It’s My Wonderful Life

Check out this blog post. I found it very interesting. It discusses how you can’t keep your faith out of your work. It is who you are.

Just to warn you this is Lou on her soapbox, so be prepared.

Health Insurance? Why do you have it? You still have to pay medical bills out the butt.

My health insurance for my family (me, my hubby, and 2 kids) was $667.22 a month. They have decided to raise the price to $701.10. What? The co-pay is even higher. What? I am thinking that this does not make sense. You would think if the monthly premium is raised then the co-pay will either be lower or the same. NOPE!

Here we are trying to save money, yet prices on everything is getting higher. Gas prices, health insurance, milk, etc. You get the picture. You have to cut things back, yet you are making no progress in saving money. All you have saved is going into the other things that are a necessity.

We paid $4,003.32 on health insurance from October 2006 to August 2007. Yet I still had medical bills. Yes, I know I had a baby and that cost. Thank goodness for health insurance. One would think that $4003.32 would go a long way consider our co-pays. Nope, we got a bill from the hospital for $500, not to mention some other random medical bills. It is crazy.

Basically, we are going to have to drop our insurance to smaller monthly payments, which means higher deductable. I think it will be OK because we are fairly healthy people.

Who would have thought that a teacher would live at poverty level? Actually, we are just above it so we can’t get any assistance. We are the ones that teach these kids and they grow up to doctors, lawyers, etc and makes lots of money. Yet, we are barely over the poverty cut-off.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not one to complain about money. After all, I knew this before I began thinking about a career in teaching. Just to watch the kids grow so much in their learning is enough for anyone to want to teach, but it doesn’t pay the bills. Yes, I could move away from south Arkansas and make more money, like most do. What about the kids down here? Don’t they deserve great teachers like North Arkansas?

Sorry Jeff, but you may actually like this one.

Just copy paste this and everything below up until my Five links:

We can post up to five. Then we tell five more people to share their links. If we all share who tagged us, our links are sure to be seen!

They can be business links, favorite sites, affiliate links, whatever you want…

There are Five Rules:
1. MUST be clean. No R rated sites.
2. Only FIVE links.
3. MUST tell 5 people.
4. A link back to the person who tagged you
5. Lara’s Place is the meme originator. (an active link would be appreciated)
<———————-end copy and paste———————>

My Five Links
1. Jeff Noble (Notes From the Trail)

2. Parents with Special Needs Children

3. Dianna (Sincerely Me) (tagged me)

4. Terry Dean (Christianity with a Purpose)

5. Brittany (Becoming….)

I’m tagging:
1. KT Morphis (Momma-tude)

2. Jenny Sipes (Every Life is a Story….)

3. Suzanne (Joyful Chaos)

4. Misty Morgan (Just bein’ real)

5. Kristy Hales (Half-Tied Ribbons)

I am not quitting on getting this group to make it. Monticello and the rest of Southeast Arkansas need this group. Parents need the common bond with other parents to talk about their concerns and needs. Our community needs to wake up and realize that these special needs children are children. They are no different than the others. So what, one may be in a wheelchair or have a problem speaking. There is one common trait that all children have…..SMILES AND LAUGHTER. This is the common language of all children.

With KT and Rosjuane’s help, we are starting a massive project of spreading the word. We have a site on mySpace, Facebook, and my wordpress account. We are going to get the word out one way or the other. Someone somewhere is going to benefit from us taking a stand to become advocates for these children and parents.

KT, Rosjuane, and I can’t do this alone. We need your help. We need you to spread the word. Everyone knows a parent that could benefit from this group. Please realize that special needs children are not only those that seem mentally handicapped or physically handicapped. Did you know the children with ADD, ADHD, bipolar, or gifted and talented are special needs children? They don’t look like it but they are. They are actually more misunderstood than those children who obviously have problems.

Right now our sites are in the process of getting started. MySpace and Facebook sites are ready. Please feel free to browse and tell others about our site.