Jonathan has learned to play!

After 3 1/2 months of just laying around and that he can interact with it - or at least with looking at the world, Jonathan has finally realized the toys hanging in his play gym. Sunday, I put him down on the mat and watched as he accidentally hit one of the hanging animals. He studied it for a bit and then his hand went back out and batted it again. He sat in intense concentration for probably 25 minutes hitting the animals, grabbing the animals, and trying to bring them down to his mouth (or actually bring his mouth up to them since they are attached). It was adorable.


































And here is a super cute picture of him all bundled up for our car shopping outing yesterday!

And it continues

To tag onto yesterday's post: I spent the morning looking into car insurance for our new car. We were planning on checking a quote with the company we had our old cars insured with and the company that insures our house. As I was looking through the paperwork, I was having a hard time understanding all of the different coverages and amounts, so I ventured online for some help. I ended up at the Geico site - they really do make it "so easy a cave man can do it" by the way. There they had explanations of all of the coverage options. To get a feel for things I started plugging in the numbers from our old car coverage and then playing with the amounts to see how they affect the price. And I ended up with what seemed like an extremely low quote. So I called to talk to a "real human." He pulled up my quote and he started laughing because he couldn't believe it was so low, but told me it was true. He said it's cheaper than he gets for an older car with his employee discount. He just kept laughing dumbfounded at the price throughout our phone conversation. So, we have our new car covered with very high coverage now for $200 for 6 months. God is SSOO GOOD!

God is so GOOD

I'm going to start out with a rather insignificant story, but trust me - it will come in handy later. Do you ever get surveys in the mail? You know, the ones asking you what tv shows you watch or what cleaning products you've heard of? I've been told by people not to fill these out because then you get put on a list of people who will do these things and your mail box will be flooded soon. But you see I'm home all day with a baby and a toddler. And while I love that, sometimes even the little mental stimulation that filling out a survey involves can be a welcomed change - answering questions asked by other adults instead of by a 3 year old. So I have been known to fill out surveys from time to time and I don't think it has really flooded our mail box - at least not yet.

Well, back to my title - God is good. Tim is now part time at the church and going back to school full time online through Liberty. I'm still home with the boys and making a little spending money online through my scrapbooking businesses but not much yet. Anyway, it's meant we've had to readjust our budget and pull from our savings this year. However, we feel very strongly that the first thing we need to do with our money is to tithe. Ten percent goes to the church each month regardless of how little we are making. (If you are a Christian reading this and don't tithe, see my earlier post from Oct 4.) And God is blessing our socks off! Let me just share a few things.

First, we get a letter from our mortgage bank saying that they overestimated how much our taxes would be and there were hundreds of dollars extra in our escrow account. Enclosed was a check for this extra money and a lower adjusted monthly payment we need to make for our mortgage. Next, I open a random survey envelope and out falls $30 in thanks for filling out the last one and would I mind filling out one more. (See I told you that first story would come in handy. :) ) Not much I know - but enough to let us eat out one night. And finally, just today we went car shopping for a van (I know, bit by bit, I'm turning into a soccer mom). And we happen to get a deal on a 2006 Town and Country that was well below what we were hoping to spend.

God is so good!! He provides for us in ways we can't even imagine. Praise Him!