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Wrecked by Grace

Sophie, my greatest teacher.

Recently a mom I know who has a child with developmental delays messaged me on Facebook and asked me to call her. She wanted some ideas and tips on working with her child at home, and she knew I had worked with Sophie to help her overcome her delays. Our talk was good and affirming for both of us, and after we talked we traded emails and I sent helpful product links and app links and encouragement.

And it tore. Me. Apart.

In a good way.

God’s grace in it all just broke me open. It is beyond humbling to me that I am able to use the experiences I had with Sophie to help and encourage another mom.  I can’t tell you what a privilege it is. Does that sound crazy? I am so honored to help. It boggles my mind that anything that I know can be useful to someone else. This isn’t because I have a terribly low opinion of myself (we all know self-esteem is not a problem for ol’ JRap), it’s because when Sophie was going through all her evaluations and we were realizing how very significant her delays were, and I was giantly pregnant with Jonah, I cannot tell you how many times I said, and cried out:

“God, I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not the mother that Sophie needs. I can’t give her what she needs.”

“How can I do this? How am I going to help Sophie when I’ve got another baby to care for? What if I can’t teach her? I don’t know how!”

I was so scared of failing my child. What did I know of developmental delays, of speech or occupational therapy? Nothing, is the answer. I knew nothing.

And yet, here we are. I didn’t know, but I learned. God gave me what I needed and he gave us wonderful therapists and teachers to point me in the right direction. And two years later, to the day…

TO THE DAY, I just realized as I am writing this. Sophie’s preschool teacher pulled me aside with her concerns two years ago today.

I have to let that sink in for a second. To the day!  And I just realized it! Thank you, Lord. I don’t believe this was a coincidence.

Two years has passed and my darling girl is kicking butt in kindergarten and in life in general. And I am helping other people with what I learned helping her. It just blows my mind that I could be used. When I knew nothing, nothing. Not. A. Thing. I was lost and scared and ignorant. And yet.

Here we are.

God is good. He keeps giving me more gifts of grace.

Three nights ago another mom found this blog through Pinterest when she was searching for ways to help her developmentally delayed child. She found my story of our journey with Sophie. It gave her the exact encouragement she needed, she said.

Her comments wrecked me all over again. I’m so thankful that God truly made all that struggle so beautiful. I’m so thankful to be used. I am blown away, ripped open, blessed and humbled. Torn up. Ripped to shreds.

In a very, very good way.

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Pin for the Wednesday: It’s not dead yet!

Happy Wednesday! Although Emily and I killed & buried Pin for the Wednesdays a couple weeks ago, my friend Tess of Daily Ups & Pounds, a loyal Pin for the Winner (and my PERSONAL FRIEND), decided to resurrect it. YAY! SO if you were a #PinFTW fan, you can head on over to her blog every Wednesday to see what people are pinning and winning with! Sometimes (like today, for instance) Emily and I will be playing along, too!

Today I offer up to you one of the first pins I EVER pinned, months and months ago but never actually tried until last week.  And it. Was. WORTH THE WAIT!  It was fantastic!  Here is the original pin:

Click to go to the original pin

I am a chocolate milk addict. I have a glass of milk made with Hershey’s every morning before my coffee. My big kids do the same (no coffee for them) so we go through syrup pretty fast.  The other night we were out and instead of running to the store really late, I decided to finally try this pin.  It was awesome! SO easy and fast: the recipe calls for only baking cocoa, white sugar, salt, and water. And it tasted amazing! I only had Nestle cocoa, and it was really good, but last night I bought Hershey’s cocoa to see how close I can get it to the original.  Now we can have home made chocolate syrup in our milk that’s slightly more healthy than the store bought kind! And, I imagine, much less expensive!

All right, that’s my winning pin! Can’t wait to see yours! Head over to Daily Ups & Pounds to link up!

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The ALDI Experiment

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I wish it was. ALDI, I CAN BE BOUGHT. *Wink, Wink*!

If you’ve been reading here awhile, you know that I loves me a bargain and a coupon.  But with the advent of that devilish show Extreme Couponing, and with the popularity of couponing surging because of all the awesome savings blogs out there, drug stores and grocery stores have really been pullllllling back big time on the sale and coupon opportunities. Gone are the days when I had a huge stockpile of CVS Extra Care Bucks, not to mention toothpaste and body wash! I used to have tons of cereal all the time, and now I’m pretty much buying it week-to-week. It’s sad. S-A-D, SAD! I can still do “ok” with coupons and sales, but alas, I no longer gleefully take a photo of my spoils as soon as I return home from the grocery. Sigh.

So, last spring when I was preparing to head to Mom 2.0 Summit, I decided to try ALDI. They sprang to mind because they were sponsoring Mom 2.0 and I’d been there before occasionally, but since I was having such great luck with couponing, I had faithfully stuck by Kroger for years.  But feeling the pinch of our budget, rising food costs (when did peanut butter get so expensive!?), and lack of sales, I decided to give ALDI another chance.

And I’m glad I did!  Since that time I’ve been going to ALDI about every-other-week. I love the low prices, and the small size of the store is perfect for when you grocery shop with kids, because you get what you need and get out of there in a flash! I’ve loved the quality of the products, too. Here are some of my very favorite items:

Bobby and I go through Splenda like it’s water.  We use it in our coffee and we like coffee. (See also, coffee pictured above, ha!) The ALDI brand Splenda-like product is $1.99 for 100 packets! Do you know how ridiculously CHEAP that is? It makes me ever so happy!  It goes perfectly with their coffee, which is also very good and only $3.99-$4.49 for a pound of whole bean, and we are totes snobby so we like to buy whole bean and grind it. They have ground, also.  We’ve been really pleased with it, and the coffee savings for us is significant. I also love their Fit & Active pasta and the Fit & Active fruit strips (not pictured) are super-yummy and great for my kids’ school lunches. They LOVE them.  They are not pictured because I’m out and need to go get more today, along with their Happy Farms cheese sticks which my kids and I also love to snack on. They are priced way less than  any brand Kroger sells, too.  I eat one of the tortillas pictured above with ALDI turkey lunch meat and ALDI sliced cheese for lunch every day at home. Affordable and yummy!

Anyway, the point is, I am glad I undertook the ALDI experiment. I still go to Kroger every-other-week or so for their Mega-Event sales and to get my must-haves like Hershey’s chocolate syrup (mama needs her chocolate milk in the morning before her coffee, don’t judge!) and I’ve found a really good balance between the two stores.  I’m really happy I made this change because it’s helped our budget out a lot and I’ve found some great new products at ALDI.

So, tell me, all you who are more frugal than me, do YOU ALDI? What are some of your fave products?

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