blessings

This morning is a typical morning at our home (all the kids are at the table eating oatmeal with raisins and milk right now) but I just really have felt strongly this morning a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness of the blessings of the Lord lately and wanted to write them down briefly....

I (as we all could) could write almost continuously for all the blessings we should be thankful for in life...food on the table, a roof over our heads, health, jobs, etc but this morning, these are a few that are just resonating on my heart.

This house.  Our new home.  In a location that I NEVER, EVER, ever....did I say ever?...thought where'd we move to, and esp where I thought my husband would want to move to because of having neighbors so close.  And now that we're here?  I. love. it.  I thought it would take quite the getting used to from coming from being surrounded by 90 acres of field to being 10 feet from the neighbors house but it has been better than I expected.

 Is it still kinda weird to have your neighbor ask you if you've been putting up shelves bc he could hear the hammer pounding? yes. but I think it's something we are getting used to fast.  It is also a blessing to still be "out in the country" but yet so close to town.  I love not having a long drive to the store, but what's even more fun is that people come over now!  No one would ever just 'swing by' our other house bc it wasn't exactly in most peoples' paths to get places but now we are blessed with friends and family who can just pop in for a quick visit!  And bc this house is smaller and more managable, I'm able to (most of the time) keep it in a more picked-up state so I'm not afraid of people stopping over either :)  So all that to say that I never thought I would be truly 'happy' here and I've found that I like it more than our other place.  ...now only if the garage was a tad bigger...but that's for a different post ;)

The next blessing that took a "bad" thing and made it a fun little blessing is the car accident that Nathan was in on Tuesday night.  It was 7:30pm and since that's when I would expect Nathan to be home, I called him to see if I could start heating up his supper.  He said yes and then we hung up.  One minute later, he calls me and says "I was just in a car accident and I think I toteled my car.  You'll need to come get me."  EXCUSE ME?!?  So 2 minutes later, I had the kids run to the van, got the baby outta bed, put him in the van and off we were.  We met him over at the tow-shop where they had to bring his car.  He rear-ended a guy on hwy 23 after the guy in front of him slammed on the breaks bc in front of him there were cars STOPPED on the hwy.  Thankfully it was only a 40mph zone and no one was hurt.  The other guys car was just dinged up on the bumper but it totaled Nathan's car. 

So how was this a blessing?  Well, the next day, Nathan stayed home from work to get a vehicle and we got to spend a whole day together, while the kids were with family!  It was a forced date day :) ....although the day was a tad stressful bc we after driving through every car lot in town, we still didn't know which vehicle to get.  We were debating between a cheap car with alot of miles that would hopefully last awhile (like his car he just wrecked...we had that for over 5 years, it has 230k miles on it, got us all over the country, and we only paid $1300 for it) or to go with something a little micer but with way better gas mileage and hope that it would last long enough Tiernan could drive it.  Well, since Nathan puts on around 660 miles per week, we figured the latter would be a good thing.  So we found this...

 

 

2007 Honda Civic

 

And then I passed a van that caught my eye... And even though we had just purchased an upgraded van from my brother in June, we really wanted to get away from an older model dodge van (plus it was starting to have signs of repair).  When we left in the morning to get Nathan's vehicle, I snuck the title for the van in my purse *just* in case...and we left the dealership with this too...

 

 

2010 Chrysler Town & Country

So let's just say that we are not wanting to get other vehicles now for a very, very, long time!

And lastly the other blessing that I have just been thinking about so much lately is the awesomeness of a new friendship.  A little while ago, we had lunch at our pastors house.  They invited us and another couple over to eat.  That is when we met Guy and Cassie.  We dove right into converstaion and the friendship has blossomed from there.  Guy even helped us butcher chickens a couple weeks later, helped with the move, put up our new mailbox, looked for prob hours on the computer for a new vehicle for us...has just been a blessing.  Guy and Nathan are so different but so similar at the same time and seems like they could talk about anything...it's so great to see.  Cassie and I somehow see each other almost every day and I've felt like I've known her forever.  I never really think that this 'late' in life you'd meet such great friends but I'm glad we did.  They are expecting their first baby anyday...like she's a week past her due date...and I can't wait to see their little family grow. 



So today as the day carries on....beautiful sunshine, warm weather (80!) for a late Sept day, cleaning for the arrival of my hubby, spending times with my littles...I will be thanking the Lord for all his blessings...esp the unexpected ones.