Your Laugh For The Day

I saw the following sign outside the entry to the fairgrounds today:

No bicycle riding
skateboarding
rollerblading
dogs
on fairgrounds.

Of course. We wouldn't want the less talented dogs there to feel inferior!

Hey, I can blog this!

The well has sort of run dry for possible blog topics lately. Sure, the kids are saying and doing really cute things, I'm reading books and seeing movies I could blog about, but my motivation is at a lull right now.

Until the following email came. I have a friend with five kids five and under. The newest ones are 4 month old twin girls. Knowing my history, you can guess that these little beauties have a special place in my heart. Ironically, the heart is the problem. Not mine, but one of the girls. Bethany and Grace are the baby twins, Faith, Noah and Asher are big sibs, Kady and Karl are Mom and Dad to the bunch.

Please lift this family up in your prayers. You've never seen such strength and hope in the Lord as you will with this Momma!

Here's Kady's email:

Hi Friends, I'm sorry that I haven't updated many of you on what's happened with Bethany. She has a very rare condition in infants called Mitral Arcade (or Congenital Mitral Regurgitation). She'll need Open Heart Surgery or possibly a transplant in months / years to come. Her condition is evidently "severe" or serious.. but the doctor feels good about her chances because of how hard she's fought thus far. We don't know how quickly she's been deteriorating so now we have a starting point to compare to. She is on 3 different medications at this point and seems to be tolerating them pretty well. We'll be seeing alot of the pediatric cardiology dept at Mayo and are thankful for their expertise and care. I'm planning on setting up a caring bridge site in the next week (hopefully).. in all of my spare time ;). Karl and I are confident that God's already got all of this figured out and His purposes are so much greater than anything we can imagine. Our prayer requests are for #1 a miracle if that's God's will, #2 her heart to grow stronger and last until she's a little older for surgery.. her chances are far better the older that she is. #3 that she won't have pain from all that her body is having to go through #4 for strength for our family and finally #5 for God to use her for His glory! Please feel free to share this with anyone.... the more prayer warriors the better :) In His Arms, Kady

Boys and Books

This is a self-imposed backwards edition of WFMW. To find other ideas please head to "We Are That Family" today!

I do believe I've mentioned that Jim, Evan and I have been reading through the Harry Potter series. Evan and I are finished and Jim just hit a MAJOR point near the end of book six. That's all I'm going to say about that.

My rant here is about the quality of good books for kids Evan's age (he's heading into fourth grade). I haven't done the actual math, but I'm guessing that ninety percent of the books I pick up in the library are geared towards girls. They have a female main character dealing with female issues (hair, make-up, periods, babysitting and the cheerleading team). Or the female lead is off doing heroic things like slaying the dragon (which in my opinion should be a male lead, but that's another topic believe it or not).

So, that leaves ten percent of "literature" with a male protagonist. But how many of that ten percent leave us with a positive male role model taking his leadership position seriously? Evan wanted to read the "Diary Of A Whimpy Kid" series next so I checked them out of the library. In one afternoon he polished off a book and a half. I got through about thirty pages and declared them unfit for, well, anyone. Agreeing with me, Jim will be returning them to the library today. The main character, though a boy, is a middle school boy. These books are written at a second grade level at best. Children who are in middle school *should* be well beyond the level of these books (but again, that's a post for another time!). The main character also showcases blatant disrespect for his own father, his mom, his friend's father and all other adult/authority figures in his life. And that is just in the first thirty pages!

Here's my plea for help. I have a voracious reader with a heart bent towards Christian worldview. What books do you recommend for him? We'd also like the books to encourage boys and men in their God given leadership roles. We'd like him to have some positive reading for the rest of the summer.

So, what would you recommend? Oh, and no pressure here, but library day is Thursday at our house, so if you've got a suggestion please leave it!

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations to M, the winner of my "Green Bag Lady" green bag giveaway! I contacted her to let her know she won and to get her address. I knew she lived here in the great state of Minnesota and learned that she is actually from the same town I am! So thanks, M, you saved me some postage!

If you'd still like your very own "Green Bag Lady" green bag I'm more than happy to mail you one. All I ask is $2 to cover shipping. Email me your info and we'll work on getting your bag to you ASAP!

Thanks to all for entering!

Works for me Wednesday complete with a *GIVEAWAY!*

I found a fun blog by a lady who calls herself the "Green Bag Lady". She makes fabric shopping bags, has given away over five thousand of them and even posts the pattern for free so you can make your own.

And I've made bags! And more bags! In fact, my handmade bag count for yesterday reached about a dozen. I made bags like there's no tomorrow. I have hoards of fabric lying around, so I just started sewing them up into bags. And you know what? I'm going to give one away. Just leave a comment promising that you'll use whatever style and pattern I made and I'll send you one free of charge! :)

Free stuff. Works for me! Go to We Are That Family for more things that could work for you!

**Edited to note that I'll pick a winner on Saturday to give more people a chance to win!

**Edited a second time to add a link to the Green Bag Lady's blog. Sorry, I guess I'm out of practice in blogging! Here she is: www.greenbaglady.blogspot.com

The Experiment

This summer Jim and I decided to conduct a little experiment. We, along with Evan, are reading through the Harry Potter series. School let out on May 20. Evan would be done except that we placed a rule on him that he could not be more than one book ahead of us.

We know the controversy about the books in the Christian circles where we run. I myself had an editorial published in a parenting magazine spouting off about the dangers of witches and wizards becoming commonplace and filling young minds with the idea that magic can solve your problems. And yet I myself wanted to read the books! So, we decided to read them together as a family. And we're discussing what we find and comparing it to Scripture. (And it's also a good lesson in self-control because we're learning things about the characters that we cannot share with others who aren't as far along as we are!)

So here we sit on July second. Jim is somewhere back in book five (something about not being able to sit around and read all day because he's working, excuses, excuses). Evan and I are each a couple hundred pages from finished with seven. And I still don't really know what to think. The books aren't as much about witchcraft (which I hereby acknowledge is a real thing very much alive in the world today) as they are about friendship and fighting for the greater good. It does seem that to get to the greater good requires much rule bending and breaking and sneaking around. The setting seems to be just that, the setting for a good story.

What do you think? Have you read the series? Would you let your children read them? Why or why not? (Have full license to discuss in the comments, but please let's play nicely and understand that different people may make different choices.)