Trials/Blessings

Are trials supposed to turn into blessings? How can you turn a trial into a blessing? From learning from it. Gaining knowledge, patience, ? what exactly?

From my limited knowledge trials come in all shapes and sizes. Whether it be physical, financial, spiritual, emotional, trials come. Some come to us from our Heavenly Father and others our inflicted upon is by our selves through our own actions and thoughts.

Our trial: 2005 Trailblazer

This vehicle was pushed upon us by a dealer. We were young (dumb) and didn't think it through. They qualified us for more than we could afford. We had almost a $500 payment each month, along with rent and two children and other bills.

Then after a year of owning this vehicle things started going wrong. Things kept breaking and we'd fix it and another thing would break. We kept putting money into the vehicle so it would run. Thus forcing us to miss payments. We couldn't call it a lemon because it was always something new breaking.

Things just kept us from paying the car payment...things like Daniel losing his job...twice...being unemployed stops all cash flow and you don't know how to live. Thank heavens for family and the church.

Since we weren't making payments the finance company kept calling and calling and yelling and harassing and making our lives quite unpleasant. Finally they put in an order to repossess the vehicle, we were able to sell some things and borrow money to pay them so we could have this vehicle that would barely run.

This kept happening and finally they said if we did not pay them $4,000 they would repossess the vehicle. Where are we supposed to find that kind of money. Daniels only had his job for a little over 6 months and I am working part time.

Where do we turn?

We turned to prayer. We fell on our knees and asked Heavenly Father what we should do. Our credit was shot. We had no money. And the vehicle would barely run. We needed a vehicle to get Daniel to work and me and the kids to school. What should we do? Should we ask the church and family for money? Or should we just let them take the Trail Blazer? What should we do?

After we ended our prayer we sat in thought for a moment to feel inspiration on what course we should take. When the doorbell rang.

Who could it be? No one ever comes to visit us other than the kids friends and the kids were already outside playing. So they wouldn't ring the bell. We go down and open the door to none other than the re-po man.

At first we were shocked. Because we had just gotten off the phone with the finance company and they said they hadn't put the re-po order in YET. (LIARS!) According to the re-po man he had the order for a full 5 days. And that finance company's tell him to not ring the bell and to just take the car. So that they can weasel out another payment.

We cleaned out the car, with questions from the children and I've never felt so down on myself. How could we let this happen. But then I realized...our prayers were answered. We didn't know what to do, who to turn to and we needed Heavenly Father to tell us what to do. And he did. He answered our prayer. Even though we felt horrible, we had no car, we knew things would work themselves out and that we would be okay. I felt at peace as the nice re-po man took our trailblazer away.

What did we learn:
1-don't buy from a dealership
2-wait, it doesn't have to be done that day (no matter how the salesman pushes)
3-look at other options (you always have options)
4-make sure you can afford it-not that the dealer says you can afford it.
5-blessings come in many forms

I'm grateful for this trial, because it was at every turn, but we learned from it. And I personally gained a stronger testimony, that Heavenly Father does hear and answer prayers, even in ways we don't expect.

Anyway sorry for this downer of a post, but I was impressed to share this interesting spiritual blessing/trial.

Until the next post...

May Mayhem?

May, I can say was quite uneventful, other than some home personal drama that I'm not going to share to the world. But it's here as a reminder to me, to learn from the trials that we are given. That choices we make have a ripple effect even though we think they will only effect us as the chooser. Especially when we have a spouse and family. This blog is more like a journal for me, and yes I am a horrible journal entry maker....that even though this says that I posted it in May it's January and I'm trying to post and catch up. It's also a blog for our extended family so they can know what is the goings on of our lives as the smaller but no less important Tate Family. But a storm wave of life came upon our small boat and nearly sank us, but thankfully we have the Gospel and The Atonement to help buoy us up in those times of great trial and hardship.

Thank you for letting me vent and not air my dirty laundry...
Until the next post.....

Black Friday

I absolutely LUV Black Friday. I love the rush, and energy and the amazingly great deals! Daniel says that something comes over me around 9pm Thanksgiving Day. It's so fun. This year was totally awesome we stayed out ALL Night Long, and all day long...I basically stayed up for about 39 hours and was so utterly and completely exhausted, my bed never looked so good! Angels sang when my head hit the pillow. But as an avid Black Friday Shopper there are some rules everyone needs to know.

So here are the Ten Commandments of Black Friday!

1- Thou Shalt Have a Plan
2- Thou Shalt Wear Good, Comfortable, Supportive Shoes
3- Thou Shalt Not Take a Cart, Unless you have a designated person with a cart whom stays out of the way!
4- Thou Shalt Go as a Group (besides it's more fun that way)
5- Thou Shalt Have Designated Items For Each Person to Retrieve (ie: 1-gets DVDs 2-gets games, etc...)
6- Thou Shalt Not Whine
7- Thou Shalt Never be a Line Jumper! (at Target you will be thrust from the store or arrested depending on how far you push security)
8- Thou Shalt Keep Your Ads With You at ALL Times
9- Thou Shalt Have FUN, if you don't get what you came out for oh well, no big deal, If you do get what you were after...You So Totally Rock!
10- Thou Shalt Get Out of MY Way! :)

Happy Shopping!

Reunion and School

So last week, well actually 2 weeks ago I had my ten year high school reunion. So I am not ready to be out of high school for ten years...time flies so quickly...it doesn't feel like ten years but I can't believe I have a kindergartner. So they have their own blog and I could not believe it when they posted the price of $60 per person! When considering two years ago we went to Daniels' reunion and it was $60 total! So I posted a comment on their blog about my concerns with the price, obviously many people were upset with the price so they lowered to $45 per person...not great but better. With Daniels reunion we went to Maddox steak house in Brigham City and while we ate they had a slide show going of then and now pictures, which was great. They also did prizes...like they had people stand who had the most kids, the most kids in one birth, how much education they've received, how far away they came from, etc. and the winners got a $5 or $10 gift card to somewhere. Then they talked about missing graduates who had passed on, and at the end of the night we got a CD of the slide show.

Now two years later it's my reunion. Well since they cut back the price they had to cut back the d.j. and it was held at the Davis Conference Center. Not only were we having the evening dinner and celebrations, but we also had a picnic at a park that our kids could come to. They sold out of the tickets for dinner but you could purchase tickets for the park only which were $15 for a family of 4 but nothing was provided, you brought your own lunch to the picnic...so what are you paying for????
So on to the evening festivities. You signed in at 6pm and went into the room where we ended up waiting till 6:45 until we got our salad and started dinner (by that time my water was already gone). Our table ran out of ranch and one girl hadn't had any dressing on her salad, so she asked one of the waiters for some he told her that they were out...interesting. Also an interesting note we had about 2 tables that were empty so how did they run out of evening tickets? Then after our salad plates were cleared we waited about 10-15 minutes for our dinner, which was either chicken or pork. They bring out my chicken with a bone sticking straight out of it...(did not look appetizing at all I'm not into the fancy) my chicken also had a glaze on it which looked like they spread bright neon orange paint on top of my chicken. With this interesting looking chicken I had about a 1/4 cup of rice and 1/4 cup of mixed vegetables. (Now by this time both my water and juice were gone and I am parched!) Needless to say I was still starving.

While we ate we had to fill out a questionnaire about where we lived, what we were doing, etc. We then had a senior officer talk about how Northridge is a feeder school for Hill Air Force Base and they wanted anyone in the military to stand so we could honor them since they were the "majority" of our school. Well only 3 people were in the military. So after that 1/2 hour lecture we then had the senior class officers read EVERY PERSONS questionnaire. I was completely BORED out of my mind...and between each transition on what they were doing there was a pause like they had no idea what they were doing. So then I'm still hungry and very thirsty...(the waiters never came around to fill drinks) then we had cheesecake for dessert a very tiny sliver of cheesecake (pathetic). Anyway then we went out and had a huge group picture in poor lighting of all the classmates that came all maybe 80 of us out of a graduating class of 500 people. Oh and there was a "photographer" there...not even she was one of the class officers little sisters who graduated maybe a year ago. Then the night was over at 9pm when it was supposed to last until 11pm. And all we got out of it was a little baggy that had two Hershey kisses in it and two northridge chap sticks. Woo-hoo. What a pathetic evening...I could have gone to a really nice restaurant and a movie or even a hotel for $90. My best friend didn't even come, a lot of my friends didn't come probably because of the price, overall it was a very sad evening.

So this week Madison started school (again) but Tuesday was her actual first day of kindergarten. Madison had a hard time yesterday, she's been upset that she hasn't been the line leader yet, and that all she does in school is work. So when we got home she cried, and I tried to comfort her. So I was worried about going today..if she would be upset or not. Well I park the car and we cross the street and are in front of the building (the kindergarten classes are in the back of the building and you walk around the outside of the building to get to her class) So we start to walk around the building and she turns to me and says "I know the way bye mom" what? wait? you don't want me to walk with you??? and she replies "No I can go by myself, I know the way." I stammer an o-o-o-k and she cheerfully says bye mom and skips around the building when she gets to the east side of the building she turns around and sees me just standing there and she waves, blows me a kiss and then skips off. So there I am standing by myself, alone, in front of the school...my baby has just skipped off independently and cheerfully without me to go to school. Needless to say my eyes began to water and a couple of drops fell but at least it wasn't an all out cry or sob. I never thought this day would come until Jr. High because since I work at the elementary school I would be there and could always walk her to class. Well she wanted to and did go to class by herself. I'm pathetic. So we will see if this will be an every day thing only tomorrow will tell....so now it's off to bed to bring on a new day.

Goodnight!