http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart recent pleonast.com entries by user sharbyheart en-us http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=599410 From a worldly view, the good news today is that we received a check from the insurance company yesterday! It is surprising how quickly things can move when no one is dragging their feet...I only wish I could get my children to understand that! LOL (We will try to determine from here if we will be able to trade in our damaged house for a new model, or if we will be repairing this one.) But THE good news is that through the difficulties of the past couple of months, I have truly learned the lessons I needed to learn from this...that God sent His beloved son that *I* through an obedient faith in Him (along with His grace) WILL have everlasting life! Praise God for the washing away of my sins and the hope that I can still have, despite my failings and shortcomings and mistakes. I hope and pray that each of you will forgive me for my faults, as well. By turning to God's word, praying, and leaning on the pillar of other good, strong Christians, I have come through this valley in life wit... 2008-11-14 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=598241 Well, I just do not have time to write a big post with pictures. We are still working hard to get Justin "caught up" on schoolwork, so it is a big priority right now, as well as just keeping to a routine and having as much "normal" as possible before things start moving on our house. Throw in the holidays coming up and Michaela's birthday in the midst of that, and it just seems to stay busy! I teamed up with my mom to have a garage sale a couple of weekends ago to get rid of a few extra things we will not want to move or store in the next year. We shed a few things, and the rest we are donating or my mom is listing on ebay for me. There is plenty more around our house that needs to find another home! We are planning a tea party for Michaela's 4th birthday. The Ottersbachs have kindly offered to host it in their house so that I do not pressure myself to make a damaged house presentable for a party! Another big sigh of relief! Michaela is going to be a flower girl... 2008-11-11 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=595033 I'll let you know when the check is in our hands, but we had a preliminary sigh of relief when we learned that our insurance is re-instating our policy...wheeeeeeeewwwwwwww!!!! Apparently the state insurance board proceeded to investigate. Our insurance is claiming that although our second attempt by the mortgage co. to pay the premium was "too late to prevent cancellation of the policy"...unfortunately they did not notify us or the lienholder of such, and they kept our money, so now that they have investigated it all, *apparently* the policy should be re-instated effective July 5, 2008, and our adjuster has the info to proceed with our claim. All that cc'd to us in a letter from the insurance to the insurance board, which arrived today by FedEx. Hoping and praying we are on the right path and STAY there now! Thanks for all the prayers. We need them. Sharon PS...All you Benchley-ites enjoy the Fontenots at your upcoming meeting. They are just on loan! 2008-11-04 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=593018 I'm going to be SO busy Friday and Saturday, that I'd better go ahead and share pictures of the kids' Halloween costumes. We had a party Saturday, hosted by a family from our church, so we've gotten to dress up once already. Justin is "Kaiba" from Yu-Gi-Oh! this year... (In case, you've never heard of that, here's what Kaiba looks like!) I made the jacket for that one, but Michaela's is a borrowed outfit, which was mistaken for a "love bug" but is really a ladybug! They had many cute, cute games set up, but the big finale was the pinatas! Justin was allowed to remove his blindfold and bust the puppy one open after everyone had a shot at it, and Michaela WOW-ed everyone with her swing at both it and the pumpkin. They had a lot of fun! Hope you all have a good week, and a happy Halloween! Sharon 2008-10-29 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=591195 I wonder if they have extra security on this guy at the Houston Zoo? Even a peaceful person like myself feels a strong urge to cut those horns off ;-) Which set of lions do *you* like best? (I prefer the ones on the right!) I have been eyeing beautiful KitchenAid stand mixers for a long time now, but I've recently realized that I have the best stand mixer in the world!! In fact, I have the two best little muffin makers in the world! Well, at the risk of boring you...in regard to our house.... The insurance has decided to make it difficult--and I really mean difficult. In a nutshell, the rumblings of problems with our policy from earlier in the summer have erupted. I could have told you in June that we would be hit by a hurricane this year ;-) In June, our mortgage co. sent the check to renew our insurance policy to the wrong place, and it came back to them. Meanwhile, the insurance contacted us saying that our policy had been cancelled. Toby spent July getting t... 2008-10-24 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=587926 Well, as we "sit and wait" for any word from our insurance, we have been a little busy. We always love pictures of the kids at Texas Children's for Justin's checkups. My favorites are always of Justin during his echocardiogram, but since those always have his shirt off, I'll not post them. Here are a few other fun pics from our day there on the 7th... Over all these years of dr. checkups, I never took a picture of Justin being measured for height, so here's a first! (he is 4-1/2 feet tall!) Same goes for blood pressure reading... I usually get a picture of the cardiologist listening to his heart, but since it was a new doc for us, I thought that might be a bit pushy, so here's one of Justin waiting for Dr. Justino to arrive... Of course, at these checkups Michaela gets to just wait around alot all day, but being on the 19th floor holds its attractions, and being a rainy day (no, our tarping did not hold...), it made for a neat picture! As my "plug"... 2008-10-15 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=585444 Our lovely oak, which is now nothing more than a pile of rubble waiting for trucks to pick it up, has a long and illustrious history. It survived a number of famous hurricanes... including..... Rita in 1995 Alicia in 1983 Carla in 1961 plus many other less-famous storms, including one in 1943 that disrupted WWII production and had a higher loss of lives due to the restrictions on distributing weather conditions during the war..... and "The Galveston Hurricane" in 1900! Yes, at 131 years old, that tree had withstood many a storm, but Ike brought it down in 2008. Lesson learned...take care of your senior citizen trees. The End. Our first bid for repairs is over $41,000. Ack! Still waiting for word from the insurance. Sharon 2008-10-09 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=584692 Justin had a good checkup with his cardiologist today. There were no surprises and no major changes, but the doctor did describe the hole between his upper heart chambers as "dime sized." At that size and at his age, there is no possibility of the hole closing on its own. In addition, it is contributing to some enlargement of the right side of his heart and leaves him at increased risk of heart attack and stroke (due to clots being able to cross the heart through the hole), so we are advised to schedule a cath surgery to use an implanted device to close the hole. Thankfully, this is not something urgent, so given the current events with the hurricane, we have begun tentative scheduling for March or April of 2009. Hopefully other things can be more stable before we tackle that surgery. Continued prayers are appreciated. The Dunns 2008-10-07 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=584199 We counted the rings on our downed tree, and I am taking guesses on how old you think it was.... Also, we are thrilled to have a new elder appointed yesterday! We look forward to working with him and his wife in this new capacity! Justin is busy at schoolwork, and we are striving for "normal" this week. He is currently working on Psalm 11 for his memorywork and copywork. Very comforting how unchanging God's word is :-) Have a good week! Sharon 2008-10-06 http://www.pleonast.com/user/sharbyheart?l=5&entryID=583499 One more step forward in "the process." :-) It is a toss-up as to whether the final decision will be a "total" of the house, or a re-build. The adjuster's personal opinion was that he could not see it being re-built due to the damage to a weight-bearing wall. We will not know anything further for 30 days. So, do I figure I have 30 days to pack a household (again) and proceed, or do I wait on the off chance that it is not totalled?? Hmmmm..... 2008-10-04