Happy Birthday to Me!!! You're Invited!!!

Well, I need to start by saying I totally stole this from Mom Huebert...But anyway today is MY birthday and I wanted to invite y'all to my party.



Cool balloons huh?



Aww you guys didn't have to get me presents!!! You're presence is enough for me ;)



Time to blow out the candles!!!! Who wants cake?

Thanks for coming...

Do me a favor?

Check this out ;) I made a city...click here to add to it..you can even leave me a message there...

YAY!

They passed of course and are officially high white belts. They even broke boards!! How cool is that? I'll post pictures in the next few days.

Testing Testing...

Okies, I'm off to take the girls to test for their high white belt for tae kwon do. They are loving this whole thing and I'm glad. It's really good for them!! I'll post some pictures either when I get home tonight or tomorrow afternoon!!

Chocolate

ohhhhhhhhh I got an Easter basket ;) My mommy made it for me. I got chocolate. The little eggies, I have some of the cadbury ones that have the crunchy shell and then some of the hershey ones that are in the foil. I also got reese's ones...oh yeah. Chocolate overload...Good thing Michelle stopped by to check on me I didn't realize I hadn't posted ;) LOL!

So tell me what ya'll got?

Easter...

So the new trend in Christian circles is that we should no longer call Easter, Easter but rather "Resurrection Sunday" because that's what we are celebrating not some long dead goddess, bleh bleh bleh...which is closely related to blah blah blah...so yeah. I roll my eyes slightly, trying to act as if there's something stuck in my eyelashes and mumble Happy Easter Anyway...and move on. I thought it was interesting to read another blog right up my alley in regards to this subject...

Michelle over at In the Life of a Child posted this today, Why I celebrate Easter. Check it out, it's a good read ;)

I like immediately...

So tonight during church we discussed how when you allow Jesus into your life He gives you peace and rest. One of the scriptures we used was John 6.21, it talks about how when the disciples "willingly received Him into the boat" the storm died down and "immediately" they were at the land that they were headed toward. Now, this was the storm that is described in Matthew, Mark and Luke as well...it's when Jesus walked on the water, scared the crap out of the disciples and taught Peter that he had enough faith to walk on water too. In Matthew 14.22 - 31 it tells us that Peter went out on the water to meet Jesus but was overwhelmed suddenly by the waves and the wind and as he began to sink he cried out "Jesus save me!" and verse 31 says that "immediately" Jesus reached out and grabbed him and pulled him up. That tells me that when it got to the worst possible moment in Peter's mind, he was gonna die, he had walked all the way to Jesus already.

I sense a theme...and I want to know, where's my immediately? I also want to know where Michelle and sweet Jacqui's immediately is...and where is Melody's immediately? Oh and while I'm at it, Lord, where's Kandy's immediately? Or Danielle's immediately? There are sooo many....so very many. Lord, my heart hurts. Make it stop. immediately please would be good...

rantalicious

So, Sunday at church was rather annoying. We are a Spirit-filled church who believes in healing and all that good stuff ;) So it's not unusual for someone to give a testimony about a healing in their lives. However, I drew my "healing" line in the sand this week. A woman stands up and gives testimony that she's been ill with the flu for the last week or so and she came to church even though she didn't really feel up to it. Then in the middle of service she felt worse. She was going to leave but she had one of the other ladies pray for her and she realized, "we put too much emphasis on feelings" that's right, she's giving the rest of US the flu because she didn't want to put too much into feelings.

Those are NOT feelings those are SYMPTOMS. If you have SYMPTOMS do NOT breathe on ME or my CHILDREN or my HUSBAND I do NOT want your SYMPTOMS AT ALL! GO AWAY and STOP breathing on that microphone, ew. AND THEN someone had the NERVE to follow her story with "Praise the Lord for healing miracles" That's NOT a miracle, that's a mindset that is going to make ALL of us sick. Great, that's JUST what we need. *sigh*

Yeah. There's a fine line between clever and stupid when it comes to 'healing ministries' this story has crossed said line and wanders aimlessly in stupidville. Ranks up there with people with diabetes going off meds because they want to "trust" God to heal them.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I thought it might be fun to have a little history lesson today since, well, I'm Irish and on this particular holiday, EVERYONE is a little Irish, right? History.com has a great background on the celebrations that occur. I also got the following information from History.com on St. Patrick

St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is one of Christianity's most widely known figures. But for all his celebrity, his life remains somewhat of a mystery. Many of the stories traditionally associated with St. Patrick, including the famous account of his banishing all the snakes from Ireland, are false, the products of hundreds of years of exaggerated storytelling.

Taken Prisoner By Irish Raiders

It is known that St. Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century. He is believed to have died on March 17, around 460 A.D. Although his father was a Christian deacon, it has been suggested that he probably took on the role because of tax incentives and there is no evidence that Patrick came from a particularly religious family. At the age of sixteen, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family's estate. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity. (There is some dispute over where this captivity took place. Although many believe he was taken to live in Mount Slemish in County Antrim, it is more likely that he was held in County Mayo near Killala.) During this time, he worked as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for solace, becoming a devout Christian. (It is also believed that Patrick first began to dream of converting the Irish people to Christianity during his captivity.)

Guided By Visions

After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice-which he believed to be God's-spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.

To do so, Patrick walked nearly 200 miles from County Mayo, where it is believed he was held, to the Irish coast. After escaping to Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation-an angel in a dream tells him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Soon after, Patrick began religious training, a course of study that lasted more than fifteen years. After his ordination as a priest, he was sent to Ireland with a dual mission-to minister to Christians already living in Ireland and to begin to convert the Irish. (Interestingly, this mission contradicts the widely held notion that Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland.)

Bonfires and Crosses

Familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick chose to incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity instead of attempting to eradicate native Irish beliefs. For instance, he used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire. He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish. (Although there were a small number of Christians on the island when Patrick arrived, most Irish practiced a nature-based pagan religion. The Irish culture centered around a rich tradition of oral legend and myth. When this is considered, it is no surprise that the story of Patrick's life became exaggerated over the centuries-spinning exciting tales to remember history has always been a part of the Irish way of life.

Good News!!!!

he's doing a lot better thanks to all the prayers that were going up!! The doctor was very positive and my dad is up and moving around a bit today. He'll have a heck of a headache and a lot of muscle soreness but he is not going to need surgery or anything and he should be home by the beginning of next week!! God is SOOO good! Thank you for all the prayers!

From the hospital

He's doing well, the nurses are optimistic. We are at a teaching hospital so he'll have top notch care and the latest stuff. I'm very tired and I'm not sure where I'm sleeping tonight but does it matter?

His hands were so cold when I was in with him.

Please Pray URGENT

My dad fell on the ice today and cracked his skull. Literally. There's a fracture and bleeding on the brain, they are medflighting him to a larger hospital. I'm leaving in a few minutes to go with my mom.

I'm not ready to lose him.

Life

School is getting easier yet harder if that makes sense...I'm ok with it. We are sending the girls back to school next fall and I am contemplating getting a part time job so we can take the insurance plan from Kris' work. Right now we are on state insurance and while Wisconsin has a pretty nice insurance plan for low income families, and it's free, it lacks in a lot of areas. We already took the dental plan offered for 20 bucks a month because I couldn't find a dentist who would take the state insurance *eye roll* I could get the kids in but not myself or Kris so when we could take it we did. The biggest downside to our insurance plan is that because it's state, not federally funded, they don't pay a lot and so mental health, while covered, is lacking in variety. We have talked about it a lot and we'd really like to be able to go to different providers that aren't accepting our insurance. There is no mental health in our county except the county people and they are worthless really. Underpaid, overworked and no longer caring about the people they are hired and trained to help. So, all this rambling leads to the fact that Kris' insurance is good, but a little pricey for a one income family, if I worked part time somewhere we could afford it and that would give us more options for mental health especially. The other nice thing is that for doctor's visits, hospital stuff, anything like that we'd still qualify for the state insurance as a secondary so we'd still have no co-pays and all that. Except for mental health, and I'm ok with that.

Now, for anyone who works for the state reading this (Tracy I might be referring to you ;) ) I do know that technically these people who don't accept the state insurance won't accept us as patients with standard insurance and state back up....but if they don't KNOW you have state backup then they won't deny you ;) Yes I've figured out how to cheat the system. There is a lovely law in Wisconsin that if someone qualifies for state insurance a medical/dental provider is not allowed to charge them for their services, which means if someone does not accept the insurance you can't pay cash to get your need taken care of. How do I know this? I had a tooth that was in severe need of a dentist visit before we got Kris' insurance and I called around to at least 20 dentists trying to find someone who'd take the state insurance, no luck, so desperately I asked well, can I pay cash then and this nice lady explained it to me. So from then on I knew to ask if they took the state insurance and if not I'd hang up and call back a few minutes later and ask how much a visit would be. Yeah I cheat. I don't mind though, considering that the only pocket it's hurting is my own. This is one of the areas I hope gets looked into when the new pres is elected and gets ready to set up nationwide health care.

So tell me...what have you been up too?

Sunday Scripture...

Samuel woke up feeling funky so we stayed home today. The girls went with their dad and I'm sure they enjoyed that, they like going and watching practice for the music ministry before service starts. Shyann especially but Ciara more so now that she is playing piano.

Today I was thinking, ya know I haven't talked about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit much lately and that's not right. My world is supposed to revolve around Them not Them fitting in where necessary. So many people lean on God when they need something but not when the going is good. I think that's sad. It's not really Biblical either, we should depend on the Lord at all times and the Bible talks about how in the end the rich on earth will be the poor in heaven. It also says in 1 Timothy 6.17 "Tell those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which will soon be gone. But their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment." I think that's good stuff right there. He gives us all we NEED for our enjoyment. Now some would look at enjoyment and think 'SWEET! God wants me to have the ps3!!' No, it says what we NEED for our enjoyment. We don't need a ps3 to enjoy life do we?
Jesus wants us to enjoy Him, He wants us to find our rest in Him...

Leap year babies...

I heard the most interesting thing...did you know that people used to change the date that their child was born so that they would NOT be a leap year baby?????? Back when Doc's could do stuff like that without a hassle ;) yup, they'd have a birthday of feb 28 or March 1 instead! How weird would that be? I mean I guess no weirder than celebrating your 8th birthday when you are 32....

Just a random thought to chew on...