More Blessings!

So my last post was about an answered prayer. And that was pretty neat. But it was peanuts compared to what God has done for us now! Nick's check was pretty small this week compared to what it usually is. For one thing, there was a holiday on there. Now that's good for most people, but for Nick it means that instead of them making the 10-15 commission hours they would usually have for that day, his teams gets $40 each. That takes a pretty good chunk out of the check. On top of that, we had several days of snow last week, and very few people were bringing their cars in for service which cut down on their commission even more. What it came down to was that we were around $700 short of what we needed for the bills, groceries, and necessities.

Okay, $700 is not a huge big deal for a lot of people, but in my house, that's a big chunk of money, and there was just nowhere for us to get it. So I spent a few minutes praying about it, telling God how much we needed His help, and then I did my best to let it go and not worry. A little while later I logged onto our bank account to see what had cleared and where we were with our balance, and I about fell out of my chair. Instead of the roughly $30 I expected to see in there, our balance was over $700! I looked at the activity, and saw that my former company had deposited $692. Okay, this couldn't be right - I had just quit, and since I had been on maternity leave for months beforehand, it's not like I had a last paycheck coming, right? And surely as soon as we spent it they would realize their mistake and take it right back out.

Fast forward a few hours - I called employee services to see what was going on. It turns out that when you quit, you get to get paid for any unused sick time. Mine reset for the year on my hire date anniversary, less than three weeks before I quit, so I got paid for the full yearly allowance!

I never in a million years would have thought about that being the policy. And it's really a sweet irony after all the stress I went through over the past year trying to juggle my sick time with my doctor's visits throughout my pregnancy. In fact, the last couple of visits I had before I went out on bed rest were unpaid for me because I had run out of all sick time and merit time.

Anyway, I just had to tell you guys what an amazing God I have!

Actually, there have been a couple of other neat blessings this week too. Last school year Morgan won a Wii during a school fundraiser. All three of us are big fans of all the Mario Brothers games, and we were pretty excited to hear about the new Super Mario Bros. Wii. However, with a $50 price tag, we weren't counting on getting it any time soon. Of course a video game is by no means a necessity, so it wasn't like we were suffering without it, but we really wanted to play it.

Well, going back to my job again - for certain anniversaries (5 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc.) the company would award you reward points that you could then redeem for prizes. Just before I quit, I got my 10 year anniversary points, and they were just enough to get a $50 Best Buy gift card. It came in the mail a few days ago, and Nick went yesterday and used it to get our game! All we had to pay was the tax, and we've had SO much fun with it!

Another cool thing: Morgan got a $20 gift card for Christmas to Justice from Nick's sister. Then Nick's other sister gave me a coupon for $15 off a $40 purchase at Justice, so if we put $5 with the coupon and the gift card, then she could get $40 worth of stuff. Morgan has been begging me to take her to spend it since Christmas, but I hadn't really had a good opportunity until today. Today I took her by the mall after I picked her up from school, and it turned out that the Justice there was going to be closing soon and everything in the store was 40-50% off the lowest marked price! I let her take her time, and she tried on half the store. In the end I paid about $17 out of pocket, but she got $115 worth of clothes and accessories. And on my way out of the mall Bath and Body Works had two types of foaming body wash for 90% off! One of them was even one if Nick's favorite scents, and I got 5 bottles for $1.20 each! All in all we got $175 worth of stuff for less than $25!

Okay, enough about my awesome shopping trip. :) We haven't forgotten about our weekly spanking. Last night Nick and I tried out the Wii game after we got Morgan to bed (we didn't tell her about it until today, because we knew we'd never get her in bed last night if she knew!). By the time we were done it was very late and Nick had to work today. Tonight we just could not get the baby to sleep, and Nick has to work again in the morning, so we're going to do our very best to get to it tomorrow night.

Anyway, I'm off to bed!