Search Results for "feed"
I feel a little silly for this but…
Posted by: | CommentsI don’t do much surfing on the web and I just accidentally came across a thing that google has that I didn’t know about. I’m sure all of you already know about it (hence the title of this post!) but at igoogle you can have a whole page with all kinds of cool gadgets! They have news feeds, calendars, to do lists, games, weather reports. How cool!
Yeah, I know… I don’t get out much! haha!
Christmas=Jesus, not commercialism
Posted by: | CommentsI just read a fabulous post by Karen over at Only sometimes clever. I started a comment on her blog and it ended up growing and growing so I thought I’d just make a post out of it myself.
Christmas in this country seems to have made a very sad turn. It has turned into almost complete commercialism and has lost the focus of what it truly is – the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. This has really been on my mind a lot recently and as I read Karen’s post it spurred me into writing something about it.
Every year I try to buy gifts for loved ones that are meaningful and will be special for them. In a society where everybody pretty much has everything, that’s getting harder and harder to do. Now our family isn’t by any means wealthy and we don’t have a lot compared to a lot of people in this country but compared to the world we have SOOOO much! Sometimes I feel like I end up buying gifts just for the sake of buying gifts – so that everybody has a present to open – a present that is from me/us. I can’t tell you how much I hate that. To me it cheapens the meaning of Christmas. Sometimes I just want to do away with gift giving so that we can focus on the real reason for the holiday. Not because I don’t want to give, but because giving just for the sake of giving is kind of meaningless. I would rather so something more meaningful.
Another reason I’d like to do something different is that we just don’t have the money this year. This is a tough time of year for my hubby’s business and things are pretty slow right now. God always provides what we need but that doesn’t mean enough extra to go out shopping! I don’t want to go out and rack up a bunch of debt in order to feed the materialistic notion that everybody has to get a bunch of presents in order for it to feel like Christmas. I don’t feel that God would be pleased with that either. I am really wondering what we can do that’s meaningful and not just pure commercialism. It’s sad to me that the focus at Christmas time is presents rather than Jesus – the ultimate Gift!
We have always taught our children that Christmas is not about receiving gifts nor is it about us – it’s about Jesus and what He did for us. It’s about love and giving. They have always understood this and been very thankful for whatever gift they have received. We have never been the kind of family that spends thousands of dollars on Christmas (or even hundreds for that matter!) but we have always bought gifts for our children – things that they asked for, things that we knew they would like, things that would be fun for them to have. But they are getting older now and have so much that I even feel like buying something for them is being done just for the sake of buying something. It’s hard to think of things that they need or that will add value to their lives. But then part of me will feel so guilty if don’t buy much and they feel sad and left out.
I kind of feel like I’m just rambling at this point. I guess the point of this was just to share my thoughts about Christmas and how it saddens me that it’s become so commercial. I’m praying that God will help our family celebrate this Christmas season for the right reasons and do things in a way that are pleasing to Him.
What about you? Do you have special ways that you celebrate? Ways that help keep the meaning of Christmas alive?
What I'm thankful for
Posted by: | CommentsThis has been a very stressful week and it seems like all kinds of things are going wrong. I was just sitting here thinking that maybe I ought to list some of the things I’m most thankful for so that I can remember how truly blessed I am – no matter how many things seem to keep going wrong. So here goes:
1. I am thankful for a God who loves me so much that He sent His Son to save me.
2. I am thankful for my husband. He brings so much joy to my life – he has such a great sense of humor and makes me laugh all the time. (He’s also not to bad to look at! 
The older he gets – the more of a hotty he is!!)
3. I am thankful for my children. I can’t even put into words what a blessing they are to my life. Sometimes it amazes me that my heart can contain as much love as I have for them. They are two of the best kids on the planet – no question about it!
4. I am thankful for my sweet puppy. He has brought so much fun and happiness to our lives and I am so thankful he’s a part of our family.
5. I am thankful for the library. I LOVE to read and it’s so fun to go in and come out with a bag full of books to read – all for FREE!!
6. I’m thankful for the internet. Not only has it opened up a whole new way from which to learn but it’s allowed me to make some very dear friends online.
7. I’m thankful for my house. There’s more to the story than I will write for this post but I love our home and am so thankful to have it!
8. I’m thankful for my camera. I love to take pictures of our family so that I can look back at them and remember all the things we have done over the years. It is so fun to see pictures of the kids when they were so itty bitty and cute! (They’re still cute but you know what I mean. )
9. I am thankful for God’s creation. There are times that I am just driving down the street and I’m just overwhelmed by the beauty that God has put before us – in the sky, in the land, in the creatures of the earth. It’s an amazing thing!
10. I am thankful for music. I can’t imagine life without music. I love to listen to worship music, hymns, and contemporary Christian and praise God with my voice. I also love to listen to my daughter play the piano because she has such an amazing gift for playing. (I also like to play the piano myself but I don’t do it as much as I should.)
This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are MANY other things that I am thankful for but those are my top 10 for today I guess. When life gets down I really need to try to focus on all the blessings God has put in my life and not focus on the bad things. Life is too short to worry – not to mention God tells us in His word not to worry!
Matthew 6:25-34 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Computer woes
Posted by: | CommentsWell, it looks like my computer is toast. (I’m borrowing my husband’s again for now.) We took it up to have the Geek Squad look at it and they said something about a motherboard and a monitor and a connection or something. Honestly, it was all Greek to me. I had to have them (my husband and the geek) translate for me several times and I still don’t really get it. But I do understand that it’s no longer functioning – my computer is toast. So now we’re trying to decide if we want to try to find a new motherboard (sounds like some kind of spaceship or something to me!), buy a new laptop (because that’s what I had), buy a new desktop (because those are cheaper), or share this computer that I’m using right now (because that would mean not spending any more money right now). There are pros and cons for all of the above so we’ll just have to figure out which has the bigger pros I guess. The good news is that they could do a data back up and get all of my information off of my computer so that whatever we decide we can put it on the new one. At least I hope that’s the good news – the guy said it should take a couple of hours and that he would call us when he was through but he never called back today. I’m hoping it’s just because he got busy and didn’t get it finished and that there wasn’t a problem retrieving my information.
I feel so disconnected from everyone!! I was just on my google feed and had over 100 posts to read from all you crazy bloggers! You have all been busy just writing away while I was away from blog land. I was able to read some but I’ll have to catch up on the rest later. I hope everyone is doing well. I’ll be kind of sporadic on here until we can figure something out so I hope everyone has a great week!
Tagged again! :)
Posted by: | CommentsMichelle over at My Bloggerings has tagged me to fill out this meme.
What websites (blogs) do you consider essential. After all, you are what you read. So just copy and paste the questions and fill in your answers.
What websites do you check out almost everyday? Gmail, yahoo mail, google feeder (to read all my blogs)
What websites do you check out weekly? Paperback swap, eBay, our local library site, technorati, Plugged In online
What websites do you check out monthly? the sites where I pay my bills, mapquest, my volunteer page, worldnet daily and student news daily (more frequently if I remember and have time).
I have lots of other sites that I go to occasionally but I don’t necessarily visit them regularly so I didn’t list them
What blog do you consider essential reading? I have 36 blogs on my reader and I like them all.
RULES: Here are the rules, fill out the meme and pass it along to at least three (but preferably five) people. When you post your answers on your blog please link back to me, or at least the person who sent you this totally awesome meme.
I’m going to have to cheat on this part. I just tagged 10 people yesterday with another meme so I’m not going to tag with this one – I don’t want people mad at me! If you like doing these though (I do but I know not everybody does!) then please do it and then let me know in the comments.
Brilliant ideas needed here
Posted by: | CommentsAs any of my regular readers know, I am a stay-at-home mom. That means all the work I do is for free. No pay at all. Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money in the world. I’ve known since I was a teenager that being a wife and mother is what I wanted to be. I was never interested in being a career woman – not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just didn’t want that. I wanted to get married and have babies and stay home and take care of them. I’ve had three jobs (regular – go to work for the day and come home with pay kind of jobs) outside of the home since my oldest was born and none of them lasted long at all because I just couldn’t stand being away from my kids. My spirit just ached when I left them and I couldn’t wait to return home to them. And it wasn’t that I had to leave them with less than desirable care – my mother-in-law kept my daughter (an only child at the time) when I had my first job, and when I had my other two jobs both of the kids were able to be home with Daddy because he was home when I was gone. But it just didn’t feel right to me.
My husband and I have talked about me working part time again somewhere to make some extra money but it’s harder than ever now. Not necessarily for the same reasons though. I still want to be here for my kids and provide everything that a mommy provides but they are much older now and are capable of taking care of themselves to a certain degree. The problem is that I really don’t want to leave them to fend for themselves – I just don’t feel right doing that – and with the schedule we have it would be almost impossible to find an employer willing to hire me for the days or hours I would be available to work. Can you just see it: “Um, yes, I can work this day on these hours, that day for those hours, I’m not available for this, this, and this, day.” I don’t think so! haha! Not to mention I don’t think it’s worth working if I’m working at a job that pays minimum wage or just over for ten to twenty hours a week. Not that I couldn’t get a job that pays more – I have a college degree and could probably find something but I’m willing to bet that it would have to be full time work and I would have to be very committed. That’s just not going to happen. My commitment is to my family and there isn’t any job in the world that I would let get in the way of that.
So, I say all of that to say that I’m trying to figure out some way to make some extra money. We have some extra things that need to be paid for – home repairs, extra bills (in other words those evil credit card bills), doctor and dentist appointments are needed but the money isn’t there, braces for my daughter. You get the idea. Life!
I do want to say that my husband is an excellent provider and business man and I don’t want to detract from that by this post. It’s not that he’s not doing his job – he is and he’s really good at it! It’s just that life has gotten so darn expensive!!! I mean it costs close to $60 just to get a tank of gas and when you live in a city as large as we do that doesn’t last long! Milk is almost $4 a gallon now!!! Our grocery bill is much more than it used to be – especially with a soon to be teenage boy to feed! 
My husband makes more money now than he ever has before but as expensive as things have gotten it just doesn’t go very far. He’s even thought about doing something else that would pay better but I don’t really want him to do that because he’s been building his company for years and while it doesn’t make tons of money it does provide for our basic needs and he’s very good at what he does.
My point in all this is to find out if any of you have any great ideas. I’ve tried to think of things and have had some ideas but they just don’t fit me. I tried to sell Mary Kay for awhile (LOVE Mary Kay stuff!!) but I was a miserable failure and ended up costing us more than I earned! I’ve thought about trying another one of those kinds of businesses – like Pampered Chef or something (LOVE that stuff too!!) – but I’m sooo not a salesman and so I don’t know if that would be a mistake as well. I want to be able to do something that is flexible and that I can do from home if possible so that I’m here for my family. So does anyone have any brilliant ideas??
Some questions for you
Posted by: | CommentsOkay, so I’ve done a few posts with different fonts and different colors. Here are my questions – is it driving you crazy? Is it harder to read? Would you rather have me use the regular font and no color? Do you even care? haha! I’m guessing that those of you reading it through a feed don’t even see it the same way anyway (at least I think that’s the way it is) so you may not have even noticed. I don’t want to make it frustrating to read my blog though so let me know what you think.
eBay trouble
Posted by: | CommentsI am so mad right now I could spit nails!! (Is that even the right expression??) I buy and sell stuff on eBay – mostly school books. I sell the school books we are through with and use that money to try and find the books I need for the next year. Well, I just sold some of our old books this month and I just got an e-mail from one of my buyers saying that the books I sent her came in a package that was destroyed, the books got water damage, and that bugs were crawling out of the package! Give me a break!!! That is SO NOT TRUE!!! First of all, how gross is that – bugs crawling out of the package??? Would the post office even have something like that in a delivery truck? GROSS!! Second of all, I package things very well and make sure they are taped up to the extreme. I know the post office isn’t always careful with stuff and things get destroyed though. But that’s why you buy insurance if you want to protect your purchase – something she didn’t do!!! She filed a claim with Paypal trying to get her money back so now I have to go through a dispute claim and see what Paypal decides. I’m going to be one ticked off individual if they give her the money back. She’s brand new to eBay and I’m wondering if she’s just trying to get out of paying for it or something. I’ve had people lie about stuff a couple of other times on eBay – those times it was only on the feedback so at least it didn’t hurt financially. Sometimes I think I oughta just quit eBay! It just hasn’t been that great anymore.
Who's to blame
Posted by: | CommentsI receive an e-mail from Focus on the Family’s Truth Project regularly and this is what I received today. I thought it was worth passing on.
VT Massacre — Who’s to Blame?
Although man is deeply complex, that doesn’t preclude the reality that certain absolute statements can be made about him. The biblical Christian worldview understands that man’s heart is “desperately wicked” (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9).
Without the direct constraint of civil law and order or the indirect constraint of cultural pressures (or a few other more complicated reasons), man left to himself with no constraints or negative consequences, will act out those sinful desires.
When a culture no longer believes this simple truth claim about man and accepts the notion that his heart is basically good, outbreaks of evil bring forth a rush to find something else to blame, for it certainly couldn’t have its genesis in the individual heart of man.
So it happened with Monday’s tragic slaughter of Virginia Tech professors and students. I listened to a number of broadcasts and read a number of articles and almost all of them are in the mode of finding blame outside of the one who pulled the trigger.
This is the natural tendency when one believes that the murderer acted, not because of an inherently sinful nature let loose, but because something external to him brought sufficient cause to tip the goodness of the individual into doing something wrong. We are hearing an earful of this sort of thing. Not that we would deny the impact of secondary causes, but those secondary causes should be viewed in light of how they fail to restrain or bring about internal restraint of those natural tendencies.
There is another belief system at work as well and that springs from the Hegelian and Marxist perspective. This notion holds that all progress results from a crisis. In its classical form, Hegel used the conflict of the “thesis” and the “antithesis” as the necessary catalyst for giving rise to the higher and more desired “synthesis” — a new truth.
In its modern, socialistic form, this perspective views any crisis or conflict as not just a necessity for progressive change, but it provides the “opportunity” for progressive change. That is why every tragedy or crisis in our culture today breeds an immediate feeding frenzy for those who seek to capitalize on it.
Sometimes, when a natural one is lacking, a false “crisis” will be crafted to achieve the same results. We have some of those in process as we speak. So, we should not be surprised to see the Virginia Tech tragedy used to gain ground in various political and personal agendas. Monday night I heard it used as evidence in the debate regarding illegal aliens. Yesterday, it was lack of gun control and a myriad of other things. Believe me, the blame game will continue until it has pointed the finger at everything and everyone in whom someone wants radical change.
It is very easy for our culture, once it buys a contrary view of man and life, to use a horrible and tragic situation like what occurred this week as just the evidence needed to prove one’s point, whatever that point may be. Single acts are rarely sufficient to prove a truth claim and never sufficient to prove a trend. Christians should not use them in that manner either.
However, from a biblical worldview perspective, single acts do provide continued evidence of that which is already established as absolute truth. Although all of the tragic details have not yet been uncovered, let us not lose sight of the simple reality of it all. Evil lurks in the heart of man and it will erupt when it is allowed to act unconstrained.
When it does, that eruption can be breathtaking in its cruelty and leave, in its wake, not only physical destruction, but emotional devastation. I am dealing with the loss of a very dear friend at the moment and I sympathize deeply with those who are struggling to cope with this senseless and heartbreaking tragedy. You are the object of my sincere prayers that God will bring His peace to you in the midst of your sorrow.
Del
