Blessings of the Unexpected

is the best sign ever at a garage sale. This past week as we juggle financially to pay all our bills we've discovered many blessings that have come in around the edges to keep us from losing hope. It's been a rough year, I'm sure many of you would agree on that, and often we find ourselves yelling at God that he needs to help our checkbook, but sometimes God blesses us in other ways and we just have to look elsewhere to see it. It might not be something we wanted, or in our minds NEED, but it's always something special. This weekend God seemed to open the treasure box on those types of blessings.

On a morning shopping trip by myself, as John and Danya were having play time together, I stopped at a garage sale. I saw this climber with a free sign on it. It's very sun faded and the slide was missing. I drove away and got to thinking that it was the perfect size so that where the slide was would match up to our wall.

After taking carseats out of our car I ran back to get it. The Dad of the house helped me take it apart and put it into our car, a big blessing for something for a free item. We got it home, washed it off and put it back together. once we set it up over the grass that just won't grow, we discovered a minor flaw, it was all red dirt underneath and that would make a serious mess of Danya's clothes. So we found all the loose bricks in our back yard and made a little matching patio for the "castle" to sit on.

Danya has christened it the Castle. It's pretty easy to see that she loves it!

We have tons of riding toys, but Danya spotted this at our neighbor's garage sale and had to have it. They were kind and gave it to her free. Kind of a belated birthday present.

As some of you know we have been making cards for the NICU to celebrate little milestones in the babies development. We've been partnering with the Mom's club I joined and making lots. Since I don't do paper scrapbooking much I've just been stuffing everything in a big rubbermaid container. This is rather time consuming to pull everything out. One of my friends had this organizer that they had been using to organize her daughter's school work, but were no longer using and she passed it on to me.

That afternoon I put every thing in it right away. Today we have friends coming over to make more cards and I can't wait to really use it. I used it at children's church yesterday and it worked great for that so I know it will be amazing for card making.

What a weekend! It's been amazing to focus on these little things that God pours down on us through our friends lately. It makes me less frustrated when I can't purchase things I think that we NEED, because I know that God knows what we really need more than we do.  Have you recieved any blessings lately?