Matt's Graduation and Animal Problems

My son, Matt, graduated from high school a few weeks ago. I'm very proud of him. It was very hard at times for him due to health problems. But he really hung in there and got through - with pretty good grades too! It was great seeing him walk the graduation line. We had a wonderful get together for him afterwards at my mom's house. Now he's got a part time job and will be going to college soon. Man, where does the time go??? I can't believe I have one married and going to college and another one who just finished high school and will be going to college. My beautiful daughter and her handsome husband came down for the graduation. It was so wonderful having them home! Trent won't be graduating for 8 years . . . so I'll still have one in the nest for awhile. I'm very happy about that. My babies . . . definitely the sunshine in my life!
Now for the storm! We pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. We know that pretty much every month we are going to have something come up . . . but usually it's not anything to big. Not this last month. We have 3 cats, 1 dog, and a golfish. Our bunny died recently. She was around 8 years old. We really haven't had any major health issues with our animals. In a 3 week span our dog had a seizure and had to go to the vet, one of our cats was throwing up blood and had to go to the vet for that (they think he got into something toxic somewhere, and then one of our other cats disappeared for 3 days. When he came home he was a mess and acting very strange. We took him in to the vet where they found he had a fever and some sort of bite which had absessed and burst. Thank the Lord they are all okay now. On top of that Trent had to have special inserts made for his shoes (and get different shoes) and I got sick. We had around $1000 in extra costs. We are still trying to get caught up. I know that money, technically, isn't important. However, I will say, that life sure is more enjoyable if you have some! It's very hard to enjoy every day living when you are trying to 'survive'. I know it could be so much worse - and that we really are so blessed. I'm always telling the boys that we are rich in many ways . . . just not when it comes to money. I sure wouldn't mind not having to worry about it for a while though!!