with us!  It's been so fun, working together in one mind toward this goal.  And it is such a God thing, really, to see how this is happening.  :)

Just a quick hello :)

It's been several weeks since I've posted, so I thought I'd just say hello to anyone who actually is out there reading my blog.

Hello.

Okay, really, I'll post a little more than that... here's what's been happening around here lately...

School is tracking along well. We've been at it for something like 8 or 9 weeks now. It's simply amazing to me how quickly time flies that way. We're learning pretty amazing stuff, and I am thankful to be homeschooling my kids. I really enjoy their company so much... we have the greatest conversations about life in general, sprinkled in amongst the academic stuff.



I cannot believe tomorrow is October! I am very much looking forward to it, because that's the month when our temperatures are finally low enough to enjoy being outside during the day. We've been having some higher-than-normal temps here lately, with several record-breakers, so everyone is ready for some more typical fall weather here. It's feeling pretty nice in the early morning or late evenings, when the sun isn't high in the sky, but soon it will be *really* nice.


We just started a new Financial Peace University class at a nearby church, and we are really excited about working hard at getting out of debt. We took our first class in 2007, and made some huge changes and paid off a fair amount of debt. But sometime in the past couple of years, we lost our momentum, so it's good to get back into it again. A week ago today, we went to see Dave Ramsey live in Phoenix, and that was a good "kick-start" to our renewed commitment to work on our finances. I plugged the numbers into our budget and we've been working hard at sticking with it this past week. One day at a time...


Along that line, we've been selling stuff this week. I have sold a lot of curriculum we're not using on ebay, with more auctions closing this afternoon.



On Craig's List, I sold a random trailer tire we had here and our un-matching tires (on matching rims) that came with our Suburban. I sold the center caps for those rims separately on ebay. And yesterday, I was able to take the money from the tires and plug it straight toward our credit card debt. An extra $140 paid off... ka-ching! :)



Somebody ran into our van in the parking lot at Matt's work last week! :( We are going to get estimates and may end up buying a "new" door at a junkyard and just fixing it ourselves, since our insurance has a $500 deductible. It's hard to believe somebody would run into a car and not try to contact the owner. :( But, thankfully, it still runs... that door is just pretty difficult to close tightly.



Just took Zoe (the dog) in for her spay surgery this morning... thanks to the curriculum selling, we could pay for it! She is such a great, loving (and yes, energetic!) dog... a great part of the family. But, wow! When she sees other dogs, she goes *crazy* wanting to play with them!! She barked constantly and would not pay any attention to me trying to calm her down. I couldn't fill out the paperwork until the man at the mobile clinic took her inside for me... I think everyone thought she was vicious. Wow. We really have to work on her socialization skills!



Our 8-month renters are moved into our Marquette house, so that's a great blessing to us. We are super excited to have people in there over the winter, and to have someone else paying the gas and snow removal bills this winter, as well. :)


So, God is good and He is taking care of us as He always does. I am excited to see what He does over this fall and winter. :)