Wordless Wednesday--Baptismal Remembrance Day (2002/2013

Christmas Break in Review

The kids are going back to school today. *sniff* Four months into this new way of life and I haven't yet figured out why parents complain about school holidays. I enjoyed ours and look forward to the next...in less than two weeks. Though that will only be a four day weekend.

At any rate, here's some pics from our break.

The last day of school was free dress, and a half-day. The kids love free dress...well, except Spock. He finds free dress days, um, illogical. He ended up wearing most of his uniform, he just had a different shirt on...which you can't see coz it's under his school jacket here. :D

So, after just a few hours, we were off for the holidays...almost. We had a few things to take care of first. Like Santa.

Yeah, I let it go down to the wire this year. Never again. Though it worked just fine, I still don't want to be standing in line outside BassPro on Saturday morning before Christmas.

After Santa, and lunch, we were off to the theater for three more shows of Nutcracker.

In between, Braniac got to sing at church, which always makes him happy. He's looking forward to first grade when he can be in the children's choir. B is on the front row, right, second one in, red sweater vest, yawning, puts the blanket over his head...

And then it was time to get ready for Christmas. Made pie this year. We've never found a gluten-free pre-made crust that we all like so I made mine from scratch. Turned out pretty good. Now Braniac wants me to make him a chocolate pie. :)

6am, Christmas Eve morning, where were you? I was at Toys R Us, in the rain, with Mr. Great-heart who was spending his birthday and Christmas money on his brothers. Yeah, he's that awesome. He also always buys people gifts with his AWANA bucks and his Space Rewards (Sunday School) money. You wish you had a kid this awesome. ;)

Christmas Eve also happens to be Mr. Great-heart's birthday. He wanted to ride a train so we loaded our cupcakes and were off to the train station to wait...and boy did we wait.

When people ask why public transportation isn't more popular, unreliability is probably a great answer. Almost 45 minutes late. We missed our return connection. But it all worked out for the best...no, actually, it didn't. Due to us having to take a later train, Babycakes didn't vomit on the carpet at home, he vomited all over me in the train. I think Metrolink should give me a free pass for making sure he only puked on me instead of their seats. :D

Christmas Eve.

Writing our thank you to Santa.

5am Christmas morning. Well, at least they don't come in and jump all over the bed. :)

Last year of going overboard. Next year we have a limit. 

But at least they know what's important. :)

We took it easy most of the time. Recovering from Nutcracker and our first four months of going to school. I took the kids to the farm a few times. Here's Braniac's first day. (I didn't tell him what those nice cattle we fed the weeds to were for...he'd probably never go back.)

On NYD we went out to San Pedro to see the USS Iowa. Very impressive. We'll have to go back in about five years to see how far along they've come in making their museum.

The Teenager turned 16. No pics, he's allergic to the camera. But here's the food we ate.

For the closing ceremonies we had a nice rainstorm. This had been a double rainbow but by the time I found my camera and got out front this was all that was left.

...but sometimes I'm just obnoxious.

We conservatives are nothing if not obsessed with the 1950's. I don't really know why  except that somewhere in our minds we have it locked in there that after the 1950's everything went to, well, you know. I started thinking about this as Spock and I were conversing about the plight of the inner city. He wanted to know how it got to be so bad. I stated the usual "soft-on-crime" stats, government corruption, etc., then I suddenly remembered something I don't think about a lot...white flight. I had to explain to him that when people who weren't white were allowed to move into white neighborhoods, the whites sold off their properties at below market value just to get away from them driving down the value of the neighborhoods and opening it up to abuse. He looked at me kinda funny. I told him that in the "good old days" at least a third of the people in his school, would not have been allowed to go to his school. In the "good old days" one of his best friends couldn't have been his friend. I didn't go further and explain that he would have been taught to hate the boy as well based solely on the boys skin color.

Ah, yes, the fabulous '50s. Life was so much better then. Everything was neat and clean. We all knew our place and stayed there. There was no messy-ness to life. As my grandmother says, "Phooey."

This reminds me of my view of my childhood with my grandparents. But, in this case, instead of the suppression of the bad memories being a good thing, it's a white-wash. Have these people been watching too much classic TV? The '50s were lousy. Sure there were some good things, there are always good things in each generation, but the fact that non-whites were treated and viewed as less than human because of their skin color should make anyone with sense take what they can from the era, and leave it in the past. Who really wants to go back to the "good old days?" Was life really better when the only people who could get anywhere in life were rich white men? The '50s did bring about a more middle class lifestyle...mostly for whites, but the problems were huge and to ignore them and hearken back to those days as the days we wish were still here, well, I just think it's kind of foolish coz we always have to qualify it with "but not the racial stuff." What else was there? Was there something bigger going on?

I've stated before, somewhere but I can't remember which post, that we have to have something to hate. It is human nature. In the 50s we hated people who were a different skin color. Now we hate people who dress differently than we do. Seriously, we do. Yesterday I was at Trader Joe's and there were five boys in the parking lot. they had their stupid pants hanging down around their hips and the whole world could see their undies. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head and wondered when this ridiculous fashion would end. But this morning I wonder something different. I wonder, if it hadn't been the grocery store parking lot, but instead the church parking lot, or better, the church lobby, what would I have thought? If the five boys were to walk into your church tomorrow morning, what would happen? I have been to churches where the unthinkable would happen. They would be told, maybe in not so many words, that they were simply not welcome here unless they would hike up their pants, change their hair, cover their tats, and remove their piercings.

While we've come a far way from the racism that plagued human history up to this day, are we not just transferring our hate to another group...any group that is different from us?

Jesus sat and ate with the dirty people. The clean religious people looked down on Him. They still do. Every time we judge someone based on their appearance, every time we forget, or in some cases absolutely refuse, to see people as in need of our Savior instead of in need of a hair cut or 1950s style clothing we step into Pharisee-ism.

Jesus did not say faith, hope and fashion, the greatest of these is fashion.

It's not an easy change to make. Obviously, I still slip back into it easily enough. But when we do, I hope we can remind ourselves just how easy it is to hate. Anyone can hate. We need to love to be considered different from the world around us. To do this we need encouragement from our pastors and Sunday School teachers. If we are listening to sermons that seem to be sound in doctrine but inevitably must include some sort of jibe or sarcastic remark about people we disagree with, can we really say the pastor is encouraging us to love? If our Sunday School teachers can't have a conversation without dragging the name of someone who disagrees with them on any issue through the mud, can we say that we will not go and do likewise? When we place ourselves under the influence of leaders who hate (I know, they never call it that) we put ourselves at risk. Always remember, we are the monkeys in "monkey see, monkey do."

I'll close, finally ;), with the words of Christ from the passage that still scares me to death...though not now because I fear that I am one of the latter, but because of how close I came to being one of the latter (there but for the Grace of God...). "Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."  Are we too busy keeping ourselves safe from the "riff-raff" to do what Christ has commanded us?

Five Minute Friday: Opportunity

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situation." Charles Swindoll

If Pastor Swindoll is right, and I believe he is, my life could best be described as one long, continuous missed opportunity. Because when opportunity came, I sat around and complained about it. To grant myself grace, and to give it to those reading, we weren't raised to do much different. Complaining is, in all honesty, the world-wide pastime  To get political, if we really want to identify what the problem is with our nation, our world, it's that when the going gets tough, most of us get to whining. Most of us were raised to believe that when bad things happen, we should spend a lot of time complaining about it. Some of us can even bring up memories from decades ago and complain with the same ferocity as we did then. I've come to see that my view on this is not just erroneous, it is what keeps me from living the life God has planned for me. As I look back, how much better would it have been if I'd tried to find the good in the bad. Now, I know, this is easy for me. I'm naturally a positive person who was raised by negative people so it's easy for me to convert to my nature. But if what Scripture says is true, that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, then if we sit around complaining when it does, how different are we from the world? We are called to be salt and light, and the best times to do that is when the people around us are keeping tabs on our behavior, namely, when our rains come.