Sunday, November 6, 2011

Montour Falls Wants Us

We went out to dinner at Phoebe's on Thursday night (free yummy food - yay!) while a friend watched our kids and we learned more about the RMED program and found out.... Montour Falls wants us for RMED. They want us enough to provide housing (We were told: "It may be a tent but it will fit as many Maases as there are going." to which Glenn responded "There are only 6 of us." Which elicited laughter from the other 4 students and one student's wife at the table.) AND a scholarship! After visiting there a few weeks ago we were told that the hospital was making budget cuts or something like that and, most likely, if we went there we would not be getting housing or the scholarship. We prayed about it and decided that the time and experience there would be beneficial and that, if we were not going to get financial help to go there from the hospital, we would trust God to provide some other way for us. He has proved Himself faithful to us over and over in our lives and we know that He has never left us without a place to sleep or food to eat so we were trusting Him to do it again. We know that it is a gift from Him that we are getting the housing and scholarship and are very grateful! So, Lord willing, we will be moving to Montour Falls at the end of March/ beginning of April!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Refund Check

Today I was surprised by a gift from God that we got in the mail. We got a refund check from Excellus BlueCross/ Blue Shield for $103.49 for Glenn's health insurance. "The refund is a result of medical cost inflation that was lower than we expected for calendar year 2010.... Since actual costs were lower than anticipated, we are returning a portion of your premium to you."

Thanks God!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Fresh Veggies


This week we have had one of the kids' friends come over for a couple of days while her mom went back to teaching at LeMoyne. They live in our neighborhood but have a garden at one of her husband's co-workers' home. She brought me a bag of little cherry tomatoes earlier in the week and today her husband went to the garden and she brought me 3 bags of produce: an ear of corn, a bunch of basil (that smells wonderful!), some carrots, potatoes and big and small tomatoes. Yum! I am looking forward to eating all of this yumminess.

Last week when we went to Waterloo we also got a bag of summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers from Aunt Amy and a bunch of tomatoes and some peppers from Grandma and Grandpa's garden but I didn't take a picture. We have enjoyed them though in spaghetti, lasagna, and chili as well as just eating them fresh. Yum! I love this time of the year!!

Thanks God for fresh veggies that are so yummy!

Free Lunch

While we were going to swim lessons back in July I was talking to a lady who brings her daycare kids to swim lessons and she told me about the free lunch program at the school just around the corner from our house. I had seen signs for it but had never looked into it. She told me that she always takes her daycare kids and that they feed anyone under 18 with no income restrictions and that I should check it out so we did. We took a walk to the school around the corner for lunch for the almost two weeks after swim lessons and before we left on our train trip. I am not sure if it is a New York program or what but it was a blessing. The kids thought that eating a school lunch was fun. They were pretty healthy as well.

Thanks God for free lunches :)

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Free Phones

Glenn's phone died at the beginning of  August. He's been getting by with our old LG but half of the time he needs to put it on speaker phone to hear/ be heard. (Could be because the kids used it as a play phone for 3-4 years.)

Anyway, I put out a plea on facebook to see if anyone had a verizon phone that they didn't need anymore and a fellow homeschool mom had a couple. I met up with her today and got the phones and chargers from her. (Thanks Cheryl!!) She only asked that we get rid of all the personal information on them. The only reason that she hadn't donated them before now is that she didn't know how to/ didn't want to take the time to get all of their personal information off of them. I am very thankful. This will give us time to make a decision on what we are going to do about cell phones.

Thanks God for providing phones for us!

GIfted Tickets

Glenn's dad's mom is turning 90 this month. Around Christmas time an idea was started to plan a birthday party for her and have everyone go out to California to help celebrate. Problem is we live in NY and it is expensive to get 6 people to California. Another problem was that Glenn was starting his medical school clerkships this summer and we had no idea what his schedule would be like. We made no plans to begin with but Glenn's parents really wanted us to go so we started thinking about it. Flying all of us was out of the question because it is so expensive. I looked into driving but it was going to cost $1200 just for gas let alone wear and tear/ things breaking on the van on the way and food and places to stay and the wear and tear on our bodies would have been intense. I was also a little worried about driving across the country with my kids by myself and SO SUPER SAD that Glenn wouldn't be able to have this adventure with us. It was decided that Steve and Debbie would come up and help me get the kids to CA and Glenn would fly. Finally we decided that we would take the train. It was going to cost a bit more than the gas cost of driving but I think that it will be much easier on our bodies and our van.

Family members (that I am not sure I can mention) offered to pay our way. The kids and my train ticket has been paid for and Glenn's plane ticket as well. We are so grateful!!

An added bonus of going by train is that we get to stop on the way to CA in Iowa to go to a family reunion for part of Glenn's mom's side of the family. This will definitely be a life experience for us with opportunities to meet many relatives. We are looking forward to it (though I am still super sad that Glenn can't come).

Thank you family members for making this possible!!

Thank You God most of all. You are so gracious and generous!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Free Citrus Tree

I love our generous God. He gives us so much more than we deserve! Even silly things. Glenn was talking about wanting to own an orange tree or having some kind of citrus grow in our house the other day. Today on our way home from finding out where his testing site for Saturday is we drove past a lemon (it might be a lime, we don't know!) tree on the curb just around the corner from our house! It has only 2 leaves but several little fruits growing on it. We took it home and put it into a pot that we'd planted a tomato in a couple of years ago. It could probably use a bigger pot but we own this pot and we aren't 100% sure that it is going to live. It is so fun that God gave us a trial tree for free to see if this is something we really want to own.

Thanks God for abundantly supplying all of our needs and SO often supplying so many of our little desires.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Miracle Worker

Last night we went to Syracuse Stage for their production of The Miracle Worker. We were able to go for free because of an elective that Glenn is taking at school. From the time that I had heard that it was going to be done here this spring I have wanted to go but I wasn't sure that I wanted to spend the money for all of us to go. Through his elective Glenn has gone to a couple other (not so family friendly) shows this semester and often the students are told that they are allowed to bring one guest with them. He asked the teacher and a few of his classmates if he could have their extra tickets and we were all able to go. Yesterday we had the kids play 20 Questions to find out what we were doing last night. It wasn't Caleb's turn yet when he figured it out. He was so excited he was jumping up and down. We had taken a tour of Syracuse Stage in the fall and The Miracle Worker was the one show that he really wanted to go to. It was a great show. We all really enjoyed it. The kids were a little freaked out about the parts where Jimmie would talk to her from behind bars but other than that they really liked it.

Thanks God for free tickets to go to The Miracle Worker. Thank You for healthy kids that haven't had to go through the trials that Helen, Annie, and Jimmie did. Thank You also for the great example of perseverance through trials.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Pretty Plants



Wow, it has been a long time since I have blogged over here. I know that I have taken pictures to "blog later" but I haven't blogged. God has not ceased to provide for us but I guess I have ceased to give Him credit here. Here is a short and sweet one. Our upstairs neighbors moved to Utah for a new job and decided not to take their plants with them. They offered them to us and I jumped on the chance to have them. I had been wanting plants but didn't know what to get/ where to get them and it is so much easier if plants are just given to you because then those decisions are made for you. You take what you are given and say thank you then try to keep them alive :). The 4 big plants in the first picture and the huge one in our kitchen window were gifts from Bruce and Helen before they left and I am very excited to have them. I love having green living things in my home. Under the cup in the first picture is a sundew. It is a carnivorous plant and was given to me by my friend Dawn. It is really tiny now but I think that it likes the light bulb it is under so I hope it will grow and I am excited because I have never owned a carnivorous plant before!

Thank you God for providing plants to make me smile.