Day 9 and a Blessing

I'm on Day 9 of my 21 day challenge.  So far it's been going well.  I don't mind not eating meat all that much.  It's a little harder on the dairy products, but not horribly bad.  I do miss sugar a lot and really desired something sweet last night especially.  It's probably good I'm taking a little break from it.  I found Sunday to be my hardest day so far in this challenge.  That's the day I rarely cook and rely on convenience foods to feed my family (frozen pizzas are our usual after church lunch, followed by ice cream and popcorn for supper - not all that vegan friendly).  So it was harder to have to think about what to eat instead of allowing that to be my eat what's convenient day.  My mom continues to be doing very well.  She's lost an amazing 8 pounds already.  I'm so proud of her!  She also says that she is feeling better physically and mentally since radically altering her diet.  Yea! 
On an unrelated note, I was blessed beyond belief yesterday.  I had been feeling pretty down and discouraged about the day to day school monotony and feeling like summer will never get here and I'm going to be homeschooling for the rest of my life.  It's kind of a typical feeling for me around this time of year, but it seemed especially strong for the past few weeks.  Yesterday, I was despairing in the morning as I gazed about my horridly messy house, and felt quite overwhelmed and unmotivated to spend the day doing school when there were so many things pressing in on me that I needed to accomplish.  I had been praying about it for the past few weeks as I don't want to live with that being the norm in my life.  So anyway, in the midst of my despair, I got a knock on the door and in walks a friend from church.  She told me she had been praying for me and felt like God was telling her to come and spend the morning with me and help me out with school.  What an amazing gift!  She spent the morning helping me with school.  She taught the kids their history lesson while I tackled my huge pile of dishes.  They learned about the plague and made "plague doctor" masks for one of their activities.  Here are David and Abby modeling theirs.  Ana didn't want to model hers because "it didn't turn out the way she wanted it".

Then while I worked with David, my friend did one on one time with Ana.  Abby got most of the day off because she wasn't feeling very good and only felt like coloring and listening in on history.  I also had time to get a bunch of little things knocked off my long-term to-do list.  I felt so encouraged when she left.

But the blessings didn't stop there!  Mondays are usually laundry day for us and I had only washed the clothes, but hadn't gotten around to folding them yet.  There was a large mountain of clothes on the bed, around 7 loads worth.  So after supper while I was busy tidying up the house, my three dear children took it upon themselves to secretly fold AND put away the laundry.  By the time I had finished with other tasks, they had completed almost all of it by themselves.  It was such a gift, especially since that's one of the chores I don't enjoy doing.  I let them know how much they had blessed me by that.  Ana was energized by the praise and recognition and went on to clean the bathroom and clean off the stairs too.  What awesome kids I have!

What are some areas you have been blessed in recently?