From back in March. While I was getting myself ready, the boys watched Sesame Street in Mom and Dad’s room.
Tag: that’s life
So my question to you is, are you a slave to a jury of your peers? Do you always have to explain why you are right? How much do you care what religious people think of you? When somebody else is wrong, do you jump in quickly to tell them so, making yourself feel righteous? My answer to these questions is yes, I do. Doesn’t that stink?
I think we would be a bit more emotionally stable to understand self-righteousness gets us nowhere, and the jury of our peers is neither an accurate or authoritative judge. It really is a waste of your time to defend yourself to anybody but God Himself. And it’s even more of a waste of time to claim any defense other than Christ crucified.
Really good read.
[Wave of the phin to Brent for the link.]
…so let’s all celebrate by:
+ jamming out to Social Distortion, Pennywise, Son Volt, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana
+ having a good laugh while watching stupid-funny movies
+ diving into a good book
+ passionately teach a group of high schoolers how much God loves them, and how they can love Him
+ show off our family through Proud Dad & Uncle Alerts
+ fill up a journal with our innermost thoughts and secrets, even if we never share them with anyone else
+ do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God
Happy birthday, bro. Love ya.
So I’m finally getting around to doing some photo processing. For Thanksgiving this past year, we spent the week with my parents at their home in the Birmingham, Alabama, area.
Click on Samuel sitting in my old high chair to see the full set.
Wow. Seven years as of yesterday.
Seven years ago, I had a great job. A career in IT.
Seven years ago, we hadn’t been in our new house even a full year.
Seven years ago, we were churchless.
Seven years ago, we were childless.
Now, I do not have a career in IT, but I do have a job: being a stay-at-home dad. And it’s awesome.
Now, we’ve been in the house nearly eight years.
Now, not only do we have a church, but that church has given me my best friend, and yet another purpose: leading some of our collegians in Bible study.
Now, we have two wonderful boys, six and thirteen months. They are absolute joys.
I’m blogging less. Twittering more. Chasing a little guy all around the house. Having fun.
It’s not all a bed of roses, but there are more ups than downs, and I thank God for all of these blessings.
So back on the first of September, a mere week after the boy started full-blown walking, I find Samuel attempting to climb atop the ottoman. So I grabbed my camera and started shooting. So far as we know, this was his first summit attempt and success.
Last evening, after arriving home from dinner, our family decided to take a walk. Our neighborhood has a small green belt with a walking/biking trail through it, the air was cool, but not too cool, and it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Our six-year-old, Davis, wanted to ride his Razor scooter. Donning his bike helmet, he did so, coasting ahead or behind us, as his pushing and balancing allowed.
At one point, while he was ahead of us, I noted his problem keeping the scooter fully upright while pushing. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that our normally right-handed son was using his left leg and foot to push the scooter along.
I verbally made note of this observation, and suggested he try switching his feet, placing the left on the scooter and pushing with his right. He tried this for a few moments, felt it was worse than before, and switched back.
My wife, thinking along the same lines as I, remarked that he hadn’t really given the right-foot push enough of a try. His reply?
“I’m just left-footed.”
Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.
To pass along Jon’s advice, “[g]ive this some time to load before watching…otherwise you won’t have smooth playback.”
In its boundless ambition, the Left understands that the character of a people can be transformed: British, Canadian and European elections are now about which party can deliver “better services,” as if the nation is a hotel, and the government could use some spritelier bellhops. Socialized health care in particular changes the nature of the relationship between citizen and state into something closer to junkie and pusher. On one of the many Obama Web sites the national impresario feels the need to maintain — “Foundation for Change” — the president is certainly laying the foundation for something. Among the many subjects expressing their gratitude to Good King Barack the Hopeychanger is “Phil from Cathedral City, Ca.”:
“I was laid off in mid-January from a job I had for 12 years. It’s really getting hard to make ends meet, but this month I got some great news. This week I received in the mail official notification that my COBRA monthly payments for medical, dental and vision insurance will decrease from $468 to only $163, all due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This is a $305 in savings a month!
“I can’t tell you how much of a weight off my shoulders this is. I am living proof of how the president’s bold initiatives are beginning to work!”
But just exactly how do these “bold initiatives” work? Well, hey, simple folk like you and I and Phil from Cathedral City don’t need to worry about the details. Once these “bold initiatives” really hit their stride maybe the cost of everything over four hundred bucks can be brought down to $163. Wouldn’t that be great?
The problem in the Western world is that governments are spending money faster than their citizenry or economies can generate it. As Gerald Ford liked to say, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” And that’s true. But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give Phil from Cathedral City everything he wants isn’t big enough to get Phil to give any of it back. That’s the stage the Europeans are at: Their electorates are hooked on unsustainable levels of “services,” but no longer can conceive of life without them.
Tony Woodlief (yes, again):
Isaiah loves books. He loves to read them, loves it when people read them to him, loves to hit his brother Isaac upside the head with them. The boy hearts books. I hope he never stops loving them, even as the world around him transitions into a post-modern funk of hyper-links and text messages and overstimulating audio-visual mind sludge. Then one day he can visit me wherever he and his brothers have finally put me out to pasture, and maybe read to me there.
Davis is getting to this point, too. At times he will decide that he’s had enough playing with his Star Wars Galactic Heroes™ figures, or pretending to duel a dragon, or building with Lincoln Logs™ or LEGO™ pieces, and he’ll plop down in the play room and “read”.
My parents instilled a deep love of reading in my sister and I when we were growing up. Weekly visits to the local library (which was about as big as the downstairs area of our current home, minus the garage) were the norm. While we’re not going weekly, Kelly and I have both taken Davis to our local library (which is larger than the downstairs area of our house, including the garage), and he loves it.
Davis will often ask for a second or even third book to be read before going to bed, although I suspect this is as much about staying up as late as possible as it is about loving books.
I’d hoped to pass on this love of reading to both our boys, and so far, it’s looking pretty good.