A Jack Funny and Two Pictures

This morning Jack's leg was still asleep or a bit stiff or something and he was having trouble walking. He said, "Hold on a minute; my leg is still processing."





I was going to use this as a Wordless Wednesday but I felt the need to say that he dragged that stool over there all by himself. He is getting just a bit too comfortable and possessive of the stool.


And sometimes you just need a nap!

Just Because

Knox...Dec 2006

A Jack Funny

Jack: Mom! It is sidelopped.
Me: I think you mean lopsided.
Jack: giggle...oh yeah!

Christmas Craft #3 and bonus

I finally finished the advent calendar for 2009. Thanks to everyone that gave me red scraps for it. Each pocket is lined with a different fabric as well. Bible verses from Luke will go in this one. I have no clue why a playmobile pirate flag got placed in #24 or why I didn't notice it before I took the picture.
Then thanks to Andrea T. for the inspiration, I made this bucket out of a coffee bean bag. It has a circular bottom with a diameter of 14 in and the height is 11 in. It was going to be a gift but seeing as how I made the thing so that all the writing is upside down!!!! it is now mine and it looks esp nice housing all my red fabrics. ;-)

Random pictures from our day...

We had a rather busy Saturday today and everyone accomplished something.

Her is Anne Michal with her granola that she made. We forgot to double it so will have to make more very soon.
Elizabeth made toffee for her Sunday School party tomorrow.





I put my crockpot to work making yogurt.


And this is my new BFF. Elizabeth adn Emma named her Ruby. She helped me make vegetable soup today.

Emma wanted to make some Christmas ornaments for her Sunday School teachers.





Creed is excellent at making a mess and does his job well.
And we never have to worry about dehydration with him because he drinks plenty of water. He kept switching cups.

And this is a hint of the advent calendar that will hopefully finish very soon!




And if you wonder where Jack wa and what he was doing, he mostly just laid low recovering from a stomach bug, but he did read the directions to Anne Michal for making the granola. I thought that was pretty cool, but didn't get a picture!

Christmas Craft #2 --Christmas Pajamas

We tried something new this year. I have had some fabric crayons sitting in my craft stash for a long time so we gave them a try. You use them by coloring a picture on plain paper and then transferring it to fabric by ironing it on. They drew and colored their own pictures (other than Creed) and then we transferred them to squares of fabric which I then appliqued onto t-shirts. We picked out the flannel last year after Christmas and as you can tell by Jack's too long of shorts rather than pants I didn't buy enough!!!!

November 2009 Book Log

73. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
74. Do Unto Others by Jeff Abbott
75. The Complete Fables by Aesop
76. Life as a Vapor by John Piper
77. Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton by John Piper
78. The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out by Mark Driscoll
79. Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters who Walk with God by Voddie Baucham
80. Not Even a Hint by Joshua Harris

They don't come any cuter.

First Christmas Craft of 2009

I got the idea from one of those little pull-off flyers I found at Joann's. I bought some paper mache letters from Hobby Lobby and painted them a brown red. I chose my photos and printed them in a Sepia one. Then I used Modge Podge to decoupage them along with Chrismas scrapbook paper. It turned out much better than I thought it would!

A Consumer Culture

Some stats from Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission:

In ninety nations, people spend less each year than we in the United States spend on our garbage bags.

Each year more Americans declare bankruptcy than graduate from college.

We have twice as many malls as high schools.

We spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education.

Our supermarkets have 250 percent more items than they did twenty years ago.

Parents spend six hours shopping each week, and forty minutes playing with their children.

Seventy percent of Americans visit a mall each week; that's more than visit houses of worship.

Something to Think About

From the annual Status of Global Mission, Presence, and Activities report:

The number of Christian martyrs in 2008 was 175,000. That's 479 Christians every day who lost their lives as a result of being a Christian.

May we be encouraged to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer for the gospel, be prepared to suffer ourselves, and be evermore crying out, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"

Optimism vs. Hope

Some reflections in this essay on the difference and why hope is the better alternative.

Little Boys and Mud

A Magnetic Attraction

Report Back to Me

Sometimes it is the little things...

If your kids are like mine and you have a number of things you would like them to do, it is most beneficial to tell them one at a time. And if your kids are like mine and they sense that you might have more than that first thing you tell them to do, they are really good at disappearing after that first thing. Granted that could just be my imagination, but it probably isn't. I could make lists and sometimes do especially for the day to day things, but nothing works better than the spoken word.

Thus the institution of "Report Back to Me." It works like this. When given an instruction or a school assignment you must always, and I mean always report back to the instructor(usually known as "Mom" who wishes she were still "Mommy" but that is another post). If I only have the one task for them to do then I let them know from the get-go that it is the only thing I need them to do. This saves us a lot of time doing what I call "the regathering of the peoples" and saves on the frustration of the peoples starting something new and fun and exciting only to be told they need to put their clothes away. "Report Back to Me" gets us through the school/chore part of our day at a better pace and gets things done a bit more effeciently making all the peoples including mom a lot happier!

What is a Missional Church?

From a paper by Tim Keller, he lists five elements of a missional church.

1. Discourse in the vernacular.
2. Enter and re-tell the culture's stories with the gospel.
3. Theologically train lay people for public life and vocation.
4. Create Christian community that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
5. Practice Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.

Found on my pillow

written by Lizzy but as you can see from Creed. ;-)

Cost vs. Coverage

Though I usually try and stay out of political commentary, this bit of analysis by Fareed Zakaria in the latest Newsweek struck me as a concise summary (so it doesn't address every point) of the health care debate.

There are two great health-care crises in America-one involving coverage and the other cost. The Obama plan appears to tackle the first but not the second. This is bad economics but also bad politics: the crisis of cost affects about 85 percent of Americans, while the crisis of coverage affects about 15 percent. Obama's message to the country appears to be "We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let's add 45 million people to it."

October 2009 Book Log

65. Killing Floor by Lee Child
66. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs
67. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
68. Prometheus Bound and Other Plays by Aeschylus
69. Refractions by Makoto Fujimura
70. Harry Potter's Bookshelf by John Granger
71. The Leadership Dynamic by Harry Reeder
72. Standing on the Promises by Douglas Wilson

My first fall in over 5 years

Thanks to our little jaunt to Nashville, we got to see our first fall in over 5 years! I can't remember the last time we traveled to a place that had 4 seasons during the fall but I know it has been more than 5 years! I love living in a place that has no true winter, but I definitely miss the fall!! It wasn't really that colorful right where we stayed which is also where I took most of the pictures but the drive was wonderful.

Remembering Knox on his birthday

We kept up with our tradition of launching balloons, eating sonic for lunch or dinner(and regretting it), and eating cake Knox style.


The balloon gang. We learned a lesson last year: you can have too many balloons so we went to the party store and each person got a different color and then we got 3 more yellow ones.

We tried to go youngest to oldest but Creed not knowing anything about letting balloons go and everything about playgrounds and swings had a pretty one-track mind.


Jack went first instead.



Then Emma...

Lizzy....who finally solved the mystery of how she knew Knox's favorite color was green. She said that she asked him if his favorite color was green and he said, "yes." Simple as that.


Then Creed was ready to get into it.

Anne Michal...
Then they let the 3 yellow ones go together. I know I said it last year, but it is kind of difficult as you have that sense of letting go all over again, but the kids see it as a celebration so we do it anyway.

There they go.

Elizabeth made the cake all by herself and then spelled Knox in sprinkles. When did she get big enough to do that without my help. Well, I did get the pan out of the cupboard. ;)
Digging in...




The damage...


And then off to the playground to play.