Lest the economic quagmire...

...send you into the chasm of despair, watch this:




You can never go wrong with pirate gerbils.

Economic Crisis...

This video is worth the time. It makes you think. Please watch it. Don't just rest on what you're hearing in the media. Shoot... don't even rest on what you see here. Take the challenge. Google the facts. Think for yourself. You have only one vote to cast. Cast it with passion and prayer.

(This video isn't available on YouTube anymore. Copyright issues with soundtrack songs between video producers and Warner Music... hummm... wonder if this happens to everyone...)

Oooohhhhh! I wanna play!

I love it when people do the put-you-iPod-on-shuffle-and-write-down-the-the-titles-of-the-first-however-many-songs-that-play game.

Jenn did it on her blog most recently. It was really fun to read.

So I'm going to copy her idea (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, according to Shannon) and post my Dirty Dozen. Dirty in that the iPod is nestled in an armband so that I wear it when I work out at the gym. You do NOT want me to use the sensory imagery it would take to give the olfactory details.

1. "Our Lips are Sealed" - Hilary and Haley Duff (A Cinderella Story soundtrack)
2. "I Love Beach Music" - Embers
3. "Goofy Goober Rock" - Tom Rothrock (The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie soundtrack)
4. "Looking for You" - Kirk Franklin
5. "Days of Elijah" - Twila Paris
6. "Fun, Fun, Fun" - Beach Boys
7. "Hound Dog" - Elvis Presley
8. "Heaven" - Los Lonely Boys
9. "I Believe" - Fantasia (the singer from American Idol, not the Disney movie)
10. "If I Had It My Way" - Emma Roberts (Ice Princess soundtrack)
11. "Rumors" - Lindsey Lohan
12. "Go Figure" - Everlife

Yep... you guessed it. My iTunes account was originally Kelsey's when she was 12.

What's your Dirty Dozen or Elite Eleven or Top Ten?

That's it! Go to your rooms!!!

That is the last straw. I want you both to shut up and go to your rooms until you can sit in the same space together and say something nice and mean it.

I have listened to you go back and forth saying ugly things about each other until I have a headache that might last me into the next decade.

I find it hard to fathom that you have been brought up in the same place and dwell in the same house and you can't manage to have one encouraging, cooperative thing to say to each other -- or even about each other, for that matter.

For once in your lives will you stop putting yourselves and your own agendas first and do something...anything...bigger than you are that will help other people. I can't remember the last time you did anything together, went anywhere together, without fighting.

I don't want to hear anymore of your excuses. Not one single, "But I just..." or "But he/she/they..."
Shhh! Be quiet. Don't speak. Go to your rooms!

AND IF THE BRETHREN CAN'T LEARN TO DWELL TOGETHER IN HARMONY BY MORNING, WE'RE GOING TO PUT YOU IN A ROOM TOGETHER AND LEAVE YOU THERE UNTIL YOU EITHER AGREE ON SOMETHING SELFLESS OR UNTIL YOU BEAT THE SNOT OUT OF EACH OTHER.

You choose.

But you're not going to destroy the rest of us in the process. Go on... get in your rooms... not a peep!

Democrats...
Republicans...

Shame on you!

Have you ever seen one of these?

I hadn't until I went out into Pepper's courtyard the other day.

It's a five-leaf clover. Four-leaf clovers... sure. I have a seven year old. We're all about finding four-leaf clovers. But FIVE???

You know I'm married to Mr. Biology (aka... Mr. Walkipedia... a,aka... Mr. Google... he knows stuff... lots of stuff about...lots of stuff). So the lesson we got out of this one was about genetics.

Now usually when he starts talking about the science behind anything at all, my totally non-scientific mind drifts to other topics, like cute furry bunnies and squirrels running through the yard.

But this time my mind landed in one of the "grrr" places instead. As he went on about genetics, I thought, hummm... here we are, thrilled enough about this genetic anomaly in a weed that I'm fighting back the dog and the seven year old so that they don't step on it before one of the big kids can run inside and get the camera so that I can take a picture.

I would have to file this one under extreme irony. I'm guessing that anyone, just about, would be thrilled to find a five-leaf clover in their yard. What are the odds?

And yet... I've had so many dear women in my life recently who have had to deal with doctors and genetic counselors and ultrasound technicians and amnio procedures and myriads of other specialists and therapists because something genetic or developmental didn't go according to "normal." And the sad thing to me is that almost all these women and their husbands had to fight their own battle with the medical profession not to clear the slate and start all over again. How sad for the medical profession.

But how amazing these families are... to choose life over convenience. And to share their sweet little ones with us. They're not mistakes to be trampled. They're blessings to be treasured. All for His glory.

Finally on the way...

I am totally stealing this idea from Joel...

But props to our man, Steve! He's FINALLY publishing the long-awaited, ApParent Privilege.

Directed at parents, Steve's second book brings the message that his first (reThink) did to Student Pastors... Parents are the ones with the mandate to bring up their children in the Lord.

We parents love a good youth staff, you know we do. Goodness, Steve and Tina are two of our best BFFs. And Blake and Amber... love y'all. And Joel and Gwen... love y'all too... and are praying for you and your new addition. But much as we love all of them, we certainly don't expect them to be on the front lines of teaching our kids to love Jesus. That's our Deuteronomy 6:5-9 job.

That said... we can use all the back-up we can get, though. And surely our boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places to have the privilege of being in this particular local family of faith. Lockin' arms where we're blessed and being equipped by the best.

So... check out Steve's book... it'll be out in the coming weeks. You can pre-order it here, directly from Inquest Ministries.

To hear more from Steve, check out his blog: www.lastingdivergence.com.

Sooooooooooo Cool!

I've been a fan of Crosswalk.com for a long time, but they are fast becoming my BFF for Bible study.

Check out their Bible Study Tools! You can register and use your own eBible. Pick a translation... any translation. Highlight it. Flag passages. Add notes. Wow!

And devotionals... everything from Greg Laurie and Adrian Rogers to Proverbs 31 Ministries to Streams in the Desert to John Piper. And much, much more!

And articles galore... curious about...
Growth trends of Megachurches?
Finances, faith and Wall Street?
How to talk to your teen about premarital sex?
What do Iron Man and Batman say about us?
A review of Chris Tomlin's new Hello Love?

You can go mobile with Crosswalk on your phone or PDA.

Bless their little techie blogger hearts, they're even on Twitter.

Happy Birthday, Zack!

On the morning of September 12th when he woke up, Zack was still my Baby Boy. Sometime during the day, he grew up ... a lot. By the end of all the festivities, he announced that I could no longer call him "Baby Boy." Maybe "Little Big Guy," but the jury's still out on that one.

As with all kid-birthdays in our house, the birthday person gets to say when presents get opened. We opened presents at 6:15am.

Coolest present... UNC football uniform.

Train 'em young. It partners well with Jimmy's favorite lullabies to sing, "Jesus Loves Me" and "Hark the Sound."

Big present... portable DVD player.

He wanted an iTouch. I'm still amazed at what life looks like for the youngest child.

We re-evaluated his list. A DVD player seemed like a MUCH better option for the hours he spends waiting for his siblings to finish their activities.

It came complete with his favorite DVD of all time: Tom & Jerry in The Fast and the Furry.

Oh yeah... his birthday was also Noah's Ark Day at school

(aka... Mom Stayed Up All Night for Two Nights

Making a Zebra Costume Day... Why do I do these things?!)

Since special snack was in honor of Noah's Ark,

we took birthday cupcakes for dessert at lunch. They were yummy!!!

After school we took some of our buddies from school

and Zane to Adventure Landing. Kelsey wasn't with us.

She was on the 9th grade field to Washington, DC.

There really should be a picture of Zack here, but of course, right after I got this shot of Zane, the batteries in the digital camera died. There are some nicely blurry shots on my Facebook that I took with my BlackBerry.

We left Adventure Landing and went to school where we tailgated with our buddies, the Blaises, before the home football game.

Zack was wrestling with his buddy, Stephen, and they rolled over a fire ant hill. Ouch! Stephen seemed fine, but Zack got a whole lotta bites.

Benadryl.

We went home right after halftime, once all our friends were reunited with their parents.
Zack was SO SLEEPY!

It was kindergarten-2nd grade's Night with the Knights.
They were handing out free megaphones.
I'd still like to have a word with the person who had THAT idea!

We concluded the birthday festivities on Sunday evening with our family birthday celebration.
Gramma, in a stroke of genius, had Omaha Steaks deliver Zack's family birthday dinner to our house. She ususally takes us out for birthday dinners, but this summer when allergy testing revealed Zack's allergies to tree nuts and shellfish, Gramma decided we'd better play it safe and not go to any of the tree-nut-and-shellfish-serving places we usually go to for birthdays.

In this picture, Zack's blowing out the candles on his Target birthday cake.

This cake is the Omaha Steaks Triple Chocolate birthday cake.
Kelsey and I really enjoyed it. It was oh-my-goodness awesome!

I highly recommend at-home birthdays where all you have to do is stick stuff on the grill and wait for it to cook. We had a great visit with Gramma and Zack LOVED his birthday dinner, delcaring it the best birthday dinner ever!!!

Thanks, Gramma!!!

We are blessed that sweet Zacky is part of our family. He is a child of grace in so many ways. The story is long and involved as he arrived in our lives after one of the most difficult seasons of spiritual testing we've ever faced.

The easiest way to summarize the blessing is to tell is his actual birth date. September 12, 2001. The Day After. As I sat there, holding this precious baby in a world that had been turned upside down the day before, I grieved for the loss of lives and innocence, but I rejoiced in the gift of God's goodness and grace. The world would go on. It still belonged to Him. Revelation 4:11.

Happy Birthday, Zacky!!! We love you!!!

Noah's Ark Day

Wisdom, courtesy of tobyMac...

Sometimes you find encouragement in the coolest places...

Do you know
Where you're going to
Do you like the things that life is showing you
Where are you going to
Do you know

This goes out to my man his name is True Blue
For all the nights that your daddy spent away from you
For all the days that I told you "Maybe next time"
Laid up in my studio consumed with my next rhyme
What kind of lyric can I drop to make you think twice
About the trials that you're gonna face in this life
I can lullaby even point you to the Most High
Prayin' every little thing is gonna be alright
Someday my love isn't gonna be fulfilling
Try as I may, human love it hits a ceiling
But I can sow a seed say a prayer this I know
If faith can move a mountain
Surely God can make His spirit grow in you

(Chorus)
Do you know
Where you're going to
Do you like the things that life is showing you
Where are you going to
Do you know
(repeat)

This goes out to my little man t Mac
For all the junk you've been carrying on your back
My burden's easy and My yoke is a featherweight
And this you know yet you're still a man of little faith
What can I do to spring your knowledge into how you roll
Don't you have My spirit and the letters that My people wrote
My love stretches farther than your mind can conceive
I've got a hand full of grace, a heart full of mercy
Someday My son you're gonna find My love fulfilling
Hope as I may you've got to turn and be willing
I'll take you as you are and just to add a human touch
I gave to you a son so you can understand the Father's love for you

(chorus)

God will light your path if you want Him to
Just emphasize His lead and your dreams will come true
From the Father to the Son to the multitude
He's the lover of your soul spiritual baby do you know

Questions...

As I toodle through the day I realize that there are grand and not-so-grand questions that pop into my mind. Below are a few of them from this morning. If you have answers, please share. Or if you have the same questions, I'd dearly love to know I'm not alone!

1. Why are there so many dead cicadas in our yard?

2. Why can Blogger not remember my user name and password even though I click "remember me" each time I log on?

3. Why can Facebook always remember Kelsey's email and password but never mine?

4. Why has our dog been throwing up once a day for the past week since she had a tummy bug?

5. Why does our dog throw up when I'm the only adult in the house to clean it up?

6. Why do men not notice stinky smells?

7. How do males in general navigate their way through a totally trashed house and not notice it's totally trashed?

8. How is it that an adolescent male can shoot repeatedly 2" wads of paper into an 8" trashcan and never miss, but the same male can fling dirty laundry towards a 24"x24" laundry basket and never hit it?

9. Why does the soap always magically divide into two pieces whenever the youngest boy uses it?

10. How come, no matter how closely you follow the Lego directions, there's always a piece left over when you build a Lego Racer?

11. Why is it a teenager on a school trip calls only once and it's when you're in a place with no cell phone reception?

12. Why is our society all thumbs-up about "spirituality," ambivalent towards "religion," and fired-up against Jesus?

13. How is it that the same people who champion the glass-shattering role of SuperMoms can declare a tough, energetic, bright wife and mother to be unfit for public office because she's a wife and mother?

14. How can you dust an entire house in an hour and by the time you get back to where you started, there's already a light coating of dust again?

15. Why does eveyone ignore Mommy until she starts to blog, answers the phone or closes the bathroom door?

16. Why can't they make zebra-patterned croc flats?

17. Whose idea was it to put blueberries into a Krispy Kreme doughnut?! And if they weren't blueberries, what were they?

18. What makes boys think that girls want to sword fight? And where are all the other boys who could be swordfighting with them?

19. Why would a 7 year old slice a popsicle with a sword? On the carpet? In the bonus room?

20. What makes Christian school teachers who advocate family values give so much homework that, to complete it, the students have no time to spend with their families?

21. Why is the fact that there have been no further known terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11/01 proof that we can let down our guard instead of proof that what we've been doing for the past 7 years is working?

22. How does Charlie Gibson know what the Bush Doctrine is when the guy who first introduced it says there's not a clear-cut definition?

23. Why do pictures upload to Facebook quicker from a mobile phone than a desktop computer?

24. Can is possibly get MORE humid?

25. Where is Tracey's blogspot?

OK... that's enough for now. Otherwise I'll have to add #26. (Why is blogging and Facebook inherently more interesting when you're supposed to be going to the gym to work out?)

Why I like Sarah Palin

(You're going to have to humor me on the picture. I'm not a hockey mom, but I have been a soccer mom, so I'm going with the closest thing I've got!)

I like Sarah Palin. As several of my more politically astute friends have pointed out... now I have someone to vote FOR and not just someone to vote against. Don't get me wrong, I totally respect John McCain for his service to our country. But he's done about as many things that I don't like as he has things that I do like. So where do you go with that? Please don't get me started about Barak Obama. I think the less said, the better for me on that one. Joe Biden? Remember I'm an English teacher at heart. I still can't get past the plagiarism thing.

So... hummm.... since Huckabee suspended his campaign, I haven't felt the call to bumper-sticker-up my car for any one candidate. Until now.

See... since we live in a representative Republic, our leaders are supposed to represent us. Mike could have represented me well, but John McCain went out and found someone who may even represent me better. Goodness gracious... she could have been one of my BFFs in high school.

I can't even begin to tell you how many pictures of her there are on the Internet, but I can say that I had the same haircut she did in high school and even wore some t-shirts with equally funny-but-not-if-you're-the-candidate-for-vice-president-funny sayings on them.

She has convictions about the sanctity of life. Not the kind of convenient never-happened-to-me convictions, but the kind that you follow when you get an abnormal amnio result and the theoretical "What would you do?" becomes your reality.

When she announced Bristol's pregnancy, the focus wasn't on how many voters she would win or lose, but on the heart of her daughter and her daughter's fiance.

By her own accounts and backed up by those who know her well in Alaska, she is very much in love with her husband, Todd, and looks to him as her hero.

She stands toe to toe with special interests and fights for what is right. Her constituents in Alaska love her for it. That fighting spirit appeals to my maternal instincts, for some reason.

When she took office as governor of Alaska, she led by example. Who on earth has a cook in their house to fix their meals for them... except maybe Oprah? She let the cook go. And part of her security detail. And the fact that she sold the governor's jet on eBay... rock on Sarah Palin!

You know, I won't presume to say I know exactly what path the Lord has for our country. He hasn't given me any divine revelation or special insight. But what I do know is that I am sick of partisan politics and ugly spins. And my prayer for this election hasn't been for one party or the other to win, but for Truth to shine forth and deception to be revealed. I long for a candidate to stand up and say, "This is how it is. Parts are lovely. Parts are ugly. But this is it. And this is what we're going to do."

And somehow, in my heart of hearts as I listened to her speak the day John McCain announced she was his choice for vice presidential running mate, I couldn't help but think of the phrase, "for such a time as this."

Non-Event... Yay!

Sometimes when we get all geared up for the Weather Event and go buy bottled water and batteries and peanut butter, we get a little bummed when the event turns out to be pretty much nothing.

Not this time.

Oh, it was pretty much nothing. We went to bed in our own beds on the second floor of our house that is surrounded by massive oak trees. We heard rain outside. Maybe wind. To be honest, I never heard a howl at all. Not like Fran.

We woke up to the sound of rain and the rustling of leaves in the trees more akin to a fall breeze than even a summer thunderstorm. It was actually kind of nice.

The power didn't even flicker enough to make the digital clocks flash. The candles are still in their cupboard. The flashlights are ... well, I'll have to get back to you on that one - Zack's been playing with the flashlights, so I can't honestly tell you where they are. The extra gas Jimmy bought for the generator can eventually go into the lawnmower.

Kelsey and I were supposed to volunteer to work at a volleyball tournament at school this weekend, but they canceled it because the visiting teams didn't want to travel in the storm. Jimmy, Zane and Zack had some yard-projects lined up, but they can't work on them because it's too wet and muddy.

So here we sit, the five of us (and Pepper who has made a splendid recovery from her tummy bug, thankfully), in a house fully-stocked for 3-5 days of not being able to go anywhere, with no projects to do and no events scheduled on our calendar. Ah, how nice!

Thanks for passing through, Hanna! In our busiest season of the whole year, you have been a very welcome visitor!

P.S. If you're curious what happened at the NC coast... especially at our own Carolina Beach ... here's a video made by one of the residents. I guess when you're shooting toppled planters and blowing paper in the height of the storm, it's not too bad!

CB during Hanna

Waiting for Hanna

Well... here we are again. I love weather. I love weather that's out of the ordinary. Hurricanes. Thunderstorms. Snow storms. I love it.

Of course, I do not like the destructive effects of severe weather one bit. But I do stand in awe of the power of our God when I see how fierce weather can be and I think that He is so much bigger than it all. I know it's odd, but in some weird way, big weather events are very comforting to me.

I have been manic in preparing for extraordinary weather events pretty much all my life. So rest assured that our household has bottled water and batteries and even a crank-handle NOAA weather radio. We have pretzels and peanut butter and bread and tuna. But seriously, who in this house would actually eat tuna without mayonnaise and salad cubes? No one. Yet, we have it. And all our important documents are on hand. And extra meds and bandages.

I have no idea how a community water system functions in a storm. City water was slam-dunk easy, though, in Fran and Floyd. I mentioned to Jimmy that we might need to run water for bathing and he, bless his heart, pointed out that we have pool and don't really need to bathe inside. We can just take soap to the pool.

OK... Ewww...

So... all systems are "go" and as of 5:30 this afternoon, we'll all be sitting in the house, waiting for Hanna to pass through.