365 - Fire and Water

These shots were all taken during our recent visit to Arkansas.

The waterfall is Tanyard Falls - located near Bella Vista. It was a warm day, and the kids enjoyed getting wet. I also got in and waded, and I believe my older sister took numerous pictures of my backside which better not end up on HER blog.

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

The bonfire shots were made right next to my older sister's house. The boys had worked with Terry and Uncle David to gather fallen and trimmed limbs. It made a huge fire! I love the silhouette shots.

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

From Arkansas May 2010

365 - Sunday School Shots

Rebecca and I teach Sunday School together at least once a month for 1st-5th graders at Redeemer Community Church. We just started meeting in a new building in downtown Johnson City. It was formerly a huge department store. Anyway, our room is very large - but the high ceilings make the acoustics horrible for trying to teach a rowdy group of kids.

When we finish the lesson, there's always some time for drawing, making paper airplanes and playing hangman with Rebecca (who is a real favorite with all the kids in the class). On this day, I pulled out the little Panasonic point and shoot that I keep in my purse.

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

From Sunday School

High School Musical

Caleb played basketball for our homeschool group this past season, but recently he also was a basketball player on stage in JRT's production of High School Musical.

From High School Musical

From High School Musical

From High School Musical

Other than meeting tons of girls, I don't think this was a play he really enjoyed. It involved lengthy practices at least five days a week and three full weekends of shows. During one of the shows there was a storm, and the power went out. They ended up finishing the performance with people holding up their cell phones to give light.

Here's a slide show of some of the photos. The basketball players had to learn lots of choreography.

New Appliances

We are getting ready to put our house on the market in a week or so. One of the things that several realtors had suggested was to update our kitchen by replacing the white appliances with stainless steel. Terry got busy shopping (and selling our white appliances) on Craig's list, and we were able to upgrade all for just $1000. During that time, I was without a dishwasher for about three weeks and spent one LONG weekend without a fridge.

Here's our old fridge (notice the High School Musical ad - watch for an upcoming post about that):

From Kitchen

And this is the one we had for about a day:

From Kitchen

It was "cool" because you could record messages by hitting a button on the front (messages like "Don't even think about drinking my last cold Diet Dr. Pepper"), but it was very "uncool" that it wouldn't keep things cold AT ALL. Fortunately, the seller took it back (claiming that he never knew anything was wrong with it), and we got this one instead:

From Kitchen

Here's my new dishwasher;

From Kitchen

I love it because it's extra deep for pots and pans. I hardly ever have to handwash anymore.

And here's my new oven and microwave:

From Kitchen

Notice that there is a hole above the microwave where the unit was smaller than the previous one. Terry filled it in with this:

From Kitchen

Isn't that clever? I need to get some smaller chalk to use in writing messages. The only thing I have right now is huge sidewalk chalk, and it's a little hard to do lettering with that.

We got a new stovetop, too, but there are plenty of pictures of that in the post below.

365* - May Shape Challenge - Circles

Recently, I've taken lots of photos in our kitchen to document the changes there (more about that in a coming post), but without really even trying I realized I had lots of photos that involved circles - all taken in my kitchen. You'll see round coils for burners in the new stovetop, round knobs, round egg yolks, round biscuits cooking in the oven, and my favorite little detail in my kitchen - a set of cute measuring spoons given to me by my sister-in-law, Angie.

I was going to try to watermark the spoon photos and have chosen the name "Lazy Susan Photography." However, I have yet to find a font that I really like.

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

From Kitchen

365* Pride and Joy

This is my favorite photo from Rebecca's graduation. It represents pride, for sure, but also pure joy! In this case, the joy is not so much for the diploma received but because the preparations and ceremony were over and now it was time to celebrate!

From the Library of A.W. Tozer

Since I first read The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy, I have been a fan of A.W. Tozer. His reflections on God were deep enough that I would re-read them for pleasure but not so difficult that I had to re-read them just for understanding. Tozer himself was apparently a voracious reader, and this volume gave me a chance to read excerpts from writers who influenced his spiritual journey.

I loved this book! I used it during my devotional time for several weeks. Some of the writers featured were known to me (Spurgeon, Moody, Calvin, etc.) but many were saints I had never heard of. My favorite selections were from St. Anselm (who was the Archbishop of Canterbury around 1100 AD), and I have been inspired to read more of his work. The writing is a bit archaic (which is totally to be expected) and is definitely deep, not fluffy. But I didn't expect Tozer to be reading The Hardy Boys.

The book is well-organized. The devotional readings are organized around topics such as worship, prayer (my two favorite sections), exhortation and doctrine. Also, there's a very helpful section in the back where there is a brief bio of each featured author.

Praying for Your Future Husband

I know some of you are thinking "Isn't it a bit too late? Haven't you already been married for 21 years?"

Well, for the sake of being argumentative, I'll point out that the guy I'm married to now is hopefully also the guy I'll also be married to in the future, so I can still find some application. But I really had my daughter in mind when I reviewed this book. Rebecca recently turned eighteen, and on her own she decided to start a journal of letters for her "future husband." I thought that this book might give her some inspiration and insight.

Praying for Your Future Husband by Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer not only inspired me to encourage our daughter to pray for her future husband, it prompted me to join her in those prayers. Robin and Tricia gave numerous examples from their own lives and also from others who have shared their own experiences. Each chapter had a sample prayer to pray for your future spouse and also a prayer to pray for your own preparation. Discussion questions are also included for each chapter. In addition, there is a guide at the end of the book which leads you through a different aspect of prayer for your future spouse for each of the 52 weeks of the year. In addition to being helpful and informative, the humor included in the book makes it fun and easy to read. I will not hesistate to suggest this book to my daughter and other single women I know.

Spring Formal

This post is overdue, but I wanted to capture my memories of this year's formal. It was very special this year because Rebecca was honored as a senior and because it was the first time for Nathan to attend (as his sister's date - how sweet!). This was also the first time that both Terry and I attended the event (in the past he went as Rebecca's escort and I stayed home.  

I must point out that Rebecca designed and made her own dress and that Nathan had gotten very sunburned right before the event.  The theme was the roaring twenties, and our friends the Skieras really stepped up with their dress!

The Final Summit Review

I know it's said that you can't judge a book by its cover, and this proved to be true for me regarding "The Final Summit" by Andy Andrews. In this case, I actually liked the cover design and the reviews on the back which called this a "riveting narrative" and compared the writing to C.S. Lewis. But when it came to reading the actual book, I found it to be extremely disappointing.

In this book, a fairly regular guy, David Ponder, is a time traveler who gets to meet with world leaders from history to help figure out how to save the word. Sounds interesting so far.

But do you find committee meetings riveting? The majority of this book takes place during a meeting - no action, not even disagreement among those attending the meeting - even though they were world leaders known for strong personalities. The quest to find the two words (here's a key that there will be no action) that will help save the world yields such tired phrases such as "restore hope" and "build character." Ironically, the final answer - "Do something" (sorry for the spoiler here)- stands in sharp contrast to the lack of action in the book.

If this book was published by a secular publisher, I would simply feel that this book was a poor read - but since it's published by a Christian publisher, my disappointment is more profound. Nowhere is Jesus or faith in God mentioned as the answer for our world. Also, the summit meeting is supposedly happening in heaven - the Benjamin Franklin character even indicates that many got there at the last minute - having almost gone to the alternate destination. This book is written from a worldview of universalism as it has characters in "heaven" like Cleopatra (a pagan) and Albert Einstein (an atheist) among many others who did not espouse a Christian belief when they were alive.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

365, Week 12 Barn Art

In this part of Tennessee, you see barns everywhere! Many are part of the "Appalachian Quilt Trail" which I'd like to explore more fully every year. Some of the barns below are right around the corner and most are ones I see quite often.
Besides the quilt squares, "See Rock City" is classic Tennessee barn decor.

I'd like to do some better photography of these barns. These shots were mostly captured from my car.

From Sep. 2010

From Sep. 2010

From Sep. 2010

From Sep. 2010

From Sep. 2010

From Sep. 2010

365*, Silly

This Mommytography assignment was easy, as we have plenty of opportunities for silly pictures in this house.

Here is Noah in his wild PJs. I bought them extra-long since he is in the middle of a growth spurt, but he uses the extra length to goof around.



And though this picture is poorly lit and out of focus, it shows another silly thing that Noah has been doing lately. He has been sleeping in the linen closet so that he won't have to share a room with Caleb. Needless to say, we are in need of a little more brotherly love around here.