Thankful

I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is 2 days away. I am so glad that I didn't commit to blogging everyday about being thankful this month because I would have failed miserably if I had made that commitment. I also realized that I could not make my only post about thankfulness be about indoor plumbing. :-) So, I am back to write about some more of the important things for which I am thankful. In no particular order, here are the top 10 things that I am thankful for.

1. MY LITTLE ANNA BANANA-I am so blessed by this little girl. She is so much fun and such a joy to Mark and I. It is so neat to see her personality develop and hear the things that she says every day. I am so thankful that God saw fit to bless us with such a sweet and amazing little girl

2. MY AMAZING HUSBAND MARK-He is great husband, father and he puts up with me and all my craziness. That alone should make him eligible for sainthood. Love you honey!

3. MY WONDERFUL SISTER MINDY-She is awesome and does things like bring back cool gifts from trips she has been on (which makes me like her even more) and offers to come for a visit just to watch Anna so Mark and I can have a date night (which doesn't happen too frequently.) She is super cool and I try not to introduce her to many of my friends because people will like her better than me.

4. MY MOM, MARILYN-She is a great friend, grandma and mom. I am blessed to have her as a mom.

5. MY EXTENDED FAMILY-I come from a huge extended family and they are the reason that my favorite movie is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" because it there are so many similarities between the family in that movie and my family.

6. MY JOB-I love working at Living Stones Church and serving as the Children's Minister. I have a great team of people I work with and can't wait for some of the things on that are planned for the immediate future...both in Children's Ministry and across the church as a whole.

7. MODERN TECHNOLOGY-I love my gadgets...my Nook, Smart Phone, Laptop, GPS, HDTV and all the other technology out there. I still have a hard time figuring out how radio and TV work, but I love it all!

8. FOOD-It is obvious by looking at me that I enjoy food and lots of it. However, I am so thankful that I have ample food to eat because there are so many people who have a food shortage.

9. MY FRIENDS-I have a great group of friends who are supportive and encouraging.

10. THE CREATIVE GENIUS OF WALT DISNEY-So many of my favorite things in the world were created by Walt...particularly the Happiest Place on Earth in Florida (which as a side note if anyone wants to give me a Christmas gift, a trip to Disney is a great suggestion.)

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Love You More

I am loving this booksneeze thing. I get free books to read for an honest review on my blog. Awesome!!

The most recent book I have read is "Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter" written by Jennifer Grant. As the title implies, this is the author's story of the journey their family took in adopting their youngest daughter from Guatemala.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I felt that the author was very honest of regarding the joys and struggles that the adoption process brings. As someone who is currently considering whether adoption is right for our family, this book has caused me (and my family) to think through some things that I had never even thought to consider in regard to the adoption process. There were also some interesting facts that she outlined regarding adoptions in different countries. I also liked the fact that she was very clear that adoption is not something for everyone and outlined many different ways that people could obey the Biblical command to care for orphans.

Even if adoption is not something that is being considered by someone, I think this would still be an enjoyable and captivating read. It was an interesting and inspirational story. I would highly recommend this book!

Happy Reading!!

Indoor Plumbing!!

How is that for a blog title? :-) I know lots of people are doing the 25 days of thankfulness on their Facebook/Twitter/Blog this month and at first I considered it, but knowing how busy my life is I decided not to commit to an every day post about Thankfulness. Not that I don't have a million things to be for which to be thankful. I just know that I am super busy and it is already a day into November so I am already behind. :-) Anyway...I do plan to post several times regarding my thankfulness this month...just not committing to any number of days.

Let me share a story....Over the weekend, we had a big plumbing issue come up in one of our bathrooms. So as not to pay the ridiculous weekend rates for a plumber, we were able to stop the immediate problem and just not use that bathroom. We scheduled the plumber to come out yesterday at 12:30. However, he didn't arrive until 4:45 PM which was a huge frustration because I had to rearrange a meeting and leave work early to meet him and then he didn't show up until 4 hours after the scheduled time. He had to access the pipes through a wall in the kitchen behind the fridge. Because the fridge had to be moved, it blocked the stove and I couldn't cook dinner (which was not such a bad thing) so we decided that we would probably have to eat out. I had to be somewhere at 6:30 but we couldn't leave the house to go out until the plumber left. We were hoping to avoid fast food, but ended up at Taco Bell at 6:05 (probably the grossest of the gross as far as fast food goes) where I inhaled my 2 fresco tacos and ran out the door to my meeting at 6:30.

You may be thinking that this sounds a lot more like complaining than thankfulness. However, once I got over my frustration and thought about it, I realized just how lucky I am. I have not one, but two, working bathrooms in my house. I don't have to dig a hole, go to an outhouse or anything else. I can get water from several different faucets in my house any time I want. There are people all over the world who do not have clean water to drink AT ALL and I have enough water in my house that I can completely close off a bathroom and it not phase me at all.

So, there you have it! I am thankful for indoor plumbing. Maybe not the most conventional thing to be thankful for, but I realized yesterday how much I took it for granted.

My Job is More Fun Than Your Job

As most everyone knows by now, I left the world of public education after 17 years of teaching to become the Children's Minister at Living Stones Church. I am having a blast as the Children's
Minister. Sure there are some things about the job that aren't so fun.... like having 12 volunteers call you on the Sunday they are scheduled telling you they can't come because their hamster has a hangnail (A slight exaggeration...I have the best volunteers in the entire church and if they call me on a Sunday it is usually a VERY GOOD reason.)

Here is why my job is so fun:

This is what I did in my office yesterday. You may be saying...what is this crazy mess? It is pasta that I colored. How many of you can say that you dyed pasta in your office yesterday! :-) I am working on curriculum supplies for the next month in Kids Kanyon and an activity in the curriculum for our preschoolers called for colored pasta. I typically don't LOVE putting all the curriculum supplies together or creating things (a job for which I will be recruiting volunteers in the near future.) So I am not sure why I enjoyed doing this so much, but I had a great time. I am not usually a fan of crafts involving macaroni, but I am excited about this one. I know the kids and the volunteers that get to use this pasta are going to love it as well. Want to find out what it is used for? You will just have to stay tuned or volunteer in the Explorers class on November 6th to find out.

Anyway, I thought this was fun project that I may try to do with Anna in the near future. If you are interested in doing it yourself, here are the directions (which are totally stolen from Orange's First Look Curriculum)

SUPPLIES NEEDED: Pasta (I used Ziti, but any kind would work depending upon what you wanted to do with it), Food Coloring, Isopropyl Alcohol, Galloon Ziploc Bags, Newspaper.

1. Fill the Ziploc Bag 1/3 full with the pasta.
2. Add 5-10 drops of food coloring. You can add more or less depending upon how dark you want the color to be
3. Add 1 Capful of Isopropyl Alcohol (which means you probably shouldn't eat the pasta once it is colored. :-)
4. Zip the bag and shake until all pasta is colored.
5. Spread colored pasta on newspaper to dry.
6. Once dry, store in Ziploc container.

The pasta could be used or all sorts of craft projects or educational purposes (sorting, counting, color recognition, etc.)

Can anyone top the fun factor in their job? Happy Coloring!!

I WANT TO BE HERE!!

Enough Said! :-)

Heaven is For Real... for Kids

I received my second book from booksneeze.com to read in exchange for a review. The book I chose this time was "Heaven is for Real for Kids" as told by Colton Burpo to his parents Todd and Sonja Burpo. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am sort of addicted to my Nook Color and digital books. However, I chose to receive this book in hardcover because it was geared to children and much prefer a "real book" when it comes to children's books.

I really enjoyed the book of the same title "Heaven is for Real" so I thought I would enjoy this as well. I also thought it would be helpful for me as a parent and as a Children's Minister.

I thought the story and the message were great. The authors did a good job of breaking down the concepts tackled in the adult version of the book to level that is appropriate for children. The main theme that ran through the book was that "Jesus really loves children." That was one of the things that struck me the most in the adult version and was glad that theme was predominant in this book as well. If there is one message that I want Anna and the kids who are involved in the Children's Ministry at Living Stones Church, that is it.

This book also passed the 2 year old test as Anna sat through the whole book as I read it to her. She loves books, but if she doesn't like one she will try to close the book and get another one. I know she didn't understand everything in it, but it definitely engaged her attention. It seems to have details that would engage children of a wide array of ages. There is the basic story that a younger child would enjoy and has some additional details that would engage older children.

If I had one criticism of the book, it would be the illustrations. I know they were done by a professional artist and I am not at all an expert of fine art. They were also based upon the observations that Colton had based upon his visit to heaven. However, I felt that the illustrations were not very clear and sort of felt like 1970's Sunday flannel graph pictures. I would say that while the illustrations are not great, the book is still worth reading.

I am glad that I own a copy of the book and think it could be a great resource for Anna when she begins to ask questions about the people in our family who we have lost in her short life (my dad, Mark's mom and Mark's brother.)

Good Intentions??

Lately, I have been realizing how my life is filled with good intentions. Before you begin to think how amazing I am with being well intentioned, you need to know that just because I have "good intentions" doesn't mean that I follow through on those intentions. I am super frustrated that I seem to be noticing more and more how I have good intentions to do something and those things are they type of person I want to be, I still have a hard time following through. Let me give you some examples:

• There is a couple we know who I had intended on inviting over for dinner when they were newly dating because we thought we might have some things in common. We finally did have this couple over, about 3 years later. The couple is now married for over a year and expecting a baby. At least I followed through on this one, but there are many others where I was not so successful.

• I have an acquaintance in the area who is a friend of my sister who was basically a single mom for over a year while her husband was deployed to Afghanistan. Many times throughout his deployment, I intended to call/email/facebook her to see if I could bring her a meal/babysit/help with household tasks and yet I never did it.

• I have intended to work out and lose weight as a part of my goals for 2011. I have not really lost any weight, my workouts are inconsistent and it is almost the end of October.

• I want to be more frugal and have intended to eat out less and cook more and yet we are still on a first name basis with many of the servers at our favorite restaurants.

• I have great intentions as far home maintenance, cleaning and improvements and even made a chore chart for Mark and I to follow but it has gone by the wayside.

And the list goes on and on...Just blogging about this because it is frustrating to me that in so many areas I don't follow through on things in a way that I would like and that is not the person I want to be. I know that I should probably cut myself some slack because I work full time, have a two year old, a marriage to work at and am super busy in general...but I need to be proactive in being more than someone who has "good intentions." I also realize that many of these things are things that I am not very good at (cooking and cleaning) or don't enjoy very much (exercise and eating right) which makes it harder to follow through on my intentions, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. Maybe by putting it out there in cyberspace, I will be better at taking action rather than just being well intentioned.

Any suggestions on how to have more than just good intentions??