Why do cats HAVE TO poop in their boxes THE SECOND you get done cleaning it out? I mean C’mon! What, are they just afraid that if they don’t mark their territory super fast someone else in the house might use it? Chloe will actually watch me emptying it and then dart in AS I’m putting the lid back on. Cats are so weird!
11 Days between the 4 of us!! Anyone know where abouts the Flu is listed among the plagues of Egypt? Cause if this keeps up, we’re going to have to hide Keegan for safe-keeping!
(I started writing this back to Deb in the form of a “comment” but when it started getting too long, I decided to just post it.)
The books are definitely worth reading. I LOVE “series” books. I love having the next thing to look forward to without wondering “what should I read next?” Even if it’s just a cluster of books by one author.
This’ll sound weird, cause obviously Aslan isn’t said by C.S. Lewis to be Christ in these books… I mean, metaphorically, yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anywhere that Lewis was trying to give people a better understanding of who God is thru his fictious novels. AND YET, and here’s the weird part, these books HAVE actually given me a deeper relationship with God. You’ll have to read them to see what I mean. But I’ll read a passage…something Aslan will say to one of the kids, and I find myself hearing something for myself…something I needed to hear right then.
Y’know, I just thought of this… In book 3, The Horse and His Boy, the story takes place during the reign of the Pevensie children in Narnia, BUT the main characters AREN’T the Pevensies, they’re Shasta and Bree. Shasta’s adventure just happens to cross paths with the Kings and Queens. And this book was REALLY good. This was the first book that really started to hit me in regard to God speaking thru the text. (Man, do I sound crazy!) There’s a part where Shasta and Aravis and their horses have a “run-in” with a lion that scares them into picking up their pace to force them to reach a city gate in time. (Read it. It makes no sense here. lol) During the chase, the lion (they find out later it was Aslan) strikes Aravis with his claws across her back as she races on her horse to the city. You’re sitting there thinking, “what was THAT about!? Why would he hurt her?” But when he explains why, you get this, “Ooooh! I get it.” And somehow you learn something about your own life.
There’s another part, in book 4, where the Pevensie kids are trudging thru a forest with a dwarf apparently lost, when Lucy thinks she sees Aslan in the distance. She tells the others about it who tell her she was probably seeing things (cause they didn’t see him) and she agrees to just follow them and not go in the direction she felt Aslan was calling her to. And guess what, it takes them much longer to get where they were headed. So what did I get out of it? Follow God! Even if no one else sees why…don’t be swayed.
Here’s a site I found that describes each book better than I’m doing here. http://books.narnia.com/chronicles/books/index.html
Wow! aren’t you glad I didn’t try to write this as a comment! Each book is only about 220-270 pages long and well worth the quick read.
I’ve been reading the Chronicles of Narnia books for the last month or so. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is technically book 2 if you read them in sequence as they relate to years. I’m reading The Silver Chair right now (book 6 of 7) and they’ve all been really good. But my favorite is still The Magician’s Nephew. This is the book that tells us how it all began… Who the uncle is that the Pevensie children go to visit in the Narnia movie… Who Jadis is and where she comes from and how she ends up in Narnia from her own world (No, she didn’t originally live in Narnia) It’s also the book that tells of Narnia’s creation. We get to see Aslan speak the world into existence…the light, the plants, the animals, even the tree that sits far across the mountains. It’s really beautiful to read.
But I just can’t seem to get into this latest book. Probably because… oh shoot! Now, if I say it, you may not want to read it… or worse, not even want to start to read the first one and that would be a real shame. It’s not that this is a badly written book or that the storyline is poor or anything…it’s just that… — SPOILER AHEAD —
The Pevensie kids aren’t actually IN this book. Susan and Peter were told in book 4 that they couldn’t return to Narnia again. And in book 5, Lucy and Edmund also had their last adventure in Narnia. (At least that’s what we’re told… I’ll confirm it after book 7) So who DOES end up in this book? Eustace, their cousin, and his schoolmate, Jill. Eustace shows up in book 5 with Lucy and Edmund by accidentally getting pulled (literally) into an adventure with them. I’m only about 1/3 of the way into the book, but it’s just not the same without the “original cast.” I’ll keep you posted though.
ok, so we put a cute little bird feeder in the front of the house. It sits on a pole just outside the window so we can watch the birds come and eat without having it hanging off the house’s gutters or anything. It was really great… at first.
These cute little brown puff-balls were the first to show up. It was a good learning experience for Keegan especially because it got him using his Encarta program (kid-friendly encyclopedia-type software you download onto the computer so they can search for stuff without getting on the actual web and finding porn by accident or something crazy like that. I highly recommend it… Encarta, not the porn. LOL!)
Anyway, we’d watch for what birds showed up each day and then read about them on the computer. The first ones were House Finches. Cute little birds. The males develop red feathers on their chest as they get older. Then Swallows. Pretty little birds (maybe 3″ or 4″) that have a dark blue coloring to them on top of brown feathers. We even had a cardinal show up! Very pretty! Notice I’ve described our LITTLE birdies, afterall, it isn’t a big bird feeder.
But then THEY showed up! Huge black birds with green-purplish heads, 8″ or 9″ inches long at least. They started swooping in and knocking the little birds off the perches. They’d poke their beaks into the small bins of food (where the seed falls gradually as the birds eat it) and toss all the little seeds onto the ground so they could pick out the larger bits of dried raisins or sunflower seeds. They’re horrible! They’re mean!… They’re BULLIES!
Read up on those little !@#$! (or Starlings as they’re known in bird-watcher books) and you’ll see how they’re basically aggressive birds that will actually watch other birds build a nest and then chase them out of it! They are like the Fowl Mafia or something! And worse yet, apparently humans go thru great pains trying to get rid of these vermin because of the havoc their feces can wreak on roofs, mortor and stone! Good God! How am I supposed to get rid of these little monsters without having to tear down the feeder for all the other birds!? In the great words of Alex the Lion, “Darn you! Darn you to heck!”
Any suggestions are appreciated. Jason says we should kill one of them and put its head on a stick as a warning to the others, but that may be a little too excessive… FOR NOW anyway. 
Ok… It’ll never get clean… She’ll never wear these socks again after having worn them in the mud… But C’MON! Is this not the cutest darn “puppy print” you ever saw!?!
So she got a new bike for her birthday. We gave it to her a couple weeks ago because the weather was getting nicer and everyone had spring-fever. The helmet was too big so we got her a new one. But looking back at these pics… Man! Doesn’t she look like a little Strawberry Shortcake doll?!
One of my favorite christian people (2nd only to Ruth) is a woman named Ellie. She runs the ladies bible study on tuesday morning, and I have such incredible respect for her. Not only does she have a fierce love for God and a strong knowledge of His Word, but she’s also very encouraging, thoughtful, sincere and a complete goofball! When my mom came to my church the first time, Ellie saw us at a table (knowing she’s about mom’s age), sat right down next to mom and started talking to her, showing her pictures of her grandkids like they’d been friends for years. I just love her.
She said something in class this week that made a lot of us stop and think and tear-up. She said (and I’ll paraphrase)
“Sometimes I’ll be driving or watching tv or sitting in church and I’ll just start crying…weeping…sobbing for no apparent reason. I feel so close to God and I just need to ‘get it all out.’ That happened the other day while I was driving and I had to pull over. Then all of a sudden I looked around and noticed how yucky things looked…muddy, wet, cold. He showed me that, just like the snow has melted and revealed what was underneath, I was having a melt-down and was able to see some of the garbage that had been lying around underneath the surface. And now it was time to start cleaning up the place.”
I could sit and listen to Ellie talk for hours. She’s such a sincere person; she has ears to hear and a heart to listen, and she relays God’s messages in beautiful ways.
In regard to the questions we ask God sometimes about the plans He has for us:
“You don’t need the answer to fit into your life; You need your life to fit into the answer.”
~Pastor Tim Tyler