Bountiful Blessings

Ahhhh! So much has happened since my last real update!

Back in July, I took in our van for an oil change and kindly asked them to give it a quick check over. We were planning a surprise visit to see my folks in Georgia and wanted to know if the van had any safety issues. It's a 1999 minivan with 213K+ miles on it. And boy! It sure did have some safety issues! In fact, the top three concerns brought in an estimate almost equal to its trade in value! Plus there were other things that would need to be taken care of as well... Oh my!

Right off, we knew that we didn't WANT to put that much money into a vehicle that old... but did we have a choice?

What followed was a blitz of research into different vans and SUVs (cars are not an option here anymore!). Being quite honest, I was terribly disappointed. Our budget was tiny. Vehicles the size we needed & newer with lower mileage aren't inexpensive. We thought we found one through Craig's List, but they sold the van to their church that weekend.

I was just about to cancel our trip, feeling very frustrated... I logged back into Craig's List one more time... A new posting! It had about half the miles of the first one we considered, was two years younger, and was only about $2K more than the asking price of the first one! My wonderful husband drove up with his father to look at it & test drive it... Everything was great! Our local banker had given us a green light before we went, so my husband quickly negotiated a price and drove away with this:

Why, yes! That IS a 12 passenger van you are looking at! Our five children LOVE it! There is plenty of room to stretch out... plenty of storage space... low miles... It IS God's providence for our family!

Thus, we were able to take our surprise trip!!

We visited MrsG30286... where all our children became friends instantly! I'm not certain about hers, but my children tend to require a 'warm-up' period before they dive into playing... but not that day! One never would have been able to tell that these children had literally just met! Especially all the boys! I believe they truly felt the warmth and love in that home and felt 'right at home'!

MrsG and I went to high school together... um... just a few years ago {wink,wink}. Thanks to the marvelous information superhighway and a nifty little thing called Facebook, we have been able to really get to know each. It was very much a blessing to my family to spend time with MrsG and her family... waaaaay out in the boonies!

After that, we spent the weekend with my family and got to see lots of faces that I have not seen in many years. We even visited the church where my husband and I were married... almost 16 years ago! The Lord has His hand on that church and has blessed it in many ways!! It has grown by leaps and bounds since the last time I was there... but more importantly, the church was filled with His Holy Spirit! As soon as the praise music began, I got tingles all over! Afterwards, as we were discussing the sermon, I mentioned it to my husband... He felt it too.. so did our daughter! We left feeling refreshed and renewed :)

Once our visit drew to an end, we journeyed home. We enjoyed a few days together before my husband went back to work. Meanwhile, I started preparing for our new home school year and also for Seth's appointment with the pediatric endocrinologist...