Universal Parenting Truth #24

 

They will ALWAYS miss the thing you are telling them to look at, out the window.

Doppelcoolness

Do you think there's someone out there like me who likes the word doppelganger as much as I do?

Explanation: I know, today's status is a stretch, but I do think that doppelganger is a cool word. Hey, maybe that person looks like me, too!

Only for the asking

Only for the asking: "
'How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!' Luke 11:13

In a sermon preached in 1740, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that we ask God for basically two kinds of things. We ask him for temporal blessings like health and jobs and family needs. We also ask him for spiritual blessings. But Edwards noted how much more frequently and fervently we ask for temporal blessings:

'They don't need any preaching to stir them up to take thorough care to obtain those outward things. . . . And if they begin to suffer for want of those things, how much do they make of their sufferings! . . . Had God nothing better to bestow upon you, when he had made you his children, than a little money or land, that you seem so much to behave yourselves as if you thought this was your chief good? . . . I am bold to say that God is now offering the blessing of his Holy Spirit to this town, and I am bold to say we may have it only for the asking.'

HT: Tim Keller

"

Plush Taxonomy 101

The taxonomy of my daughter's toy is perplexing.

Explanation: For a baby shower, we were given a hanging plush insect*, which we have used on the handle of my daughter's carseat for quite some time. It's many colors and play options have proven to be quite wonderful on car trips, and we have gotten many months of use out of it.


The problem, however, arises when we attempt to speak about this insect. Some call it a butterfly. Some call it a firefly. Some call it a dragonfly. All taxonomy attempts on this insect have failed. Its unique coloring, five body sections, and oddly distributed wings make it a difficult critter to get a handle on. As a result, my poor little girl will most likely grow up thinking a dragonfly, a firefly, and a butterfly are all the same insect. Can you help?

*Lamaze, the manufacturer of this insect, calls it "Freddy the Firefly," but I question their taxonomic abilities as well.

ALP İN DENİZ VE KUMSAL TEMALI DOĞUM GÜNÜ PASTASI

He doesn’t do much Halfway

 

The night before Ryan ran his first Half Ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13 mile run), this is what I told him:

“I am proud of you.  This race exemplifies everything you are.  You are a man who stretches yourself in every area of your life.  You set goals to do what is hard for you, whether in fitness, parenting, serving God or in marriage.  You stretch yourself and you accomplish what many people would simply say is ‘Too hard’.  This race is why you are the man you are.

And that was BEFORE he got his awesome time of 5:55:44. 

The cheerleaders:

 

Right before the last 1 mile of the race.  He was dead, but you can’t tell.

The finish line:

  

The “congratulations package” brought over by the Daines.  It was full of 6 packs of treats, because he did the race in under 6 hours.

**And EXTRA big thanks to Ryan’s aunt Susan and Uncle Jerry, who went above and beyond in the hosting/feeding/loaning car/cleaning up after us category.  And Mark and Mandy who drove down to Jerry and Susan’s to give moral support over the big weekend! 

What Goes U Must Come D

If that football game were an emoticon, it would be colon capital D.

Source: This is blatantly ripped off from The Big Bang Theory, still one of the best written shows on television (in my humble opinion).

Explanation: The ninth-ranked University of Miami came to Blacksburg this weekend for a game against eleventh-ranked Virginia Tech in which Miami was somehow the overwhelming favorite. At the end of the day, the 'Canes walked out of Lane Stadium having been beaten down, 31-7. Now the Hokies, with only a loss to Alabama, are ranked #6. You can say that we are rivals with this school and that school, but few things feel better than beating Miami.

:D

DİŞ BUĞDAYI PASTASI VE KURABİYELERİ

DOĞUM GÜNÜ İPHONE PASTASI

It's An Old Software Engineer Mind Trick

I am not the software engineer you're looking for.

Explanation: You don't need to see my identification. I am not the software engineer you're looking for.

“How can [a pastor] persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if [he has] to juggle [his] schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?” (pg. 17) -The Contemplative Pastor

“Thy righteousness is in heaven”

“Thy righteousness is in heaven”: "

“One day as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul: ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And with the eyes of my soul I saw Jesus at the Father’s right hand. ‘There,’ I said, ‘is my righteousness!’ So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, ‘Where is your righteousness?’ For it is always right before him.

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

Now I could look from myself to him and could reckon that all my character was like the coins a rich man carries in his pocket when all his gold is safe in a trunk at home. Oh I saw that my gold was indeed in a trunk at home, in Christ my Lord. Now Christ was all: my righteousness, sanctification, redemption.”

- John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

"

Indian Summer

 

If I hear one more person say:

“I am just ready for autumn to start!  I’m ready for this summer to be done”…

I’m going to hit them.

We are enjoying the most lovely Indian Summer here in the Inland Northwest.  Yesterday, when I took these pictures, it was 90 degrees.  The flowers are still blooming, the tomato plants are still tomato-ing, and my kids are riding happily on their bikes to school.  And I’ve been hearing moms complaining about it.

What I always want to ask those people: 

Have you ever NOT gotten enough cold weather?  Have you ever wished spring would come later, so you could have just a little more winter?  Are your kids jeans NOT as hole-y as mine by the end of May?!

Long Live the Late Summer!

Spasibo

 

After trying out recipes all month (yay on the Pelmini and the Borscht, nay on the Peirogi—seen here):

and cooking for, truly, 8 hours

and worrying that all my mismatched and lame dishes would look dumb

and a trip to the Kiev market for some black bread and smetana (Russian sour cream…it’s on EVEYRTHING)

and having Ryan type Russian food names for all my dishes

and reading the LONGEST (though most excellent) Anna Karenina

I must admit…book club was a success.

One Tooth, Two Teeth, Three Teeth...

We have a new tooth sighting!

Explanation: At four months, my daughter shocked us all by sprouting her two bottom teeth. At the first tooth sighting, we thought "So THAT'S why she hasn't been sleeping for the past week!" Well, after a few days of poor sleep, we spotted tooth #3! Looks like #4 isn't far behind, either. Oh, and I should mention how grateful I am this morning for infant Tylenol!

BİKİNİ KURABİYELER

Yaz ayı bitti ama yaz arşivde bulunması açısından hazırladığım bikini modelli kurabiyelerim:) Buda erkekler için mayo modelleri :)

Review: “A Praying Life” by Paul Miller

Review: “A Praying Life” by Paul Miller: "

Over the weekend I read the best book on prayer I’ve ever read. Yes, over the weekend: that’s how engaging this book is. And yes, I’ve read quite a few books on prayer. Paul Miller’s A Praying Life beats them all.

Four reasons why Miller’s book is that good:

1. It’s not simplistic. Miller engages the difficult questions about prayer without falling into naïve God-speak or smug cynicism. As an example, he starts the book by punching the reader in the mouth with this story:

I was camping for the weekend in the mountains of Pennsylvania with five of our six kids… I was walking down from our campsite to our Dodge Caravan when I noticed our fourteen-year-old daughter, Ashley, standing in front of the van, tense and upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “I lost my contact lens. It’s gone.” I looked down with her at the forest floor, covered with leaves and twigs. There were a million little crevices for the lens to fall into and disappear.

I said, “Ashley, don’t move. Let’s pray.” But before I could pray, she burst into tears. “What good does it do? I’ve prayed for Kim to speak, and she isn’t speaking.”

My daughter Kim struggles with autism and developmental delay. Because of her weak fine motor skills and problems with motor planning, she is also mute. One day after five years of speech therapy, Kim crawled out of the speech therapist’s office, crying from frustration. My wife Jill said, “No more,” and we stopped speech therapy.

Prayer was no mere formality for Ashley. She had taken God at his word and asked that he would let Kim speak. But nothing happened. Kim’s muteness was a testimony to a silent God. Prayer, it seemed, doesn’t work.

Can you relate to this feeling? I can.

2. The author writes as both a fellow journeyer and a spiritual leader. To make me listen to what you have to say about prayer, you need to be skilled enough in prayer to know what you’re talking about, but real enough to relate to the rest of us. Miller walks this line perfectly. He isn’t afraid to claim that he knows something about prayer: “I never started out to write a book on prayer. I simply discovered that I’d learned how to pray. Life’s unexpected turns had created a path in my heart to God; God taught me to pray through suffering.” Okay, I’m listening. This guy has the smell of wisdom. But at the same time, he doesn’t over-promise: “What does it feel like to grow up? It is a thousand feelings on a thousand different days. That is what learning to pray feels like… a praying life isn’t something you accomplish in a year. It is the journey of a lifetime… There is not one magic bullet but a thousand pinpricks that draw us into [a praying life].” And that’s Miller’s stated goal: not for you to make impressive resolutions or pray for only a season, but to help you develop a praying life.

3. The book acknowledges both the poetry and the precision of effective prayer. To those who trust in formulas and structures, Miller has this rebuke: “Many attempts to teach people to pray encourage the creation of a split personality. You’re taught to ‘do it right.’ Instead of the real, messy you meeting God, you try to re-create yourself by becoming spiritual… So instead, begin with who you are. That’s how the gospel works. God begins with you. It’s a little scary because you’re messed up.” On the other hand, just when you start to make “praying like a child” an excuse for laziness, he retorts: “Many people… are suspicious of all systems. They feel it kills the Spirit. Systems seem to fly in the face of what we learned about childlike praying. But all of us create systems with things that are important to us. Remember, life is both holding hands and scrubbing floors. It is both being and doing. Prayer journals or prayer cards are on the ‘scrubbing floors’ side of life. Praying like a child is on the ‘holding hands’ side of life. We need both.”

4. The book is full of powerful sentences. If an author, time and again, grabs me by the throat with a single sentence, I know I’m reading a book that has punch. Hence the reason I enjoy Lewis, Tozer, and Chesterton. Miller is not in the same category as those great writers, but his book does have its share of thought-provoking turns of phrase. Among them:

• Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.


• If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life.


• Less mature Christians have little need to pray… there is no complexity to their worlds because the answers are simple.


• Cynicism is the air we breathe, and it is suffocating our hearts. Our only hope is to follow Jesus as he leads us out of cynicism.


• The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.


• I do not understand prayer. Prayer is deeply personal and deeply mysterious. Adults try to figure out causation. Little children don’t. They just ask.


• Everything you do is connected to who you are as a person and, in turn, creates the person you are becoming. Everything you do affects those you love. All of life is covenant.


• We think spiritual things – if done right – should just ‘flow.’ But if you have a disability, nothing flows, especially in the beginning.


• There is a tendency among Christians to get excited about ‘listening to God’ as if they are discovering a hidden way of communicating with God that will revolutionize their prayer lives… This subtly elevates an experience with God instead of God himself. Without realizing it, we can look at the windshield instead of through it.


• How would you love someone without prayer? People are far too complicated; the world is far too evil; and my own heart is too off center to be able to love adequately without praying.

Whether you’re just learning to pray or seeking to deepen your practice of prayer, do yourself a favor and read A Praying Life. It will feed your soul. We’ll have a few copies available at the Coram Deo book table next week.

"

Morning Bacon

Why is it that there are no bacon-flavored breakfast cereals?

Explanation: I'm just wondering. It seems there's bacon-flavored this and bacon-flavored that. We have chocolate covered bacon and chicken fried bacon. Doesn't it just seem natural that somebody come out with Bacon O's breakfast cereal? How about Bacon Bacon Crunch? Frosted Mini Bacon? (I know, Bacon Bits would be the perfect name, but it's already taken.)

My new business cards came today!!!

Carmen bought some cool cards for her mom, friend, and knitting stuff sooo after I saw them I knew I needed some lol! I was excited to get them today they look really good and came really quick! If you need some really cool cards... then go check out these websites. Warning will spend money if you look! ;)

Here is thehappygirl's Etsy website: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5309497

Her Twitter page: http://twitter.com/thehappygirl

Let Them Eat Cake

Seth:  “Mom, I have a good idea!  How about when we get home, you make some cake and we eat it ? Isn’t that a good idea!?”

Why yes, Seth, it is.

A brother in Christ sent this to me today...

You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the evil powers of this world. So why do you keep on following rules of the world, such as, "Don't handle, don't eat, don't touch." Such rules are mere human teaching about things that are gone as soon as we use them. These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, humility, and severe bodily discipline. But they have no effect when it comes to conquering a person's evil thoughts and desires. -Col 2:20-23

Thanks... I needed this!

The People of the Gospel

The People of the Gospel: "

“Christ died for his people, and we are saved when by faith we become part of the people for whom Christ died. The story of the Bible is the story of God fulfilling the promise, ‘I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God’ (Exodus 6:7; Revelation 21:3). If the gospel is to be at the heart of church life and mission, it is equally true that the church is to be at the heart of gospel life and mission.”

- Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 39.

"

Thoughts on designers moving to programming

Some thoughts about the jump from designing to programming and about workflow

Theory 1: The number of designers moving to programming has decreased
Is there a magician who tells you about your future? Designer or programmer? What are you? There´s a ditch between them and it´s getting bigger!

There are some programmers who used to design but they realised they´d better do programming cos it was easy, practice and a challenge.

Flashers used to be outsiders, the frontieer between design and programming. We were called Flash designers/animators/programmers. Now this has changed. Many of us moved from design to programming but I can´t see this migration anymore. Why?

I have some possible answers: It´s difficult, it´s not a vocation, there´s no need to do it, Adobe´s policy...

Theory 2: Programmer vs. Designer
There were programmers working with computers before all designers began to use it. Why are we sometimes considered just as producers ?

Designer: Someone who designs
Programmer: Someone who programs

I wonder how a designer can tell how things will move on the screen. They shouldn´t do about interaction if there´s a flasher in the team.

I don´t know what´s worst: a customer trying to design or a designer trying to animate something. The answer is always the same: Why don´t you do it?

In the end, the most important thing for the good work of an agency, a studio or so, is the workflow. The rest are just stories and stories

L-O-S-... Oh Wait, We Won!

Even though the offense barely did anything at all, a win is a win, not matter how small.

Source: This is from the Dr. Seuss classic, Tyrod Throws a Touchdown. OK, maybe it was about an elephant. My memory isn't so great on Monday mornings.

Explanation: Having been completely and totally beaten in Saturday's game against Nebraska, Virginia Tech somehow managed an 88-yard scoring drive in the last two minutes of play, thanks to a very mobile quarterback and a terribly blown coverage assignment by Nebraska's secondary. I was listening to the game online, compliments of Nebraska's radio team, and it pained me to hear how broken up they were over the small lapse that led to their loss. Of course, I'm over that now, as the #11 Hokies are 2-1 and host yet another ranked opponent next weekend as #9 Miami comes to town.

Our Identity in Christ

Our Identity in Christ: "

“By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those others who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity. . . . If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians.”

- Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill, Crossway Books, 2008), 41.

"