Hello Mornings Link-Up

The Hello Mornings crew has a great link-up today. I haven't had a chance to try the coffee yet, but I have a bag of Avodah's Morning Brew sitting here, waiting for me to get to the store to buy creamer. ;D

I learned some nice things my first go round of HMC last Spring. Mostly I learned to cut myself some slack. I will post about my religious tendencies at a later time, but suffice to say I really was thinking I needed to get up like clockwork, pardon the pun.  My biggest challenge was Thursday morning. We have AWANA the night before and it is just so hard to get up. One of the ladies suggested I get up a little later on Thursday. Yeah, I know, obvious to you, but not to me. lol. It worked wonderfully. In fact, I started getting up and hour later on Saturday too since our day starts later. It has really made each day much easier.

Another thing that helped was using Twitter instead of e-mail or Facebook. I know it's a bit public, and it's not as easy to figure out as the others, but it is far less distracting. Get on Twitter, check in, read the brief messages from the other group members, respond, pray for what needs to prayed for, get on with your day. I honestly can't think of a time I've been able to stay focused when going through e-mail or Facebook. :D

Come Summer we were without an A/C so I somehow ended up being nominated by a HMC person who shall remain unnamed. ;) I'm not really a born leader so it wasn't really what I wanted to do. But I do love to encourage people. It turns out that's mostly what an A/C does. I'm going to give it a try this fall when things are really crazy here and see how it goes.

The best about being an A/C has been getting to know the HMC team better on Facebook. It was so nice to see the heart that goes into making HMC a success. The ladies really have a great love for the Lord and for their sisters in Christ. I've found great encouragement in my walk with Christ as a result of reading their posts and blogs, as well as encouragement in my daily life of being a wife and mom.

If you are interested in signing up for the Fall Challenge that starts August 20, click here.

SD Zoo Redux

Since we didn't quite make it down to the zoo during Camp Mom, we packed up and headed down yesterday.

We decided to go over to the children's zoo since we haven't been to that part in years. Really. The little kids didn't even know there was such a thing. :D We found they had added a playground. Not too happy about that. Playgrounds at zoos are for little zoos, like the LA Zoo, that don't have enough to look at. ;) But it didn't turn out too poorly. Babycakes did leave when we were ready to go with no fussing.

Stopped by the petting zoo. Braniac did not want to leave for quite a while. He loves farm animals. :)

Stopped by the bug house. They had some pretty cool bugs. I want this one. :) Oh, and did you know that there is a bug called a violin mantis? Yeah, we need some of those.;)

Looking at the otters below and above, inversely, yet not. ;) Babycakes wanted to get in with the otters. 

He also wanted to get in with the meerkats. Actually, he didn't want to spend a lot of time in the stroller today. He wanted to get out and walk around like his brothers. We'll have to take his leash next time. Yes, we are people of the leash. :)

Stopping to eat lunch.

This picture was taken right before a little altercation between this animal and his/her roommate. It was quite exciting. If you're into that sort of thing. :D

The leopards were being fed when we went by. We were able to see most of the big cats today. Of course, most of them were sleeping.

Most of the animals were pretty active. The weather was very mild for August. Overcast morning, then sunny but bearable temperatures.

Checking out the displays at the gorilla exhibit.

And the gorillas.

Braniac with a pygmy hippo. He really liked this display. Of course, he really likes all of them.

OK, we found the lizard we want for our new tank. Guess we'll make a trip down to the reptile store on Monday and at least try to find something similar. :)

Some kind of monkey type animal. ;)

Fuzzy, baby flamingo taking a nap.

I love that my kids are cool with cheap souvenirs. :)

Then off to CFA in Poway for dinner.

We still didn't get to feed the giraffes :/ so we'll have to go back one more time before school starts at the end of the month.

Texas Debriefing

When I first returned to listening to Christian music a few years ago this was one of the first I bought on iTunes. I think I can safely say this was my theme song from the trip. It was a weird sort of trip. It's hard to describe. I'm not who I was last year. I'm definitely not who I was on the first trip.

The first year God smoothed the road before us. With small exceptions, the entire trip went off without a hitch. Last year it was hard from the get go, which we almost never got to. The first year I think I needed to have God show me He actually did care. I've spent most of my life thinking God hated me. It's a long story but it has a lot to do with how I ended up at my grandparents' four states away from my parents. The second year I think I needed God to show me that I was a lot stronger than I thought. It had been a hellish year up to that point and it only got worse before this past January when things finally started to get better. Maybe I needed to see that I could get through it.

This year, maybe I just needed to have an excuse to offer God all the praise right here and to anyone I spoke with about the trip. I wasn't raised to do that. In church, until this past year, I was often met with strange looks when I would mention God outside any sort of doctrinal discussion. Seriously, you should have seen the looks I got when I praised God after my first trip...even from someone who really, really, really should have known better. But I will refrain from naming names in a public sphere.

One day I will write more on the transition from religion to relationship, but it will get too long for the purposes of this blog entry.

Another thing that happened was kind of funny...OK, we laugh at this sort of thing at our house. We were in the hotel in Texas. I can't remember if it was Sunday or Monday, but the kids were watching Flywheel...again. (Hey, did you know you can watch the whole thing on YouTube in one video? I'll link to it at the bottom.)

***spoiler*** As the main character is returning the money to each individual former customer he is met by enthusiasm and thanks by everyone. He calls his wife and tells her how great it's been and how much easier it is than he thought it'd be. She tells him not to be prideful. The first 25 times I watched it...have I mentioned we watch that movie a lot?...I really couldn't see how he was being prideful. I thought he was being thankful, or just passing along good news.***end spoiler*** 

But as I listened to the scene play out in the background it suddenly hit me...I sound like that.  All this spiritual stuff is coming so much easier than I thought. In fact, I was probably beginning to think it was going to be easier than it is. I was being prideful without even being aware of it. It gave me a lot to think about.

Anyway, here's the movie my kids, especially Babycakes with his car obsession, think needs to be watched on a fairly regular basis. :)

Chick-fil-A Day

Any excuse to eat at Chick-fil-A works for me. We love it. They forced the acceptance of Sweet Tea in Southern California and if you aren't eternally grateful to them for that....I might boycott you. :P

The Teenager got Babycakes to eat a second piece of potato, but not a third, which is what he's trying to convince him to do here.

Obviously, we ate there for more than just the food. It was a statement. I would like to think, even if I wasn't a Christian, I would have eaten there just because I'm an American. While I thought boycotting was the thing to do in my youth, I think calling for a boycott now is decidedly un-American and, to be frank, un-Christian. Let me explain.

Boycotting gives us an excuse to make up signs like the one above. Normally I enjoy Conservative jokes, but this one annoys me because none of my liberal friends fit this description.  Being in ballet, I have quite a few liberal friends. I find friends who have differing opinions a benefit for reasons I've mentioned before. One thing I've noticed though is that we are more alike than we are different. Yes, we have our things we disagree on, but if we are honest we will admit there are a lot of things we disagree with Conservatives about as well.

When we, as Christians, call for a boycott, the world sees us as they see themselves when they do the same...hateful. If you don't like the rhetoric being thrown around the airwaves and in the blogosphere this week, change the words just a little bit and you will see it's not a whole lot different than some of the things Christians say during boycotts. And sometimes to other Christians who don't feel they need to participate in the boycott.

I admit I did decide to boycott Starbucks, but honestly, I hate Starbucks already. Their coffee is dreadfully bitter and only became popular because most Americans were just happy to finally drink something that tasted better than Folgers. But I digress...;) So it's not like it really put me out to boycott them so I probably wasn't really serious. If a boycott were called for CBTL, it would have to be something huge to convince me to participate in it.

Now, there is a business we have not shopped at in probably four years or so. This is a business that gives money to an organization we disagree with. Don't ask me which business it is coz I won't tell you. I'm not going to call for a boycott, though I think their practices are far more heinous than simply trying to maintain the biblical defnintion of marriage, or even making really terrible coffee. But out of our own convictions we have chosen not to shop there based on this one fact.

Interstingly enough, when I posted something on Facebook about today's CFA incident, it was one of my liberal friends who said about her decision not to eat at CFA:  But those are my decisions. You should be able to make your decisions the way you want to live.

And that's how it ought to be. I guess I would challenge people who are boycotting in a called boycott or in their personal boycott...do you look down on people not participating? Do you think less of them because they had a Frapuccino or ate at Chick-fil-A. Then you are accomplishing nothing by your boycott except feeding your, um, dislike (yeah, I want to use the other word) for others based on your own personal grading scale.

In the end we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Period. The people around us will respond to love far more quickly than to our diatribes and our rhetoric.

Texas 2012 Day 8

On which I tried to take out a Sonic Drive-In with the Monster Van.

It began like any other traveling day...gas & ice. We were all tired so we tried to push it to Kingman. Got as far as the middle of nowhere and Braniac vomited. I don't think we will ever again have a road trip on which someone does not vomit. It seems par for the course these days.



We finally made it to Kingman and to Sonic, which I promised the kids. I was eyeing the parking spaces and thought, gosh these seem more narrow than the one's at home. While I was trying to pull in I heard a really nasty sound. :/



We fled the scene, after eating our lunch and consuming our ice cream at a leisurely pace, and didn't stop again until the first rest stop in CA. Well, except that one where they ask you where you were last night around 8pm....OK, they just want to know where you're coming from. I never really know what to answer. Do I give them the entire story? Do I tell them where this leg of the trip originated? Do they just want to know where I was last night...around 8pm? I always say Flagstaff. It musn't be too much of a seedbed of intrigue coz they always just wave me through...or maybe it's just that the idea of an fat, middle-aged woman, with entirely too many children could never be involved in anything nefarious....because she simply wouldn't know where to put it in her schedule. ;D

Ah, return to civilization...and you can't have civilization without smog. :)

BTW, if you ever want to know why we bought this house...this is it. Yep, a nice view of the mountains every single day (almost). *sigh* I feel so much safer with mountains around...it's a Montana thing, you probably wouldn't understand.

This makes me cry. It's cleaned now, but the big scratch on the bottom is there. Need to find my touch-up paint. :/

Very nice flowers waiting for us upon our return. :)