How to be grateful....

This is one of series of the several posts that I wanted to do all along, but never managed to do it. Now I am committed to share what I've going thru and learning, so bear with me :)

This is the sappy little fridge someone managed to let us borrow. 1) I'm very grateful for the person who had the extra fridge in the first place, because we would not have moved in without one. I told Mat some things were just too basic to live without,especially when you have kids in the house. A fridge being one of them. Sappy was not a reference to the nice lady who let us borrow her extra fridge, but a description of the fridge itself. This little guy was SMALL...

Look at how small the freezer was. I should have snapped a picture of how it was before. Half of it was ice. It was not the "frostfree" kind....so I had no space for meats. Call me frivolous, but I was getting depressed and completely discouraged to cook anything. I hadly opened the fridge unless when I had to make things for the girls....I was eating at my mom's whenever she invited us and I was seriously getting into depression. We currently don't own a car, so to be able to buy meat on a daily (or every other day) basis I depended on someone taking me to the store. My mom doesn't always have the time. So we were not eating meat. The RD I have been consulting with said I had to eat more protein. I hit an all time low, when I had an ultrasound and the tech said Julie was small. (which I blamed my lack of protein, and the RD said something of that matter- or maybe that it would be bad for breastfeeding later on...I don't recall exactly what she said. I just knew I had to eat more meat)

So I began my search for a new fridge. I talked to the Lord and told Him I could not stand this situation anymore. We had no furniture, we had no table, no couches....and the fridge was ridiculous. I told Him I believed I wasn't helping my family to be healthy and I felt like I was failing as a mom and wife all together. I had no more positive energy to drain my attitude from. No more hope of "things would get better"because it had been 1 1/2 years since we really had our home. That's when things began to change....

We found someone at our own building selling their fridge. I went to see it and fell in love with it. The size we were looking for. It was worn out but the inside looked good and best of all, it was cheap!!!! Look at the size difference between what we had and the new fridge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First time I was able to buy and store meat in the new freezer I took a picture. I wanted to be able to remember this and how grateful I was that the Lord gave us a new fridge. IT WAS HIM. We thought about making two payments and had even mentioned it to the lady we were buying it from. She was ok with it. But for some reason we had money in our account that month. Please keep in mind we don't have spare money. We pay our bills, tithing, food and we are done. That's how tight out budget has been. So to be able to get this fridge out of pocket was TRULY a miracle!!!!!!

I also took a picture of the fridge after our first grocery shopping for real!(we always had to keep small quantities of everything because things went bad fast. Because the freezer had no door it sucked all the cold to it and the bottom of the fridge (fruits and veggies) went bad at a fantastically/depressingly fast rate. Now we were able to fit a whole watermelon and cantaloupe :)))))))) A variety of washed fruits and juices. I cannot open that fridge and not love it. I am SO grateful for it. It's the perfect size for us!!!!!

This is the snap shot of out CLEAN kitchen. It's beautiful. Someone before my parents lived here (and we took over the rent after they moved) remodeled the floor and wall. My parents left the beautiful cabinets for us and that's how we have a fantastic kitchen to ourselves :)

We cherish this present Paulinha and Cefas gave us before we left Rexburg. It reads "Friends are the flowers in the garden of life". OBRIGADA PAULINHA!!!!!

So after a week or so that we bought the fridge a nice lady in our ward said she thought about us not having furniture. Her soon was giving her a new table set and she asked if we wanted to keep her old one WITH 6 CHAIRS. What's awesome about this little babe is that it opens up and it's able to host about 8 people around it. We've never had one like that before. Although it's not easy on the eyes I plan on renewing it somehow. :) Any tips??

Here is a tour of our kitchen and laundry area. You can see the old floor too...

The appliances are OLD and also borrowed. A great widower in our stake got remarried and let us borrow her washer and dryer for whatever time we needed it. :) Talk about miracles :) (The back door is the closet where we keep our food and bathrooms items since the bathrooms have no storage space in them)

This is where I spend a great amount of my day. It's messy, but I was making lunch then....:)