You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June, 2008.
We’re gearing up for Nate’s big birthday bash in a few weeks. He wants a Fellowship of the Ring party this year. This was his original idea of what the cake should look like…
This is what “we” decided on instead…
We’re finally getting into our summer groove. Everyone’s home, VBS (round one anyway) is over, & the summer schedule’s been successfully implemented for a week. Now we’re getting the exercise & eating habits back on track for the season. Keith & Nate are working on shedding some pounds while I plan to join them as soon as the baby’s born & I can hop back on that efx machine. I really am looking forward to it.
That being said, I got back into making the fiber brownie muffins & sugar free jello for low point snacks again this week. It is really tough for me to keep up with the jello consumption around here when people are in the reducing mode! It drives me crazy. So, I thought now would be a great time to teach Nate how to make that jello snack on his own. That’s what led to a great discovery – don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. While trying to explain the simple step by step instructions of how to make jello, I realized this was going to be hard for him to “stir with fork until all dissolved, pour from bowl into little cups without spilling”, etc. So, it came to me to use the pitcher with the plunger lid (that’s what we call it) from Rubbermaid. SOOO much easier! The biggest key he has to remember is to put the hot water in first & then the powder so it doesn’t all clump up on the bottom. No problem!! Plunge a few times, add cold water, & simply pour into the little cups. Voila! He has fun making something (as well as the responsibility to keep it stocked) & I’ve got yet another job off my back. 
It’s all good.
This article just set me off today. Just a warning. I am really getting sick of the “going green” cr*p. Anyone else out there with me? Okay, I understand God told us to take care of the earth He gave us & I’m all for that. We actually do a lot of the things suggested to keep the environment clean – we use fluorescent bulbs to keep down the electric bill, we have our water heater on a timer for the same reason. We don’t eat out much, I think long & hard before driving places, we’ve planted plenty of trees on our property (for aesthetic purposes), the kids wear gently used clothes, I make use of our clothes line, we have a timer on our heater keeping it pretty low in the winter (we wear layers rather than crank up the heat) & don’t use the AC much, we even use one-ply TP – why? Cheaper!
If you are one of those who seriously thinks America needs help in this department, have you ever seen Asia?!!! For crying out loud! They are belching out the black smoke & air pollutants left & right! We are downright pristine here! Coming home after Seoul was like Heaven air quality wise. It is asinine to think our putting new light bulbs, etc. would change the atmosphere so much for the good after taking a stroll down one of those city streets. Seriously, folks.
I truly see this whole environmental wave as a total worship nature campaign. I mean, first we are led to believe we are harming the planet by driving big cars, etc. So, they are trying lay guilt trips to pass all these laws to force us to change our lifestyle. Now they are talking about limiting family size & how less children would be better for our planet! I thought we got over that stupid argument years ago! Haven’t we yet learned that the earth was made for US, not the other way around? Look at the fix China’s in now because of that mentality (too many elderly with not enough youngsters working to support them, baby girls abandoned all over the place, etc.). I swear, if people in the U.S. start talking that nonsense now in the name of our environment, well, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised. Because that’s where all this is headed, folks.
These environmentalists are not going to stop at trying to tell us what car & light bulb & how much toilet paper to use. NO. They want “evil America” to go down because we use oil & chop down trees. So, if enough people listen to them (& it looks like more are all the time), we are going to continue this nonsense about having gas prices skyrocket & more people throwing their money at these silly “carbon credit ” companies (just like indulgences in the dark ages!). Meanwhile, the Middle East has control of the oil, Asia will continue to not give a hoot & keep polluting (Do you think they are going to slow down progress in the name of saving the planet? Heck, no! They’re not stupid!) And we are going to whittle our families down to nothing in a matter of a couple generations while everybody else takes over.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, people. I’m just sayin’. Ancient Romans never thought Rome could go down either, but fall they did. America is not immune.
O-o-o-o, this is so good. Callie was studying China at the end of the year & of course, we talked about the Buddha. When we came to these lessons with Nate a few years back, my first thought was that I really didn’t want to be talking to my little guy about false gods. But Keith helped me to see how it could be used to talk more about how our True God, Jehovah, is so very different from other gods, & pray for those in China & other countries who don’t know our God but instead follow after the Buddha even now. That is what we’ve been doing.
This article is a great one for others trying to do the same thing. Jon Bloom, the author from Desiring God Ministries, does a great job of boiling down the essence of Buddhism & how it’s different than following Jesus. Here’s a little teaser to get you over to read the whole article…
What struck (Gautama, aka the Buddha) was the impermanence of the world—nothing lasted. In spite of this, people were attached to impermanent things. They desired to hold on to life, health, possessions, and each other. But life, health, possessions and people pass away. This, he reasoned, was the cause of human suffering. Therefore, he concluded that if he could kill desire his suffering would cease and he would be happy.
But the Buddha did desire something: lasting happiness. Ironically, it was this great desire that fueled his philosophy of killing desire.
There is a vacuous absence of God in the Buddha’s pursuit of desire-less joy…
How different are Jesus’ answers from the Buddha’s. When a rich young man, not so different from the rich young Gautama, sought out Jesus’ direction for eternal happiness, Jesus replied,
You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. (Mark 10:21).
Note that Jesus did instruct the man to become detached from his possessions, but he did not mean a Buddhist detachment. The Buddha taught that nothing lasts, so be attached to nothing. Jesus taught that One Thing lasts, so at all cost, be attached to that!
Playing in the great outdoors with cousins ’til the lightning bugs come out.
Dinner menu tonight: grilled burgers, corn on the cob, cantaloupe, & root beer floats.
Summer! Oh, yeah.
For mood music, click the box below.
Yeah!! I spent a few hours last night on line looking for decent but cheap lab coats for our Club next fall but the best I could find were 15$ not including shipping. Bummer! I had given up & figured we’d just go with two or three coats & share instead of each of the twelve workers getting their own to wear. Then, I stopped off at The Salvation Army. BINGO!! I had no idea they had lab coats – a whole rack of them! So, I took my pick of ten to let people try them on & then I’ll mosey back on another Wednesday (half off day) to get the remaining few needed sizes to make sure everyone gets one that fits. I am so excited!! Most of them still have tags hanging off of them. And we got 10 for 32$!! Thank You, Lord. We’re going to have a really fun year.
Oh, I also got a lot of fun stuff to decorate & play with from Steve Spangler. I especially loved these, these, and these. And of course, we have to have a plasma globe & a bobbing bird, too. I figure at at the end of the year, we can give these out as prizes.
Now all I have to do is order those crazy wigs & wacky glasses for our two mad scientists (object lesson teachers), & pick out some more fun awards. That and make a gazillion copies of the notebook stuff to put into the kids’ lab notebooks & we’ll be set for the new year of learning & growing. It’s coming right along.
Jess linked me to engrish.com. If you’ve ever lived overseas, particularly in Asia, you will get a good laugh if you spend some time at their site. There are crude ones, so be forewarned. While living in Korea, we often wondered who in the world got paid to translate stuff. I mean, wouldn’t you check to make sure you had the correct meaning before going to print? Why bother writing it out in English at all?
Anyway, here’s a sampling…
As early as age two!
Classic stationary.
Translation: “no parking on bicyclists at any time”. I just threw this one in there because it made me laugh so hard. You’d never catch this in the States!!
Graduals can sneak up on you, too.
I’ll start by rearranging this sentence…
Life is serious. Oh, I’m sorry, was I smiling?
My men were gone on a Father/Son outing the last two days – camping, boating, fishing, baseball game, no showering, etc. Anders broke into tears at Walmart out of the blue this afternoon saying how much he missed Daddy & Nate – so glad Keith’s not in trucking or the military or some such career! Anders wouldn’t do so well with that. It is good to have them back! They were only gone 48 hours, but Anders wasn’t so hip on being the only little man in the house.
They had their picture taken at the Twins vs. Indians game the other day. For more pix, go to Flickr on the left.
Today we remember D-Day, June 1944.
Ronald Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th anniversary…
“Let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived & died.”
My kids surprised me a month or so ago. For some reason, the topic of Satan came up in devotions one night & I asked what they thought Satan looked like. Now, I think we’ve had some good conversation & all through the years & like to think we are grounding our kids in Scripture well enough that this question would get them thinking, but I did not expect the answers they gave. They gave me stuff like “red”, “horns”, & “mean”, etc. I hadn’t given them that! Where did they get that idea? Our children’s Bibles don’t really give a picture of him, so where were they getting this stereotype? After thinking, I’m guessing Looney Tunes or some such nonsense. I asked the same question in Club on Wednesday night & got the exact same responses.
Anyway, this really disturbed me. Even as careful as we are to train up our children, watch what they put into their minds, give them plenty of Scripture, have them in church, etc. this simple & very important truth had not gotten to them yet. Troubling implication: If they are looking for Satan to be this mean, ugly, scary looking creature, they are not on the defense when he tempts them with all those beautiful & fun things called sin! Satan was at one time the most beautiful creature in Heaven next to God Himself & he still is attractive – sin is!! If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t be tempted by him. Our children need to be keenly aware of this fact if we hope for them to be successful warriors in the battle. They need to know what the enemy looks like so they can keep their spiritual eyes open for his tricks & attacks.
So, that got me on a hunt for a systematic, intentional catechism type book to go through with my young ‘uns. A quick google search netted me plenty of the traditional catechism questions but I was shocked to find not one of them gave the Scripture to back up their answers. I know the answers are right & all, but I don’t want my kids to just take a rote answer for granted if there’s not Scripture behind it & I want them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt it’s in the Bible. Who cares what tradition deems the right answer! I want the kids to have the answer from the Answer Book, not just regurgitate the “right answer”.
Solution: 801 Questions Kids Ask About God is a great book with tons of great questions for parents to go through with their children. It gives Scripture to back each up & the questions cover topics like prayer, the Bible, friends, money, Heaven & angels, etc. We’ve been using it for the last week with the thought we’d do one question a night, but one leads to another to another & we always end up having to cut off the discussion after like twenty minutes. Good stuff! And the kids are really thinking & listening. Check it out & consider adding it to your devotional time if you have children ages 4-15 I’d say. You might even be surprised at your kids older than that or yourself – do you know the answers?
To hear a recent broadcast on the topic from Family Life Today, click here.
