In His timing...

So I have to brag on God a little bit. When I last posted, I mentioned that we were facing some pretty serious financial issues. As of Sunday night, we were both out of gas and money, and Nick had no way to get to work the next day. 

In the past, my parents have lent us small amounts of money on occasion, but I just felt like God was telling me he didn't want me to ask them. My mom has a tendency to want to step in every chance she gets to help, which is very sweet, but we've both talked about how sometimes that may be stepping in God's way when He wants to provide in a different way. 

That night my dad had brought us a gallon of milk, something he does probably once a week because that is a special way my dad loves on us, making sure the kids always have milk, even if he doesn't know that we need it. I called my mom to thank them for it, and asked her to just please be in prayer for our finances in the coming weeks. I stressed that we knew God had a plan, and that we weren't asking for anything but her prayers. That was probably about 9:00. She later told me that she wanted to help financially, but that she knew she just needed to leave it in God's hands. Just after midnight our phone rang.

I was a bit alarmed when I picked it up, afraid something had happened to one of them. It was my mom calling to tell me that without any input from her, my dad had told her that God was telling him that He wanted them to offer us a loan for a couple of months until we get our income tax return. Nick and I prayed about it, and we felt a peace about accepting their offer. I drove out to my parents house on the little gas I had left and picked up $50 cash and a check for $950. Literally a few hours before Nick had to leave for work God provided gas money, plus enough to buy some groceries and help make up what his next paycheck is probably going to be short.

I also was contacted by a girl interested in doing a photo shoot in the next few weeks, and I'm meeting a client on Friday to give her the CD she ordered and pick up the $50 balance on her account.

But what really has me grinning and shaking my head is my Etsy shop. In the last 2 days I've sold 4 pillow covers and put up a custom listing for two more. I know that's small potatoes compared to the loan from my parents, but this is the first time I've ever had multiple orders on one day, and here it's happened two days in a row! I love it when I get to tell people how God has shown up for us in a big way! Fortunately it happens quite a bit. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's 3 in the morning here. Jack finally succumbed to the soporific effect of Play With Me Sesame a couple of hours ago. The chocolate chip banana bread is in the oven, and the cranberry oat bread is rising in my bread machine. The lemon blossoms are baked and will be glazed while the cranberry sauce cooks and the corn casserole bakes, things I will do after I get a few hours of sleep. There's an episode of Friends on TV, one that originally aired 14 years ago, the week we spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. 

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Money has been tighter than ever, something that inevitably happens this time of year due to the nature of Nick's work. As the holidays draw closer people tend to put off having their car worked on because they are saving for Christmas/Hanukkah, etc. He also missed a day of work on the this check because he was just too sick to make it in. I can't tell you how many times my sweet husband has gone into work sick,  but by the time he was halfway there he could tell he wasn't going to make it and turned around and came home. Fortunately it only lasted a couple of days, and he just missed the one day, but it hit his paycheck pretty hard. 

Even so, God has provided as always. There are things we've not gotten to pay that we needed to, but we've had food and fuel, and the basics have been provided. I'm really praying hard for next couple of weeks. His check will likely be about $500 short of what we need just to pay the bare minimum of what has to be paid no matter what, not to mention money for gas and groceries. And when I say the bare minimum, that's exactly what I mean - there's nothing I can postpone. Everything is as late as it can be without effecting our credit rating. I don't have anywhere I can go to borrow that money, not do I have a way to earn that much. I don't foresee my Etsy shop producing 25+ orders in the next week, and as far as I know there's no one intending to hire Nick for side work. 

But my Father owns the cattle on 1000 hills, and He has promised to provide for us. The same God who fed the 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish is the same God who loves and cares for me and my family, and His promises are sure. My job is to pay attention to following His will - my part of the promise. I crave your prayers these next few weeks - for me and for Nick. I know how frustrating it is for him to every week see his hard earned paycheck gone before it hits the bank. But God is teaching us about faith during these hard days, and I'm so grateful that Nick is willing to walk this road with me. My life is filled with so many blessings, and my husband is far from the least of them.

We're having Thanksgiving dinner at Grant and Kelly's house. Last year I was pregnant, and Kelly had not yet conceived. What a precious thing to have these two new baby boys at the table this year! It's so awesome that all three of my kids have 1st cousins close to their age. Morgan and Kit are 16 months apart, Maddox and Daisy 4 months apart, and Jack and Logan 9 months apart. All of my many 1st cousins on both sides (13 in all) were several years older or younger than me, so I was an adult before any of us really became good friends, and I'm so tickled my three will get to grow up with theirs.

I have sold a couple of pillow covers in the last couple of weeks, which was nice. I also made Jack the cutest little turkey onesie to wear tomorrow. It seems like I'm always too busy to sit down and craft unless I'm filling an order for the shop, and it just lifted my spirits so much to get to make that last night! I just used a onesie he already had and appliqued the turkey parts onto it in felt. I got the idea here, and I think it turned out so cute! (Excuse the crappy cell phone photos).

If you look close you might notice that the onesie is a size 3 months. Yep, my handsome boy is still such a little guy to be less than 6 weeks from his first birthday! My girls were always a size or so above their age, so I'm really cherishing this extra tiny time with Jack. He's perfectly healthy and doing everything he should be doing by this age, so I'm just enjoying it. 

It's really funny to see his tiny little body crawling around at top speed. He's learned to climb stairs too. Fortunately he's not discovered the stairs in our house, but he loves to climb the 3 steps up to the stage at church, and he's learned to climb onto the hearth, then up onto the ottoman, then onto the couch to me at home, which scared the crap out of me the first time he did it. He was down playing in the floor and next thing I knew he was climbing up onto my lap! He's also almost mastered the art of blowing kisses, although sometimes he smacks himself in the forehead instead of the mouth, so it looks like he just realized he forgot something important lol.

Anyway, it's time to take the cranberry loaf out now, so I'll say goodnight. Have a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving!

First of all, let me issue a warm if slightly late welcome to all the wonderful people who commented on LOL Day. I do apologize for not having a chance to respond sooner, but I appreciate each and every comment, from old friends and new. And I'm sorry about the CAPTCHA. I went without it for a long time, but the flood of spam comments in my email box was getting to be ridiculous.

It's been a busy and blessed weekend. Nick was off on Friday. He went to the doctor that morning, which went well. After he got home he took our trash off and picked up a free Papa John's pizza I won in their recent sweepstakes. He also picked Morgan up from school because she had a stomachache. Of course it got better suspiciously fast once she got home lol. While he was gone my parents stopped by to bring us some food from church. Every Friday our senior ministry has a service and a big meal, and a lot of times there's food left to share with those who couldn't make it. They take a lot of meals to shut ins, and sometimes they bring us some too. That evening my dad and James came over to drop off James' car so that Nick could do some work on it.

I mentioned a few days ago that I got our bedroom mostly clean. Unfortunately I got distracted before I got it finished, and Nick had a thing or two to say about that. We were getting ready for bed, and he was pretty worn out, so he told me he was going to spank me, but he would wake me up early the next day to deal with it. I did, however, manage to keep him awake long enough to have some um, face time with a certain part of his anatomy. He returned the favor, and we both slept very well. 

So well in fact that we didn't get up till the kids were awake, so that kind of put the kibosh on any morning discipline. We both had a busy day ahead. He had not only James' car to work on, but also my aunt's as well as another lady's. This was SUCH a blessing from God, because this week has been especially tight. I had TWO photo shoots scheduled, which was awesome, because I've not done a whole lot of work since Jack was born, and one shoot that I've had scheduled for months was canceled because the event I was supposed to shoot was canceled. My mom called early in the day and offered to watch the kids if we needed her to, which turned out to be a good thing. Nick had to leave to do some of the work he needed to do on the equipment at his job, so I took the kids out to my parents' house. 

Both shoots went well, although my first client was very late, which could have caused a real problem. Fortunately my second client was very cool about giving them a few extra minutes. I did, however, still have to cut it a little short with the first client, but they were willing to hang around and let me shoot a bit more after I finished with client number two. After I finished, I called Nick and let him know I was on my way home. He was at the parts store when I got there, but he got home after a few minutes and directed me upstairs. In the bedroom he pulled out the Leather Thorn AngelBrat paddle and had me bend over the bed.

Conventional wisdom would say that leather is a lot more forgiving, and I suppose it is in a way. It certainly doesn't bruise as easily as wood, and any redness it leaves fades a lot faster. But Nick tends to spank a lot harder with leather, I guess for those very reasons. Leather Thorn pieces are very nice, and this one is quite heavy. It's about 16 inches long, and on impact it wraps across my bottom and kind of sears everything it hits. I've actually not had all that many punishments with this particular paddle, but every one has been memorable. I have no idea how many swats I got, but if I had to guess I would say it was probably somewhere around 40-50.

By the way, those are not affiliate links - I just really like their products. Er, most of the time...

After he finished spanking me he hugged me a bit, then went back down to work on my brother's car some more. I got myself together and went to pick up the kids. By the time I got home he was done with his work and starving. He sent me to Taco Bell with some of his earnings. When I got to the drive through I found that I was $3 short. It wasn't a big deal - I had ordered a few extra things, and I was just going to tell the girl to take them off, but instead she gave me a senior discount, which put the total down below what I had. :) I spent most of the evening filling an order for my Etsy shop, another blessing.

Today we went to church. There was appropriate recognition of the veterans in the congregation, and I want to say thank you to all of you out there who have served, in whatever country you may be! 

After church we met a girl I went to school with who gave me TWELVE cans of baby formula, plus a bunch of jars of baby food! She has a baby boy a month younger than Jack. He was also born at the same point in the pregnancy as Jack (38 days early), but unfortunately, unlike Jack, he has had a number of health problems as a result. His mom also has a huge number of food allergies that she has passed on to him. Because of this their insurance provides them with about 3 cans a week of a formula that is made to  give the needed nutrients without triggering his many allergies. However, he strongly prefers breastfeeding, so she had a huge stockpile of extra formula that needed to be used up, so she passed part of it on to me. I'm going to double check with his doctor tomorrow to make sure that it will be okay for him, but from everything I've researched on this particular brand, it looks like it will be fine.

Kelly also brought me a couple of cans she got in the hospital since she's solely breastfeeding. After we picked up the formula we had a quick lunch at a pizza buffet with Kelly, Grant, Logan, Robert, Faith, Brandon, and Melanie. The plan was to then take advantage of free day at the zoo. We went last year and it was crowded, but not crazy so. This year traffic was crazy, and when we turned onto the road into the zoo, a girl on her way out rolled down her window and told us not to bother, that it was so crowded you couldn't even get close enough to the animals to see. We decided to take her advice since by this time it was only about an hour and a half before closing time anyway. 

The girls were disappointed, but I remembered something that happened when I was a kid. A trip to the circus unexpectedly fell through, so my parents gave James and me (this was before Robert was born) each $5 and took us to a department store to spend it on whatever we wanted. I still remember picking out a soft purple stuffed rabbit in a white basket. So we took the girls to Target and gave them $10 each ($5 doesn't buy what it did almost 30 years ago). Morgan picked out a pair of One Direction headphones, and Daisy chose a toy hairdresser set, which I thought was adorable since her Nana (my MIL) is a hairdresser. They recently opened a craft store right next to our Target, so after we left, Nick stayed in the car with the kids and let me just explore the new store a bit.

When we got back to church Melanie, who is amazing with crochet hooks, had brought Jack the most adorable gift. It was a hat/beard combo, a lot like this:

Source Obviously this one isn't his. His is green, and of course didn't come from this shop. Anyway, she made Logan one too, so I'm hoping we can take their pictures in them together.

Anyway, that's been our weekend - how was yours?

Love Our Lurkers Day!

I think it's fair to say that many, many, many of us were lurkers to start with. I know I was! I was just sure that if I left a comment on a *gasp* spanking blog it would immediately send out a notification to my mom, my boss, my pastor, and those mean kids in high school. But one day I took the plunge. I left a comment, and not only did the world keep turning, but I found that I'd taken a first step - one that led me to eventually start my own blog. And I met a lot of great people, some of whom are now my friends outside of the blogosphere too! So if you're out there being shy, stop it! No, don't go away - pop in and say hi! This is the 7th annual Love Our Lurkers Day, and I'd love to meet you!

Randomness

I'm sitting here with my fresh clean baby boy. :) Jack really enjoys baths in his little baby sized tub, but he always makes a huge mess splashing. I'm always soaked by the end. The couple of times I've tried bathing him in our tub, he freaked out. So I thought it might be a good idea to get in with him. Not so much. He still freaked out the whole time. But he got clean and tired out, because now my fresh smelling little man is curled up asleep in his car seat on the floor beside me.

Tonight Kelly and Grant came to church and brought Logan. I think Kelly has turned a corner with her postpartum issues. She actually let a couple of the girls in the youth group hold him. :) She also handed me a bag of Milano cookies (my favorite!) and a card with $25 and a $50 Walmart gift card for my birthday. Then she leaned in and whispered that the gift card was a thank you for doing the pictures, that she didn't want me to think I wasn't appreciated. I get the impression someone said something to her about it. I told her she didn't have to do that (she didn't! It really wasn't about money!), but I did really appreciate her doing it. And I have to say, it definitely helped out this week. I wasn't sure where I was going to get the money for gas to drive to my photo shoots on Saturday, and we're almost out of toilet paper. 

I did connect with a friend of an old classmate today who met me and gave me some unopened cans of baby formula. My mom also brought us a container of formula yesterday. And she let me borrow the money to cover what we needed to go in the bank.:) Jack liked the Nido stuff, but it did seem to be constipating him, so I'm thankful to have some formula (which definitely fixed the constipation issue lol).

The new dog is still doing great, which is a relief.

And I made another sale in my Etsy shop! :)

Also, I found Nick a doctor and the kids a dentist. Both kids have needed to go, but with their insurance I was having a hard time finding the right person to take them to. Daisy has never been, and I know she has a couple of cavities, so I knew I needed someone really good with kids. Last week I happened to have a conversation with an acquaintance who mentioned that her son is on the same insurance and loves his dentist. I got his name and number and got them both set up with an appointment for next week. 

And I found Nick a doctor who will take payments. His insurance has a huge deductible, so the whole visit will come out of his pocket, so this was important. He's had some congestion in his ear for several months now that he just can't shake. Plus since he's been losing weight (30 pounds now!) and exercising, he felt like a check up was a good idea. 

Our old doctor was kind of a nut. I guess he was okay as a doctor, but he was obsessed with weight. Neither of us is exactly thin, but we've also never had any health problems related to it. Every time Nick went to him for anything at all, he insisted on checking his blood pressure and cholesterol, then would get really irritated when both came back great. One time he took my blood pressure and told me it was terrible and that if I didn't get it under control I would be on medication for it for the rest of my life. Later on I had pregnancy related hypertension, but when I'm not pregnant I've never had a problem, so I was understandably shaken up. When he stepped out and the nurse came in I asked her what the reading was. She looked at the chart, and it was something like 120/72. "Is that bad?" I asked. She looked surprised. "No! That's actually really good!" It was kind of crazy, so we haven't been back to him in years.

Anyway, that's what's going on around here. How are you guys? 

So much to be thankful for...

Okay, I need to do a gratitude post. A little while ago I checked the bank account and realized that we're going to be about $65 short covering what we already have out there. And Nick just got paid, so I'm struggling a little. This time of year is always rough, but this was the worst check of 2012 so far (and hopefully at all!) due to a number of factors that don't really matter. So we were already putting some things ahead that we really needed to pay this week, and we still came up short. But I do know that God is looking out for us, and He has done so many good things for us this week. I need to focus on that and get my attitude in gear. 

I can be thankful for:

One biggie is that I discovered the shortage before it actually overdrew us and caused overdraft fees. I will probably have to borrow the money from my mom for a few days (which I HATE to do), but one great thing is that I booked a couple of photography sessions for this coming weekend, which should give me at least $90 in sitting fees that day. So at least I should be able to give the money back to her within 4 days.

Another awesome thing to be thankful for - today we got a new dog. It's become pretty evident that Pancho is gone for good (sob!). Last week a girl that I went to school with mentioned that a mutual friend (another former classmate) was looking for a home for her dog Lucy. Normally in that situation I think, okay, what's wrong with the dog? But in this case she loved the dog, but their family situation was less than ideal for it. She actually belonged to my friend's 12 year old son, who just refused to do all the doggy related chores (walking, feeding, bathing, etc.) My friend ended up doing all the caring for the dog herself, and she'd been threatening to give her away for a year if her son didn't start taking responsibility. They also live in a condo, so there's no real room for the dog to run around outside. Anyway, today we went to pick Lucy up. She's a mutt, but a fairly small one, although she's bigger than Pancho. She's very well housebroken, great around kids, and loves to cuddle. We brought her home and she's settled right in. And she was free! And if God should see fit to bring Pancho home after all, we'll happily have two dogs.

A few days ago I discovered via Pinterest that you can bake cinnamon rolls using a waffle iron. They bake up really fast, and the best part is that the waffle grid means that when you pour the icing on it doesn't go sliding off the side! I had a can of orange sweet rolls in the fridge (my favorite), and I was starving, so I'm eating some as I write. Yum!

A few days ago we got a card from Kate with Kit's newest volleyball picture and a nice note in it. I gave her a call just to catch up, and we had a wonderful long conversation that I really enjoyed. 

Morgan got to go to a Fall Festival with her friend across the street tonight. She came home with a cake, a box of cupcakes, and this big vase full of Skittles that she won by guessing closest to the right number inside. Not that we need more sweets in the house (hello, Halloween!), but it makes me happy that she won something, just because I know that was fun for her.

I was running low on diapers for Jack, but yesterday we stopped at the Goodwill (although I wouldn't have if I'd known how short we were!) to replace my ironing board that broke recently (I know, who breaks an ironing board?) Not only did I get an even better ironing board (with a place to hold my iron!) for $3.00, but I also picked up a pack of diapers for Jack for the same price. Now before anybody fusses at me for buying thrift store diapers, the pack was brand new. It's my guess somebody got them in their shower and their baby outgrew them before they could use them. They're a size 1, which will juuuuuust fit him. We actually buy size 2's now, but these will do in a pinch, and they'll certainly get us through the week.

We were also out of formula, but fortunately I had a backup. When Daisy was a baby, just as she outgrew formula, I made a great find at a local discount grocery store. They were selling 3 1/2 pound cans of Nestle Nido Kinder, which is basically formula for the 1 year + crowd, for $9.99, half of what we were paying for a 3 pound can of formula at Sam's. I was able to find it there for just long enough to carry her through the stage of needing stuff with more nutrients than cow's milk, and I hadn't seen it since. A few weeks ago I found it again, only this time the cans were 4.85 pounds for $9.99! One of the cans was pretty badly damaged, so I left it, but I bought the other three, bringing home over 14 1/2 pounds of it for less than $30. Jack won't be a year old for another 8 weeks (EIGHT WEEKS?!?! How did that happen?), but I'm just making sure he gets plenty of solid food, and the Nido is working great for satisfying his bottle needs. 

We have plenty of food in the house to see us through.

Yesterday I was able to pick up a couple of free 8x10 photo collages from Walgreens. I had a code that worked on both my account and Nick's, so I got to surprise my mom and Nick's stepmom with collages of all their respective grandkids.

I got a Redbox code via text that let me rent What to Expect When You're Expecting tonight for free, and we really enjoyed it - very funny!

Morgan missed the bus this morning, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. She was actually out there 10 minutes before it was due to run, but for some strange reason they had already come and gone a few minutes earlier, this according to the girl at the bus stop waiting for a different bus. Jack's been up really, really late the last couple of weeks, and when she came up to tell me she'd missed it, I wasn't fit to drive. I told her I was going to need a few more minutes sleep before I would feel safe getting behind the wheel, so she went back down to let me sleep. When she woke me up it was after 10:30. She'd only missed one day this year, so I decided to just let her stay home. She helped watch Jack and Daisy all day, and I got a TON of work done on our bedroom, something Nick was very happy about...

...as evidenced by the mostly lovely encounter we had just before he went to bed (only mostly, because Jack wouldn't go to sleep, so we put him down in the (newly clean) floor to play where he couldn't see us. We were almost done when he managed to pull himself up to my night table, knock my clock off in the floor, and turn on the very loud radio function, scaring himself into a wailing fit). But interrupted or not, it was very nice to just connect that way, something we really need to make it a point to just make happen more often, kids, work, and chores or not!

I'm going to be part of a sort of craft/home business fair on Black Friday. There will be 10 of us with home businesses (ie. Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, Arbonne, my Etsy shop, etc). I plan to sell some leather and vinyl bow cuffs, which I'm also making for Christmas, as well as some hair accessories and felt Christmas trees. Those last are just big felt Christmas tree shapes with various ornament shapes cut out of different colored felt. You hang the tree on the wall and let your resident toddler decorate and redecorate to his or her heart's content (and hopefully leave YOUR tree alone!). I made one for Daisy, and she loves it. I also plan on sending one to Maddox as well as my cousin's little boy a few weeks before Christmas. If I can come up with the $10 to buy more seed corn, I'm also going to make some hot/cold packs. I'm going to try to get Nick to paint some ornaments too, something he did last year for gifts. 

Anyway, hopefully I can earn a little money and get a little local exposure for my shop in the process.

It's been well over a year since I last got new contacts. In fact, I'm thinking it might be more like three years, because I've not had vision insurance since I quit my job. Anyway, we're those terrible people who wear our disposable 30 day contacts way longer than we're supposed to. No lectures please, needs must and all. But I was down to my last pair, and I was really milking them. I'd had them in for probably 6 months or more, just trying to make it through till we can afford the copay to get new ones. I have glasses, but I got them when I was pregnant with Morgan, and the prescription isn't quite right anymore, so I only wear them when I have to. When I was cleaning out our bathroom the other day I found a brand new pair of contacts! So you can bet I put those suckers in!

I have just about everything on hand that I need to make Christmas gifts. I do need to buy some candy to send to Will (last year's was a huge hit), and I need to order some photo prints and get a few picture frames. I also need some plastic canvas to make a fabric barn for Maddox, and some dollar store farm animals to go in it. But I think I've got everything else.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Good night all!