We started our little adventure with an even bar, but that sure didn’t last long.
To give you the whole picture we need to go back in time, so cue up the fuzzy back in time film that takes us to when this all started.
Back around Thanksgiving I started cutting out what seemed like a million little pictures for Lil’ Monster’s and Little Terrorizers PECS books.
They use these books to help them communicate and tell us what they want. They have been such life saver at times when they can’t verbalize what they want.
Then of course we roll into Christmas and all of the wrapping of presents. This is when my thumb started to hurt originally. But like usual I powered through it and tortured myself.
We’ll come back to my thumb issues in a little while, just be patient.
Now if you are at all like me you love doing laundry. NOT! But at the same time our family of 5 goes through a TON of laundry in a week. I have a Lil’ Monster that changes her clothes anywhere between one and ten times a day too. Just in case I don’t have enough clothes to wash she like to make sure I have more too.
Right before Christmas, I’m talking a week or so before Christmas my washer went bad in the middle of the night. We tend to put the washer on a time delay cycle at night so we can mostly sleep through the noise.
Some noises and harder to sleep through though. Like the LOUDEST clunk, clunk I’ve ever heard.
The clothes in the washer had to be rewashed but the worst part was that I didn’t realize the washer went bad so I tried to wash another load. That didn’t go so good.
Instead Papa Bear had to take our clothes down to our Awesome Neighbor’s house. He washed two loads that day and tow more later in the week.
Finally we came to the realization that we needed to start shopping for a new washer and dryer.
These beauties were my Christmas toys.
Christmas came and went - we had a great holiday by the way – without any more huge displays of activity so we thought we were out of the woods. We came to find out we were so wrong though!
On New Years day Papa Bear’s family lost a great woman, as it was her turn to leave this world and head back to Heavenly Father. 
Grandma, Papa Bear, and Silly Girl (5 months)
Two days after that Papa Bear’s cousin took his life and went back to Heavenly Father too.
You would think that this was the end of our “bad luck” but you are mistaken. This is just half way up the hill.
We decided that we would head to San Diego to see family but first we had to get a new windshield in our car. After trying three different times we finally got a new windshield put in the car just a day before we were to head south. On the way south just 30 minutes from the hotel at around 9 o’clock we were in the middle of the freeway when we saw a pile of mattress padding. We had no choice but to run over the padding. Then five minutes down the freeway we saw this rolled up mattress coil springs right is our way.
Yes we ran it over!
We had absolutely no where else to go. It took Papa Bear and I 30 minutes to get those mattress springs free from the car. After that the car’s tire was messed up but we didn’t know how bad until morning when it was time to go and Papa Bear had to put the spare tire on the car.
So if you were keeping track now that’s a new windshield, a new tire and a tire rotation for a quick two day trip to San Diego.
I need to back track here a bit and tell what else hit us the day we were getting ready to head south for San Diego. Papa Bear and I have had a sweet boy in our lives for years now, he was 15 years old. 
For the week before we left Baron our beloved dog started having problems walking. Papa Bear was having to help him just walk outside to go potty. His whole back end would collapse and he we stay in one place for hours at a time. We didn’t want to but as a family we decided it was time to send him up to Heavenly Father at this time.
Then around comes February and the only thing this month brought us was an extremely painful hand (my thumb) and the stomach flu.
I told you I’d come back to this. By this time my thumb was hurting me more. In this post I tell more about my thumb.
In all it took me seven weeks of being in a cast to finally being cast free.
I still have some pain issues in my hand but now it’s from my hand being immobile for so long and every once in a while it is my thumb that is giving me pains but that’s mostly from not using it too.
I just don’t recommend to hurting yourself!
After all of this all I have to say is that it is very important to pay your tithing! It truly is amazing the blessing you miss out on when you don’t pay. We of course – really I mean I – don’t think about the blessing you miss out on when you don’t pay and you don’t realize how much of a difference it really makes.
I’m hoping our LUCK, will start to look up soon, I don’t know how much more of this we can manage or afford.
Hard to believe but I really think this sums up our last couple months worth woes.
