Problem Solving

Ram and I have had to deal with one problem after another for the last few months. It started with my key stuck in the ignition of our old minivan. We had our old minivan for 4 years. First we had to get the ignition fixed and we chose to have dents removed from a parking lot fender bender. Car repairs and car shopping to trade in the minivan was highly stressful for me and I was so relieved when the check was written and we drove off the lot with a new minivan. Ram wanted to get me a personalized license plate and that has turned into a mess because we were due to get new tags in January but I purchased the new plate in December. They decided to not put the order in until January so I didn't get charged for an extra month. So I now have temporary plates and hope they send my new ones before February. I can't wait to show you a picture of my new plate!

We had to make decisions regarding doctor appointments because we had met our deductible last year and we wanted to make the most of it. We figured out how to have Lamb 2 graduate from all his therapies and have nose surgery and fit the rest of all our routine doctor appointments in 2014. I was especially proud that we all saw a naturopath chiropractor that I really liked for a couple of appointments while insurance was paying for it. Today we had to deal with a bill from one of those appointments that wasn't billed to insurance correctly. We'll see how many more phone calls it takes to resolve that.

I am still dealing with a bill for a doctor that Lamb 2 saw in October of 2013. I finally got so disgusted that I paid the bill a few months ago. Then in December I found out that they rebilled insurance and insurance paid for that visit. So now I'm waiting for my refund for paying that bill.

Then the back door lock wasn't working correctly and I thought we should call a handyman and get it fixed correctly. Ram made a trip to Home Depot and fixed it himself when I was gone one day. I was so glad to have that done.

Then the microwave blew a fuse late one night. I don't care about the microwave, but that is the ventilation system for our stove. We have lived here and used the microwave for 3 years and it does not get as much use as an average family. We decided we needed a new microwave so ordered it so we could take it off our taxes in 2014 but chose to have it installed in January so we didn't have to deal with that around Christmas. The plan was to have an electrician out here to check that everything is ok before installing the microwave. We haven't had time to make that appointment with the electrician and the microwave will be installed next Friday. In the meantime I'm getting used to cooking without using the microwave at all. The Lambs are getting used to making breakfast without a microwave too.

This morning I put a CD in our MAC during school time and I couldn't get it to play nor could I get it to eject. Ram called to ask for help and got some other problems solved but not the CD out. He was on the phone for a long time and I'm afraid we may have gone over our cell phone minutes this month because of that phone call. We'll see. Our cell phone minutes reset tomorrow. Now we have to find time to take the MAC in and get the  DVD player replaced. It frustrates me because we rarely use CDs in the MAC and it is less than 4 years old.

One of the presents that I gave my sister for Christmas arrived broken and so I spent several e-mails dealing with that until she took the present apart and fixed it.

We got a new treasurer at church and there has been some confusion about our HSA. I think it has been resolved but we have to wait for the money to be moved from the church account to our HSA account and then to be direct deposited in our account. It is such a relief to me to have this straightened out after bothering our treasurer about it for several months, but it doesn't help financially until that money is in our checking account. Because of this I have tried to watch our spending carefully recently, but that's not easy when we need a new microwave etc. and there are always lots of bills in January like Ram's taxes due. It will be wonderful to be reimbursed this money and try to get caught up financially again.

This post is not a complaint as much as I wanted to document what has happened to us recently so I can look back in a few months and see how everything was resolved and how everything worked out. I know that God is taking care of us, I just wish we didn't have to do so much work (especially phone calls) to get everything fixed! I am also so thankful that we had money in our emergency account for stuff like this.

We had a wonderful Christmas vacation and got back to homeschooling and routine this week. I'll blog about December and include lots of pictures beginning next week. Tonight I am going on a date with my beloved! We are going to take a break from problem solving tonight and enjoy dinner and a movie together.