The March Gang

Last Friday Kirsten and Connor(her best friend) were playing outside.  When suddenly Connor came running in the house and said “come fast, Kirsten got hurt”.  Well, when you hear these things you never know if you should run as fast as you can or just get there eventually.  Riley & I went ahead and went outside.  Kirsten is walking towards us without her glasses and is holding her finger.   After we finally got the story.  Kirsten was standing to close to Connor while he was golfing.  He swung back while she was scratching her temple and smacked her so hard that her glasses went flying off.  The ear piece was sticking straight out.  She couldn’t move her finger and her eyebrow had a big knot.  I decided to take her to the E.R., becasue she has such a high tolerance to pain, I thought her finger might be broken.  Thank God that it was just bruised.   The Docotr did say it was a good thing her finger was at her temple or she probably would have split her head open.  She however, was not to upset about her glasses because she had been wanting new ones.  So here we go again to spend more money.  All five of us wear glasses and I wear contacts.  We have all had to get new glasses this year, so you can imgaine the cost of that.    Here is some pictures of Kirsten’s new look.

Old glasses:

 

New glasses:

Lately Simeon has been acting like he couldn’t see very well.  It has been a year since his last check-up so we decided that we would go ahead and take him back to the Dr.  My baby’s poor eyes have gotten worse once again.  For those of you who are not familiar with us I will give a little background.  Simeon was a child who was behind on everything compared to kids his age.  I know that you are not suppose to measure your children to others, but lets face it we all do.  I thought maybe it was because the other children his age were girls and they say boys are slower.  He didn’t walk until after his 1st birthday.  At 18 months old I noticed that he had to hold a book up to his nose, and he would stand right by the video to watch it.  We took him to the eye Dr. not really believing that it could be his eyes.  The Dr. was amazed, he had never had a child as young as Simeon with eyes as bad as him.  If you are familiar with near sightedness Simeon was an -10.  The Dr. was going to take him to a -8 at first, he said if he took him to 100% it could make him sick.  I got him home that night and we decided to try my glasses on him which are  -7.  I put them on him and he reached out for me and said “Mommy?”.  I about lost it at that.  The Dr. said that given his eyesight he was surprised that Simeon was even walking and getting around.  He said that if a child’s eyesight is that poor that they tend to stay in just one area.  I felt very thankful that Simeon was not developmentally delayed, he just couldn’t see.  We have his eyes checked every year and they keep getting worse.  Now at 4 he is at an -14.  They still don’t want to bring him up to 100%, so he glasses are -12. 

Simeon decided this time he wanted a different style of glasses .  Peyton has chunky glasses and so do I, so he wanted glasses like us.  He picked these out with a little help from me.  This was his choice though.  I personally think he looks adorable.

Simeon’s old look.

Simeon’s new look!!!!

Trying to beat the heat, the young marrieds group decided to go to a “hillbilly” water slide in Piedmont.  We pulled up to this country water slide and didn’t know what we got ourselves into, but hey for $5.00 what can you complain about.  After our first ride down, we decided it was well worth the money.  The owner let us have it for 2 hours.  The last time down I decided to make Simeon go by himself(he is not the bravest little boy), I put him on his own pad and sent him off.  He was screaming the whole way.  When we got to the end I grab him so he wouldn’t go under.  He turned around to me and said “don’t ever do that again”.  Since then he has said that he wants to go back, and he will go down the little one by himself.  I was so sore the next day that I decided I’m not as young as I used to be.  The kids loved it, and are begging to go back.

 

The last Sunday of every month our S.M.A.K. church has a special theme for the kids.  This month was a Halle-luau.  The kids were asked to wear tropical colors and flip flops.  Peyton and Kirsten asked maw-maw March to make them grass skirts.  Simeon wore his hawaiianshirt and insisted that his monkey backpack had to go to church(we never know what goes through the mind of this child).  The kids all received leis and had a great time playing games and eating fruit.   We have an awesome children’s minister Bro. Ethen & Sis. Lori McGonigal, they are always coming up with amazing ideas.  The kids love them, and are always looking forward to seeing what the special theme will be next.

 

God is so good to us.  He is my physician, my provider, my comforter, my hero, my everything.  We had a couple from our church to give us a $500.00 check Sunday night.  THANK YOU JESUS!!!!!!   I know that our budget is going to be supplied.  If you know me very well you would know that I am kinda a worrier.  I tend to worry about things that don’t even happen.  However, since Riley resigned from his job I haven’t worried at all about the money.  I just have this sense of great peace, and I am less stressed.  I didn’t realize that I was even stressed about his job.  Riley is also less stressed, but still as busy as ever.  He is still getting calls to work on computers and he is helping his dad this week.  He also is working on the MO YOM blog site, and working at church.    We are just taking our lives one day at a time.  We still are not sure when we will be leaving for Ireland, but I feel like it will be soon. 

Hello, everyone.  This is my first time blogging, so bear with me please.  Riley & I have entered into a new phase in our lives.  If you know us very well, you would know that we (especially Riley), are very cautious people.  We have never in our lives given up a job, even if we hated it, before we found a new one.  However, we felt that God wanted Riley to resign from his job.  We wrestled with this decision, because going from making pretty good money to making very little money, and having a family of 5 is kinda scary.  We were praying about this and asked God to give us an answer two week ago on a Sunday.  We went to church on that Sunday night, and our pastor Bro. Chuck Carr, preached about stepping out on faith and trusting God.  I knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt that our prayer had been answered.  Since then Riley resigned and we went on a mini vacation(we are really trusting God).  When we got back the next morning Riley got a call to work on a computer, and he has another service call this week.  We’ve also had someone give us some groceries today.  That just lets me know that God is taking care of us, and He will provide when He asks you to step out in faith.  We have had some people to think we are crazy, but I know God has a reason for this.  We still are not sure when we are leaving for Ireland, but all in Gods’ timing it will happen.  We now have nothing holding us back, so when He says it is time we will be leaving.

I forgot to mention on my Wednesday post that it was Kirsten’s birthday.  We actually had a party for her at the same time she graduated Kindergarten in May thinking we were going to be gone already.  The little peanut is 7yrs and two days old today.  Her MeMe Slusher, Tara’s Mom, brought her a “birthday cake” before church Wednesday night.  It was exactly what Kirsten wanted, a big watermelon.  Simeon thought we all were losing it when we called it her cake.  He was very adamant that we realized it was in fact a “WATERMELON”.

Well as you can see we are still state side.  We are still working on obtaining the funding to fulfill our budget.  If you were to allow it, the situation could be a little depressing.  Northern Ireland is goverend by the UK and so the currency used there is the Pound Sterling (GBP).   Currently the US dollar is two to one against the pound.  So I need two dollars for every pound I will spend.  So as you can see with the US economy in the shape it is one could get depressed very quickly.  Especially if you are moving to the UK.  Well there is one part to the equation that Wall Street and Bloomberg have no clue about.  That would be the “God Factor”.  I was in prayer the other day and God spoke to me that he never leads where He doesn’t provide substance.  So I took that seed of faith and have stood on it.

So that brings me to last night.  Dad called me and told me he was on his way down to my house because he had something he needed to bring me.  Well when he showed up he had in his hands the basket that is in the picture below.  My Dad’s next door neighbor came over to his house and told Dad that he started rolling his change jar a few days ago and while he was doing it he felt that the Lord told him that he needed to give it to me to help with my trip to Ireland.  So he showed up with this basket full of money rolls.  There is $589.50 in change there and it weighs in at 60lbs.  Now when things like this happen I know it is a God thing.  Brad, my Dad’s neighbor, doesn’t go to our church and we are not sure how he found out about us leaving.  However God impressed it upon Brad’s heart to help us out.  So you know what I do when doubt and fear show up and tell me there is no way?  I just knock it out with a 60lb basket of change.

This is the second time something like this has happened from someone outside our church family and friends.  I had a man show up on my door step three weeks ago and hand me $1000.00 in cash.  Said he just finished a job and felt that the Lord told him that was what he needed to give me.   So I know God is making it happen and much to Tara’s disappointment on His time not hers. ;)  So yeah God is awesome!

Our Visas have arrived!  I tell you it is a little unnerving sending off your passports and trusting they don’t get lost along the journey.  We had a very big mess up with getting them submitted.  It is a long story that I wont bore you with, but let’s just say that we are very familiar with the Home Land Security office in St. Louis.  Despite using an incompatible web browser (Mac+Safari) and not knowing it to getting the wrong biometrics on one of our applications we did it.  We have Visas.  We are now legal to travel and live in the UK.

This weekend we are hopefully going to be taking our belonging to the shipping container in Effingham IL.   We are going to have to build crates to pack everything in.  Along with our stuff, the Bunch’s and the McFarlands we are also shipping building matierals.  We are going to be putting an addition on the church once we all get there.  Yes believe it or not it is cheaper to ship the supplies from here rather than buying it in Ireland.

If you want to keep up with what is going on in Ireland right now check out the Bunch’s Blog. God is already doing wonderful things.

Well this is the official launch of our blog.  We are working as hard as we can to get everything in order for our “launch” date.  If everything goes as planned we will be leaving the last week of June. Our funding hasn’t all come together yet, but we are not worried.  God has called us and because of that we know he has a plan.

Right now we have started the very long process of obtaining our Visa’s.  Ever since 9/11 things have changed.  I am pretty sure I had to answer on the application who my second grade teacher was and what I did for my third grade science project.  We finished the applications and then had to go to St. Louis to the Home Land Security office to be finger printed. We had a small hiccup and had to go back a second time, but as of right now they are being processed at the British Consulate in Chicago.

Well we will keep you posted as we make our journey to Ireland