A Time For Every Season....

Snow, Snow, after two days of snow flurries and the weatherman predicting rain, the Lord sent Drew and I a special gift wrapped in white. This afternoon the fog overtook the sunshine and a blanket of snow poured down on us. It was beautiful, magical, like something out of a fairytale. The streets were empty, people still hard at work, I awoke Drew from his slumber with the promise of a great adventure. The flakes embraced the sky, a small Texas blizzard -- Drew screamed and wiggled out of my arms towards the window. A confused look crossed his face, then I told him we were going to play in the snow! He smiled, "No, mommy no?" "Yes little one," I replied, "It is snow. Your very first snow!" The flakes were thick and clean -- a sharper white than any of my fresh linens. A mantle of white covered the streets in rare silence. The birds retreated in unison, only silence and thick flakes remained, the cats ran too and fro, the dog ran down the vacant stre...

In kingdom work, we make a mistake when we start with ecclesiology. We should start with Christology. Our first approach should be "How can we live out the love of Jesus in this society?" It's not "How can we start a church?" One Sunday Pastor Bob Roberts asked everyone in the congregation at NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, to invert the collar of the person in front of them, find the label, and call out the nation where the shirt was made. China, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, Dominican Republic, and Spain were all mentioned before someone finally said "USA."The shirts on their backs came from all over the world. It was Bob's way of reinforcing his recurring theme of glocalization, synonymous with Thomas Friedman's "the earth is flat." It describes today's seamless integration between the local and global, a comprehensive connectedness produced by travel, business, and communications. "Glocal is as important a term...

First, Drew turned 2! I can't believe my little boy is so big! Drew had a great Birthday! He wanted cheese pizza with pineapple for dinner, which he ate on the "special family plate." He got to stay up late, until 8:30pm, and play with his trains and cars. He was so cute; he would line all the cars up on the floor by the chair, then pick them all up and move them to the fireplace, then once lined up, move them again to the couch. This went on for 45 minutes as we all watched and giggled through the process. We started asking him "Drew, how old are you" to which he now responds TWOoooooooo! We are having a family party with balloons, presents, and a train cake on Sunday. I can't wait for Drew to see the Thomas trains we bought him, he will be so excited to play with them! Drew is quite the busy little man weighing in at 24.5 pounds at 2 years of age! We are having a hard time keeping him still so he can gain some weight! That and his favorite foods consist of...

We made it back from our Anniversary cruise! It was wonderful, relaxing, and way too much fun! There is a lot to share and about 800 pictures to rifle through. I will be slowely adding pictures to the slideshow on the front page if anyone wants to look. John and I had an amazing week together, enjoying taking naps, swimming with the tropical fish, snorkeling, climbing the ships giant rock wall, relaxing in the sun, reading, being entertained, eating, eating, and more eating! It was so nice not to worry about anything for a whole week. We both had a hard time thinking how our vacation could have been better. Our real lives have come back to us, we are both busy with work, Drew, laundry, and life. Kitty missed us more than Drew; she moped around for the whole week were were gone. You should have seen the excitement in her eyes when she saw us for the first time. She yelped, jumped, and ran around in circles. Drew also gave us big smiles and tons of kisses. I can't get out of Drew...

1/3/2007 2007 has already started the changing process; yesterday we sold our 1996 Jetta, it was my last tangible memento of life before marriage and child. I will say I miss the car, but not the life it represented - freedom, independence, stability, isolation, selfishness. Family is such a wonderful blessing from the Lord and I am so blessed to have a fantastic one! My husband is so wonderful, the week before Christmas he spent all his time off remodeling the pantry so his Christmas present (a new freezer) would fit and not look too out of place. What a guy! (Thank you David too - a wonderful brother in law!)Then, a few days ago we finally went to Petsmart to get the dog a new ball because the last two had fallen down the drainage ditches outside the house. Would you believe that within 10 minutes of playing outside with the dog I managed to get it lost down the drainage ditch! I was really mad at myself for loosing a $7.00 ball. Ugh! Sweet John, got a flashlight and crawled into t...