Year 2, Day 244: The Day of Miracles

Ok, I wouldn't call them "miracles" but God's hand has been extremely evident in the last 24 hrs!  First, I have been praying diligently for my side of the family recently, and some of that has been quickly answered!  Not all of them will be, and they involve multiple pieces, but I feel that a huge weight has been lifted.  If you want to know details, please ask.  I don't mind sharing privately, but I do respect my family's privacy.  And if you are faithfully reading this blog, then I'm guessing you are a pretty close friend.  But anyway, just know, it was something that made me cry happy tears during church last night.  I am not often moved to tears like that.

Then, this morning, I got a random message from Justin's best friend's aunt, about something else entirely, but learned that his best friend is back in town for the weekend (Bryce, who moved to Atlanta in August).  Since Justin's birthday is this upcoming Saturday, we were trying to figure out what to do for it.  Justin wanted to do something with Bryce, but we told him that his mom wouldn't fly him up there just for a birthday thing.  I knew he was disappointed, but that's reality.  So, to know that Bryce is actually in town, is the miracle! So, I quickly messaged his aunt back and asked if we could take him to Skyzone this afternoon.  I found another Groupon, too!  Woot! Woot! So, away we go on that! And then Justin can get a couple of other local friends to the opening night of the Lego Ninjago movie on September 19th to finish it off.

Third, after waiting over 1 1/2 years, I finally have a brand name Luci display bag for my Lilla Rose business!  When I found out about them, I had just been given my Doctor Who backpack purse from a friend, so I was frugal and used that until it wore out.  But I said, once it does, I will upgrade to the Luci bag.  Well, I went on eBay and low and behold this was a used one for 40% off retail price!  You have to understand that I've never been a name brand girl.  I know what the brands are, I know what the trends are, but I will not buy the name brand at full price.  The only name brand full price items I buy are gluten free/dairy free food or homeschool books I will keep forever.  So, to finally find this bag, at the right place, at the right time is incredible!  I bought it last week, before a huge sale hit this weekend.  I hadn't planned on this sale bringing in any orders, however, it has brought in enough to cover the cost of the bag!  I was just going to eat the expense of it, and not worry about being directly covered this soon.  I mean, it is a bag to show off the products and hopefully garner some sales, but, that's a long term goal.  So, how sweet it is to see that because I was intentional, and faithful with a little, God has given me much to be faithful with.

It's only noon on Sunday and look what He has done!

Oh this kid and his need for physical touch in any way, shape, or form!  Abishai is literally standing on Jared's head!

Protect your eyes because toddler needs to climb!

What are you doing? Daddy phrased it well, "She's doing cute with Abishai (in the sunroom)."  I.e. she's saying cute things to him and coaxing him along through the open window.

See the paragraph above, but here are the two bags side by side.  As I put it on social media today, the good Doctor Who is going through a regeneration!  And *spoilers* in the first time of the history of the show, he's actually regenerating into a woman! Now, I'm not so happy about the way the show is going, and I'm way less into it, so this a good time to move on and be the woman I am and share the products I sell.  And this bag holds a ton of stuff!

Abishai loves to "drive" to Grandma's house!  "Turn left, Daddy!"

Justin traded a fidgit spinner for this pinball machine!  Oh my word!  When the boys said it was a "mini" pinball machine, I was thinking it was 6 inches by 12 inches or something.  Nope, it's much bigger.  And now it's in my house.  Ugh.  But we are all enjoying it, so we'll keep it for now.  Grandpa Howell and I used to play a lot of pinball, minesweeper, solitaire, and tetris on the first versions of windows where they were automatically loaded, so, I'm pretty good at this thing.  Even Abishai knows how to play!

Awww, it's awesome that these two got to hang out today!  What a great birthday surprise!  They played video games, went outside, and just hung out at church and that at our house and Skyzone all day!  What a blessing!

It took forever to pose this dog and this kid and get them to look at the camera at the same time!  But I did, and bam, they are cute!  Abishai was so happy that "Socks with us."  In fact, when I was talking about going to Grandma's house for lunch, the Socks went to the inside garage door expected us to get his leash to take him with us.  Sweet!  And yes, he did come.  And we had yummy tacos for lunch.

Oh! I regular grasshopper!  We've seen so many different kinds of bugs and heard them, like the cicada and cicada killer.  We saw little hoppers in the lavender fields in Michigan.  But we haven't seen this regular kind of guy.  He hopped away quite happily.  Justin enjoyed seeing him.  And Jared thinks he saw a hummingbird tonight.  Yeah for flowers and green cover that houses all these wonderful creatures!

I'm here again, at Skyzone, while the boys do their jumping thing.  Time to do my own studying!

Flips into the big pillow thing!  It used to be a foam pit, but there were issues with it.  Now it's a big bag of air!

Thump! I would think it would be hard to get out of there.

Where did he go?

Both Bryce and Justin got their basketballs in!  It was pretty busy today, but everyone was spread out so no one had to wait long to do the element they wanted to do.

Get those points!

I finally got Justin's attention because I wanted to see what he could do on the warped wall.  He couldn't do the 10 ft one.  Oh well. I'm sure I can't either.

But he did get the 8 ft one done!

Ta da!

Bryce's turn! 10 ft, easy peasy!

Woot! Woot!

They added their tags to the big ball of tags at the front desk.  Not sure what Skyzone will do with that big ball, but hey, it looks cool!

Our house is full this Labor Day weekend with Bryce and Ethan hanging out with us.  Sweet!  This is what we wanted, to be hospital to people of all ages.  I'm glad that our plan is working!

Leah found these incredible gluten free, dairy free, egg free pretzel thins and oh my goodness they are to to die for! I still always look at ingredients because I just want to know what I'm eating regardless of what the package says.  But I happened to glance further down and notice that this is a "product of Israel."  Saw what?!  Cool!  There's even some Aramaic (I assume, I could be wrong) writing on the bottom.  Double cool!  Thanks, Leah, for the yummy snack!

Totally addicting!

This is Keturah's Minecraft world.  She says this is my library!  Wow!  Cool!  Both her and Justin have created incredible worlds and they go in and tweak it now and then, too.  Keturah has a bedroom for each of us where she put bigger beds for Jared and I, but we sleep in separate rooms.  In Jared's world, he has this cool roller coaster transportation system, complete with a base where the cars go when they are finished delivering you to your destination and signs, too!

Another gorgeous sunset!

There's always time for more wrestling!

Charge!

The lighting is poor here but still, Abishai was pretty red from running and laughing so hard.

And it continued into the living room.  Stop milking it from your Dad, kid, and go to bed!  Ssheesh! So much fun though!