What is that about?  I can hike this very quickly and calmly by myself or with a friend.  The danger isn’t as real or evident.  But put me with my children and family and my anxiety level skyrockets.  I know I have a fear of heights.   Am I really afraid of heights or am I a fraid exposed heights, I feel safe in an airplane but if it had a see through floor, I think I would just be beside myself, what has ever given me reason to believe I will fall from a height?  I have never had an experience where my life was threatened by being in high places so is my perception a trained condition or an experienced response?  I am exploring that answer every day…

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Why do you think God says this to the people of Israel?  I believe it has to do with obedience and habit.  God has expectations that we would obey.  Kind of like the obedience we expect to see from our children when asked to complete a school assignment or help out around the house.  We are responsible for who they grow to be.  They are responsible for what they do.  But doing is a byproduct of being.  I have been the head high school soccer coach for this year and I must say it is rewarding and insightful.  I love it, although I can’t wait to spend more time at home.  I have seen parenting decisions that are so hard to make, but give me confidence that those young men will grow to do some amazing things because of who they are. Not because they are great athletes, but because their parents continue to take the time to discipline, love, guide, and instruct them.

The conviction and desire to mold and shape our children into Godly men and women has to supersede our desire or their desire to attain worldly achievements, that may in the end result in fruitlessness.  In other words, we need to have a 10-20 year vision of their future, while your child or other people may only have a weekly or at best yearly view of their future.  Because when that $1k instrument is gathering dust in the garage, or those $250 pair of basketball shoes get their first holes, or brand new car gets rear ended in the school parking lot, or that knee gets twisted from sand volleyball while on vacation, what you have taught your child about life and adversity and how you have shaped their character with your integrity will reflect you.

It is your responsibility to train your child.  Surround them with men and women of integrity including yourselves and one day, they too will “be” those same men and women.

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This young father’s voice became my heavenly father’s voice proclaiming, No matter what happens with your current situation, I will always be your father, and I want to cherish every day we have left together, even if it may be 99 days.  Let’s live every day to the fullest, together.  I am God and I LOVE you, enjoy!

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This weekend we had several soccer games with our three little ones.  They went well, we won 2 of 3 but no one was keeping score. Something that disturbs me about youth sports is the insane amount of stuff parents use to validate themselves or impress people.  What we end up with is a snack that is large enough to replace a meal.  Our 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son came home with more sugary snacks in gallon sized ziploc bags than they eat in 2 weeks.  The assortment included in one bag, yay; a banana, capri sun, cupcake, twinky, ring pop, fun dip, cheetos, fun straw you eat, and cracker jacks.   Did we miss the memo?  Is this what snacks are?  How do we keep up?  I didn’t know we had to go in debt to provide snacks for our kids recreational sports teams!?!?!

All this made Supermom and I recall a particular Everybody Loves Raymond episode, see video, where Raymond doesn’t pack an “Approved Snack” and the snack coordinator lets him know his disappointment.  We laughed as we headed to the car, but soon our laughter turned to this serious discussion of what is expected of us.  We don’t want our children eating all this crap all the time.  We don’t think a snack needs to have more than 2 items included, one of those being a drink like a juice box, capri sun, or gatorade.   The other being 1 piece of fruit OR bag of chips; banana, apple, orange, cheetos, or fritos.  That to me is a snack for a kid.

Plus, this got me thinking, if this is what kids parents pack for snacks to sporting events, what must they be packing for kids lunches on a daily basis?  Is this the reason many families grocery budget reaches the 4 digit category with 2 kids and 2 parents at home?  I say enough, of the craziness, ENOUGH.  Be a rebel, bring a snack that really is a snack.  See what the other parents say about your “SNACK!”  What has been your experience?

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It was IBM claiming they are building a smarter planet.  At first glance I said yeah, that sounds good, but then I caught myself.  What is this saying?  Why a smarter planet? Do we really want a smarter planet?  I thought we wanted a simpler planet, thus the inventions of so many things like dishwashers, microwaves, fridges with water dispensers and the like.   Why do I have a problem with this advertising?  I read their website and although they talk about why “smarter” is better I don’t think they have the right framework. I guess it may not be a big problem, but it just rubs me the wrong way.  To assume that we can build a better planet than the we already have, says a lot.  Maybe semantics is just where I like to fight?  I don’t know.

I do know that one thing I think IBM may be trying to do has very little to do with being a smarter planet.  I think they stopped short, they could have gone all the way.  For some reason they chose to stop at smarter planet.  I think they should have gone all the way and suggested we build a “wiser” planet.  You see, I know a bunch of ‘smart’ people but they are far from “WISE.”  Take the guys at Enron for example, they were smart guys, but lacked wisdom.  There is a big distinction from being smart and being wise.  You see, wisdom will not always profit a company in the short-term, but being smart pays now.  We want to be the smartest because we think it is the same as being “WISE.” I don’t think it is.

Look at Proverbs 4.  Take a look at proverbs 3:19, “By WISDOM the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place.”   Not by being smarter…  The great thing about wisdom is that one of the byproducts happens to be ‘smartness.’  But IBM doesn’t think about that.

So I guess my main problem is that I get what IBM means, but I think it lacks something, MORE, something transcendent, something IBM can’t quantify.  What do you think?

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We feel this pressure as parents, I surely understand it from my childhood experiences, but when I watch what is being promoted and fed to American children through the “Tube.”  My knees get weak and my eyes swell up.  I want to throw the TV out the window.  I want to move to Alaska or Iceland and live at the foot of some mountain.  It breaks my heart to see kids forget how to play, how to show grace and mercy to one another.  I want to scream, STOP!

My heart aches for the millions of children who will grow to be adults and not know how to say “NO” to stuff, to things!  The rise in weight related illness amongst children is staggering.  Kids are sedating themselves to death, and the collective ‘we’ as parents are allowing it to happen.  But The cycle has started, how can we break it?

(Here is the trailer to Consuming Kids)

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The first video is of our kids races and how they did during the event.  The bottom video is some of the best finishes and closest races from the day.  Be sure to check out the last photo finish.  Let us know who you think won.  You can pause it right at the end to stare at how close it was.  Overall, we had a great experience at our first Awana Grand Prix.

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Wendy, the blogger at I will not leave you as orphans, recently commented on our site and agreed with my adoption definition from my previous post, Different?! She mentioned how thankful our children were for the gifts that were given to them.  Aside from the everyday struggles of parenthood, we are amazed at how children speak a universal language.  That language is JOY.

Joy at the simplest things, like stickers; “Manny” our 4year old ran down the aisle at church to be dismissed to children’s church on Sunday morning.  He was screaming with excitement and running with such enthusiasm that everyone in the church could see and hear him going down the aisle.  His joy was even more evident when the pastor handed a sticker to all the kids to which he taunted his big brother saying,”ook, ook, me, me Wees.”  (translate: look, look, me, me, Luis.”)  Sometimes as parents or adults we forget what “Joy” actually is until we see our kids get excited about something.

So in church yesterday, we watched a short video presentation from Operation Christmas Child and you wouldn’t believe that I felt water falling down my cheeks.  Meg and I smiled, turned to look at each other and both of our eyes were red with tears.  We said, “We know what they felt.”  The kids in the video were real people to us.  They were our children, they showed the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement about a Shoebox full of paper, glue, and dolls; as I show about a chance to play soccer or a new bike gadget or my iPod, and just as much excitement as “Manny” showed about his little sticker.  We cried cause we are forever connected to God’s heart for the orphaned and the widow.  Being an adoptive family doesn’t give us all the answers or a pass to God’s grace (that is a gift for everyone through Jesus) but we have a unique understanding of what it means to be “adopted as sons into God’s family.”

Please remember, that one way you too can help the orphans this Christmas is by putting a little shoebox together and sending it off to be given as a gift to one of God’s children. Here is the video that we watched, and make sure to have some tissues handy. Remember, God promises that “[He] will not leave you as orphans,” and that through his people others too will believe.

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This is a video of our recent trip with the Church and our family to a local Orchard and Winery where we were able to pick our own pumpkin, although it was more fun and less expensive at Jeff and June’s place, we got to play with tractors, ride fake porcelain animals, and have a scrumptious meal.  We enjoyed the nice weather and we were dying to try out our new video camera.  As you can see the filming may be a little shaky, I promise to get better with that in the future.  This is a short recap of what our time was actually like last Saturday. 

Click me to Play

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