Seven Pounds

No, I'm not going to tell you to stay away from the Christmas goodies and lose seven pounds.

I saw the movie, Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith, this past Saturday. I highly recommend it. I think it's a great look into the potential of the human heart.

Christmas Moments

My definition of a Christmas moment is when something happens to remind me of what Christmas is all about. I had two of those moments today thanks to my kids.

It's been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks and as I freely admit it easy for me to get caught up in all the things surrounding Christmas. Mind you most if not all are good things, even necessary things.

This morning I was taking Abbey to school. Usually I drop the kids off at the school curb but today Andrew was home sick so I parked and walked her into the school. As I got ready to say good-bye to her she grabbed my hand and asked me to walk her to class. Any one who knows of Abbey's independent nature will understand why that was a special moment for me. I jumped at the chance.

As I said, Andrew is home sick today. I was staying with him until his mom got home at 3pm. I had my plan: he would watch TV quietly, the dogs (one new puppy) would sleep in the corner, and I would pull out the laptop and get loads of things done. Didn't happen. Not even close.

So I scrapped that idea (not an easy thing for me to do) and went with plan B. Andrew and I took care of one of our Christmas traditions, watching Home Alone together.

Now I'm at Wegmans trying to get at least half of my list done.

I'm thankful to God for today's Christmas moments and that I did not miss them.

The American Humanist Society has unveiled a $40,000 ad campaign in the DC Metro area. The campaign will use the Metro trains, buses and stations to advertise their message "Why believe in god? Just be good for goodness sakes."

The spokesperson for the group had this to say about their decision to run the campaign at Christmas: "Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion."

I think the church needs to respond to his statement, but probably not the way many churches will. I believe he's right. A lot of people are lonely during the holiday season. But the church has a message of hope and so we need to get that message out there, not to counter an anti-religious group's campaign but because the second greatest commandment given to us by Christ is "love your neighbor as yourself."

With the help of one of our pastors, our church put together it's own message for the holiday season to help share the message of hope with lonely people.

New Arrival

We have a new arrival on the way in two weeks. He's a 6 week old Australian Shepherd (Aussie.) We have not decided on a name yet but so far Andrew is leaning toward Indy.

One of our hopes is that it will be somewhat theraputic for Andrew. Andrew has ADD so self-esteem and self-confidence is always a concern for us with him. He will be going through the obiedence training with the puppy and maybe even doing some obiedence competition.

Great Time of Year

I love Fall. I finally got back on my bike after a couple of weeks of business. Great to be able to create some margin and enjoy the great outdoors.

I grabbed this pic yesterday. It was a little cool but worth the ride. The colors were great and I saw at least 7 deer.

Prayers for Jamie

I received an Email late yesterday from Rick asking for prayer for his daughter-in-law Jamie. Seven weeks ago she had a baby prematurely. Two days ago Jamie was admitted to the hospital and they discovered she had a large brain tumor. She underwent almost 30 hours of surgery.

It is unclear at this point what her condition is and what the complications from the surgery will be.

Here is a link to Rick's video blog where he gives more details: http://saddlebackfamily.com/blogs/newsandviews/index.html?contentid=1500

Lejla's Story - Operation Christmas Child

This is the video we used to kick-off this year's Operation Christmas Child ministry.

Lejla's story is an amazing one.