Counting our blessings/ What an awesome God I serve

Phillipians 4:19 NIV And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 6:25-26 NIV 25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

With this being Thanksgiving week & in light of what happened to us yesterday at church, I just wanted to share a few things.

My husband left retail in 2006 after many years in it. We toyed with the idea of keeping it part time. "Just in case." Just in case, you may ask? Just in case what? Just in case the job he took didn't work out, or our finances became too tight, or fill in the blank with your just in case scenario. Well, we felt God leading us NOT to keep the retail job part time, so we didn't. Fast forward 9 months. My husband calls me on a Friday afternoon, while the girls and & I are in NY helping clean up my mother's estate, with the news that he just lost his job. God provided for us by giving us distributions from my mother's estate, along with unemployment. In the fall he got a photography job, but the conditions were not as good as they seemed. Now we are at the beginning of 2008. He got a temporary job at Staples corporate, well that ended the end of June, and we have since been unemployed.

Now here is the good news of how awesome God is. ALL of our bills are current. That is not saying our financial situation is not tight! It is beyond tight & I feel like I am constantly trying to juggle our money around to pay bills. We have NOT used any credit cards since Bill lost his job in June. And God has been blessing us in other ways that may seem small, but are really huge.
A friend blessed us with much needed groceries- I'm not talking just dry goods, I'm talking meats-chicken, pork, hamburger, fresh fruits and veggies, etc. We received money in the mail, as well as a grocery store gift card, 2 separate occasions. And Sunday at church we received more cash along with 2 gift cards- 1 to Walmart & 1 to Toys'r'us. The cash was absolutely huge as I was wondering how we were going to come up with our rent money. This just took a huge chunk out of it.
And we also had a 2 week period the end of September of NO unemployment or other funds coming in. A big thank you to God's servants who listen to him & are obedient.
GOD IS TRULY AWESOME & FAITHFUL!!!!

Mind boggling things I saw today

I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon for a checkup. As I was driving to it, I saw several things that boggled my mind. If any of you reading in bloggy land have ANY insight to the following things, please do share.
Bumper sticker on a car. First of all let me just say I like to read bumper stickers; yes, I can read them and still pay attention to the road. This bumper sticker was a fish- like the Christian fish; but it wasn't the Christian fish. And it wasn't the darwin fish either. Inside it had the word WITCH, on it's head it had the little pointy witch hat & underneath the fish was a broom. I had to call several people to see if they had any inkling, the best I got was from Supra at our church. She told me it must be a fishwich & that maybe the person put it on their car for the halibut!
Okay, you know you cracked a smile at the halibut part. But I am honestly not kidding about this bumper sticker. One of the nurses at my dr's office is into wiccan, but it was very busy in there today & she wasn't my nurse so I couldn't even ask her. I do pray for her though.

As I was getting off my exit there is a bicycle store right next to my exit. On the outside of their building they had a sign that said: "electric bicycles." HUH??? Wouldn't that be a moped? or a scooter? Wouldn't electric defeat the whole purpose of pedaling/exercise???

I come up to a major intersection. On my left is a 24 hour Walgreen's, across the street on the other left corner is a 24 hour CVS, across the street from CVS on the right corner is a Rite-Aid, and on my right is Dunkin' Donuts. Three MAJOR drugstores & 2 of them are open 24/7. Am I the only one this strikes as odd? Are there so many people in this neighborhood who get sick that they need 3 drugstores on opposite corners from each other??? WOW!!!!

In other news today, for my few faithful readers, who have been praying for my nephew, please continue to pray for him and his mom, my sis-in-law. Adam ended up in the hospital with a blockage in his bowel. They say there is no evidence of cancer stuff, so don't know what is causing the blockage. Also due to all the other stuff going on with him, they can not use all of the traditional methods to clear out the blockage, so if they can't get it cleared he will have to have yet another surgery! Obviously my sil is stressing about all of this & I can't say as I blame her, but she fell Monday night and cracked 3 ribs so she isn't doing to great herself. Please pray for both things to be resolved quickly.

Well, it is late & I must be off to bed. Hope y'all have a good evening.

Good news, bad news

So, thinking just maybe Rae, doesn't really have an ear ? infection, but it's just a little clogged; we administer said anti-inflammatory, the girls play a little play doh & then she lays on daddy with the heating pad. All per the on-call triage nurse. (okay, not the play doh part) Sunday dawns and we decide not to say anything about above incident, figuring, if she really is in pain, she'll say something. Not a peep out of her.
However, today we are sitting at the table at lunch & notice Emily's ear inside, but not down in the canal, is bright red. I need to back track a bit here. A week or so ago, she had scratched her ear so hard she made it bleed. We started monitoring it & putting a bit of neosporin in it to keep it soft & help it heal. Great, all gone! But she keeps asking for the medicine in her ear. Even last night(Sun.); so Bill puts a dab of my face moisturizer on it and to sleep she goes. I call the nurse to get her opinion, as I'm not one of these people who likes to bring their child(ren) in for every little sniffle and sneeze. And as I've posted before, we are a relatively healthy family, in terms of illnesses. Lo and behold, they see her this afternoon. At some point, either from when she scratched it or before that, Emily got an infection in there. So she is now on topical & oral antibiotics.

On a different front; some of my "doing life together" ladies & I got together for an afternoon out. Trader Joe's just opened here in RI, so we decided to go check it out, do lunch, and a few other stores, after church yesterday. We had a lovely time, thanks to all the hubbies for watching the children while we did this. But the best part was reading about what Bo Hunkmeister did. I'm only mildly envious, because my first b-day we were together, my husband put 37 helium balloons in my apartment with 3x5 index cards attached with 37 reasons/things he loves about me. (I happened to be out of town for said b-day & came home to this.)

GO BO! Hold that bar up high for the rest of the men!

A trip to mecca aka IKEA

So, a little while back (the exact time frame escapes me)my good friend, Maria sent me a link to enter a contest through IKEA. I'm all for entering contests if I'm not going to get more junk snail mail or spam e-mail. So I enter said contest & get a notification back that I won one of their instant $20.00 gift cards. Give them all my info & a few days later, in the snail mail WA LA(is this how you really spell that? Noah Webster must be turning over in his grave!), said gift card arrives. It has been hanging around for a while now as mecca IKEA is about a 45 minute drive heading towards Boston, from where we live. Now, not being a "true" New Englander, this doesn't really bother me. But especially with gas prices as they were(we are down close to $2.00, here), this is not a trip you make any old time or every day. So I say to the hubby after his bible study this morning; "Honey, do you feel like going to IKEA today?" His response? "Why absolutely, oh beautiful love of my life!" Okay, so he wasn't really that sickeningly sweet. But he did agree to load the girls up & head out with us. He had never been to mecca IKEA.
We get there, walk around for a while, then went & had an early dinner. As we sit down, Rachel says, "my ear hurts." Bill asks her if she wants him to pray for the pain & she in her pitiful voice says, "uh, huh." As Bill walks around the table to pray for Rae, we hear Emily say, "In Jesus' name, AMEN!" and then promptly inform Daddy that she just prayed for Rach. (as she has recently taken to calling her.) So she feels no one else needs to pray for her. Then, on the way home I called the peds office to see what I should do, as my girls don't generally get sick. Give her some ibuprofen & a heating pad when we get home & call them in the am to bring her in. Emily, again informs us that she/we already prayed for Rachel & she doesn't need any medicine, but "mommy, can I have some too?" So we tried to explain that we can all pray for Rachel's ear pain & that sometimes God wants us to use medicine to help us get better. We will have to see how she is when she gets up, in the am. I'm just praying it isn't an ear infection or strep.

Oh yeah, as we are pulling out of the parking lot, I could sense he wasn't impressed with wasting his afternoon his visit to IKEA. So in my ever observant & un-filtered way of saying things, I stupidly ask him what he thought. He says, "It reminds me of a high-end Job Lots." (I think he might have meant bldg. 19, but I could be wrong)

In the meantime my friend, Dawn, aka "the domestic goddess" & martha stewart, jr. calls me, ME!!! to ask me a recipe question. Okay, so it was on a recipe that I had given her, but still. I'll have to get it back from her to post on recipeasy. I got it from the owner of my local meat market, but since my family wasn't crazy about it, I just gave her the entire recipe.

btw- thanks Maria, for hooking me up with the IKEA give away!

Life & my nephew Adam

So, I've had several posts rattling around in my brain. (my husband would tell you, that's probably all that's rattling around in there.) But, at this point in the game, I'm like, aaahhh, too late to post them now- irrelevant. I just saw a recipe on a blog that I read that looks really yummy. I might have to try it. (I'd steal it & post it on recipeasy, but it's on Emily's sister's, Holly, blog.) Wanted to post on the election, but seems irrelevant at this point. Did get an interesting e-mail from a friend about 77 days of praying for the president. Check it out here if you want: www.presidentialprayerteam.org. I'd do the little linky thing, but I am NOT technically savvy. You show me what to do I can do it. Try to figure it out on my own, not so much.
Wanted to post about halloween, but again, seems irrelevant at this point.
Guess I should give my dad a belated b-day shout out. His b-day was Saturday the 8th. In typical Gail fashion, I bought his b-day card on October 21st,(this year); but when I went to mail it I couldn't find it, so it didn't get mailed until the 6th when my darling husband found it for me.

I do want to say THANK YOU to ALL the veterans out there who served our country. Whether you pushed paper across a desk, or fought on the front lines, it is all still important. And my family & I thank you, because we appreciate our freedoms. May God bless America, & may that be a phrase that NEVER dies in this country. Too many lives have been lost in order that we might be able to say that.

I'm really slacking in this department. My nephew, Adam, had a PET scan last Tu. & then met with his oncologist on Fri, 11/7. According to the doctor, at this point he is considered in remission!!!!!!!!!!!! CAN YOU SAY YAHHOOOOO!!!!! The PET scan came back with no signs of cancer & his tumor markers are normal. He still has to finish out his chemo, of which he has 2 more rounds. He should be done mid-January. 4 weeks after that they'll do another PET scan to make sure still no signs of cancer & then 4 weeks after that, if all is going well, they'll reverse his iliostomy & repair the hernia he got.
What is almost as awesome as that, is we as a family have been praying for him when we put the girls to bed. Well, Wed. nights is our bible study nite & my awesome girlfriend, Viv, comes over to spoil babysit the girls for us. When we came home, she asked me about Adam & said that Emily said we didn't have to pray for him any more, 'cuz he was all better. I didn't get the above report about remission until Friday. Odd?? or God! I personally like to think God.
So a huge thank you to those of you in bloggy land who have been praying for Adam. Please continue to pray for the rest of his treatments & anything else the Lord may lay on your heart.
Well, I think that is about all for tonight. It is late & I must go to bed.
Have a blessed rest of the week.
-Gail