michelle hamlin peterson

Get ready for a laugh! Today's guest blogger is better known to me as just Michelle Hamlin. I met Michelle in the sixth grade and we were closest during junior high school. After high school we drifted apart and lost touch, but I am ever so thankful that we were reconnected as adults!

It's funny how you can pick back up right where you left off. I absolutely love sharing our lives as "big girls". One of our funniest memories we both share is our cafeteria addiction. Not a lot has changed with girls, even back then, we were always criticizing our weight. Neither one of us needed to lose a pound, yet we still found ourselves always dieting. At lunch, most days, we would only eat saltine crackers and get a ton of ranch dressing to dip the crackers into and that is all we would eat. Little did we know that we were consuming more calories in all that salad dressing than we would have if we would have walked down to Dairy Queen and had lunch!

Hope you enjoy a peek into her life of thankfulness! (I love ya, friend!)

I was a newlywed in the summer of 1993. Flying high and living on love! Hubby and I rented a rambling old farm house surrounded by Indiana corn fields as far as the eye could see. This two story farm house had nearly a dozen rooms, no appliances and as we were to find out that winter, no insulation.

Two months before the wedding, Hubby had graduated from pharmacy school. Because we were broke, my in-law's bought us a used refrigerator and a second hand king sized water bed. My Mom pitched in to help with a kitchen table and chairs and living room furniture, again all second hand. We settled in to married life easily enough. I learned to cook creatively without a stove/oven. I had a microwave, electric skillet and a table top 2-burner hot plate.

Cold weather eventually set in and so did our first experience with the "fuel oil man" as we called him. The first time he filled our tank we were shocked...it cost $345 to fill the tank! We had no clue how long this much fuel oil would last us...maybe it would last half the winter? Such naive kids we were. Ha!

As the farmers harvested their fields, apparently they dropped memos from their combines to the critters left behind, "Need a new home for the winter? There's plenty of room in the big white farmhouse on the hill..no reservations required!" Somehow, animals begin finding their way into our dirt-floor basement. The first critter was a tiny kitten that we coaxed up the stairs and into the house.

The next critter...well, let's just say he wasn't nearly as welcome as the kitten. I was home alone ( I spent long hours at home alone daily) and I heard this terrible racket coming from the basement. Eighteen years later, my Hubby still remembers my call to him at his pharmacy, "HELP! You HAVE to come home!! Someone or something is in our basement!! It sounds like a family of Indians moving furniture around!!" I was beyond terrified! I didn't have a car, but I did have a lawn chair and a big, thick book. I took the chair and the book outside and determined I'd sit out there until Hubby got home from work...4 hours later.

At some point, my elderly neighbor that lived across the highway came outside, so I decided I'd ask for his help. He went into the house, went to the basement, came back out, crossed the highway, went into his house, came back out with a shot gun, crossed back over the highway to where I was sitting in the yard and said, "It's a ground hog big enough for a small child to ride!" What a relief to know I didn't have a band of Indians setting up shop in my basement! It took 3 shots to put down that ground hog and the neighbor had to take it away in a wheel barrow.

The next racket came a few weeks later...something was in my kitchen! I was upstairs and once again called my Hubby to come home and rescue me. As a newlywed, a bride has such high expectations of her Knight-in-Shining-Armour Groom. Instead, he called the fire department! Turns out, I had a raccoon in the kitchen and it had knocked over the trash can! I won't bother to mention all the rats in the house that he killed with a shovel...but I will mention that newlywed bliss had long departed! Ha!

Winter set in with a vengeance. We soon learned that the full tank of fuel oil that cost us $345 only lasted 3 weeks. Three weeks. At that time, $345 was more than we paid for a month's rent! We had no insulation and very little money to buy fuel. So, we bought a space heater and an air mattress and set up "home" in a small bedroom downstairs. We shut the door to the upstairs. I spent all my lonely daytime hours in that tiny room, working jigsaw puzzles, etc.

We made it through the winter. Spring came with great surprises. Our water bed upstairs had frozen solid. We didn't know that until one day, it burst. Water ran down that staircase like Niagara Falls. It seeped through the downstairs ceilings, blowing out light bulbs at an alarming rate. Glass and water everywhere! But, at least I did not have a band of Indians in my basement!!

Just a couple of months later, we moved out. We lived in that rambling old farmhouse for 15 months. I'm sure I'd aged 15 years.

In the 18 years that we've been married, we've bought and sold three houses. We've had some rough times and good times. Being a newlywed is hard work, but adding in all the struggles that we had that first year made it an especially hard year. In the middle of all that mess, I first started getting ill with what I would later find out was an ovarian disease. My precious mother in law had kidney failure and congestive heart failure. Life was hard. But we made it. We leaned on each other and we leaned on God.

What am I thankful for? A husband that works hard to provide for his family. An insulated home that is easy to heat. A stove, refrigerator, microwave, Crock-Pot, dishwasher...and money to eat out with. A warm bed to sleep in. No rodents in my house. A precious mother in law that I knew and loved until God called her home at age 53 in 2001. My ovarian disease and infertility because through that I learned what a true gut-wrenching, pain-filled bring-me-to-my-knees struggle was all about. And my beautiful, miraculous baby girl...our gift from God through adoption.

I am so thankful for the simple, daily things and may I never be found guilty of taking those things for granted. Happy Thanksgiving!