Why curl up with a good book when you can do this?
photo caption: all is well.
FavoriteDaddy reading The Hobbit to PinkGirl last night.
look who survived Thanksgiving
I happened to look out my window a few minutes ago and discovered NINE turkeys in my front yard, including a male who was displaying his feathers.
This is why I LOVE living where I live. Smack in the middle of a middle class suburb, but backing up to a pond and river.
And none of these photos were taken with a telephoto lens. They walked right across our driveway, just a few feet in front of FirstHusband, the camera man. And they were NOT quiet.
Volcanoooooo (a sixth grade science project)
Here’s how PinkGirl’s volcano science project turned out yesterday:
If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember FavoriteSon’s volcano project. Here’s an excerpt from that blog post:
We end up at Michael’s craft store with four packages of quick drying clay, a terra cotta pot and . . . a rocket engine. Yes. Michael’s sells rocket engines. FirstHusband is smiling and FavoriteSon is explaining how there really IS a type of volcano that explodes like that . . . The boys spend all morning Saturday wiring and soldering. Then they go into the backyard to test it before they make a terra cotta pot LOOK like a volcano. It works. It explodes. I look at FavoriteSon and say, “When you get sent to the office on Monday, give them your dad’s work number so he can explain how that’s perfectly safe.” . . . Then it’s tested again, this time adding sand to the top of the volcano so it shoots dirt up into the air and looks even more realistic . . . either FavoriteSon will be suspended or he will get an “A” on this project. (postscript: he got an “A”)
So. This time, explosives are NOT an option. PinkGirl has the same science teacher FavoriteSon did. No playing the “I had no idea” card. But PinkGirl wanted “a BIG explosion.” How to do that without ignition? FirstHusband wanted to buy a portable compressor, but his attempt to justify the expense by coming up with other things to do with it after making a volcano explode?
FAIL.
So my father (SuperPappy) suggested the shop vac reversed. The lampshade idea came to me during a severe allergic reaction to crafting after my husband said the words “paper mache” to me. We picked out a dirty, torn lampshade and got a 25% discount. Final Sale. No returns.
No problem. Crafting avoided.
As you can see, the explosion was a HIT. The ash went higher than the fence.
Here’s the written report PinkGirl wrote to accompany the volcano shown in the video:
“Volcanoes are amazing things of nature and only God can create them. Still for my project I tried my best and I also had fun while doing it. From deciding what type of volcano mine is or what type of eruption it will have it was a fun learning experience that I would love to tell you about.
The First thing I did was paint the lampshade (which is my volcano). It was actually a lot harder than I thought it was going to be because I had to mix paint to find the right color. The second thing I did was cut a hole in the box big enough for the pipe. Then I cut the top of the lampshade out with bolt cutter. (It was awesome!) After that I measured and cut the pipe to the right size with a hack saw. (My dad helped a little for this part but I did cut with a hack saw.) Next I glued the pipe to the adapter and cut the small pipe to the right size and glued it to the adapter and the elbow of the other pipe. Then I put another hole in the side of the box and put the side pipe in it. Next is my favorite part. I put coal in a bag and crushed it with a hammer. After that I poured the ash and coal in and covered it with saran wrap. Then I painted the box green and put the “Snow” on the volcano. The last step was decorating it with little touches to make it look better.
During the process of building my volcano I learned all about Composite volcanoes and plinian eruptions. Composite volcanoes are made out of ash, tephra, and lava. Plinian eruptions are violent and have lots of ash and poisonous gasses. Mt. Saint Helens was a composite volcano and had a plinian eruption.
I always thought a volcano just meant lava and smoke but I now understand that volcanoes are much more complicated than that. God must have had fun designing and creating volcanoes. He is a very creative God who has an amazing imagination. Volcanoes are dangerous magnificent things that create new land, give us dazzling treasures, and really open our eyes to show us how marvelous our world really is. I can only imagine what other planets are like.
a good Christian life.
Honored to have had the privilege of delivering this message to a group of women at a Brunch this past Saturday morning. This video will give you a preview of the book I’m writing. If you’ve got 8 minutes and 27 seconds, check it out.
answers.
[the following is an excerpt from the book I’m writing]
Answers to prayer come in all different shapes and sizes – and times. God has definitely answered my prayers in ways I didn’t expect. Some answers I would quickly and easily describe as blessings, some answers I would say were blessings disguised as trials. Sometimes, I would tell you God didn’t answer my prayer at all, but that may or may not be true. It may just be that I didn’t get to witness the answer.
Yet.
God has answered my prayer by blessing me with wisdom and imagination when I’m smack in the middle of a seemingly unsolvable problem. But He’s also taken a job away from me that, in retrospect, I can see was time to leave and never would have let go of on my own. He allowed me to struggle through a 7 year relationship plagued with distrust and heartache, but in retrospect, I can see that my distrust of that person kept me from sleeping with them and saved me for someone who still tells me he’s crazy about me after 22 years. Years ago, while my husband and I were house shopping, we were confused and disappointed when the two houses we put offers on didn’t progress to a sale. Today, we count it a huge blessing that we didn’t entangle ourselves in additional debt at that time in our lives. One of my son’s friends has an amazing ability to dribble and shoot a basketball equally as well using his right hand or his left. By watching him, you’d never know that he broke his right arm when he was younger and spent months learning to play basketball with his left hand because his right arm was unavailable. When he broke his arm, I’m sure he and his family thought it was a bad thing, and in the immediate, it was. But in the long term, it provided a unique advantage. My sister teaches adjunct at a local community college and she was hurt and confused and worried when, out of the blue, she didn’t get a teaching contract one semester. Then over the next few months, she found herself home multiple times with very sick children on the very days she would have been teaching had she gotten the contract.
The stories are endless. Think back over your own life. What was something you prayed about that you believed at the time turned out very badly but now, in retrospect, you see was the best thing that could have happened? Can you see situations where God saved you from a negative consequence or used the bad situation as a foundation for something amazing in your life? Something God worked not only for your good, but for His greater glory?
I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true: God works in mysterious ways.
not more from God, more of God.
[the following is an excerpt from the book I’m writing]
Intimate communication with Christ through prayer can be the foundation of everything in your life: every thought you think, every idea that opens your mind, every choice you make. But when we relegate prayer to certain times and places in our lives, we limit that communication – and its influence on our thoughts, ideas and choices. We quench the Holy Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 tells us to “pray continually” and that it is “God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” These instructions aren’t directed at monks, they are for everyone who has accepted Christ. It’s possible to pray anywhere, anytime because God is with you, everywhere, all the time. It’s possible for prayer to saturate your moments and your days.
Did I just morph into that Jesus Freak with whom you avoid eye contact and cross the street to escape? Have you already tuned me out, thinking, “meh, she’s not talking to me. I don’t need to change anything. I’m fine.”
fine.
The most heinous of four letter words. Saturated in mediocrity. Reeking of average. Riding the edge of dissatisfaction and discouragement. More comfortable than a recliner and a bowl of chips in front of a 60 inch flat screen. There are some people who live their entire lives feeling fine about everything they do. There are people live their entire lives feeling fine about their relationship with God.
Fine is not what I’m going for. I. want. more.
I’ve discovered that I can have as much of God as I want, and I want more. I want Christ in every nook and cranny of my mind and heart and soul, every day of the week because when He’s not? My pursuits are just pointless exercises in ladder climbing and stuff collecting. I want my relationship with Christ to be at the center of my marriage, my relationship with my kids, family and friends, my career, my ministry.
If that makes me a Jesus Freak, go ahead and call me one, under your breath or to my face, I’m okay with the label. I’ve found the ultimate source of passion in life and I can’t keep it to myself. I’m compelled to share it. It fuels me. My relationship with Christ makes the routine meaningful, the lows bearable and the highs incomparable. God’s grace is more amazing than any song could describe, His love is illogically unconditional, His patience is unimaginably endless, His blessings are undeserved and abundant and His peace obliterates worry and fear. This is the “more” I’m talking about and there’s plenty of it to go around.
It all stems from prayer, intimate no-holds barred prayer. Naked prayer. The kind of prayer you pray when you are unashamed and want to tell God everything. The kind of intimate communion Adam and Eve experienced with God in the Garden before they were deceived. I’m writing this book because I want you to want more. To have more. More of God.
Not more from God, more of God.