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!