Seeing Baby, Jared’s job, and Prayer to Pathfinder!

 I have so much to share!  3 very exciting things happened in our lives over the past few weeks!

1.        Seeing Baby:

Today I am 21 weeks (5 months 1 week) and my tummy is getting round! (I will get Jared to take a picture ASAP!)  I've been feeling the baby move over the last 2 weeks or so and Jared got to feel a kick just last week!  I was saying to baby: “Kick, baby; kick Daddy!”  Then Jared looked at me and said: “What are you teaching our baby?!”  Valid point.  But at this point, I don’t think baby can understand our speech.

Anyway, on Friday we had our first regular ultrasound! (We had one at just over 7 weeks, but baby looked more like a peanut than a baby at that point!)  It was really neat seeing the baby on the screen, moving, yawning, and sucking its thumb.  Most people ask us at this point: “Did you find out the gender?”  We did not.  The technician wanted to tell us, but I asked him not to.  So baby’s gender will be a surprise!

Baby Blatz profile, sucking his/her thumb!

2.        Jared’s job:

So there’s really 2 parts to Jared’s job as he technically has 2 jobs! 

1)       First, Jared was very excited to receive his pager for attending fire calls!  He still has more training to do and will only receive his level 1 Firefighter testing next November!  But there are still a number of things he is allowed to do on a call.  He was also given an emergency light for our car for when he gets a call!

It was very exciting this week receiving a call just as we were about to get into the car.  So I got to go along!  They call it ‘going in red’ when they have their light on, honking and going through red lights and all that.  It was pretty exciting!  Then, once at the hall, it was cool to watch them all gear up and pull out with for sure 5 trucks!  It ended up being a false alarm, but it was still fun to watch them gear up and head out!

2)       Second, Jared was offered a manager position at a finishing site!  In case you don’t know, Jared works for a hog company.  So he’s been there now for 3 weeks I think and is doing great!  He is in charge of 5 barns and 1 employee.  On one of his first days, his worker, who has worked at this site for some time already, pointed to our civic and said to Jared: “Is that all you've got?”  Then he explained to Jared how the road to the barn drifts up pretty good and our little civic would never make it through.  And that brings us to the next point!

3.        Prayer to Pathfinder:

So Jared and I have been thinking, praying, and talking about a second vehicle for a little while now, partially for easier car seat placement and partially for drifted snow days where our little civic might not get through.  So Jared did some number crunching and we figured out how much we could afford to spend on a vehicle and what sort of vehicle we could afford long term, specifically insurance costs.  There wasn't much in our price range.  We took a Mazda for a test drive and were disappointed.  We knew our budget was small, but we needed something we could rely on.  I stopped scouring kijiji for a few days and got some homework done.  Then Sunday morning I was up early and just thought I’d see if anything new had popped up.  There had!  I didn’t get my hopes up too much as most of the better vehicles were a good distance away and we don’t have terribly much time to be trekking out all over in the evenings.  When I clicked on the Nissan Pathfinder and looked at the map I realized that not only was this vehicle in our price range, insurance included, it was right close by!  Just up the street!  Big answer to prayer right there!  But it got better!

We were able to go look at it that very evening!  The man was so honest and upfront.  The first thing he did was show us anything about the vehicle that wasn't quite perfect.  He told us about work he’d done on it and all kinds of other things about this type of vehicle itself, he was a mechanic!  Then as we talked we also discovered that we go to the same church!  And he’d been in a cell group with Jared’s sister previously!

We took the pathfinder for a test drive and were quite impressed!  We came back to discuss price and they invited us in!  He gave us a great price and even offered a few extras like the hitch package, shampooing the interior and something with the rotors!  Then they invited us to stay for hot chocolate and games!  I saw their daughter and realized I’d met her before at church!  We played a game, wrote out a bill of sale, and before we left they prayed for us!

Now have ANY of you had an experience like that when buying a vehicle?

GOD IS SO GOOD!  SO AWESOME!