Friday, August 28, 2009

product placement = amoretti

I recently discovered a wonderful clothing line, Amoretti by an ex-pat Mommy from Texas living in Oxfordshire, England. The clothes are made for twirling girlies like mine:
"I believe you shouldn't have to choose between beautiful clothes and practical clothes. That dressing up should be easy. That being a lady isn't old fashioned. And that "ladylike" most emphatically does not mean "fussy." And since Amoretti is so tied to my life, you could sum up the design philosophy as good old, down-home, American... but with just a touch of an English accent."
Click here to visit her blog and enter her "fortnightly purse" contest for all sorts of fun stuff. Poke around her website and be inspired...

I haven't had the privilege of purchasing yet, but hope to buy the girls something special for Christmas.

coupla recent crochet projects

The big honkin' snake for Baby Solomon.

Smallish baby blankie for Baby Boy Twin A...

pugliese




Last night's bread with recipe from
The Bread Baker's Apprentice
:

Pugliese (say, "pooh-lee-ay-zuh")

cable-less update

It's been almost two weeks now since the big plug-pull. And what a great couple of weeks it has been. We have been listening to podcasts every night from The White Horse Inn, John Piper, John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, or just listening to music, talking, reading, crocheting, etc., or the best thing, NOTHING playing. No noise. The quiet is calming. We also find we are going to bed much earlier now, and waking more refreshed.

For the sake of full disclosure, we did get a digital broadcast antenna installed so that we could pull free digital signals. We get ABC, NBC, PBS (3 great PBS stations - Create, Kids, and standard PBS), CBS and FOX, a local 100% weather station (which is important to have) plus a handful of independent and Spanish-speaking. But like Chad said last night when I asked him to see what was on, "it takes me about 20 seconds to surf through," and we were done with it. It is so much easier to turn off the TV now, and it is off 90% of the time.

Go ahead, pull the plug! It's wonderful!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

we are officially cable-TV less

What a feeling of freedom! The topic of time wasting, quality of watching and godliness has been heavy on our hearts. We decided and successfully killed the cable on Saturday afternoon.

I'm going to expand this post more...

Saturday, August 15, 2009

nice crochet pattern

I found this easy crochet pattern up on Ravelry. I hope to deliver it to my friends' newly-adopted child tomorrow at church.


Tuesday, August 11, 2009

ingrid just asked THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS...

I'm not making this up. Ingrid just asked this question 5 minutes ago. Remember, she's 5 1/2. I put down my dinner plate, ran into the office to type it into Blogger after we answered the question, of course. This is one for the memory book:
"Can God make everyone believe in Him? Why doesn't He make everyone believe in Him?"
Has she been listening in at the door during Tuesday morning women's Bible study? I wonder if she can rattle off TULIP, too:
Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability and Original Sin)
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement (also known as Particular Atonement)
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)

Monday, August 10, 2009

things that are done better with the tv off

  1. pray
  2. read
  3. think
  4. sleep
  5. crochet
  6. conversation
  7. exercise - well maybe not this one as I need the distraction
  8. puzzles
  9. clean the house
  10. organize closets
  11. blog
  12. play with the girls
  13. contemplation
  14. I could go on and on and on but I need to take a shower...

yet another wise voice regarding tv

While over at Tim Challies' blog this morning, I found link to this blog post by Randy Alcorn regarding wisdom and television. I think the Lord is more than tickling our ears. Cancel it already!

Yesterday the TV was off and I just sat in the silence and crocheted while Chad read and the girls played with puzzles. (Well, it was off for a while, until we popped in a video for the girls -- the old BBC version of "The Silver Chair," which is actually high quality entertainment.) Our sermon yesterday was "How to Listen to a Sermon" (the audio should be posted presently if it isn't already there) -- listening is becoming harder and harder these days because of all of the visual input. (See "Amusing Ourselves to Death" for more on this.) Listening is going to have to become a learned practice in our modern era.

At this point, I feel like I'm starting to make excuses...why haven't we canceled the cable yet? There are so many better things we should be doing. Am I afraid that I won't know what to do with myself? Hardly. I have a list a mile long of special projects that could be completed at a leisurely and possibly enjoyable pace if I didn't have the idiot box on every night.

Friday, August 7, 2009

generational wisdom

The girls and I went to that fun big-box store yesterday afternoon that has the concentric red circles for a logo in order to pick up a few necessities. As we walked into the store, a woman approached us with a warning that, "the credit and debit lines are down. They are only accepting cash and checks." Uh oh. When was the last time I had more than $7.89 in my wallet? I know that amount because that is what I had yesterday: just enough to get the girls the promised snacks, and myself a tall, cold Venti-Passion-Iced-Tea-Unsweetened, please, at the co-located St*rbucks inside the store; we sat and waited for the end of the tragedy.

But this is what I noticed: the few people who were in line who were buying, and there were VERY FEW, were of the older generation. I would guess they were 65 and up. They had checks. They had cash. Their collective shopping days weren't stopped dead in their tracks.

Something I have been thinking about lately is this: we are going to have to be very purposeful in teaching the girls about money when all they see are the debit cards whipped out of Mommy and Daddy's wallets. Check are still a bit esoteric, but at least it is paper, like cash. I think they need to see more cash, and start to understand the true value of money, not just what money can buy.

And if that giant ATM-controlling satellite in the sky comes crashing down one day disabling all electronic financial transactions, what in the world will we do then?

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

yet another cute quote

In our Bible lesson this morning, we learned that God made Adam and Eve differently than he made us, and this demonstrates Him as the Creator of all things. I asked the following questions:

Mommy: "Ingrid, who was the first man?"
Ingrid: "Adam."
Mommy: "Ilsa, who was the first woman?"
Ilsa: "Madam."

That being said, I wholeheartedly recommend this Bible curriculum by Sinclair Ferguson which quickly straightened things out.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

oh be careful little eyes what you see...

On the way home from Bible study today, Ilsa proclaimed, "Mommy, it's a Clicker Car!" This seems to be the week of "Huh?" responses by Yours Truly. "Moooommmmy, a CLICKER CAR! Over dare [sic - she means "there"]." Sure enough, there was a vehicle with a huge COX logo plastered on the side. It only said, "COX". That was it. She recognized the logo from our digital cable TV clicker. (No, we haven't dumped it yet...we ARE GOING TO...it just hasn't happened...I promise. It will. Sooner rather than later. Yes it will.)

Nothing inherently wrong with her making that association, in fact, it's GREAT that she made that visual link. What an amazing capacity for learning the Lord has given children!! But this is my point: what am I feeding into my childrens' minds? It does matter what our kids see. A consistent diet of junk food will make your body fat. It's the same with minds.
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