September 30, 2007

...of ears, music, shoes and water...

We had a fun time going to dinner and a concert last night with friends....11 of us! After eating some southern cooking at Cracker Barrel (Charles was loving that), we went to the Glendale Arena (or whatever name it has this month) to see Casting Crowns and two opening acts, John Waller and Leeland. We were a little bit late. We came in almost at the end of John Waller's set, so we didn't really hear much of him. I have heard Leeland before, but really enjoyed the set they played last night...full of songs with a humble heart for God and compassion for a generation who needs Jesus.

I was really fascinated though, by the lead singer's shoes. Yeah, white dress shoes, just like these on this young man with red emo hair, tight jeans and a vest...yes, a plaid *I think* vest. All the time I was listening to this wonderful music, watching this energetic band, I kept thinking about the crazy shoes and vest. I'm so easily entertained, I know.

Another side note: During intermission, there was a video playing and it had a commercial for Steven Curtis Chapman's new CD. It looks like a good CD, but Steven needs to be told that his haircut should really match his age. Yep, he's got an emo doo, just like the guy from Leeland, only blonde of course. I don't know if he had white shoes. But it was just messed up.

And speaking of intermission...yes I was, pay attention....we walked up the stairs beside a young woman and her son, who looked to be 5 or 6 years old. It was still loud, so he was shouting, "Mom, what is inter....shun?" She said, "In ter mis sion, it means we're taking a break." And the last words I heard from the conversation were his excited voice, saying, "It means we're in eighth grade!?" "Nooooooo, a BREAK!" Ah, kids are hilarious.....he thought he got to skip all those grades! I giggled all the way to the restroom.

It was a good concert, lots of variety. CC had an artist who drew and painted on a black screen during two of the songs, and also a violin/electric guitar dual between a married couple in the group. Then toward the end, as Mark Hall introduced his group individually, they each played a little solo on their instruments....except the drummer. He played until we thought he was going to hemorrhage! Then he did a crazy dance going in circles at the end when the band was called up to do an enchore. So it was a fun time, and they had some powerful messages, including video and testimony of their Compassion International trip to India and Africa to raise awareness of the clean water problems and to promote sponsoring children in those places.

My only problem with these big concerts in large arenas is that the music is SO loud. There was a constant hisssssss in my ears and I actually felt pain on and off as the singer's pitches or different instruments played into the mix. I am so thankful for my hearing. I have grouchy half deaf people in my lineage and it is NO good to lose your good hearing too soon in life. In my opinion, this generation of young people right now who are listening to blairing ipods in the ears all the time or going to a lot of these concerts is going to get a huge wake up call when they are in their 40's and getting hearing aids. Hearing aids are never as good as the equipment God gave you in your ears. (ear bones) BE careful!

In fact, Mark Hill of Casting Crowns wrote a song off the concept of the children's song, Oh Be Careful Little Ears What You Hear, only it was not about your hearing. It was about how people do not stumble in huge ways all of a sudden. There is always a gradual series of compromises and 'oopsies' of lifestyle and heart.

On the way out to the car, someone asked Charles what he was doing and he told them he was resting his ear bones. EAR BONES. Of course, I knew what he was talking about, but it sounded so funny. He went on to explain what he meant anyway...y'know the three little bones that bang and vibrate, making sounds into intelligible stuff in your brain. The tiny stirrup is the only one I can remember. Tiny little pieces of our anatomy, yet so incredibly important to our lives. We use them constantly.

Next concert: earplugs.

September 27, 2007

Friday's Feast #162

***Go to Friday's Feast to learn more or to do your own spread.***


Appetizer
How are you today?

Wow, thanks for asking. I enjoyed the day after getting over a bad sinus headache this morning. (Sudafed and Advil)

Soup
Name 3 television shows you watch on a regular basis.

Design on a Dime, Cold Case, House, Wonder Years (reruns), and Smallville

Salad
What’s the scariest weather situation you’ve experienced?

We lived out in the country in Oklahoma when we were first married. My husband was a youth pastor at a small church and we lived beside it....in a mobile home.

I was always kind of terrified when there were thunderstorms during those 2 years, first of all, because a tornado had come through the field where our home was just a year before and totalled the parsonage (there was a new one built by this time and we lived next to it), but also just because we lived in a mobile home (aka 'tornado magnet'). I could barely sleep some nights, worrying about tornadoes. My husband, being from Oklahoma and being....a man....teased me and told me not to worry so much. So when I was awakened by my husband one night out of a dead sleep, telling me to get my shoes on and run next door, I instantly went into auto pilot and ran with flip flops on through a field of straw stubble, ruts and stickers. When we got to the parsonage, the pastor's wife was standing at the garage door waiting for us and we dashed inside. The weather passed quickly....no tornado in our field, but there was one close to our area. As we walked back to our home, my feet suddenly noticeably sore from running through rough straw and stickers earlier, I asked my husband what had happened before he woke me up. He said that he woke up to thunder crashing and saw our floor-length bedroom curtains flying up to the ceiling.

I didn't sleep well for days after that.

Main Course
If you could wake up tomorrow morning in another country, where would you want to be?

That would be wild! I'm thinking either a cozy old cabin, fire roaring in the fireplace, in Banff, Canada or in a small town inn in Scotland, with sheep and shepherds crossing cobblestone streets, thatched roofs and rolling hills and the sea off in the distance..

Dessert
What do you usually wear to sleep?

Pajamma pants and a tshirt....sometimes socks.

No fear, the flower is happy

My friend Joann made this comment about my new blog 'look':

"I really like the format and the color. But there's something about that flower having fallen down that makes me wonder about it."

It makes me wonder too, but I'm not losing sleep, Joann. *patpat* Hope you're okay now and have reasoned it out in your head. ;) I actually LOVE daisies....and love different perspectives in still-life photos....artsy I think is the word I want to use.

So don't worry. The daisy is not sad, neither is it discouraged or discarded as compost. It is simply a different perspective. Artsy. But I will probably change it as soon as I find something else that is more 'me'.

The one thing I do not like about this template is the 2 columns on the right. I wish it was only one column. But then such is life....eh?

September 26, 2007

Being shiny and salty

My husband wrote about See You At the Pole and about being a Light to the world today. Go over to Veritas to read it!

I have yet to hear my kids' reports on their pole gatherings, but I will post it later.

.....and have a nice day. =)

September 25, 2007

Round the Pole

Have you ever driven by a school around 7:30am on a Wednesday morning in September and seen a group of kids crowded around the flag pole? Did you know they were praying…..exercising their religious rights and praying for their school and classmates around the mainstay American symbol of freedom…their flagpole. Tomorrow is See You At the Pole 2008. Christian school kids in every city in the US are encouraged to get together to pray around their school's flagpole. It is an awesome thing to see, if you take the time to drive by your local school tomorrow around 7:30am. Last year, as a leader in our youth ministry, I decided to take pictures of the kids as they gathered around the poles at our high school and our middle/elementary school. I knew the kids from our youth group were planning to be there…but when I drove up to each of the schools, I saw a large crowd on each campus. Word had spread and there were a lot more people there than I thought there would be. Teens are eager for ways to show their faith. Unfortunately, there are always people who come out to heckle and protest each year at different schools.

See You At The Pole is not a new idea....it's been around for 16 years, since 1990. On September 15, 1999 our youth met for See You at the Pole....then that night on the news we heard about a church in Texas that a rally to celebrate their See You at the Pole day. There were teenagers there from all over that city. A mentally disturbed man came into that rally and shot 14 people, killing 7 of them, then killed himself...all of this in front of a huge crowd of teenagers. A friend I grew up with was the first one killed that night.

Read about how that church responded here. What Satan means for evil, God turns into a testimony for Himself. See You at the Pole is not a meaningless gesture to say, "We're here."
It is a powerful event, these kids are under attack every day, they are not "allowed" to share their faith or pray publicly at school. This event of gathering publicly to pray for their school and declare their religious freedom is not a popular thing from the enemy's viewpoint. We need to pray for these kids as they make a bold stand this tomorrow, for their protection and that they will hold strong to their faith when adversity comes, because it will.

And God will use it for good.

September 24, 2007

New look....annual reminder....

Obviously I am still experimenting on my 'look' here on Blogger. Any input would be appreciated! Eventually I hope to do something of my 'own' design with my own photographs for graphics, etc. Kim, I will be putting a very small version of Photoshop called Elements on my computer soon. Then when I have time, I will be asking your advice on stuff.

Anyone heard of or participating in your local See You At The Pole prayer meetings? This year's SYATP will be held on Wednesday, September 26, 2007! Even if your child hasn't heard of SYATP and wants to participate, they should go to their school on Wednesday at 7am to meet with whoever else comes to pray.

Pray for the kids who will be meeting on Wednesday morning. They are doing a brave thing and definitely making a difference by making their faith public and by asking God to work through them in their schools. Our church is having a prayer meeting for the kids and their schools tomorrow night at 7pm. I will post my annual tribute on Wednesday.

I will be going with my 10 year old to her school that morning. My husband will be going with our teens to their high school.

So the only thing left to ask is.....will they see YOU at the pole?

September 20, 2007

Friday's Feast #161

Appetizer
What is your favorite type of art?

Black and white photography.....or any kind of artsy photography. I love good contrasts.....and I love still life, but not so much the abstract.

Soup
When was the last time you got a free lunch (or breakfast or dinner)? Who paid for it?

Once a month a group of workers a the school where I work puts out a spread for the others. Today the 4th grade teachers and aids put on a very nice finger foods lunch. Cheese and crackers, fruit, veggies, cookies and some home made cupcakes that were so cool....chocolate ones loaded with cherries and lemon with lemon pie filling inside!

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how emotional are you?

I think I'm a 7....???

Main Course
Approximately how long do you spend each day responding to emails?

On emails, about 15 minutes....don't ask about the forum I go to though.....very time consuming.

Dessert
To what temperature do you usually set your home’s thermostat?

78 during the day and 75 at night.

September 19, 2007

Pirate Day

Something by Dave Barry for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Aaaye! Give it a read and tell me what ye thinks. Now outta here ye scallawags!

Thanky KQ, lovely lass that ye arrrrrrrrrrrrre.....

September 18, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: Our Hope



For our ladies' annual luncheon, I decorated this table with one of the themes of the luncheon: Hope. I tried to make it look like a little bit of Heaven. Impossible I know, but it was just symbolic. I was dissappointed that the dry ice fizzing over with fogginess didn't show up well in the pictures. There was a bowl on the other side of these candles, but you can't make it out. We had bone china with gold rims, gold flatware, lots of fluffy tulle with twinkle lights underneath, divinity fudge and a halo draped over each chair, to be worn by the attendees. It was really a lot of fun and it did turn my thoughts toward our future Hope of life with Christ in that intriguing place He called Paradise.

***To see more entries or to join in and do your own, go to Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom.***

September 17, 2007

Good news and bad news

Well my friend Kim has helped me get my old header back up on this new blog, but I've lost all my sidebar links and things. Pooh! It was my own fault. I hit a wrong button when I was transferring the html.

Hey, if I had done it the easy way, it just wouldn't be me. So I'll get those back up and running soon...I hope.

September 13, 2007

Feeling fragile

I've been in a sad frame of mind the past two days. There was a tragic accident that happened in the town we moved here from. It's a very small town, so things like this accident affect the whole town. My daughter was having a hard time understanding how events like this seem to happen more and hang over a small town's history in people's memory more than in a city.

I had to agree....in the 9 years that we lived there, we had a horrifying, tragic event happen every few years with the town's young people and some with adults. Every tragedy seems to affect the whole town. Yet I know that horrifying things happen in Phoenix every day, and I am not impacted by it at all, except for a fleeting thought and prayer. In a small town, you know everyone, or of them at least. You associate people by family names, what churches they go to, and places they've worked. I could not tell you the companies some of my closest friends work at here in the city.

So when I found out there had been an accident, I was immediately in a state of anxiety over who was killed, were they friends' children, did they go to our former church? I called the church secretary there and she read me the names. There were familiar family names, churches affected went through my mind as well as faces of young people we had known there. There was only one that I had known personally, a girl who had been in a Sunday school class I taught for middle school girls. Her grandmother is a friend of mine there and a fairly new Christian of a few years. I'm sure her heart and mind are just tortured over this. I can only pray for the peace of Christ to surround her and carry her through this.

My daughter told me that a friend of hers that worked at the Young LIfe camp just outside of town was the first one who came up on the scene, just after it happened. I can't imagine the horror that is stuck in her mind forever now.

So pray, if you could, for our former town, for the people affected by it closely, for the people who had to help at the scene and for the girl who survived it.

I can only sum this up in what my daughter Hannah said the other night, "Life is so fragile."

It can be gone in the blink of an eye....

September 12, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: Lillies and delphinium, perfect together



This is for Michele, over at Laundromat.

***To see more entries or to join in and do your own, go to Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom.***

September 11, 2007

Blahgging

Little frustrated here.....

I am trying to upload a picture...my old header...for this blog's header, but Blogger will not apply the change. It says it is saved and the picture is there on my layout page under 'header', but it does not show up on the blog.

Anyone?

Little help?

Kim???

September 6, 2007

Rich quoteses

I am trying to get a new blog design. The one I want has a quote on it that is not really 'me', so I am awaiting an answer from the designer to see if I can get a different quote on there. I looked up Rich Mullins' quotes because he had such a weird and honest take on Christianity and how people understand it. (and he has a habit of not completely finishing his sentences, but that's okay) Here are a few....the quotes with asterisks are the ones I am considering for a header:

Rich Mullins Quotes:

***"Never forget what Jesus did for you. Never take lightly what it cost Him. And never assume that if it cost Him His very life, that it won't also cost you yours."

"So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live."

"It's so funny being a Christian musician. It always scares me when people think so highly of Christian music, Contemporary Christian music especially. Because I kinda go, I know a lot of us, and we don't know jack about anything. Not that I don't want you to buy our records and come to our concerts. I sure do. But you should come for entertainment. If you really want spiritual nourishment, you should go to church...you should read the Scriptures."

"We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach us—and this is remarkable—the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea."

"I had a prof one time... He said, 'Class, you will forget almost everything I will teach you in here, so please remember this: that God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway'."

***"I think if we were given the Scriptures, it was not so that we could prove that we were right about everything. If we were given the Scriptures, it was to humble us into realizing that God is right, and the rest of us are just guessing."

"Bear in mind, children, that [parents] listen to you because you are kids—not because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us."

"We never understand what we're praying, and God, in His mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to His wisdom."

"Yes, it's embarrassing to be born again, but imagine how embarrassing it must have been to be born the first time. At least this time you get to wear clothes!"

"If you've ever known the love of God, you know it's nothing but reckless and it's nothing but raging. Sometimes it hurts to be loved, and if it doesn't hurt it's probably not love, may be infatuation. I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don't really love Him, and they don't really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world, it's also the only thing that can bring us salvation and it's like everything else that is really wonderful, there's a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt."

***"I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts."

"If you want a religion that makes sense, go somewhere else. But if you want a religion that makes life, choose Christianity."

September 5, 2007

Wordless Wednesday: View

Click photo to enlarge.




***To see more entries or to join in and do your own, go to Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom.***

This is a shot from the top of Bill Williams Mountain in Williams, AZ.

It's gone....

I am quite sure this time that my blog design is not coming back. So if you know of a place to get free Blogger templates (a tried and true place) , please drop me a note! I'll be looking too.

In the mean time, I feel kinda dull here....

September 3, 2007

Movie review: Charlotte's Web

Having read the book as a child and seen the animated, I think musical, version of the story, we opted not to see Charlotte's Web in the theatre last year. (it's soooo expensive to go to the movies with the whole family these days) Instead we waited for it to come out of dvd. And since it arrived at our door with the other 49cent dvds my husband ordered with a dvd club membership, we finally watched it. Well, we watched it three times this weekend to be exact. I LOVE IT. It is the cutest family movie I've seen in a while.

The live action movie with computer generated animated animals was a little bit reminiscent of the movie Babe, but better much better computerized animation (like the spider spinning the web). And the story and sweetness of it was so much more. Besides the story of the pig, spider and farm animals, it is a wonderful story of a shy little girl's blossoming. Silly, sappy and totally predictable barnyard animal lines and jokes still had me giggling, even during the third viewing. An all star cast provides the voices for these wonderful animals. The scene where the baby spiders hatch is beautifully done, and is so sweet. But one of my favorite parts was the end, where the credits first begin to roll, the song Ordinary Miracle is sung by Sarah McLachlan and is accompanied by really well done still illustrations of the story. It is beautiful! So if you watch the movie, keep the dvd going at least through that song.

And aren't you lucky! I found it on youtube:

September 1, 2007

Breakfast casserole

I just made one of these to stick in the oven in the morning for a sunday school breakfast. It is called a strata, a menonite recipe from a recipe book put together by local people north of Harrisburg, PA, at a place called Camp Hebron.

I make it several times a year for holiday breakfasts or church things. People always ask for the recipe, it is so good. The bread cubes in it makes it light and fluffy and the mustard gives it a taste that catches you by surprise, but it's a good surprise. ;)

Breakfast Strata

6-9 slices of bread, cubed
1/2 to 3/4 pound of sausage, bacon or ham
1 c. shredded cheese

9 eggs
3 c. milk
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp prepared mustard

Layer sausage, cheese and bread cubes in a greased 13 x 9 baking pan. Mix mustard with 1/4 c. milk and whisk to keep it from getting lumpy. Combine eggs, milk (including mixed in mustard), and salt with a whisk and pour over pan of layered food. Refrigerate overnight, then bake at 350 for 40 minutes.
You can also freeze this before baking and use at a later time.