Counting my Blessings . . .

I’ve been wanting and wanting to blog for the past few days, and time got away from me. It’s so hard to write during the day, since there is usually someone needing me to do something, or some little hands trying to reach the keyboard . . . all you mommies know how that is. :) Nighttime is my best time to blog, but I have to stay up late in order to make that work, and lately I’ve just been wanting to get as much sleep as possible!

I’m sorry I missed putting up a Homemade Life post last week. I had it all planned out, and then Saturday we had spur-of-the-moment guests over, which was lots of fun, but left no time for blogging. So, I’ll plan to put one up this week for sure!

I’ve had a few blessings over the past week that I just wanted to share--bear with me, this may get long. :)

**First was a direct, specific answer to prayer that was really a “little thing”--but so cool to see how God cares even about the little things, isn’t it? :) For the past month, ever since I read on MoneySavingMom about Dave Ramsey’s upcoming “Town Hall for Hope” on this coming Thursday, April 23, I’ve been really wanting to go to it. I kept checking the locations for NH and all of them were too far away for us to go . . . I mean, we could have done it, but it would be difficult since the event starts at 8 pm. We wouldn’t have wanted to bring the kids, but I would have hated to ask anyone to babysit them for that long either, since we likely wouldn’t have gotten home till 10:30-11 pm. Anyway, a little over a week ago I decided to pray specifically that if God wanted us to go, that He would open up a closer location. The very next day after I started praying about it, I found out that some friends of ours who live only about 15 minutes from us are hosting the event at their house. How cool is that?! We were also able to get someone to babysit for Sam and Julia, so they will still be able to go to bed at their normal time and we’ll get to see Dave “live” (well, almost). I have a lot of respect for Dave Ramsey, and his books/DVDs/CDs are extremely helpful for money management. We are making slow progress in this area; sometimes it seems like we are taking more steps backward than forward, but that’s OK. :)

**Second, God has provided several small jobs for Jim to do over the past couple weeks! Also, we will be getting a (very small) tax return--no, it’s not much, but it’s a definite blessing because there have been plenty of years that we’ve had to pay in quite a bit.

**Third, I was blessed with some birthday gift money, which I used to buy a really nice new swimsuit from Lands End when they were having a recent overstock sale. I got a suit that originally would have cost over $70 for $20.98. I was so thrilled; it’s a really high quality suit and should last me for years.

**Fourth, a sweet friend sent me a surprise package for my birthday. In it were several thoughtful gifts, including The Love Dare, which I had had on my Amazon wish list for a while. I’m excited to start going through it and see how God will use it to strengthen and bless our marriage. :)

**Fifth, I finally earned enough Swagbucks to buy 2 books from Amazon--a gardening one for me, and one about raising chickens for Jim. Yay!

**Sixth, I was able to buy a bunch of stuff at Rite Aid tonight, including a jumbo pack of Pull-Ups, shampoo and conditioner, for about $1.47 after coupons and rebates. It’s been a while since I got many good deals at Rite Aid, so I was especially excited about this. :)

Well, that was more than a few things, wasn’t it? Isn’t it neat how once you start counting your blessings, you can come up with so many things to be thankful for!! I have many other things to blog about, but hopefully I’ll have a little time in the next few days to do that. I had hoped to get this post up yesterday for Works of God Monday and I think I’ll link to it there anyway, even though I didn’t get it done till Tuesday. :) I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far!!