Thankful Thursday

1. It was SO wonderful going to the Sandi Patty concert on Friday night with Nadia (for free!). It was also amazing to hear the group Veritas. I bought one of their CDs for Nadia, and she has played it for  hours in her bedroom over the past week. I am happy to buy quality, uplifting music like that for her.

2. It was a delight to go to Donna's surprise 70th birthday party on Saturday afternoon. Her children and grandchildren put on a very special party for her, and it was wonderful to see people I hadn't seen in years.

3. I saw some improvement in Ian's soccer playing on Saturday afternoon.

4.  All three kids sang a song with the Soul Patrol kids' choir on the platform at both services on Sunday morning. I'm grateful they can be in the choir.

5. The Steelers lost on Sunday, but the Giants helped us out by beating the Ravens, which means we are still at the top of our division.

6. We are enjoying another novel about ancient Egypt called Mara: Daughter of the Nile. The book is full of suspense!

7. In the first five days of my diet, I lost four pounds. Yahoo!

8. We've been having "Indian Summer" weather lately. It has been gorgeous!

9. Today we are headed to the Landis Valley Village Farm & Museum in Lancaster for their Hands-on History day. Then after that we are heading to Maryland. Ian keeps talking about how it's sad that Grandma isn't there any more. It's an adjustment for all of us. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Maryland Science Center (for free because of our ASTC membership) and Port Discovery (because on the 3rd Friday of the month it's only $2 to get in after 4pm). The last time we were at those two museums was September 2015, and that time both of my parents joined as at the museums. My kids and I miss my mom very much.

10. I am finally making progress with refinancing the house. I paid for a home appraisal a few days ago. Why on earth it costs so much money I have no idea. We are only trying to borrow 1/4 of the value of the house. I understand why it would be necessary for the bank if you are trying to borrow say 80% of the value of the house, but when you're trying to borrow less than half, it doesn't make any sense to me, but then a lot of government regulations don't make sense to me. Closing costs when you buy a house aren't fun to pay, but paying those costs a second time just to lower your interest rate is really not an exciting way to spend money. But our interest rate is going to be dropping 3% (we should have refinanced years ago!), and we are going from a 30 year to a 15 year mortgage. Our mortgage payment will drop $200 a month, and we are cutting seven years off our mortgage, which means we'll be paying a lot less interest. I had hoped by 2016 we wouldn't have a mortgage. That would have been true if we hadn't moved here as our first two mortgages were 15 year mortgages, and then I thought if we moved this year that we'd not need a mortgage (due to down sizing plus borrowing some money from my retirement accounts). I used a mortgage broker the three times I bought a house, but this time we weren't borrowing enough money for him to be interested in helping us. So this is my first time navigating the process on my own. I called around to different banks, and hopefully I made a good choice. I will be glad to check this off my to do list when it's all completed!