raising redheads: Blessings of God!!!

I dont know if I've mentioned this before, but I struggle a little bit with being humble sometimes and accepting the blessing of God. I like to be the blesser, not the receiver. I get this honest...both my nanny and my mom are BIG givers. I dont know if my issue is that I feel unworthy to receive God's blessing or if I feel guilty receiving a gift from another person. Either way, I struggle with it. I think alot of it comes down to the fact that if my parents give us a gift I dont want others thinking that mommy & daddy are giving us hand outs. I also know, however, that we are almost 24 years old with 2 children and have been married for 4 years in December. I think we have proven over and over how financially responsible we are and that we honestly dont need help because we have it all under control. God blesses us financially in so many ways that we have just never needed any extra help. If we did, although it would be hard for me to ask, we would. Daniel and I still have money in our savings account from his deployment LAST year. Yes, we could spend it on things that we WANT or things that we think we NEED for the house, but being miss accountant that I am, we have not. I like having a cushion to fall back on and know that when we want to do extra things with or for the kids, we have that money. Over a year later, we still have not had to live on a budget. Even though we didnt understand that deployment at the time, it amazes me to see the blessing that God had stored up for our future that we are receiving today! Imagine the blessings stored up in Heaven!!!

Anyway, the reason that I started out writing about finances and blessings today is this:

I woke up yesterday morning to a phone call from my mom saying that Daniel & I's birthday present was on the way to our house so to move our van out of the garage. (our birthdays are in November and December & what does the van have to do with anything?) She then told me that her and my dad were going to have our driveway blacktopped! WHATTTTTT? wahoooooooo!!!! This is something we have been talking about doing since we bought the house and were going to do it at tax time. Then after we had the leaking windows, decided windows were a necessity and a driveway was a vanity. It would have to wait. Well, apparently not! I know that we could pay them back, but of course that was out of the question for them. I am so excited and am learning to just accept this AWESOME gift! What a blessing to our lives it is and my parents bless us every single day just be being here and being present. I love you both more than I could ever say. I hope that in everything we do for you we can somehow pay you back. We love love love you!!!

Last night we had Abby & her boyfriend Andy over for dinner. Andy is from Scotland and is here in the US playing soccer. Abby met him and he has since become a good friend of ours! We enjoy having him around. There's a whole list of things that he has never done that we plan on doing with him while he's here in the US. One of those things just happened to be tie-dying, so of course Abby decided we'd do it! We chose to dye shirts the color of their college...PURPLE! It was a blast and it just so happened that Daniel had never done it either. They learned together and the shirts turned out awesome!

Today is the apple n' pork festival. I'm heading there soon. I just wanted to share the latest pics of the driveway, our funny & crazy kids, and one of the many future adventures with Abby and Andy! Enjoy and have a good weekend!

Hello buddy!