My 80's Song

So funny...cuz this is so me (in the 80's, not now)...Thanks Steve for the link!

Your 80s Song is "1999"

If you were transported back to the 80s, your life would be all about living large. You love the excess that the 80s represented, even if the party wasn't meant to last. (Thank God) You think of the 80s as a time of wild fashions, big money(I was making the big bucks back then), and fast cars (oh my Z-28 Camero). And that's a world you wouldn't mind being a part of! (NOT.)

What's Your 80s Karaoke Song?

Smoke

Today I met with several people that my insurance company sent to start taking care of the damage that occurred when my furnace caught on fire.

Tomorrow the First Response team is sending a company to pack up all our textiles; bedding, clothes, towels, shoes, rugs, curtains, stuffed animals, etc to have them cleaned. I had to choose what we will need quickly and what we will want stored until we are able to move back home. They will be cleaning the stench of oil and smoke out of everything they can, and inventorying what they cannot.

In the next couple days First Response will take everything out of the house, from furniture to dishes, from my washer and dryer to my Christmas orniments, it all gets removed, cleaned, accounted for and stored. They told us today that the clean up would most likely take 30-45 days. Now we are just trying to figure out living arrangements.

I feel a little overwelmed. But I am trying to focus on answered prayers and blessings that will come out this.

Kristi called me tonight because she and her girls were studying tonight in the book of

Exodus when they happened upon this scripture...

Exodus 19:18-20

18 Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain [a] trembled violently, 19 and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

I thought it was a perfect smile from God, reminding me that He is in control.

Four Wheeling Fun

Cooper's Grandparents bought him an extra special birthday gift this year...Tilly loves it too.

Local Librarian on NPR

Linda Yoder, director of my local library, was recently interviewed by Madeline Brand on National Public Radio. The topic was how the library is being used as a resource for the unemployed during these tough economic times.

You can listen HERE.

Fire!

Our weekend was eventful to say the least...

Saturday afternoon we were at home enjoying our weekend when Jud felt the house rumble, he thought that a plane or something was flying over head, when he stepped outside to look for what had made the house shake he saw that there was black smoke pouring out of our chimney...this may sound normal but we did not have a fire burning...at least not in the fireplace. He came inside and told me about the smoke, asked me to turn off the furnace and headed down stairs to check out our old oil burning furnace. Moments later he came barreling up the the stairs and told me to call 911, the furnace was on fire and flames were shooting out of the ducts. As I got 911 on the phone I scurried around the house to get shoes and coats, we got Tilly and the dog out (Cooper was at his grandparents). Jud got Tilly to the neighbors. You can read her version of the day HERE.

About 5 trucks from our little town's volunteer fire department arrived about 10 minutes later. We stood out in the snow with others from the neighborhood and watched as the firemen worked.

The fire was contained to the furnace and basement, but oil and soot came blowing out all the vents in the house leaving black oily residue and a nasty smell.

We are so thankful that the furnace did not blow during the night and that we are all safe and sound. We are staying at my aunts house for now (she is on vacation in Belize this week). Hopefully I will know more about how long it will be before we can get a new furnace and get the placed cleaned up once I meet with insurance tomorrow.

Please pray that everything will be covered by insurance and the process will be swift.

A Couple Things...

Before I rush off to work this morning, a couple of random thoughts...

1. I was moved by Obama Inauguration yesterday. I thought his speech was low key, earnest, and hopeful. I loved how much he invoked history. I am a lover of history and could not help be moved by the thought of how much has happened in America in the last 200 years.


2. The best new thing we have found so far this year is the Kiwi tool that Jud and Cooper picked up for free at the grocery yesterday. Cooper LOVES kiwi, it is one of only a handful of fruits and veggies that I can get him to eat, so we try to keep well supplied. The way my mom always served kiwi was cut in half and with a spoon to scoop out all the yummy kiwi from the furry skin. That is how Cooper likes them too and now he has the perfect tool. This awesome little kiwi utensil has a knife on one end to cut the fuzzy fruit in half and a small spoon on the other end, the perfect size for scooping out the delicious green flesh! LOVE IT!

Do You Want to Go to Church?

Do you want to go to church? I mean, when you wake up on Sunday morning are you excited to get to church? I am not talking about the minute you wake up and you lie in bed wishing you could sleep in, I mean once you are up…do you look forward to getting to church? Or do you look for excuses why you don’t have to go this Sunday.
Do you just go to church because you know you should? Do you WANT to go to church?

I think this is a sign of spiritual health.

This summer I found myself not looking forward to church at all. In fact there were many Sundays this summer that I found a reason not to go. I thought it was because it was summer, the lake was calling my name, or we had stayed up too late…but it was more about the fact that I was not enjoying church. And more over, it was about my spiritual health.

Summer is one thing, there is no youth on Wednesday night and I was traveling a lot, but once it was fall, school had started and I was teaching youth on Wednesday night (which I love), but I still was not excited about Sundays. All summer long I was being blessed by my new ministry visiting the ladies at the Elkhart County jail. But meeting the Holy Spirit in the jail seemed to make the empty hole I felt at church even greater. I had lost interest in my Sunday school class. I tried to listen to the sermons but most Sundays found myself looking at my watch waiting for the pastor to stop talking. The trouble that my church was having with our denomination was disenchanting to me. There was a negative attitude growing inside my heart. This all led me to my church search that I have been posting about in the last month.

In the book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Jim Cymbala writes "We are always either drawing nearer to God or falling away. There is no holding pattern."

I was falling away. From church. From God. Not a back sliding free fall, just the kind of barely noticeable falling away, but the kind of falling where you wake up one day and say “how did my heart get here?’

Brrrr!

With all this wintry weather I was about to complain...then I remembered an interview I heard on NPR last week. They interviewed a woman who lives in Tok, Alaska where the temperature recently dropped to -78 degrees.

She spoke about putting card board in the grill of her car to keep the fluids from freezing, scrapping ice off the inside of her windshield, and leaving the car running when she goes grocery shopping. She also told about how her thermometer at home does not even go as low as the temperature has dropped. She did post a picture of this thermometer at Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge offices in Tok, Alaska on her blog .

I guess I won't complain about our Indiana weather!

Step One: Get Started

I bought this old house in 2006 from my grandparents estate. My grandparents raised their family here, and I think it is neat that now I am raising my family here. For the last 20 years that my grandparents owned this house they were old, they both were in their 90s when they passed away and had not updated any features of the house in a long while.

This house is old. The decorating is old, the wiring is old, the fixtures are old, the plumbing is old, the furnace is old...the roof and the windows are new (I just want to balance out my complaining.) I am so thankful to have this house (and it is only through a miracle that I do).

Aside from painting Tilly's room orange and a few new pieces of furniture for the kids, my house is pretty much a hodge podge of hand me downs and 30 year old decorating. I have wanted to re-do and renovate but I work on a limited budget and limited time and limited skill. But it is really time to do some sprucing up.

With some help from Jud and his parents and a tax refund I am going to make some changes.

Starting this weekend.

Step one...strip wall paper in the kitchen.

This is what the wall paper was like...

This is the some of the progress made this weekend. All the wall paper is gone.

One of These Kids is Doing Her Own Thing

Steve’s posting series about memories of his old house has been fun so far for me, because I share those memories with him. During the years that Steve lived in "the gray house" we were best buddies. We were almost the same age, I lived right around the corner on Parkwood Drive, and our moms, who are sisters, worked together for our grandpa.

Steve’s most recent post about my memory cracks me up. Mostly because my memory was right and wrong. Steve wrote about the carnival and our visit to WSJV for the Jerry Lewis telethon. I was sure that we wore clown suits to WSJV. But leave it to Steve to have picture proof that I was the only CLOWN that day.

This is an example of how our memory protects us from things that we do not want to remember. In my memory of the day I had no recollection that I was the only one dressed like bozo. I hate to say this but I bet, if the picture was of my face, you would see my nose was painted red. This was surely my mother’s doing. She is very creative and spirited, and she is never embarrassed.

This moring I got an email, from Jen, who had read Steve’s blog, she signs off the email...

...Oh and what are you wearing today? Are you blending in or did you go with the clown look? :-)
Jennifer Odiorne

Thanks for sharing Steve!

Game Time

We are game addicts! We have a whole armoire full of games of all sorts. We spent many hours this Christmas break playing games together. We like video games as much as the next guy...but we spend nearly as much of our gaming time sitting on the floor around a board game. For Christmas the kids each received several games. Our favorites so far are:

• Mastermind It is a code breaking game of logic and deductive reasoning. You can play this for any amount of time, the rounds go quickly so your time commitment depends on how many rounds you want to play. I had this game when I was a kid, the game board has changed since then. The only down side to this new improved board is that the compartment that holds the pegs cannot close with all the pegs in it...which seems to defeat the purpose of the compartment.




• Scrabble The kids and I have enjoyed playing Scrabble Junior but Tilly received an awesome Diamond Anniversary Scrabble board this Christmas. The board is awesome because it folds into a convenient carry case with a handle which has drawers for the letters tiles and accessories. Tilly and Cooper quickly caught on to this game both scoring big points with words that surprised me.



• Chess Jud taught Cooper how to play Chess over break. Cooper loves it.
  


• The Game of Life Twists and Turns This was on Tilly's Christmas list. She had played the original version with my Aunt. This is modernized version of the classic. It has a electronic Lifepod which keeps track of each players money and life points on their own credit card. At first this seemed a little confusing and weird to enter information into the Lifepod on every turn. The second time we played we had it down. The kids love this game, especially Tilly.
  On Saturday we played a forty minute game, when it ended Cooper and Tilly played on their own for another 2 hours! Then on Sunday night Tilly and I played again for an hour and half. Tilly could have played longer. This game can be programed for as many turns as you would like so you can alter the length of the game, however the shortest game is really at least 40 minutes. It is more fun to play longer games because you can gain more money and life points. I think Tilly enjoys the pretending that comes with this game...she takes great care to pick her career, get her degree, get married, have babies, etc. There really is no skill and very little strategy involved with this game.
  
• Nintendo DS Brain Age Tilly got a DS for Christmas from her Grandma, it came with the game Brain Age. I absolutely love it...oh ya, so does she. Our whole family has been taking Brain Age training. They are short little brain games (that strengthen your prefrontal cortex) . It measures your Brain Age and graphs your scores. It has fun activities; for instance occasionaly when you log on it will ask you to draw a picture from memory of some random item. It will compare your pictures to the pictures that the other players have drawn. Also it has Sodoku, which I had never played before Tilly got this game but I am hooked now.



• Rock Band Cooper received Rock Band for our Wii. He loves it...we all have enjoyed playing it. If you look in our window at the right moment you might see our whole family rockin out singing, on drums, and guitar. The one thing I did not think about when I purchased the game was that the drums, even though they are not real, are LOUD. We only have 2 TVs and the Wii is in our living room. The banging can get to me after a while.
  
  
  

We love a good family game!

6 Year Old Misses the Bus, Drives the Car

WICOMICO CHURCH, Va. – A 6-year-old Virginia boy who missed his bus tried to drive to school in his family's sedan — and crashed.
State police say the boy suffered only minor injuries and authorities drove him to school after he was evaluated at a local hospital. Sgt. Tom Cunningham says the boy arrived shortly after lunch.
It happened around 7:40 a.m. Monday on Route 360, about 61 miles east of Richmond.
Police say the boy, who wasn't identified, missed the bus, took the keys to his family's 2005 Ford Taurus and drove 10 miles toward school while his mother was asleep.
He ran off the road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.
Police say he wasn't wearing a safety belt.

• I just cannot believe the kid made it so far before he crashed. That must of been some slick driving. Can most six year olds press the gas and see over the dash?
• My kids (at age six especially) would not be that determined to get to school.
• My kids (at age six especially) are not that autonomous. Was his mom asleep when he ate breakfast, got himself dressed, brushed his teeth and made sure he had his back pack too?
• I wonder what would of happened to him if he would have woke his mom up to tell her he had missed the bus....I hope nothing bad.
• This would have been a better story if he would have actually made it to school without crashing...can you imagine the look on the faces of the other parents and teachers when the kid rolls in to the parking lot and jumps out and heads to class.

Church Search Continued...

One thing that made the main list of things I do not like about my church, but did not make the top 3 list, (see Rob’s comment about narrowing down the pros/cons when finding a church home) is the music.

(Come on, how superficial can you get, Rocki!)

Our church is, shall we say, conservative when it comes to music. There is no electric worship band…just an organ, or sometimes a piano. We sing mostly old hymns. They try to sprinkle in a few newer "praise" songs from time to time, but it still falls short of contemporary worship music. But I have discovered that I am one of only a few in the congregation who are not enjoying the traditional quality of our "worship".

I want to make sure that you are hearing me clearly; there is nothing wrong with the music at my church…the problem is with me.

I have been to churches where the music was incredible. Where they have awesome musicians, the congregation is really singing out, hands in the air, eyes closed or sometimes clapping and full of joy and worshipping God. I loved it.

I have sung spontaneous a cappella choruses of praise with the ladies in Pekin Federal Prison, truly worshipping God. I loved it.

I have been to Acquire the Fire and Battle Cry conferences where the music sweeps over the crowd worshipping God, creating an emotional wave. I loved it.

Some have a problem with that emotional wave, saying that it causes people to rely on the music to create an emotional experience and to feel close to God. And I guess it’s true that any music can create emotions, not just songs with Christian lyrics. But I believe God gave us music precisely because it affects our hearts and emotion.

Greg Gilbert had an interesting post some time ago when he wrote "I wonder if the whole "excellence in praise and worship music" phenomenon we’ve seen over the past few years—for all the good it’s done—hasn’t also had some less-than-desirable effects on young Christians. I wonder if it hasn’t created a generation of functional mystics who gauge their relationship with God by emotional experience rather than the objective reality of redemption. "

No risk of that at my church. At times I find myself singing the hymns at church more grudgingly than worshipful…sometimes I even stop singing and just blindly stare off in the distance. I am allowing my musical preference to interfere with my worshipping of the amazing Almighty God!

Because the music at my church is not likely to change…for me to stay at my church will mean a serious refresher course on what is essential in worship.

And hopefully, like Greg Gilbert wrote about his church’s music "That forced me to learn how to stoke the fires of worship with truths and words, and not just with excellent music. I’ve learned how to be emotionally affected by the excellent words of hymns whether they’re played and sung "excellently" or not."

Tell me your views on the importance of music in the church….

Attractive Church?

Happy New Year!

We had a blast celebrating with the Galls, the Hahns and Egoffs! We played 9 rounds of New Year Family Olympics! Steve came up with games for each family team to compete in. This year the games consisted of; Puzzle Race, House of Cards, Name the Artist, Karaoke (oh yes Steve, I am holding on to the video for future use), RC Car Driving, Bean Bag Toss, Pin the Ball on the Pole, Dance Dance Revolution, and Best Sportsmanship Award. We rang in the new year with sparkling grape juice and the trying to catch a glimpse of the fireworks from down the road. Tons of laughing, tons of fun! What a great way to say "Good Bye 2008! Hello 2009!"