Free At Last!

The Lord has seen fit to allow me the pleasure of providing a little extra for my family lately, and only He knows how long that will last. After Wednesday night's message, I have much more to think about and pray about when it comes to the decisions in my personal life and relationship with Jesus Christ. I'm happy that Jamie was able to get his laptop. Now he can get his homework done even if he's at grandma's house :)

In addition...

Just an end note to that previous post. I looked back in the chat channel to see how the conversation ended.
It turned out to be 2 guys going back and forth about how to raise kids, and neither one had kids of their own. They were both in their early 20's, and the most vocal of the two was studying psychology. He adamantly thought Sigmund Freud was the leading authority on child rearing. They both agreed that they disagreed with each other on how to raise children, and yet had been so quick to tell me how I was doing it all so wrong!
In the book I have been reading, that Ted previously mentioned, there is a little story about Education.
*Some people struggle for answers. One student told the medical school professor that in some points his lectures disagreed with the textbook. When shown where in the textbook, the professor tore those pages out of it..."Now it agrees with me", he said.*

And here is another to close: " A society that scorns excellence in plumbing because it's a humble occupation and promotes shoddy philosophy because it's exalted, has neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither pipes nor theories will hold water." - John Gardner

Judgement Calls

Wow, so here I am enjoying an unexpected day off. Just family time and some housework and of course the huge missions project I am trying to finish up for church.
I spend alot of time online in a chat channel which I have been in since we lived in SC. God lets me use it as a tool to minister and to witness.
Today, though, was interesting. For those of you who adhere to Biblical guidelines, and also homeschool your children, you are probably used to these self appointed judges.
The topic got into homeschooling versus public school. Now, mind you although this is a USA channel, it really is international. The main conversationalists were from Romania, England, the US and possibly a few other countries.
The general consensus amongst all of those was that 1. you should NOT homeschool your children, that it was actually WRONG. 2. You should never discipline or punish your children, only speak nice kind words to them and show them how to live. 3. You must let them suffer bullying and persecution, so that they can know how to live in the real world. That it would be the only way for them to toughen up.
As I said, very uhm interesting. What was prevalent, was the huge assumptions they automatically made just knowing I was homeschooling. They were all telling me at once how to raise my children, without even knowing me OR my children. They automatically assumed that we were anti-"social", my kids were locked up inside all day, and that I must be ignorant of how to raise children.
Most of the time I just sat there letting it flow around me, they weren't listening and weren't caring, just judging me on their own pre-conceived ideas. I was not going to debate or argue what I already knew was God's will for our lives.
My thought for the day: how often do we ourselves, even as Christians, make such quick judgements based on little or no information, and colored by our own preconceived notions about something? Do we base our "judgements" on Scripture, or just pet peeves?

Word For The Day

I had a Dream! Well, yes, but I never remember them. Much like the words I make up. Rebecca and I have had some fun with the words my mind comes up with. Many of which are a direct result of circumstances that arise throughout the day. After creating these words, I rarely write them down.

We had a laugh one night when I made up an awesome word, then formulated a Webster's hypothesis based on the circumstances in which the word came to me. We laughed, because i said "If i don't write it down, I won't remember it." I didn't write it down, and I couldn't remember the word OR it's meaning in the morning. What a sign of an impending geriatric era ahead of me!

When I woke up this morning, much to the demise of my dog. Rebecca, handed me a book that she had started reading. The book is called The Tale of a Tardy Oxcart and 1501 other stories by Chuck Swindoll. In it, was this quote which absolutely identifies my disposition.

I have a little sign that hangs in my study, It reads this way. "Idiosyncratically eccentric phraseology is the promulgator of terrible obfuscation." Doesn't that thrill you to hear that? And on the back is a translation, "Big words cause confusion."

January Birthdays

Well, I had tried to put all the birthday celebrators on my previous post, but somehow blogger lost all but Mike and Julie's picture(actually, I am still so new to this, I probably screwed it up). So the top picture is my mother, in the middle is Ted's brother Tim, and here at last is my nephew DJ.
Happy Birthday everyone!

The Old and the New

Normally, I would send out a long newsy email newsletter to everyone. With this new blog I have eliminated that mass production. Alas though, I fear, I will have to email people just to remind them that the newsletter and our news is on a more frequent and updated venue then a monthly or tri- monthly email. Please drop us a comment and let us know you were here and read our news. I will not be sending out newsletters anymore. So, farewell to the old and hello to the new!

January is a big month of birthdays in our family and beyond. As Ted mentioned in the previous post, you can view Ken and Jamie's party pictures on Tammy's blog( a link is on your sidebar of the main page). We also wish Ted's brother, Tim, a very happy birthday. We were unable to spend his special day with him due to the case overload he has had being a Sheriff Detective. Sadly, we see him more on T.V. lately, in the news, due to the crime that has been more frequent lately. Continue to pray for his safety as he never knows what each day will hold in this lost and sinful world.

My mother's birthday was also this month. I hope she had a good day. I don't hear much from her; may be somehow she will find her way to our blog to keep track of us all.

My nephew DJ also celebrates a birthday this month. Happy Birthday DJ! To all of you precious people who celebrate birthdays or anniversaries this month we wish you God's blessings and many more to come.

I also wish to send a special greeting to our friends Mike and Julie in OK, ya'll are such a huge blessing to us, words can not express the thanks and gratitude and overwhelming feelings we have towards you as our special God given brother and sister in Christ.

Ssshhhhh!!

I had to let this out. You remember seeing the pictures of Jamie's birthday party at Mom and Ronn's house. I believe Tammy posted them over at her blog, along with Ken's birthday pictures.

Well, we told Jamie that he has to wait a few more weeks before his REAL birthday present comes in. So we started playing a game to help pass the time. We played 5 dashes on the white board ---.-- and let him fill in the amount he thinks his birthday present costs. He only gets 1 guess per day, and each day, I will update my UP arrow, or DOWN arrow, depending on his answer.

The most difficult thing is that Justin is very close to his brother in age as well as maturity level (imagine that). Justin finds it hard to understand that things cannot always be "the same" in an imperfect world. So for now, he will have to settle for just being the younger brother, even though he is loved absolutely as much as Jamie. I'm sure also, that Rebecca and I will find a way to make him just as happy when it's HIS turn to start guessing.

So, if you know what Jamie is getting. Well, rub it in! :)

oh yeah.. and it's 2:30am. Go figure! I got in from Wadesboro around 1, and still had to gather numbers from my stores. I have a meeting at 8:30am in Spartanburg, so I guess I'd better git 'er done.