365 days ago...

Where were you?? I had just been home a couple months and wondering what God had in store.... Now I have been home a year and a couple months and I'm wondering what God has in store...
Somehow so much can happen in a year and yet still leave you where you were 365 days previous. That's how I feel. I know there are things in me that have changed... and maybe irrevocably, and there have been changes in relationship with friends and family, some drawing closer while others pulling apart, and yet somehow I feel like there has been no progression. I am praying prayers I prayed last year. I am wondering the same things about the future and so ready to move on, but unsure to what or how... or when. Sigh, stupid New Years making me all melancholy. However this time I am resolved to NOT feel melancholy at our rockin' "multicultural Newyears party" and to take dance classes in the New Year :D No more freedom for me - it's time I take control over my dance habits and learn to step in time >>>

Post script... This Christmas John got a very special Christmas Card from the creator of white ninja... it's positively thrilling for the whole family. Joy, Dave and I got the tshirts! I know it makes you super jealous, but I was too excited not to tell. Of course, you'd find out anyway. I threw out all my other shirts. They were just too lame in comparison.

Happy Christmas Everybody!!!

I pray you can all have lots of fun! AND that you know absolutely how much our heavenly father loves you to have sent his son :D
xx's Grace

Last Christmas

I gave you my heart... but the very next day, you gave it away. *Sigh*
P.S. Watching this Joy immediately picked out george michael as "the cute guy" hahahaha poor joybells.

Capernwray Dance Party

Believe or not every single person is completely sober... but at this dance off the promise of a free Milkshake is enough to make Paul, Lydia and Victor dance their hearts out!

I miss our dance parties

Here Paul gets competitive in our dance off... I miss dance party in the Beehive. IN fact I am posting both videos I have from that night... I had forgotten I had them

This winter is a wonderland

Still it snows... the snowiest winter I've seen in forever... it snowed all day again today.

Fortunately I have bronchitis, so I don't feel guilty for not wanting to go anywhere. Instead we curl up in blankets, sip tea and watch a plethora of movies... and paint, and ... well praise God for snow days.

Thanks Mr. Bean for this inspirational poem, and joy for reminding me of it...

Roses are reddish...

Violets are blue-ish...

If it wasn't for Christmas,

We'd all be jewish!

(....Happy Chanukah friends!)

sometimes winter is beautiful... and a strange dream

This is just out of town... I went out with John to take some pictures. I love how at sunset even snow can look warm. I guess the grass peeking through helps too.

So I had this strange dream the other night... it's really hard to explain, but it was strange not just because of the content of the dream, but because unlike most of my dreams I had no idea what was about to happen, in that way it felt very real. I was sitting in the living room with my family. It was summer and our dining room window was open, all of a sudden we hear this ruckus outside. There was a guy... who I assumed was drunk yelling and we could hear what sounded like bottles breaking. He was yelling "REALLY WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL... HE WAS JUST THE BASTARD SON OF A CARPENTER AND A PROSTITUTE. YOU CALL HIM A SAVIOUR HE COULDN'T SAVE HIMSELF!" I felt so sad for this guy. I felt sad that he was so deluded. I felt sad that he bought into the lies that have, truthfully, been hanging around since the romans and pharisee's started spouting them just after the resurrection. He kept yelling and I can't even bring myself to write what he said... (There is almost never any swearing or bad language in my dreams no matter what was happening - so I guess that set this dream apart too.) My curiousity got the best of me, as it usually does... and I went to the window to see who it was. I was absolutely shocked to discover that it wasn't just one man... There was a group of people bashing out the windows of our cars with bats and rocks. The man was there yelling and the others grinning and nodding assent to what he said as they kept breaking windows. My heart started beating so fast... I thought I wasn't scared but my body was saying otherwise. I felt I really had to say something, proclaim truth in the midst of the lies. I stood at the window looking, some of them glancing at me and laughing, shaking their heads. I started telling the leader that he was wrong.. that not only had Jesus in that one radical act saved not just himself, or the jews or the others of that day, but he had saved me. That he is in fact the legitimate heir of the King of Kings, Majestic in Holiness, working wonders... and all sorts of things he had done and names He was given came tumbling out. Even as I spoke I knew they would come after me next. I felt bad for my family, that I hadn't given them a chance to get away... I felt sad that I had pushed them into having to take a stand for Christ right then and there. But in the back of my mind I knew it was good and right, that God had brought this test to us, not just me. It was time for us to stand up and bear witness to the truth. I woke up as I was still speaking to them and watching them grow in fury... My heart was beating so hard, and I thought - I can't forget this dream - even if I don't understand it right now in full, it felt like there was something important in it. Even stranger, when I fell back to sleep, the next dream that I had ended with me telling my sister Christina about this dream... somehow it's important.

A collection of delightful times with Ol' St. Nick, in days of Yore

I do believe this St. Nick is in it for the money and not for the love of the children..

Oh won't somebody think of the children??
This is one shady looking St.Nick look at the devil horns he's sporting...
I think those kids have a right to look nervous!

I think I would be crying to... what is that thing??

Gives me the creeps just looking at it,

and yet... somehow... I can't look away.

Ahhh... Here's the Ol' St. Nick I remember! ...It's the girly purple wristwatch he's sporting,

sets him apart from the fakes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this Saint, that is just one bratty kid, angry he's getting coal for Christmas.

I love that the true Saint Nick is an advocate of tough love where necessary.

True Story!

Antoine Feuchtwanger introduced the frankfurter weiner to America....

2nd quote of the day

Sometimes we put up walls. Not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down.

Quote of the day.

"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the perogative of the brave."
~Mohandas Gandhi