Ooooofta! :-)

Wowzers, its been awhile since I've blogged. Its time to get moving with this again! It's really awesome and a great way to get my thoughts out and keep everyone posted on our life at the same time!

Things have been going dandy for us!! Things to have certainly seemed to calm down finally. With the medical issues we had between myself and Julia, we were quite the ball of fun for awhile. It was no good, but PRAISE GOD, we're healthy and living life to the fullest again! Now, just to continue working on paying off those medical bills.....YUCK! Luckily, we've almost hit our "major medical" point, to where we won't have to pay anymore. In the meantime, gotta love the payment plans through the hospital that are interest free! :-) Thank goodness something is working in our favor with this stuff!

Tom's car is on its last leg unfortunately. The brakes recently went out and had to be replaced. It was quite the chunk of change and its STILL not completely fixed. The air conditioning is still not working at all, the blinkers are not working at 100% (I think theres a wiring issue or something) and then there is oil leaking out of the head gasket apparently. And the breaks were on top of all of this. So we're really keeping our fingers crossed that the car will last us through the beginning of next year and I hope to get a new car shortly after. I really want a Dodge Journey, and they're really pretty affordable which is the best part. The reviews are good too which is wonderful. The space would be VERY nice and it would make traveling with family a ton of fun too! It's really an all around good deal. My biggest obstacle now is to convince Tom that this is the right thing to do! Hmm....got any tips?! :-)

Awhile ago (probably about a month and a half or so) I decided to take on a project by putting together a team for the Marathons of Hope. The Marathons of Hope is a fundraiser for cancer patients and is a great way to reach out to cancer patients and their families. Anyways, I decided to put the team together and worked hard to reach my goal of 10 people. Well, I met my goal, and in fact, I passed it! I ended up getting about 17 people to participate with me! The kicker was was the person had to be willing to spend $35 just for a registration fee. For some people, that was enough to turn them away. But I kept going and it paid off! So then we were put to a "Team Challenge" and so then I went on a mission to find a way to fundraiser for us so we could be the top fundraising team! I came up with a raffle and began to print raffle tickets like crazy. It was a great money making thing for us and it worked, but it took a lot of work! I personally had to call about 100 businesses and ask them for a donation of money, gift certificate, merchandise or whatever. I ended up having about 47 different prizes for the raffle. And sold raffle tickets to employees, patients and our families and anyone else we could think of. We sold tickets for $2 a piece and ended up raising about $600! Then there were a few other small things too that all added up and in the end, we raised about $1300!!!!!!!!! What a deal!! It was really a great feeling to be a team captain and know that all my hardwork paid off, is really a great feeling! I was pretty proud! We ended up winning the team challenge and we're now getting a plaque with our names on it and going to be posting it on a wall somewhere!! I'm really excited and hope to see it soon!

I have a prayer request for you as well. A dear relative of mine passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He was really brave and they did all they could to help him. He is now healthy and living cancer free! Just please play for his wife and sons and family members that are able to be there with them. They live quite a ways away so we're not able to be there but they'll definately be in our hearts.

Well, I don't have much else to report right now!! My long term plan is to blog at LEAST once a week...hopefully more!

Hope you're all doing well!