Just a quick note

I forgot to tell you all that I may not post on Mondays. We don't watch any TV on Mondays, or use the computers much for non-business items. We also don't use our phones after dinner. Instead we play board games or have a family devotion. This week, both children had sports practices after school. It's J Term, which is a week of fun classes for the kids at school, and Mikey signed up for half day gym classes. So, he's in gym class for over two hours, then has practice for an hour and a half. By the time we got home and had dinner last night, both kids were wiped out and went to bed early. We also don't get home until 6:20 or 6:30. I can see now our crockpot is going to get a workout. There is no practice or any type of after school activity on Wednesdays so the families can go to church. I'm looking forward to that. I don't know what/if church we will go to tomorrow. Michael is really tired and needs some rest. I think we might watch the movie that's based on Dinner with A Perfect Stranger. We really loved that book, and Michael wants to have a party with non-dairy versions of the food. Yep, that's my boy. He loves to eat. lol

I'm really enjoying my Bible reading. Yes, reading through the Bible in 90 days is intensive, but wow! For example, isn't it ironic that Abraham and Issac both lied about their wives being their sisters, then Jacob was deceived concerning two sisters? Maybe it's just the odd way I tend to connect things, but that just really struck me. And yet, they are in the bloodline of Jesus! We can mess up, and still God will use us mightily. I know that's a great comfort to me. I mess up on a daily basis. Sorry if you thought I was perfect. I'm far from it. FAR from it. I'm just happy He sees me as worthy to even keep around.

Well, I'm off to bed now. Tomorrow is a slower day, and I'm looking forward to that. Thursday is another crazy day, including Katelyn's 16th birthday and a game she's cheering for. We're going to celebrate on Saturday instead, I think. It's up in the air as we try to coordinate schedules with family. I'll be taking pizza and dessert to Katelyn and her friends on Thursday at school. I've promised to try to not embarrass her unless I show up with pizza. hehehe I'll be embarrassing her. It's my job as a parent. Now, just how am I going to do that. I think I'd have to sleep with one eye open if I showed up as a clown. Maybe baby pictures posted around the school....

Freezing my toes off!

Yep, it is officially cold. Very very cold. I'm readay for a little warmth now I don't mind winter, but sub-zero wind chills are too much. The woodstove version of heat wars is going on. Put another log on, too many logs are on, let the logs burn down, the logs have burned down too far. and all the while, I'm still cold!

The Bible reading is still going well. It's more intensive than I thought it would be. Going through it in 90 days is quite a challenge. But, I know that it is going to be so fruitful. It already is. And the whole point of trying something new is to stretch yourself past the point of comfort to see what you can accomplish. I love reading the Word!

Today was a quiet day. I had a few errands to run, and we're getting ready for the start of school tomorrow. And sports. YEAH! It's going to be a busy time here, but that's the way we like it. So, let the insanity begin! Oh, did I mention that Katelyn turns 16 this week? She's counting down the days, and I'm trying to forget that she is growing up. She's become such a beautiful composed young lady. It seems like just yesterday that her father and I were married, and this girl on the verge of womanhood. Now, she's almost grown! I'm not ready. lol

I'm going to finish watching Masterpiece Theatre and head to bed. I want to just burrow under my blankets and not come out until the mercury rises above 25deg!

What a busy day!

We're finishing up the downstairs area from all the flood damage. The floors are being done, and we just have the walls to finish. John is still working on the floors this late at night, and I'll be running to the store tomorrow for more supplies. But, it looks great and he is working so hard! I've been busy working on the upstairs. I have to reorganize just about everything. I need to set up our spaces to work for us. They haven't been, and stay messy. So, it's time to organize, purge, and clean.

Today's reading for the Bible in 90 Days is Genesis 17-28. This is already so much fun! I love reading about the geneology of our faith. Imagine, the people I'm reading about right now are in the bloodline of Christ, and all of us! Have you ever stopped to realize that? Yes, you can claim direct lines to Noah and Adam. I think that's so cool. Imagine that family tree!

Well, it's short and sweet today. It's already past midnight and I'm very tired. I need to sleep. I've battled insomnia a lot lately and am thankful for fatigue tonight. I need the sleep. So many people I know have had sleep issues lately. I don't know what's going on with that, but we are all very very tired people! lol

Night all!

Happy New Year! Goals for 2010

Hello! How are you all doing? Me, well, we've had an interesting end of the year. We've had flu, allergic reactions, and all sorts of stuff going on. I decided around the beginning of December that I needed to just regroup and concentrate on family for a bit. I picked January 1 to be my reemergence from my self-imposed exile. So, here I am. I'd like to be able to commit to posting every day on my blogs. But, honestly, my schedule is truly packed all ready. We'll see how that works out. We are now a two sport family. Katelyn has cheerleading and Michael is on the basketball team. Practices are at two different times in two different locations. I'll be living in the car most afternoons. So, what's a girl to do? I'm planning my days around this time in the car so I can use that time to read and do Bible study. Hopefully, I'll be able to use that time to work on some of my other goals for the year. Notice I say goals, and not resolutions. I think goals are much more attainable and quantifiable than just some vague resolutions.

Here are my goals for the year. I've broken them down into the 7 areas of life that we all have. I also have a couple unnamed goals, that I cannot share until I have actually started them.

Spiritual Goals:
1. Read through the Bible in 90 days
2. Consistant Bible study, either through books or tape series
3. Prayer every day, and not just when something is going wrong.
4. Be more open about my faith and share
5. Church every Sunday (we're looking for a church home right now)
6. Write that books God's put on my heart - I can't give details yet. This is one of the unnamed goals (what they are about and all that).

Physical Goals:
1. Lose weight! Have a healthy BMI of 20-22
2. Follow THM eating plan. No dairy, no red meat, no processed sugar, just whole healthy foods. For more information, visit www.marilu.com
3. Exercise 5 times a week
4. Complete a marathon
5. Get asthma back under control without any of the icky meds that make me sick in other ways.
6. Look more feminine. The whole jeans and t-shirts thing is getting tired. I want my hubby to look at me and say WOW!
7. Get my Hidradenitis Suppurativa under control and help spread word and knowledge about this rare and painful disease.

Family & Home Goals:
1. Make sure my husband knows how much I love and value him. He is a hard working incredible man of God. Plus, he puts up with my craziness and makes me laugh. lol This includes date nights, fixing meals he likes and are healthy for him, and lots of other little things.
2. Be a good parent to my children. Not a friend, but a parent. Be there for them, support them, make sure they are growing in their faith and will grow up to be Godly adults. Use chore lists, family nights, model the behavior I would like them to follow...
3. Keep the house straight all the time
4. Family dinner every night Sunday - Thursday.
5. Decide about redecorating and get moving
6. Keep in touch with my extended family and friends better. Not just emails, but letters and phone calls too.

Business Goals:
1. Get a job to meet some short term goals we have right now.
2. Continue to grow my business
3. Keep track of every penny spent
4. Revise business plan
5. Revise website
6. Work more with the organizations I belong to.

Friendship Goals:
1. Become more involved with church women's groups.
2. Keep in better touch with my friends and spend time with them.
3. Host teas at my house from time to time.

Mental Goals:
1. Read through classics and not just Jane Austin over and over (yes, I love her work!)
2. The unnamed goal. I promise, I will share later. I've been dreaming about it and God has given me a way to start working on this goal soon.
3. Work on organization. Use my planner and Blackberry to keep up my efforts.

Ministry Goals:
1. There is a group I know that I'm supposed to be involved in. I need to get working on doing so.
2. Being more involved in church fits in here as well. But also, involvement with non-Christian charities is important.
3. Blogging more consistently. I'll share more about this later, once I work out all the details.

I think that's enough for now, don't you? I pray everyone has a great night. I'm going to be starting my reading through the Bible in 90 Days challenge tonight. I couldn't find the Bible at my local store, so I will do the reading in my own Bible with the schedule. Today is Genesis 1-16. I'm going to order the Bible online though. I just can't wait! I know that there are many people doing a challenge with this starting today. I'll have to link up with them, maybe tomorrow. May I just say I love my Bible reading?! I can't wait to see what fruit a concentrated reading like this will bear.

Chele

For the month of October

I'm making a concerted effort to blog on a daily basis. Don't know how well that's going to work, but hey. I can try. So, I'm posting this on all of my blogs tonight, October 1st, and taking it from there. Life is no more less hectic now than it was before. I just have a lot to say! lol You know me. I talk a lot.

Ramblings on Reality TV

Let me preface this entry by saying that I know what some of you will think. Yes, all 11 of you. lol I haven't lost my mind, or changed my views on God, life, or coffee. I'm just saying that sometimes Christians can be so heavenly minded that we're no earthly good (as Oliver Wendell Holmes first said). There are times I feel that by being so seemingly strict and unbending we're driving people away from the love and light of Christ that we Christians are supposed to be.

I've recently started watching reality TV. Yes, I am strange. I've never seen an episode of American Idol. I could care less about Big Brother. And until we got the expanded channel offerings, I only watched cooking shows on Food Network, as my hips will attest. We have the big channel package before, but all I watched then was Food Network, Clean House and when my mom was in town, Bridezillas. lol The rest of the shows our family watched were on regular channels, so we got rid of the other channels. The basic package had Food Network and Hallmark, so I was good. lol Now, we have many many channels. Yes, we watch approximately 7 of them now instead of the 4 we did before.

There are two reality shows that I watch now. They will be a surprise to you. They were a surprise to me. I watch Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood and Gene Simmons Family Jewels. If you don't know, the basic premise for both shows is following a famous family through their everyday lives. There's the mom, dad, and two kids. All sorts of situations, both normal and only-the-rich-and-famous-would-have-this-happen type stuff. Now, real or contrived, what comes through in both of these shows is the love that the families show. I do know that there are many people who would say that it's all editing, or that they are only showing what they want people to see. Yes, I'm gullible. I think that there is a true deep and abiding love with these couples and their families.

For those of you still with me, I bring these shows up for a reason. I've heard people say that these shows are trash or what a "proper" Christian wouldn't watch. These same people watch movies and TV shows with content that surely is more questionable. They listen to music that talks about these same situations, they use language that is dicey, they wear clothes that are the wrong kind... Anyone else see this as hypocrisy? Seriously folks. Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed, although not married, have a beautiful family and home, are devoted to each other and have lasted a lot longer than other marriages in both Hollywood and the rest of the world. They are hard working and take time to not just write a check to charities, but actually give of their time. Obviously, I don't agree with some of their lifestyle choices. I've never actually heard a Kiss song, at least that I know of, but I've heard it is kinda out there. The make-up is enough! lol But why throw out the good values being shown? I know people who would say I'm not a real Christian because my hair is too short (it's a little past my shoulders) or because I buy store bought bread sometimes. Get real!

Tori and Dean is based on the same premise. They are married with two very young children. They show the trials that all of us working (yes, even work from home) parents deal with. Finding a balance between work and family, wanting success at our chosen careers, even family relationship issues. They lean on each other, fight with each other, love each other. There's one scene that just cracks me up. Tori's infant daughter is fussing and Tori says this line about every mom does the check and smells for poo. It's classic parenting. Who among us hasn't had to do that smell check. My son is 11, and instead of smelling for poo, I'm now checking that he puts deodorant on his smelly man-funk pits. That's as real life as you get! As with Gene and Shannon, Tori and Dean are not Christian and don't espouse Christian views. But they are committed to their marriage (or in Gene and Shannon's case, long term relationship) and their family. They are real life people living extraordinary lives. Tori and Dean's arguments about Dean's motorcycle racing reminds me of fights with my husband about his computer games. Um, yeah, we no longer fight about that with my blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and on and on. lol

All too often, we Christians throw away great opportunities to share with the world around us. We spend too much time trying to witness to each other that we forget we are supposed to be lights to the world. That would be the world of NON-Christians. They are not going to be won over by our Christian-ese language. They are not going to be converted by repeated thumps over the head with our Bibles. And the last time I checked, a forced salvation isn't a real one. As my husband says when I'm trying to get him to do things my way, agreeing with a gun pointed at your head isn't real. (Kidding! I don't really use a gun. It's a frying pan.) The world is going to run in the opposite direction when we are negative about everything that they do. If you can't find common ground to start a dialogue, then you're just talking to yourself.

Here's the point of this long rambling post is to say that if you are serious about trying to model Christ and show Him to the world, remember, it was the sinners He dealt with. None of us are perfect, and we shouldn't try to impose our own prerequisites when God doesn't require any. Do you remember who you were, what you were doing in your life when you heeded God's call to you? I remember where I was.

I used to party. I mean, get drunk, hang out in the club, act stupid partying. The stories I could tell! I met my first husband while pledging, don't remember that, then met again at a party, don't remember much of that, and didn't remember what he looked like when he showed up for our first date. We dated for a year and a half before I became pregnant and we thought we should get married. The next year, I was saved after realizing what a horrible mess I was in. Fast forward six years later. We were divorced, our son was living with me and seeing his dad on weekends. I met and married my husband in four months. Seriously. We met in January, married in May. And I've never been happier. That story is for another post. Talk about God working out things!

God worked (and is still working) on me in tremendous ways. It took me many years to stop partying and going to clubs. It took the death of a friend to get me to stop drinking. My driving, which was legendary for it's awfulness, is now much improved. I know what a speed limit is! And I follow it! My temper, which once led me to park my ex-husband's car in the middle of the front lawn in January, in Michigan, in two feet of snow, is now under control. Imagine if that first person who told me of God's love had tried to do it by saying how wrong I was in the lifestyle I was living. I have no doubt that I would have been living that lifestyle a lot longer if that happened. Instead, the person who first planted that seed met me where I was. She didn't go clubbing with me, but she didn't tell me I was going straight to hell either. She was a friend. She was honest and real and that, more than anything, made me crave what she had.

I'm not going to start writing letters to try to convert Tori, Dean, Shannon, or Gene. I'm not going to start preaching on street corners. I'm not going to be Suzy Sister Christian with the perfect family, perfect house, and perfect bundt cake. I'm me. I'm someone who still listens to secular music. My husband calls it noise, but that's kinda what I think of that rock stuff he likes. lol I'm someone who's house looks more House Lived In than House Beautiful. Shoot, I'd love to have a housekeeper cuz I hate cleaning (hint hint John!). I am guilty of neglecting my family at times for business, and vice versa. But you know what? I have real relationship with people and am open about my faith. That's where God will meet the world. More people have been saved by craving what others have. It's the keeping up with the Jones syndrome. Let's use that to our favor!

Plan B

There are times when Plan B is really Plan A. It's just that my Plan A is not always God's. Take this weekend for example. I was supposed to do a craft show. Things happened, and we decided I shouldn't do it. We have a family friend spending the night. Her little brother was just diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I signed up to do a marathon for Team in Training on Monday, he got the diagnosis on Tuesday and started Chemo on Wednesday.

Now, she is spending the night with us, relaxing and de-stressing. The show I was supposed to be in? Well, it poured all day today. It would have been canceled due to rain anyway, and I would have lost inventory, time and sales. I've been able to test a few new recipes, which I will post on my other blog. More than that, we were able to minister to a teenager dealing with a serious illness in the family. See, my plan A wasn't the important one. God's plan A was so much better.

I'm heading to bed soon. I want to get up and make pancakes for breakfast tomorrow for John and the girls. Maybe I'll get pictures of those BEFORE they eat them all. lol