the back door

yesterday i spent a couple of hours cleaning out my file drawer. i needed to sort out old stuff and make room for new. as with any kind of cleaning out project i enjoyed the treat of seeing what i had kept so long ago. in 2002-03 i was the publiciy coordinator for MOPS. i stumbled upon several newsletters i had saved. the following is something i wrote for the january 03 newsletter. i thought it seemed fitting to share at the beginning of this season.... "it amazes me how much young children can teach us as adults. while i busy myself with trying to teach mapboy his numbers, letters, how to dress himself, and how to play nicely with his toys mapboy is busy teaching me more and more about myself. Things such as how little patience i really have, how cleaning the house doesn't really matter, and that it is okay if more water ends up on the floor than in sink while doing dishes. However, mapboy taught me a big lesson this Christmas that i hope i never forget and may even c...

i don't know how many of you are following america's next great band. and honestly i wouldn't choose to watch it myself, except for the connection to denver and his band. it is truly amazing to watch them perform and say "i know them. i really do. he goes to my church (when he is home that is!)" so anyways....hubby and i are almost always home on fridays so we have been following the show. thankfully, several nasty sounding bands have made their exit. but this is what i observed this week: 1. the first judge always asks why they didn't do a different style of music. now, i have not yet heard him ask dot dot dot or the little boys to do something other than heavy rock music. i haven't heard him ask sixwire to change their sound either. hmm....so why should denver??? 2. this feeds off the second...i think it shows how incredible denver is as a musician that he can take a rolling stones song and turn it into a big band swing arrangement. i'm n...

saturday night was quite moving here at our house. after a pretty non-adventurous day we were doing bedtime. i was tucking in mapboy when all of a sudden he starts repenting for his sassy talk, bad behavior, bad attitude and tells me he understands i'm just doing my job and that his is to obey. he tells me i'm the best mom around and how thankful he is for me! wow!!!! did he really just say all of that??? i give him a big hug and kiss and head to princess... princess sings her songs and starts to pray. as she prays, and can i just say this girl covers everything in her prayers, she ends with asking Jesus to come live in her heart!! now, being a mom, i'm a little overwhelmed here. we hadn't talked about this at all with her. i mean she has heard it i'm sure and we talk about Jesus all the time. so when she says amen i ask her all sorts of questions and sure enough - she totally knows what she did and why she wanted to do it!! i come down stairs all weepy. ...

this morning i had the honor of helping in princess's preschool class. they were doing their christmas gifts. i painted atleast 35 hands bright green and never got one drop on their clothes of mine!! amazing!!!!!!!!!!

yesterday is known as black friday around the good old usa. i find it so odd that so many people get up at the crack of dawn to shop for bargains. i find it even more bizarre that people would camp out for 2 days in front of best buy??? hubby commented they are waiting to buy themselves something - most likely - not for someone else. there are several things that make me quite sad about black friday... 1. the whole camping out for 2 days. if i calculate that right, that means they spent thanksgiving sitting in front of a store being greedy. harsh, i know, but in reality isn't that what it is. i mean if you are that desperate to get the bargain of the year that you would not spend time with family and friends on a special day to give thanks for what you do have, then yes, you are being greedy. 2. on the news last night there were clips of fighting and shoving and other things that did not demonstrate holiday cheer!!! what is the fun in shopping if you are afraid of getting ...

my dear friend(in fact a roommate from college) over at mauch meanderings has been blogging about her walking plan. she bundles up all of her kiddos to walk her oldest to school. i believe she said it was a half-mile to the school which means 2 miles a day. well, i too walk my child to school. okay, so i walk him to the bus stop. but...the year before he went to kindergarten i had great plans of walking him to the neighborhood school 1/2 a mile from our house. i, too, thought it would be a great way of getting my exercise in. well, we built a new school which forced redistricting and we ended up at the new school which is more like 3 miles from my home. so now he rides a bus. princess and i enjoy the walk with him every morning. i'm too worried about weirdos to let him walk it by himself. it is only 1 1 /2 blocks, but not visible from our house. so each morning we make the treck with him and in the afternoon oscar our dog makes the treck with us for pick up. so i figur...

this past week i read through velvet elvis by rob bell. i actually started it a few months ago and it got put aside, but last weekend i picked it up and started again. i could hardly put it down!!! some of you out there have read it already, others have heard about it, and others are trying to figure out why i cared about a velvet elvis!!! this really has nothing to do with elvis...but everything to do with living for Christ. like all books i read; i take some and leave some thoughts. this one was quite a challenge. a friend of mine described it as a look at how to make christianity relative to this generation. she didn't seem to totally agree with that and although i see where she comes from, this book totally put it in perspective. bell goes to great lengths to pick apart the scriptures and explain them for that time period. phrases that i didn't really get are in there b/c it relates to the jewish customs of the days. when he would say something it clicked with them...