This song came out last year, but somehow I missed it.  Hysterical:

Toy Packaging by Sara Groves

Nothing makes me lose my cool like
Toy packaging
Ask the kids to leave the room for
Toy packaging
I have no choice the money’s spent
I’ve worked for hours to make a dent
I guess it’s anger management
Toy packaging

Nothing makes me lose my cool like
Toy packaging
Ask the kids please leave the room it’s time for
Toy packaging
I’m drawing up a battle plan
to extricate this robot man
My self-esteem is in the can
Toy packaging

In the old days you could hold a box and shake it
And hear the pieces rattling around
My eyes tear up with these grommets, tape and twisty ties
Remembering their beautiful sound

Toy Packaging
I love Toy Packaging
(Mom! Honey!)

Nothing makes me lose my cool like toy packaging
Kids you really need to leave the room, mom’s opening toy packaging
I’m sorry you have to see this sight
You must be brave, no please don’t cry
I promise it will be alright
I hope to have it by tonight
Nevermind this dynamite
Toy packaging

John and I are so excited to announce our next grand adventure.

Learn all about it at AdoptionAdventures.org

Hey friends!  Compassion had a great idea this year of letting sponsors help them find new sponsors for some kiddos.

Here is my precious assignment:

Meet Grace!  She is 4 years old and lives in Kenya.

Here is the description that Compassion wrote:

“Grace lives with her mother.  She is responsible for running errands.  Her mother is sometimes employed as a laborer.  There are 2 children in the family.

As part of Compassion’s ministry, Grace participates in church activities.  She is also in preschool where her performance is average.  Playing with dolls and playing ball games are her favorite activities.

Please remember Grace in your prayers.  Your love and support will help her to receive the assistance she needs to grow and develop.”

And here is their description of the area she’s from:

“Across Kenya, thousands of children like Grace face a harsh, daily struggle for survival.  Many children go for days with little or no food, or have little access to safe drinking water.  They are often sheltering in unhygienic conditions where disease, violence and abuse overshadow their lives.  No wonder many live in constant fear and danger.

But through the Compassion sponsorship program, children like Grace are being given the chance of a lifetime to break free from poverty, receive an education for the first time and know what it is to feel loved, valued and highly esteemed as one of God’s precious children.”

The cost for sponsorship is $38 a month.  This covers SO much.  Not only will you be providing for Grace’s food and education, but you are also building into the community through support of local churches and organizations.  And Compassion has such a great pen pal system!  You can even write to Grace online and they will translate and send it to her!

If you are interested, let me know and I’ll get you in touch with Compassion for Grace.

Jac’s teacher just put these pictures up on facebook. This morning the kids went to different classes to do Holiday activities. Apparently Charis was not happy about making gingerbread men. These two pictures are just too perfect not to post.

Here is Jac trying too make this a fun activity for Charis.  I don’t think she’s buying what he’s selling…

She remains unconvinced.

Any suggestions on how to raise a…uh….passionate girl?  Help me please.  I’m serious.

This post is from Sarah Markley’s blog.

I’ve reposted one of her blogs before…this one is also worth putting up here.

Great read -

The Gap in the Covenant

Sometimes my husband and I seriously don’t get along.

We’ve been through this, we’ve gone to marriage counseling, we’ve sat in billions of Bible studies and listened to enough sermons to fill a 64 gig iPod.  We even counsel other couples and speak to groups about marriage.

But more-than-occasionally we miss each other. Like really miss.  (Picture unathletic college-me taking tennis as a class and missing the fuzzy green ball over and over again.  That kind of miss.)

We talk loudly and even hang up the phone. We glare and growl sometimes too.  We flop over in bed and turn toward the wall.  We sulk and scowl.  We expect the worst and live in the past. We think mean, selfish things.

Why can’t he just…

What would be the harm in him….

I’ve told him this a hundred times…

But, even so we have a covenant.  We have binding promises.  We didn’t say Until One Of Us Wounds The Other. Or Until You Get Really Mad At Me.  Or even, Until We Really Really Hate Each Other. We said Until Death Do Us Part. It’s forever.

What makes the difference is this: we are learning to live in the gap of the covenant. Because sometimes only one of us is upholding our promises. Love. Honor. Respect.

When he doesn’t hold up his end, I hold up mine. When I fail miserably and say something un-take-back-able, he stands still as my husband, unshaken by something as fleeting as a word in the face of a promise. Even though it hurts and it takes time to get over, we are learning to practice this.

But our example for this isn’t each other (we are far from skilled even at this) or even another couple we admire. Our example is the first Covenant Maker.  The One who stands strong in the face of our adultery, our hatred, our selfish words and actions.

He IS the gap in the covenant. He even stands at the altar with us knowing we will become distracted and trip over our own desires.  He knows we will not keep our promises. He knows we are destined for cheating.

But He lives there, right in that place where we don’t keep our end of the bargain. He doesn’t flop over in bed or think mean things. He doesn’t glare at us and live in our past mistakes.

He wants us to live the way we were designed to live. The way we vowed.

But until then, He’ll live in that gap unshaken by us in the face of unmet promises and He’ll make up the difference when we can’t.

Are you living in the gap in your marriage?

So last night I’m talking to a dear friend of mine that has young chidren.  She brings up, kind of out of the blue, that she will not be sending a Christmas card this year.  Okay, I say.  She then goes on to explain for 10 minutes why she can’t send out a Christmas card this year.  No, seriously, I say, it’s ok.  It does not bother me.  One bit.   She then continues to explain how there is just so much going on this season and there is no possible way she can make time for a Christmas card.  Girlfriend.  It’s OKAY.  No one will be upset at you for not sending a Christmas card this year.  I promise.

It’s at this point that I realize that we may all just need to let each other off of the Christmas hook.  We need to say it’s ok if we don’t get a Christmas card from each other, okay if we don’t make homemade cookies for our neighbors, okay if every single teacher gets an individual Christmas present, okay if your house doesn’t smell like cinnamon at all times, okay if your outside lights never get put up, okay if you don’t make it to the Christmas play that you’ve gone to every year….IT’S OKAY.

My friend made a great point last night.  She said, as Christians we live counter-culturally 11 months out of the year.  And then all of the sudden in December we look around and say, “oh that’s what they’re doing, ok, I’ll do that, too.”  At what point did December become the month we just “get through”?  At what point did we get upset at a friend that didn’t send a Christmas card?

And maybe even more than letting each other off of the hook, we need to let OURSELVES off of the hook.  I would love to have a Norman Rockwell Christmas day every day.  But some days it’s OK if all I do is make some hot chocolate for the kids.  I would love to have Clark Griswald lights on my house (really, I would).  But its OK if this year I just get the family in the car to go check out other people’s lights.  I would love to have a picture perfect Christmas card.  But we all know how hard we tried last year and came up with THIS:

All I’m saying is…I officially let you OFF OF THE CHRISTMAS HOOK.

Wasn’t there a baby involved in this whole thing?

Ok, I tend to exaggerate, but seriously.  This performance at the AMA’s of Empire State of Mind by Jay Z and Alicia Keys is SICKDICULOUS.  (That was for you, Jes.)

The song is great by itself, but performed live like this – incredible.  Having dabbled in production myself (on an incredibly smaller scale) – there is so much about this that I appreciate.  The Sinatra intro by Keys, the classy grand piano and tux that Jay Z is wearing, the NY skyline, the multiple stacked pianos behind them, the perfectly timed animation, Alicia Keys playing piano for the first half and moving to the front as a more prominent piece during the second half, even what the background pianists are wearing.  (And it makes me smile that even Reba couldn’t contain her groove.)

It’s all SO good.  Thanks to my little brother who is now a Dad for showing this to me!

After I posted on Gendercide a couple of weeks ago, a good friend sent me a link to The Girl Effect.

Check out their video:

Did you know that an extra year of primary school raises a girls lifetime wages by 10-20%?

And an extra year of secondary school raises a girls lifetime wages by 15-25%?

Educating girls in developing countries is not optional.  It’s one of the missing links to turning massive, cyclical poverty around in these very poor countries.

Click here to learn how to get involved.

I love the Post Secret book and website.  You can check them out here and here.

If you’re unfamiliar with Post Secret, it’s basically an address that you can send in any random anonymous secret to on standard size post card.  He collects and publishes a lot of them.

Today as I was reading through their last blog, this particular secret really moved me.  Hope it reminds us all not to judge others on appearances…

My friend, Tony Kim, asked me to write a guest review of New Moon.
You can check it out here:
http://babbleon5.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/new-moon-from-a-twi-hard/