3. I'm very thankful that Paul works to support our family and enable me to be a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. I have the kids draw their self-portrait the first day of school every year. You can see Nadia and Ian's self-portraits from yesterday in this post. I also started a new tradition of having the kids each write at least four goals for themselves (faith, physical, academic, and personal). That wasn't an easy task for them. My mental list of goals for each one of them is far longer than what they wrote, ha ha!
4. Last Thursday Nadia and Ian auditioned to be promoted to the Camerata (middle school) and Valley Singers (high school) choirs of the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale. They were successful!
5. I took the kids to see a free outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream last Friday night. They weren't excited about going so I sweetened the outing with a stop at Sweet Frog for frozen yogurt.
6. Paul took off work on Saturday, and the five of us visited the Lehigh Valley Zoo, National Canal Museum, and a festival held outside the Museum of Indian Culture.
7. The kids ate dinner at home by themselves for the first time in their lives on Monday as I was attending a missions committee meeting at our church. I'm thankful that they are old enough that I can leave them at home for a couple of hours without paying anyone to babysit.
8. The boys enjoyed their first Ninjastics class on Monday night. The last time Oliver took gymnastics was the fall of 2019; I was amazed that the Gym director remembered his name!
9. The last two pounds took a LONG time to shed, but I've lost fifteen pounds so far. I want to lose at least eight more. Hoping I keep this weight off for years to come!
10. The kids enjoyed bowling, the trampoline park, arcades, laser tag, and the lunch buffet on Tuesday for the Homeschool Expo. I can't say the experience was helpful in any other way, but the kids had fun. I bowled one game with them. Ian was the winner!
11. My allergies have been giving me far less grief lately. I've even been able to mow and weed whack. I also feel like I've gotten totally back to normal with my ankle. My right elbow also doesn't typically bother me anymore. It did hurt to hold a bowling ball, but I can go years without bowling so that's not a big deal. I'm still waiting to regain my hearing in my left ear.
12. The price of gas has come down some. It's still higher than it was last year, but I'm thankful for the reduction in price. Last year we spent $4,120 on gas, and I'm expecting that we'll probably spend around $6,000 in that category this year.
13. Our wonderful neighbor took Milo out for a walk once on Saturday since we were gone for about twelve hours.
14. We have reached the end as far as trying to reduce the size of the hospital bill from my ankle surgery. The outcome certainly wasn't what we wanted, but I'm thankful that the suspense has come to an end. We hadn't heard anything from the hospital for five months. All our efforts didn't help one iota. They still say we owe another $19.923 in addition to what we already paid. It's mind boggling. They will give us 10% off if we pay the full bill within 30 days. That's their standard policy which we have known all along. I did the math, and I expect we will spend at least $29K on either medical "insurance" or medical bills this year. I say "insurance" because we don't have actual medical insurance anymore (because of this fiasco - what's the point of paying for medical insurance if they won't pay for a surgery to repair a broken ankle?). We now contribute monthly to Christian medical sharing program. We haven't had any expenses yet that were eligible for reimbursement through that program, but I feel confident if I needed a surgery now that we would only pay $400 for it not more than $20K. Anyhow not counting what we give away in charitable donations, I expect medical expenses will end up being close to 40% of the amount we spend altogether this year. The next biggest category in the budget will either be food or gas, as I expect both of those will rise to about $6,000 each, but time will tell exactly which one will be the biggest. So, in the very year that we are experiencing the highest inflation that we have in 40 years, we also are hit with what is for us an astronomically large medical bill. In our 21 years of marriage, Paul and I have only spent more than $10K for two things - a home or a vehicle. I honestly would have skipped having the surgery had I known it would cost us $10K much less $20K. The only time Paul and I have spent more than $1,000 on any medical expense was with fertility treatments, and those were definitely worthwhile as they resulted in us having three children. If we ever have medical insurance again, I will NEVER trust any hospital to do the preauthorization. Either Paul or I will call to make sure it is preauthorized, and although we have had various appointments and hospitalizations at that hospital in the past (ex. that's where I typically went for my annual mammogram), we are going to try to avoid that hospital like the plague the rest of our lives if at all possible. I'm not planning on getting a mammogram anywhere for a while as those aren't covered by our medical sharing program, and the thought of incurring any additional "large" medical bills right now is abhorrent. Of course, a mammogram costs a LOT less than an ankle surgery, but still, it costs more than $1,000 without insurance. Thankfully, we have a way to pay the bill. There were years in the past we would have had no way to come up with the funds to pay this size of a bill, but Paul in the last two years had started setting aside some money as a retirement account for himself, and we are using some of that money to pay this bill.
