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Friday, December 28, 2007

Looking for wickedness...


Matthew and Grace were playing in the kitchen. David walked past them and said of Grace (who was being somewhat ornery), "I see the wickedness in you." Next thing we knew, Matthew was right in Grace's face looking intently saying, "Where is the wicked? I don't see it." He proceeded to follow Grace around for the next few minutes as David and I tried to control our laughter.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Toys at the Table

As I recall, I was never allowed to play with toys at the table, not even at Christmas. However, as our family sat around the dinner table this evening, presents still lingering close at hand, Matthew was playing with the tape measurer he received this morning. He wanted the tape to stay out but hadn't quite figured out how to slide the button to do so. He passed the tape measurer to me to elicit my help. I promptly dropped it in my mashed potatoes. I had just finished telling Matthew that it wasn't a good idea to play with toys/tools at the table because we could get food on them. However, I had a solution...I began to lick the potatoes off of his tape measurer. At which point Matthew said, "Mom! Don't lick my tape measurer. It's not yummy!"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...thank you, Captain Obvious. :P

Saturday, December 15, 2007

A New Tradition

Making Gingerbread Houses...with the Conlogue's :D


The Boys' House


The Girls' House

Friday, December 14, 2007

A Word About Pictures

Well, we've updated photos again. Hope you all are enjoying them! To the right you'll see pictures from our first decent snow, cookie baking, etc. Some of them are self-explanatory...others you might wonder about...just click on them and you'll get a bigger picture with a title description. Hope you like them.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Batting Unbelief

Our church is beginning a DVD study in January on Battling Unbelief by John Piper. The material is essentially an abridgment of his larger work, Future Grace. I must confess that my initial reaction to the prospect of doing this study was not very enthusiastic. I was trying to trust the judgement of the leaders in our church, but I honestly didn't think unbelief affected me much. Will I ever overcome pride in my life!?! So far, the studies I have most benefited from in this church have been the ones of which I least thought I "needed" to be a part. I suspect that will be no less true of this study. Always an overachiever (and having read some reviews and learned more about the study), I bought the larger work (Future Grace) so that I wouldn't miss anything. Here is a quote from the introduction:

"Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds out some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Which means that the power of sin's promise is broken by the power of God's" (Future Grace, pg. 10-11).

So...Mr. Piper's thesis is essentially that we sin because we do not believe God's promises will deliver more happiness than the "happiness" that sin promises us. Well, in that case, I suppose there is much unbelief in my life because I sin many times each day. I am definitely looking forward to participating in this study with the ladies in my church. It is always such a joy to seek to apply God's word to our lives and grow together! I'm sure I'll be sharing more little nuggets from this book in the future.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Lessons From A Charlie Brown Christmas

As I was watching A Charlie Brown Christmas with my children the other day (for the first time in my adult life), I was aware of some serious attitude problems among the characters. Carolyn McCulley notes one such set of negative attitudes in this 2005 post:

Lessons From A Charlie Brown Christmas


It's a great reminder to, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). We tend to let our guard down when we think something is safe, but nothing is safe in this fallen world. For those of us who are watching this movie, we need to use it as a conversation starter in our family on many counts. Just as real Biblical characters are not perfect, these fictional characters are not perfect. May God open our eyes to the things that don't please him in this film so that we can guard our hearts and those of our children.

Carolyn also posted on A Charlie Brown Christmas this year. You can read that post here:

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Friday, December 7, 2007

How Can I Pray for You?

Last month (11-10-07), our pastor encouraged us to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. (You can download the message by clicking here: Living in Light of the New)

Following that message, our care group had a fruitful discussion. We came to the conclusion that asking shallow questions of others (i.e. how are you doing?) tends to result in getting shallow answers from others (i.e. fine). Asking more thoughtful questions (i.e. how can I pray for you?), tends to facilitate deeper communication and thus, deeper and more Biblical fellowship.

Along those same lines, is an article by Don Whitney about asking people how you can pray for them and that question's influence on unbelievers:

Ask People How You Can Pray for Them

Thank you, Tim Challies for putting this link in your A La Carte section. Though simple, it is definately worthy of attention. Most of us want to find ways to share the Gospel with others but don't find the door open. Don gives us a great way to open that door!

So my friends, how can I pray for you?

Thursday, December 6, 2007

A Christmas Classic

Here's an old Christmas classic reminding us of the true meaning of Christmas (I know this isn't really about our family but I did show it to the kids last night ;)





Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Snow Days


Well, here we are enjoying the beautiful snow. Not a whole lot of it just yet, but enough to make a few nice snowballs...hee hee hee :D

Monday, December 3, 2007

Meet Captain Plunger

Well, tonight was our annual care group Christmas party. We always have a great time of fellowship, food, and gift exchange. This year, we did things a little bit differently which worked out for most everybody...

Anyway...

David ended up becoming a very happy Captain Plunger thanks to Stephanie's creativity.



And I...well, I became Captain Bingo-lass thanks to...that's right folks, zero bingos (I think the game was rigged! ;)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and great laughs among friends. We'll have plenty of fodder for future jokes...and speaking of laughter...Steph put some pictures of our fun night on her blog: Laughter is Good Medicine