Signs

I passed a church sign today that said, "Do your best and let God do the rest."
I love the American work ethic, at least pre-O'Bama American work ethic, but there are times that I think it has flawed our theology. Many of us grew up hearing the gospel of this sign. The message was something like, "Try to be as perfect as you can. It is understood that you may only be 80% perfect, but if you try hard enough God will cover you for that other 20%.
I believe our lives as Christians should be in response to what God has done for us through the Christ rather than an effort to earn the sacrifice He made.
If they'd let me edit that sign I would change it to something like, "God has given all and done it all, so give Him your best."

~ My Husband Rocks! ~ but sometimes . . .

I don't tell him, or tell him enough. Sometimes I don't thank him for holding my hand when we walk around the block. But, Everytime I kiss and hug him when he leaves for work, comes home from work, or anywhere anytime in between, my heart is happy that I love him.

Busy Week

On Saturday, after rest time, we went to a splash pad that opened near our house. Annie was not into the water splash pad, but liked the mud. Jones and Georgia liked getting soaked.






There are soccer fields next to the park, so they ran. Jones can do the monkey bars by herself.















Whistle while you work.......On Monday, my wonderful husband and two oldest scrubbed the kitchen floor during "rest" time!















Then we went to the lake!
Here's Georgia:













Here's Jones:













And Annie:











And two more:




On Tuesday, the girls and I went to a "vbs" at Wayman Manor, low income apartment housing, and had a good time spreading love. Jones and Georgia were not happy about wearing light blue shirts, but were over it pretty fast after our little talk in front of the building. :) Here are some of the activites: story time, craft, game and snack. Annie stayed with me in the snack area, she was content :).



















Thursday morning, Annie had her 15 month well check and shots. She weighs 19lbs(10%) and is 29 1/2 inches(25%).

Thursday afternoon. Jones cut her hair!
Jones and Georgia were supposed to be watching a movie during rest time today. I came through the kitchen and found hair on the floor near the table. Willie and Ranger had been in the garage the night before during the storm, so my first thought was that it was Willie's and I had missed it this morning. But, as I reach down to pick it up I know it is Jonesey's hair. She first told me it was Willie's, then she told me she pulled it out, then she confessed to cutting it with the kitchen scissors in the utensil carousel. The scissors have been removed.
It's not bad. I don't have any embarrassing pics to show you. She just cut a little where bangs would be, but it's not drastic.

For tonight's meal we had corn, zucchini, squash and cucumbers from our garden. Yumm









And we thank the Lord for the beautiful picturesque clouds.


Good night.

Instead of complaining.....

In case you haven’t heard Pat Green’s latest single from his album of the same title, “What I’m For”, I thought I’d post the lyrics. One of those songs that I wish I had written. As usual, a song is better heard than read so I encourage you to click on the youtube link below.

What I’m For

I'm for wildflowers in the window
Mechanics you can trust
I'm for crackers in my chili
And leavin' grudges in the dust

I'm for drive thru order takers
Who can muster up a smile
I'm for takin' in that stray dog
That's been hangin' 'round for awhile

I'm for turning off the TV
Gettin' off the internet
I'm for learning all the words
To the Gettysburg Address

I'm for dusty pawn shop guitars
And boxers passed their prime
I'm for soakin' up the wisdom
When an old man speaks his mind.

I'm for laid off factory workers
When the wolf is at the door
You don't have to guess what I'm against
If you know what I'm for

I'm for Texas, margaritas
Gettin' outta debt
I'm for havin' faith in something
That hasn't happened yet

For the shy kid in the corner
Afraid to ask the girl to dance
For the ex-con outta prison
Who just wants a second chance

For the inner city teacher
With her heart stuck in her throat
Can still see God in every child
And never gives up hope

I'm for dusty pawn shop guitars
And boxers passed their prime
I'm for soakin' up the wisdom
When and old man speaks his mind

I'm counting all my blessings
When the wolf is at the door
You don't have to guess what I'm against
If you know what I'm for

My own comments continued from the comments section.....

There is a black guy I work with, from West Texas, with pre-school age children, goes to a church of Christ... but I'd bet that if the HR dept. of BNSF got on a train with us and took our picture, they would use it on one of their diversity posters. It's the ridiculous that leaves me incredulous.

Regarding our most recent Supreme Court nominee. Whether for or against, and even from those who say it doesn't matter, there has been a lot of hype about her "latina" heritage, but think about this:
Justice Scalia, a conservative nominated by Reagan, is actually more "Latin" than Sotowhatshername. His dad came here from Sicily. He's only one generation removed from being from the birthplace of "Latin", yet there was none of this diversity hype about his nomination. Her parents were from Puerto Rico, an American territory. I would venture a guess that her European (Latin) anscestors came over here from Spain more than 200 years ago.
In our political world, if you're grandma cooks lasagna from the old country you're just an old white guy, but if your grandma makes fresh tortillas in the morning then you are a treasure of political diversity.

***Those of you who would rather look at picures of fish or our kids than read about what's making me mad this week stay tuned. I promise we'll have some pictures soon.***

Diversity or Division?

I’ve been intending to do a post on this topic for a while now. Here are my disorganized thoughts on the topic of diversity. If you are so inclined, please share your thoughts on the matter in the comments section.

If you want to keep the special interest groups off of your back, you’d better play their game.
Even the company I work for, who makes money by moving freight from point A to point B, takes every opportunity it can to push the issue of diversity. I recently saw a trainmaster wearing a cap that said BNSF- Safety and Diversity. What does diversity have to do with safety and what does it have to do with moving freight?

Diversity has more to do with skin color than anything else.
I dare say that if you put a white guy from Boston, a white guy from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a white guy from Podunk, Alabama, and a white guy from Pecos, Texas in a room together they would not be considered a diverse group by the goofballs who decide what is and isn’t diverse. However, if you put a white woman from Boston, a black man from Boston, and a Chinese man from Boston who all went to high school together, then you would have yourself a very diverse group. According to the experts that is.

White and Male is now considered the ultimate absence of culture.
A Texas classroom with 19 Caucasians, 2 Blacks, and 1 Mexican would not be considered very culturally diverse, but a classroom with 19 Mexicans and 2 Caucasians would be considered not only very diverse, but culturally rich and wouldn’t learn anything on May 5 because they would be celebrating that culture. Makes no sense to me.

A Look at History
I’m stereotyping and making a generalization here so you can call the ACLU on me now if you’d like, but in looking at history, lands that had diversity forced upon them were/are lands of war and discord. Whereas lands that were culturally homogenous have experienced long periods of peace.
See if you can figure out which list is which:
*The Middle East, Spain, Italy when it was made up of individual city states, Los Angeles, New York City, the border of Pakistan and India.
*Switzerland, Italy after the Renaissance, Maine, Australia, Lubbock.

Real Research
I recently heard of a study which found that communities which were more homogeneous were much closer knit, more likely to know their neighbors names, etc… while residents of communities that were the most “diverse” often remained strangers to each other. You can visit any town in West Texas and then visit a new subdivision in the DFW Metroplex to conduct your own study.

I’m not saying white is right, not saying the whole world should speak English, not saying that I don’t enjoy visiting foreign places and experiencing different things.
What I am saying is that, as Americans of all races and backgrounds, having a false diversity and cultural variety forced upon us because we are assumed to have a flawed culture or even and absence of one will bring division and resentment rather than unity.

Summer Fun!

Every afternoon for the past couple of weeks has been spent in the backyard and in the water. The blowup pool is positioned at the bottom of the slide and the turtle, once a sand box, is now a pool. The sprinkler is going and the girls are soaked and having a blast. I think we will go through a lot of sunscreen this summer!

Jones and Justin's garden is producing a lot of cucumbers and squash. The snow peas were plentiful but have dried up. We had a couple of strawberries. Jones was able to eat one and a half. The birds helped themselves to the rest. The tomatoes have started and are green, so we await those. Here is a picture of proud Jones.


Yesterday afternoon we headed over to Kirsten's house for fun! Her pool was not blown up yet, so we both tried to blow it up. Jones took our picture.








Here are the girls having fun. Annie's favorite activity is to hold the hose and try to take Madalyn's hat off. Jones and Georgia run back and forth to the faucet turning the water up and down. And Madalyn's not quite sure about all the activity, but is excited to be with her friends. She and Annie are sure cute whenever they see each other. The hug til one falls, hug again, and then look at each other not sure what to do next. Hopefully, we can get it on video one day. It's too cute.