Updating and moving on
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
We are back from vacation. I kept a journal of some sort during our time and you'll find the posts predated, going back to July 9.

None of the pictures are mine, but I hope to add in some of our photos when I've had time to edit them. =)

Glad to be home for a couple of days before going down to Phoenix to help my dad while my mom recuperates from her hip replacement surgery, which was Wednesday. I will update when I can from there.

***I have been finding tons of typos and whole parts of sentences missing as I slowly go back over these posts and edit. I was typing them up at lightning speed on my daughter's laptop. If you've ever typed anything on a laptop, you know that if you run your hand over the track pad while typing, it can highlight sections without your knowledge *if you're looking at your spiral notebook while typing* and then it deletes when you start more typing! It's infuriating and I am used to looking at my words as I type them, so I didn't check the text as often as I should have.....arg!

Please bear with me....

re: stuff
Topic: Holidays/Vacations

The laundry is almost done now from the week of camping and we decided to go on a driving tour today of the mines up around Creede. It took about 2 hours and was absolutely a beautiful drive…..and the brochure we had told all about the old settlements that had been up there and about some of the history and people who lived there. We stopped twice to hunt minerals in mine trailings and several times to take pictures of the scenery. The lupines are in full bloom here and are mostly situated under and skirting around the aspen groves. It is charming!

Tonight we’ll cook steak on the grill with baked potatoes (and all the trimmings) and nice green salad. It is very hard to get your veggies and your fiber while camping. Mostly we’ve been eating meat, potatoes, canned things and junk food. I feel better now having the fridge stocked with some whole grain things and fresh produce.

This is reminding me of how God is. He allows us to go through rough, dirty, stinky, uncomfortable times in life, that is true. Everyone does. But then He provides the refreshing, overwhelmingly comforting times too. We’ve had kind of a rough year with depression lurking and some “people issues” that can drain you in ministry. So we are soaking in this refreshing time.

Re-fresh….there’s another “re”…..to get your freshness back. Wish you could refresh produce too…but sadly it is either fresh or not, no going back. How sad it is to open the ‘crisper’ drawer of the fridge and find wilted, moldy stuff….the nice produce that looked so perky and fresh when it was put away, all spoilt. Such a shame.

Perhaps that is how God looks at us when we aren’t used and sit around in our ‘crisper’ drawer too long, which is why you have to go back down after being in a mountaintop retreat time. We are all fresh and perky when we go in, but lack of purpose creeps in and wilts and molds and destroys. I’m glad I’m not a grape or bag of lettuce that cannot be refreshed once it wilts. Thankfully we are renewable…..we can re-fresh in God’s presence and be new again.

Creede Cabin
Topic: Holidays/Vacations


Turning the page….we arrived at the cabin today around lunch time. I can’t describe the beauty here, so I am taking lots of pictures to illustrate. We are still quite high at 9,000 feet elevation, close to Creede, Colorado. We are more specifically in a place called Wagon Wheel Gap, a ‘gap’ being a narrow passage through the mountains or in this case through rock walls with a canyon-like feel. The Rio Grande is just a few yards from our front door, so we can hear it, and we can see rafters go by, squealing with laughter around the river bend we are situated in. It’s a glimpse of Heaven I think…..

As I mentioned before, this cabin is owned by some people who make it available for free to full time ministers. May they have blessing upon blessing heaped upon them! Not only is it a ‘nice’ place, it is a luxurious place! We have the lower level of the cabin. The upper level and a separate small cabin are also for ministry families to use. The lower level has three double bedrooms, wonderfully furnished and cozy. It has a ver large L-shaped living area with two sitting areas, desks to work at, a foosball table and a ping pong table. The kitchen is well equipped and looks out onto the river. There are beautiful small gardens, green landscaping and hammocks, picnic table areas, grills and a lawn swing all right at the river’s edge.

There is no one staying upstairs yet, but there is a couple from Jacksonville, Florida in the small cabin. Today is their anniversary so they went to the Creede Repertoire Theater to see the opening of a Neil Simon play, Broadway Bound. When they found out that Hannah was wanting to go see the play but we could afford to take the whole family, tickets being $20 per person in the cheapest seats, they invited her to go with them and then they paid her way! I sure hope that I can practice this kind of blessing others the way they did for Hannah. They enjoyed the evening with her and even invited her to come to Florida and stay with them on Spring Break if she could. I’m sure she’ll be giving that some thought.

Moving up...
Topic: Holidays/Vacations

One day left until we get the cabin, so we drove down closer to Creede. We are staying in 30 Mile Campground, just downstream from the Rio Grande Reservoir, by a rushing stream, tumbling over rocks in a slightly downhill sort of way. (No listening to nose whistles tonight! Charles said it actually is the Rio Grande River, but the dam upstream controls the flow.

We know this because we stayed here in September of 2002, just two spaces down, right beside the river. We were so excited to get a space beside the river…love to hear it, love to play beside it. We set up our tent, fixed dinner and suddenly we realized it was quiet, very quiet. Looking over at the river, we realized it had slowed to a trickle, puddles of water trapped by rocks with 10 inch trout in them! The girls got to touch the fish, but we didn’t eat him…do you need a fishing license to take a fish out of a puddle with your hands? We asked the campground host why the river had slowed down and he told us they were doing some work this side of the reservoir and shut off the flow. I laughed and laughed about that. Never heard of turning off a river! So we slept without the nice roar of the water and next morning packed up to move. Once we were all packed, we realized they had turned the river on again. Our luck! We ended up leaving since we were all packed and we didn’t want to camp by a river we couldn’t count on.

So we arrived today to try out 30 mile campground again and washed each other’s hair with freezing cold well water. We feel much better though and won’t drive people out of public places now when we walk in! My daughter Emma held up a sock out of her duffle bag today after her scrubbing and asked me to smell it and tell her if it was clean, because she couldn’t tell. I told her no, I won’t sniff an iffy-looking sock and besides everything was starting to smell like dirty socks to me. (Did I mention that the cabin has a washer and dryer???)

This campground is much more preferable than our last. The rushing water, other families. Our first campground was a fishing lake and mainly used by retired couples and groups of men who fish. The campground host looked like the Grandfather on Heidi, right down to the Swiss-looking hat, neatly trimmed beard with no mustache, and overalls. He turns on his generator early in the morning, then again in the evening, and plays Swiss mountain music, including yodeling. It makes me want to use V’s instead of W’s and shout from the mountain top, “RICOLAAAAA!”

It also has a nicer outhouse here. I know….nice…outhouse? I am comparatively speaking. This one doesn’t smell too bad if you breathe shallowly, you can’t see the bottom (little scary here, but worth the wondering) and it has two forest service posters on the wall ….one of wild mushroom’s, one big honkin’ one in the middle with lots of little ones that look like they are dancing around it and other types around the edges….and one of wild birds that says, “Thank you for protecting our home.” Nice little birds…and scope for the imagination while ….well…nevermind. ;)

Along the road
Topic: Humor/memes

One horrid thing about being in Colorado is the roads. Towns in the mountains usually began as mining settlements, so it was imperative to build roads that went up into the mountains to where the mines were. Some of these roads are still not much more than mule trails, skirting the edges of mountains, 10, 11, 12 thousand feet in elevation, sheer, rocky walls on one side of you, sheer rocky drop offs on the other side. Sheer rocky mountain terror to drive on….for me. Charles has no problem with the roads (if he doesn’t, he is a good faker). He zips along hairpin curves and narrow roads while pointing and telling us about various landmarks or what the name of that “fourteener” is. (for the uninitiated, a 14er is a mountain that is over 14,000 feet in elevation.) Pretty cool to look at, but not when you’re in fear of careening off a cliff as your ‘tour guide’ points them out.

I always say, “Does everyone have their seat belts on?”

Someone is always the wise cracker (don’t know where they get that) and spouts off, “Like that would help if you go over a drop off like that! Hahahahaha”

“Very funny, put your seatbelt on!”

I have terrors about these roads and my kids make fun of me….psychotically sadistic bullies! I have started closing my eyes when it is realloy bad…I used to try to mentally drive and guide the car, which just makes me nuts and weird and a great big target for sadistic children. The first time I felt that way was on our honeymoon. We were driving to an old abandoned mine and ghost town and were WAY up in the air on a narrow dirt road that was tilted toward the abyss when we came upon a boulder in the road. There was no choice but to back up (not a fun thing on a windy mountain single lane mule trail) or inch back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until you had the car turned around. *Terror* I began crying and begging him to abandon the car and walk back with me, but he insisted on bringing the car with us. **men** So I got out of the car and stood there crying and hiding my eyes while he turned it around. Neither of us was in a very amiable mood for a few hours.

Two summers ago we had the privilege of having a 4 wheel drive truck with us on a trip to Colorado. What was I thinking ? Going with my husband to Colorado with a 4 wheel drive vehicle!? I must have been out of my gord. Anyway, my kids got to see me in ‘terror mode’ as we drove over the “4 wheel drive only, not kidding, turn back NOW you wimpy little city cars” road over the 12,000 foot mountain pass between Silverton and Lake City. Yipes! My kids still talk about it to anyone who will listen. And still, after two years, they think it’s hilariously funny that their mother, the one who birthed them, nurtured them and gave them their sense of humor (whoopsy on that one), was hysterical, having terrors and crying on this road trip. NOT one of my favorite stories, but it makes people entertained, so why not write it down in the permanent record? Besides, if my kids were to tell the story first, they would add many more unpleasant details!

On our way into Lake City the first time this week, I was driving the girls in for showers while Charles was content to stay and fish, fish, fish at the campground. I did not remember that road…obviously. Nope, didn’t remember the constant downhill steep grade while going around hairpin curves with NO guardrail! Not that a guardrail if going to really help up on a windy road like that, but it’s just nice to have it there, comforting you as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you if you go to far over.” So I put it in first gear and went about 15 miles per hour while making some Texan really miffed behind me. I did pull over ASAP to let him by, but not soon enough to nix the miffedness.

On the second trip into town, me driving, (you see how desperate we were for showers that I would do this again?) I was more confident, but I did make the girls change the music we were listening to. It was Relient K singing “We’re going down down down in flames” (I am not embellishing….it really was the song that was on and it was very unnerving!) They changed it to the next song, which was, “We’re gonna have a breakdown”….on to Superchick and Christian girl power songs. Lol I started feeling empowered and even joked with my girls about how driving roads like these can make you feel this almost uncontrollable urge to drive off the edge. I got them back good…no laughing this time…just bugging out eyes looking at me in the rear view mirror. Oh, that was good…..

Seeing my reflection....
Topic: God things
As I’ve said, amidst all the whining about camping, we love to come to Colorado. Charles grew up spending weeks of summer here and we came here on our honeymoon, although we only camped one night of that trip. There is something about the high mountains that is restful and restores you, relaxes you and makes you reflective. Funny after writing that I realized all those adjectives beginning with re….cool.

To ‘re’ do something is to do it again. You had it once and need to get it again. Re-lax means you lost your ‘lax’ and need it back. (No obvious puns here, I’m being serious.) To re-store means you’ve lost your store of something vital…your store of peace, rest, freshness, spiritual strength. Re-juvenate means to get back that youthful feeling. Renew…to feel new again, reflect (I do not know what flect is a root word for…I will try to remember to ask Hannah, my Latin-taker.)

I certainly have been doing a lot of reflecting this week. I think that’s what rest if for. Your body stops and your mind goes, “Ok, now I’ve been meaning to go over some things with you…..”

I’ve been reading Psalms because I thought it would help me to express my feelings about God’s creation since we’re out in it 24/7 this week. But the Psalms I’ve happened upon, by God’s hand I’m sure, are helping me to deal more with my inadequacy, my acceptance of some things in my life that I should not be accepting, and also dealing with enemies and the unjust. I can’t share anymore about that, but I wanted to share how God’s used this time and how He works.

He is so surprising…sneaky really…always so timely and good…so understanding and patient with us (me).

The long hot day....
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
It's hot.....

Bethany, Emma and I are sitting in the pop up trailer, tired of flies dive bombing us and mosquitoes trying to nibble us. Beth brought homework (?) and is trying to finish 10th grade Literature. Emma is writing a story. She has a spiral notebook, it is less than half the size of an 8x10 spiral notebook and she has over half the pages FILLED with her tiny, tiny handwriting. I don’t know if it will continue or if it is only a phase, but she has become a story writer and songwriter this year, always scribbling in notebooks. She used to rewrite stories she already knew, like The Lord of the Rings stories, but she would change a few things to make it suit her, but these are her own original works. She won’t let any of us read them until months later when she feels more confident about them, but the ones I’ve seen are pretty good for a 13 year old.

I am also scribbling in a full sized spiral notebook…and I do mean scribbling. Since I am so used to typing on a computer for everything except grocery lists, my hand writing is sorely, sorely gone downhill. Of course it doesn’t help that my hands are chapped beyond all reason from scrubbing them after outhouse visits and being outside all the time. I am blogging on paper. It’s very strange and feels disorganized, but I’m sure I’ll be able to sort it out back home…or maybe I’ll use Charles’ laptop next week at the cabin to type it up on Word. (I am typing this at the cabin, but using Hannah’s laptop.)

I don’t miss the computer, I’m just used to jotting down ideas now as they come and it’s less convenient on paper….hand cramps, bugs squished on notebook paper, dirt, wind, lack of light at night to write. (my best thinking time)

Hannah and Maggie are outside. Hannah is finishing up Anna Karinnina by Tolstoy. On v acation last year, she read War and Peace, so she felt it was tradition to bring ol’ Leo along on vacation. She is almost done with it and told me this morning that we have to find a bookstore soon. She’s never without a book, but is ravenous about reading while on vacation. I brought some books too. I am not an avid reader, but I like to read if there is nothing else to do. ;) So I brought Katharine Hepburn’s autobiography and am enjoying that. She is so honest and self depreciating…she sees herself honestly. Going over events in her life for the book helped her to evaluate how selfish and stupid she was (quite often) and I feel like it passes on a kind of worldly wisdom. She refers to God and to her mistakes as sins, but I think it is more of taking them in stride and not actually being repentant of anything.

I also brought a book that is being circulated between some of my grown-up-lady friends from church. It is called “Called to be his helpmate” about being a more effective partner as the wife in a Christian marriage. I am waiting until next week to read it though. I have to be honest and say that I would probably find the book irritating while living in primitive conditions that my husband likes to put us in each summer. ;) The friend who read it though think it is a very practical and wise book. I’ll let you know what I think of it in the near future.

I said Maggie is outside, but she is actually going in and out of the trailer, being restless. She needs someone to play binka bonka (badminton) with. I think I’ll go hit a few with her.

The two brothers have gone down to the marshy creeks…no, not to look for moose, they’ve given that up….to fish for trout. They slathered up with sunblock and bugspray, all toxic I’m sure, and will return absolutely disgusting but happy when they return, especially if they caught fish OR had adventures. =)

Da da da dun dun.....DUN DUN!
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
We have two more nights camping, then it is off to that nice cabin for a week. It will be like Christmas! Flushing toilets, showers, a washer and dryer, indoor cooking, the Rio Grande River right beside us…electricity, water, a refrigerator, electricity, ahhhhhh. You cannot even imagine my anticipation I feel ….like ‘Lisa’ on Green Acres “Dahling, I love you but give me indoor plumbing!”

Poor poor Charles. He is realizing on this trip more than ever that teenaged girls are not the best troopers when in primitive conditions.

He is trying his best to put up with us, but I’m afraid we have all had our moments of extreme irritability. But then there are times when we have all just had showers at the RV park in town and we are sitting in the pleasant park enjoying being with each other and enjoying the outdoors. It didn’t hurt that we had just had a steak dinner in a nice restaurant for Hannah’s 18th birthday and there was a youth group from Texas (i.e. cute boys) playing Frisbee in the park. I am just hoping that they will remember the pleasant things and not the irritating, hard, dirty and smelly things.

Goodnight, sleep tight...
Topic: Holidays/Vacations

Nighttime has been interesting here. We love to camp by running water, especially for it’s soothing effects at night. All you here is the rushing water and occasionally a deer or bear crashing through your camp. (Last year it was a raccoon who opened our latched ice chest and we heard crunching and licking…..we went out early in the morning to find our eggs half eaten along with some other items thrown around.)

We had a site by a stream the first night, then moved up where Rick’s site was, up by the fishing lake. Fishing, fishing, fishing. Here it is beautiful, aspens and spruce trees everywhere at the top of a mountain, over 10,000 ft elevation. There is a breeze during the day and the views are wonderful. But at night it is so quiet, you can’t even imagine the stillness.

The first night here, I heard my ears ringing and that kind of ocean sound echoing in my head as I tried to sleep. The only things I would hear where my family’s breathing patterns- which is only irritating when you’re trying to sleep. I heard an S shaped hook clinking against the trailer post, husband breathing, my own nose whistling….arg! So I turned on my flashlight and rooted around in my makeup bag for one very used, old earplug. Heaven! I put it in one ear and laid my other ear on my pillow and went to sleep soundly.

Oh, and we have a signal at night to roll over when someone is snoring. One of the girls will give the trailer a good shake. When you feel the trailer shake, it’s time to lay on your side. Ha!

Our 8 year old, Maggie, is sleeping next to Bethany, 15 and Emma, 13. The first two nights she cried, whimpered and struggled in her sleep and scootched around until she was uncovered and lying horizontally across the top of the bed. The third night I put an extra seat cushion to fill in the gaps of her ‘mattress’ (she is sleeping where you put the table down and use seat cushions to make a mattress) and she slept just fine, much to the relief of her sisters.

Now when she wakes up at night and can’t see anything (it is pitch black here at night, no moon as it goes down early here) Bethany will just reach over and hold her hand and she goes back to sleep.

So you can see how getting out of normal routine and lifestyle can also help develop coping skills and problem solving. =)

Herrrrrrrrre Moosie, Moosie, Moosie
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
Everything here around Lake City is about moose….by the way, it’s not mooses or meese, as you might think or want to argue about, it’s just moose, whether it’s one or a bunch. In the past few years, the forest service has released several pair of moose in this area with it’s boggy creeks. They are reintroducing them here because I guess they ran out of them.

Charles and Rick have been listening closely at night and in the early mornings to try to hear a noise they thought must be a moose calling. They were even getting good at making the sound and thought the animal making it was moving closer to the camp when they made the sound.

Last night we decided to go moose scouting. So we piled in the truck just before sunset and drove slowly on the back road along a marshy creek. No moose…..although at one point Rick was joking around saying if he sees a moose, he’ll signal by going, “THERE’S A MOOSE!” (he yelled out the open window) At that moment a female deep jumped up, startled out of her wits I’m sure, and bounded away. Very funny. Poor deery.

We turned around and headed back slowly, still keeping our eyes trained on the creek when I saw a dark brown animal grazing about 200 yard away in a meadow. The more we looked, the more we decided it was a moose! Charles and Rick decided to get a closer look and walked across the meadow, about half way to the animal.

The girls and I just watched them as they got smaller. Then we heard them clap and yell to get it to lift it’s head as dusk got duskier. We saw a flash go off, then another, then we saw them heading back. As they neared the truck I called out the window, “Was it a moose?” at which point Rick held up a cow pie bigger than a dinner plate and said, “No, a cow.”

The flashes we saw were of Charles taking a picture of Rick holding up the cow pie. We heard the mysterious call of an animal again this morning, everyone stopping to listen and concentrate, at which time we all decided it was a cow.

I am going to have to find some kind of stuffed animal or picture of a cow in moose disguise for some Christmas gifts this year!

A walk in the park...
Topic: Holidays/Vacations

In Lake City, there is a famous ice cream parlor called the San Juan Soda Fountain. It has an old fashioned, heavy oak counter with all the familiar looking equipment and menu of a 50’s soda fountain. There are about 20-30 flavors of ice cream and for some reason it’s the best tasting ice cream you’ve ever had! Maybe it is the atmosphere in the shop, or the quaint mountain town outside. Maybe it’s that we always take it over to the town park across the street and eat it while sitting barefoot in the soft grass, looking up at the high mountains that surround the town. Or it could just be that they have the best ice cream ever. If you stop in, you have to try the mocha almond flavor….there is something really satisfying about toasted almonds in ice cream stuck in a freshly made waffle cone.

The girl who waited on us in the tiny grocery store told us Lake City has only about 450 people who live here year round. This was emphasized by a framed photo in the Mocha Moose coffee shop. It said, “Lake City before tourist season.” And the photo was of a handful of shop keepers along with 8-10 dogs sitting on the front steps of the coffee shop lazily waiting.

Along the town square there are gift shops, an organic grocery store, a steak restaurant whose owner is from Italy and think Maggie, my 7 year old, looks like a princess and was talking to him with her eyes. She was on cloud 9 after hearing that and kept staring at other people trying to “talk to them with her eyes.” =)

Down the street from the soda fountain is an espresso shop. The next time we were in town we stopped there. Hannah had Chai tea, Emma had French vanilla Italian soda and a blended iced mocha frappe for me. Very cute shop called the Mocha Moose.

Meanwhile back at the campground, there were fresh brookie trout for dinner. They were very good. Only Emma didn’t try them (city girl).

We have now banned the headphones and Gameboy, by the way. The girls are getting more into playing cards, Chinese checkers, badminton (binka bonka), and reading their books they brought. They are also much more pleasant….we’ve found that the more they get into their own heads with the music, games, or at home computer games and television, the more irritable and zombie-like they become. So back to rules….no Gameboy or music hooked into your ears while camping…unless there’s a long car trip to be endured.

Fareware to civilization.....
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
All packed up with a full pickup and pop up camp trailer, we headed out Thursday morning for our annual family camping trip. This year it is to Colorado.

My husband grew up going on camping trips to Colorado from the earliest memories he has of cramming in with six kids into an old pickup with a cab over camper, driving on dusty mountain roads (that are now well kept and a lot of them paved), fishing, fishing, fishing, and fishing, exploring old mine areas looking for minerals like gold, silver and amethysts in the mine trailings that have built up over years and years of mining, memories of hiking as a teen and young adult in the high mountains.

Our vacations are nothing like that. My husband and I were blessed with four girls, none of whom like to fish or be without showers and flushing toilets for very long. Two years ago he took us camping for two weeks in Colorado (about one week past our limit) and he almost had a mutiny. We paid a lot for showers those two weeks at $5 per shower at the town RV park. So this year we are camping for one week, then going to a cabin with electricity and running water for another week…good compromise I think….especially since the cabin is free! (a ministry to full time ministers by a wonderful group of people that we got a letter of invitation from about this time last year)

But back to modern day camping. We don’t have an RV with a generator for microwave oven and satellite tv, or a trailer full of 4-wheelers (although we’re jealous that we don’t) to go zooming around forest roads. But we aren’t exactly Robinson Caruso either. Our pop up trailer may not look like much to anyone else—it is a 1972 Pleasure Seeker with gold and aqua interior—but it has padded benches to sit on, beds to sleep in, a door to walk through and an indoor stove to cook on. To us it’s luxury after tent camping all of our married life with kids from babyhood to teenaged, fighting off biting flies and mosquitoes while cooking and sitting huddled under a tarp waiting out a freezing rain storm….two years in a row while Maggie was a baby, the rain was not to be waited out and it poured the entire week we camped, nothing was dry. In other words…we love our little trailer!

Charles has made so many concessions over the years to keep us happy on these trips, it no longer resembles much of what he grew up with. Teenaged girls need concessions…he is a wise dad. So we let them bring their CD players (stocking up on batteries), one of them has a Gameboy which has been highly coveted this week by all the sisters (she shares well though), two laptop computers and a bunch of DVD’s to use when we’re desperate for “real life.” He is letting them sleep in this year too…usually they are jumped upon and squashed if they don’t get up for breakfast. Yesterday they didn’t get up until 10am. Today it is 9:15am and I am waiting breakfast on them—yesterday they ate cookies I think.

I got up an hour and a half ago and Charles and his brother Rick, who is joining us this year, were already gone—fishing. They left the coffee above the dying coals on the fire grate to keep it warm for me—very thoughtful. A little hazelnut creamer and I was one happy pup. I had fully intended to get up and make them pancakes before they left, but I have had two nights of wakeful sleeping and I made the mistake of closing my eyes again after Charles got up. We will be going into town today to take showers and walk around looking at touristy shops in downtown Lake City.

...back after these messages....
Topic: Holidays/Vacations
I will be taking a break from making any blog entries while we take a little trip....without computers. We will be happily, lazily taking a vacation to Colorado...a week of camping and then a week in a cabin.....all in places above 10,000 feet elevation.......just picture us humming John Denver tunes, roasting marshmellows and reading in the hammock. (one at a time)

I promise to take plenty of pictures and return all refreshed and inspired in two weeks.

God bless .....and don't hate me because I'm on vacation! =)

Sammiches
Topic: Humor/memes

This is a cute picture I found on a blog featuring different artists each day. I had just finished eating a tuna sandwich when I saw it....

I think this will become my new response this summer when my kids say "I'm bored!" .....I"m sure to get lots of eye rolling!

Perfect! I just showed it to my 15 year old and what did she do? Rolled her eyeballs! My evil plan is working....bwahahaha

yippee!

ps....this is what happens when I can't think of what to say and only got 4 hours of sleep last night.....I'm sorry. =)

Out of whose picture?
Topic: God things


There is a commercial on tv right now that flips my lid every time I see it. Commercials have become somewhat of an art form in themselves the past few years…I wish there was some was to capture and archive them. I’m sure a VCR would work, but how to know when the commercial will air and on what channel…now that is a dilemma. The ad I am talking about is for HP digital photography. It has a catchy tune by The Robins called Out of the Picture and the guy in the ad is sitting in a chair, holding up pictures beside his head of….his head! It is so ingenious….each time he holds up a new picture, his head beside the picture becomes part of the new picture. At the end, he holds up a full sized picture of his head and it becomes just a frame he is looking through and he puts his head through the frame, the object being the realistic quality of photos you can get from the new HP printer. Are you getting all of this? If not, and you haven’t seen the commercial, I found where you could watch it on the internet.
Go to the TV ad entitled Francois 2. You won’t regret it. =)

Photography is a hobby of mine…I wish I had more time to play with it. I plan to get back into this year….with my new digital camera and all my free time. =) (Now if I just had one of those fancy printers!) I love how you can take an ordinary picture, add special effects, make it artsy and give it your own signature style…..take an image from reality and tweak it to become a creation of our own.

Art is something we create, using our God given talents. I once read a quote from the late musician, Rich Mullins, that was a response to someone asking him if he thought that God wrote the songs through him, since there was so much originality and theology in his writing. He responded, of course not! He said God gave us creativity and he thought God enjoyed seeing what we created and used for Him….what we would say about Him, write, sing, paint, and draw. I agree. God created art for us in nature, in animals, plant life, in all the kinds of people He created. And I think He enjoys seeing us create things, express our thoughts, express our love and praise to Him. It’s our part of the sacred romance.

We can create and add our own signature style to things of earth, but it’s a huge mistake we people tend to make to add our own ‘style’ to our image of God. He’s given us the Bible and shown Himself to us through it and through nature. We need to accept who He is and that He is above ‘figuring out’ or making Him into an image of human proportions. He is so much more….so infinite, so holy. He came down to our level to die for us and give us such an easy way to bridge that expansive gap between Creator and creation, caused by sin. I don’t think He would have gone through all of that, becoming the sacrifice for our sin, if it didn’t matter what we believed….if sin wasn’t a big deal. It is a huge deal! And He is so patient with us while we figure that out. (…as we should be with others, by the way, with that big old pole sticking out of our eyes.)

Jesus showed us such a loving, approachable view of God, that sometimes I think we have lost the sense of His holiness and unchanging quality. I see it everyday…on the news, tv shows, in my own church, even in my own mind and life. We justify things that the Bible says are unacceptable. We cannot reinvent our God to suit our own style or beliefs….I think it is awesomely graceful of Him not to just smite us here and now when we do that. **lol** What the Bible teaches us about Him is so far above where we put Him sometimes. So these are the thoughts that came out of my heart today, after seeing that commercial and thinking about art, creative styling and trying to think of what God is telling me through it.

I saw a poster once, I bought it and put it in my room as a teenager. It said, “Eternity will be at once a great eye opener…..and a great mouth shutter!”

Don’t you love it? God is….God. Nothing we say or do changes who He has been since the Beginning. If we all got more into reading His Word (that He gave to us, protecting and preserving it over the years) rather than in listening to who others think He is, we would live differently I think. Maybe we would start seeing things the way He does. I think we would even start to sin less and see others as He does and love them more.

Start today…here is the tool I use online to do word searches on different topics in the Bible.