The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Have you ever had a time in your life when you have had to wait on the Lord? God put us in a position in January 2006 where we started a long phase of waiting on God. The Lord led us away from NBBC and into the Independent Business Owner life. Phil started Tri-Star Computer Solutions with the hope of building a successful business. It has been a long road since then filled with many bumps, curves, and dead ends. Phil found a few really great customers and yet, he found it difficult to build a business that was sufficient to meet our family needs. He enjoyed his business and loved being home more, but the financial stress was very difficult. The summer of 2006 he decided that he would actively start looking for employment. He has applied for more jobs than we can count and has had many interview's. Only two in this long process looked promising. For one, the Lord obviously closed the door. The other, we saw it looking positive, then for a while we thought he was not the choice the company was going to make. Each time Phil would remind me that it was Good to Wait on the Lord. I often failed to see God's goodness in it all, so I'd cry out to God for His grace and strength, begging Him to help me to wait as He was desiring me to wait.

Last week and this week he received more communication from the company that caused us to believe that they were very interested in Phil. Each time another positive step took place we were excited yet felt the Lord encouraging us to continue to wait on Him. Today Phil received the official job offer from Dynamic Campus Solutions. He is excited to join their company in the position of User Services Manager. He has been very impressed with the research he has done about the company and how thorough they have been in the interviewing process. His first day of work will be November 5th.

I've been crying since about 4:00 ish when he got off the phone with the woman in charge of personnel. We are rejoicing in God's mighty provision of this job. We prayed specifically that he would find a job that would be in Wisconsin for Thomas's Autism Waiver qualifications, meet our needs financially and that would allow us to move out of the area. We have been blessed with a great public school here for the kids but really felt the Lord directing us to home school. We didn't feel it was in the best interest of the kids nor our relationship with the school, which is VERY good, to pull them while living four houses down from the school. I am very excited about being able to have my husband, children, and home as my total focus. I have a couple Pampered Chef shows in November, but I do not intend on taking my business with me. I'll be notifying my loyal customers about our move and letting them know that I am willing to do catalog shows but will not plan on traveling back to the area to do Cooking Classes. I've had 10 GREAT years in the business and am excited about letting go in order to turn my focus totally onto my family. There is a time and a season for everything and my season is that of being a mom, disciple maker, and teacher to six children who we pray will grow up to be soldiers for Christ!

The Lord has provided a place for Phil to stay for the first month of his employment or until we are able to find a place to buy in that area. It is our desire to look at the churches in the area and choose the place to look for a house based on which church we feel the Lord wants us to be at.

There are still many loose ends since Phil needs a vehicle, we need to sell or rent this house, we need to find a new house in the Cleveland, Manitowoc, Sheyboygan area, WEAP needs to find a new team of therapists for Thomas, and much more. Thank you all for praying for us and we would continue to covet your prayers as we transition into a new home, area, church, and a new family routine with Phil being gone during the day and the children being home schooled. We are hoping to be able to move around Christmas time so this kids will finish up the first half of their school year here in Pembine and we will start homeschooling in January. All of these plans are in the hands of the Lord. We will continue to move forward as He unfolds the path He has for us.

Psalm 27:14

It has been a long time since I have blogged. Over the past couple of weeks we've had many adventures so I will try to briefly update you on Life with the Reese's Pieces!

About 2 weeks ago Nathan hit his head wrestling with Caleb. He seemed fine, only crying a minute or two. Then about 1 1/2 hours later Phil noticed that his left eye was fixed and dilated. That is usually the sign that there is serious brain trauma! We took him to the hospital where the CAT scan was normal. The doctor there was baffled so he consulted an Opthamologist who said that often people will hit their head and it will cause a dilation in one eye that will dissipate after about 48 hours. We were still a bit nervous but went home. Two days later Phil was up until 4 am studying about it. That next morning one of the kid brought us and empty eye drop bottle. Caleb had to take a medicine that forced his eye to stay dilated to help with the healing process. We discovered that Nathan put some of this medicine in his eye because he looked at the bottle: Held his eye open, pointed to his eye and said, "my eye...." So we figured out that the dilation was because of the medicine, what a relief!!

One of my dear friends had her first baby, a sweet little girl on October 2nd! It has been fun keeping up on the babies first weeks. My friend is going to be the BEST mom!!! She was always wonderful with our kids and I know that she will be a Godly sweet mommy!

Elizabeth celebrated her 11th birthday on October 13th by having a friend over the spend the night and for cake and ice cream! I'm so thankful for how our children have graciously gone through this time of Phil not having a job. Elizabeth had a present from her friend, a card with money from Grandpa & Grandma Conover, a very small gift from us, a present from Grandma & Grandpa Reese (Jonathan Park Adventure Cd's-- if you've not heard of these they are AWESOME Creation vs. Evolution adventures, check them out at www.jonathanpark.com, they'd make a GREAT Christmas gift for kids between the ages of 6 - 12). She was very sweet and so excited about what she did get. Usually we hold a large party with several friends and she gets lots of nice things, but this year we just couldn't afford a large party. She accepted it with such a sweet spirit!

Caleb had an appointment at Children's Hospital on Monday, Oct 15. It was a very encouraging appointment! The doctor said his eye is healing well and that he is lifted from all physical restrictions. Caleb is VERY excited to be able to have recess, play in gym, and ride his bike!

We had parent teacher conferences last week and I was shocked and so excited to see that our Samuel has all A's & B's. Many of you know that Samuel has really struggled academically the past couple years. His teacher this year is AMAZING. She has really sought to connect with Sam and help him with his various learning struggles. He is thriving in her class!

Phil's job search has been on hold the past couple weeks because he has been VERY busy with his own Business! PTL! However, about 3 weeks ago he started the interview process with one company. They did a phone interview and at the end of the phone interview he was asked to set up an in person interview. Then he got a call a couple days later asking if he'd do a phone interview with the Executive VP. That interview also went very well. His in person interview was next. Phil thought it went ok, but he didn't get so much of a "We'll be in touch". Since we didn't hear anything for 2 weeks we assumed that they had decided that Phil wasn't the right fit for the company. We were pleasantly surprised last week to get an email from them stating that they were sorry they hadn't been in touch and that they are trying to make their final decisions this week. We were encouraged thinking that they must still have some interest in him or they wouldn't have emailed. Then last night right before church they called and asked for another phone interview today. He will be interviewing with the person who will be his boss. The interview will be some time this morning or afternoon. Please pray with us that God's will, will be evident and that we will be able to accept a rejection if they don't choose Phil. This is the farthest we've made it through the interview process. For those of you who didn't know, Phil has been without consistent employment since Dec. 2005. His computer business is not strong yet, we are very thankful for all the business he has had the past two weeks though!

As for me, I've been trying to switch over the kids summer clothes to winter. Last week I spent about 24 hours sorting, packing, switching, laundering, etc. I still have to pull all the summer from Sam, Caleb & Elizabeth, and make sure they winter clothes that fit properly. WHEW!!


Sorry this ended up being so long, I'll try to get batter about posting.

Chapter One:

Once upon a time in the small town of Pembine a little curly headed boy lived with his family. Samuel was a sweet 6 year old boy full of adventure and life. He loved hunting and killing bugs, building all sorts of weapons, and inventing new ways of making it essential to remodel his modest home.

On one especially warm fall day the flies decided to awaken in hopes of spring. The flies, seeking the warmth of the sun, were enjoying an afternoon sitting calmly on the Reese Families Large living room window.

Samuel was deeply concerned about the invasion of these pesky black flies on the exterior of his house. He was determined to make them pay for turning his beautify tan home into a sporadic polka dotted sight. Since Samuel's stature was slight he decided the only way to rid the house of these flies was to get his mothers kitchen broom and attack them with vehemence!!

He walked out of the kitchen and around to the window which was covered with flies, determined to kill as many as he could with each blow. He lifted the broom and took a powerful swing! CRASH! Samuel was not only successful in killing a few flies, he also single handedly broke the window into many large and small pieces. The look of absolute horror on his face..... PRICELESS!! The cost of the window.... we won't tell, we'll simply ad it to his "bill of release" which will be handed to him on his 18th birthday!

Elizabeth and I were cleaning the kitchen tonight when Nathan started to scream. He had tried to open a folding chair and sit on it. Well he didn't get it opened all the way and when he sat down he pinched his ring & middle finders in the fold of the metal legs. After icing it they are still quite red & swollen. I think he will be ok. It may break him of sucking his fingers when he sleeps because it is the two fingers he sucks at bedtime. We'll see what happens tonight!

You may be wondering why we had a folding chair in the kitchen. Well our dinning room set is a severe eye sore! We have been given or purchased for VERY cheap (like $25 dollars) FOUR dinning room sets since we got married. The four tables have survived and are still in used in various rooms of the house or have been given away to others who needed a table. The chair situation however are very sad!! We have 2 matching from one set, another 3 from a different set, and two lone chairs from two different table sets. If you ad that up we only have 7 chairs and 8 in our family. So we have to use a folding chair for the 8th person. It is quite a sight seeing us eat dinner because we have a table that only seats 6 and all 8 of us squeeze around it at breakfast and dinner. We keep saying that once Phil gets a job one of our first purchases will be a dinning room table set that can easily seat 8 or more! If you know of anyone giving away a new/barely used table and 8 chair set pass them our name! :-)

Today Samuel got his stitches removed. The cut looks quite nasty still but it is sealed up! I was reminded of all the amazing ways that Samuel has found to get blood out of his fingers:

1. Easter Sunday's 2006 episode with the whiffle ball! For those who haven't heard this story I will share it! Easter Sunday we were all ready to go to church when Sam came into the kitchen crying because he couldn't get his finger out of the whiffle ball. He had decided to take his pinky's and stick them into holes on opposite sides to see if they could touch. Well Sam's fingers are a bit on the pudgy side so they got STUCK! Phil managed to pull one of the pinky's out but the other was VERY stuck and started to swell. We tried, cold water, ice, oil, and butter with no luck. So Phil took Samuel to the hospital hoping they'd have something that could cut it off. At the hospital, I'm sure it was their most interesting Easter Accident, they had to numb up Sam's finger and pull the ball and deep groves of skin off his finger. Sam couldn't feel a thing. Later that day of course his finger throbbed quite nicely. I had hoped he had learned his lesson about shoving body parts where they didn't belong only to find him on the deck a few days later crying because he had decided to stick his knee's through the side panels on the deck and was stuck there. I was afraid we'd have to saw him out but thankfully I got him to relax enough so I could pop his knees back through!

2. The Serrated bread knife to the finger which needed three stitches. He decided to cut the end off a piece of celery by using his hand as a cutting board.

3. Stapling his finger. This just happened a couple days ago. The story: I called Phil on the phone while I was in town grocery shopping and all of a sudden heard Sam screaming. He was loading staples into his stapler and put his thumb over the area where the staple come out and pushed to close it not realizing that it would staple right into his finger. The staple was all the way in his thumb! The staple bruised him pretty good.

Someday I will have to post other of the past adventures of Sam..... like the time he ran through the garage door in Phil's car, the time he stepped on a nail that was sticking out of a board just to see what would happen, and the time he decided to kill flies with a broom..... the flies were on my living room WINDOW!! So, look for more adventures of Samuel in the future. I'm sure there will be many new stories . I often wonder if he will survive until he becomes a teenager!!

Tonight at dinner Thomas was complaining that his tummy hurt because he ate to many meatballs. He was saying he wanted to go to my bed to sleep because he was sick. Philip said, "Don't you want to go to your own bed Thomas?" Thomas said, "No, I'm sick" Philip said," But your bed is so cute!"

Elizabeth and I just cracked up hearing Philip say so sincerely that Thomas' bed was "so cute."

Today Caleb had a Doctors appointment at the Children's Hospital and we are very excited to report that the Doctor is pleased with how Caleb's eye is healing. Caleb is able to tolerate more light and is was able to see some letters with his left eye. He is no longer on bed rest so he will resume going to school with the exception of recess & gym class. Caleb will not have to wear the eye patch 24/7 anymore. He will be able to wear special sunglasses or an eye shield. The doctor wants the eye protected and he is still sensitive to light so the sunglasses will be worn most of the time. The eye shield requires medical tape which irritates Caleb's skin, so we will try to do the sunglasses as much as possible. I'm sure there will be times when he will wear his pirate patch too but he will not be wearing it as much.

Sorry to not be blogging much lately. I was down with a head cold Sun. & Mon. and yesterday I played "catch up" on the house and laundry. It is amazing how many things go undone when mom is sick. Thankfully I'm feeling much better, however, Philip has an ear infection. Since we don't do the "doctor" thing much we are using all the homeopathic treatments and Motrin for the pain. He will most likely have to miss school tomorrow if he isn't feel better.

Will try to write more later about all that has been happening here.