Praise Report

Great news! The nephew of my friend Chrissy L. has recovered very well after his heart surgery a few weeks ago. I can only imagine how many prayers must have been sent to the Lord over Kevin. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. Even things not directly related to Kevin's surgery. But Kevin appears to be well on his way to his normal life. Here is a small snippet from his Care Page this afternoon:

"Kevin is doing so well. I just can’t believe how fast he is recovering from this surgery. I’d still be trying to milk it a little if I had just gone through open heart surgery, but not Kevin. He is handling it like a champ. He got his stitches removed this week and they also removed the tape that was keeping his chest incision together. He says he feels so much better now."

Again, to those of you who prayed, I say Thank You! Kevin's family is quite grateful!

It's 5:30am...

...and I haven't been to sleep yet.

My hubby picked me up from work at 4:15pm today, and we drove straight to our tax accountant's office. Our appointment was at 5:30pm and we actually got there by 5pm on the dot. We walked in to face about 10 people already waiting. The receptionist asked us if we wanted to go eat, shop, watch a movie...something to kill the time. We gave her our cell number so she could call us while we were out and let us know when we should head back to the office. Oh, by the way, my hubby has been getting sicker and sicker with each passing hour of the past couple of days. Bad time to get sick.

Even so, we went ahead to get dinner at my favorite restaurant...Pappadeaux!! YUM!! I hadn't eaten there in years! I looked at my watch after we finished eating. It was 7:30pm. No call from the receptionist yet, so we decided to chance a movie. We watched a 7:45pm showing of "No Country For Old Men". Please don't get me started about that movie...that is a whole post in itself. We decided to go to Starbucks afterward. Although I'm usually against having caffeine after 5pm, I figured we'd probably be up until at least 2am. I was right.

All's well that ends well. We left the tax accountant's house a little over an hour ago. It is now 5:21am. I will sleep for 3 1/2 hours, and wake up to call Chris's classmate(s) to let them know that he's too sick to go to class. Then I will try to get in another 3 1/2 hours and call my mom to see if she will keep my kids for the rest of the day. Then I will try to get another 2 hours of sleep.

Oh, in other news, the countdown to Orlando has officially begun. 2 weeks from now we will be waking up the kids, getting dressed, and ready to leave the house on our way! We are staying for 5 - 6 days. We really need this trip, and I hope that it's all I think it will be for the four of us.

Twins Kick Tumor From Pregnant Mom's Cervix!

Wow, I haven't heard anything about this in the MSM. I could only find it on Fox News. I wonder why. </sarcasm>

A woman pregnant with twins was rushed to the hospital after she believed that she was suffering a miscarriage. It was then that she discovered she had cervical cancer. Even though delivering a child while having cervical cancer can be deadly, she refused to have an abortion. So the doctors had to instead treat her with mild chemotherapy so that the cancer would not spread throughout her body during the pregnancy.

Read here for the details on how verything turned out. We are ALWAYS rewarded for our obedience to God! Great story!

Planning a trip to Orlando

My family visits Orlando every year. Our kids are age 4 and 2 now, so this definitely factors in to the how's and what's of our trip planning. Each year I try to plan the trip so that it's better than the last. But at some point during every trip something happens that causes me to think to myself "I wish someone had told me to expect this!"

Here is how I plan to help others like me. My next few posts will be write-ups useful for families of young children visiting the Orlando, Florida area. I will divide the posts up so that they are topic specific. The very first post will be entitled "Where to stay".

Enjoy!

Let's make this a great week

I napped for 3 hours today. Clearly I was completely exhausted. My hubby and I could barely keep our eyes open at church today, and that's completely unlike us. So it's 10:15pm right now. If I can be asleep by 11:30pm, I'll be ready to wake up t 5:30am refreshed. We're down to one car temporarily, so we can all leave the house at 7am, drop my hubby off by 7:15am. I can then have the kids at school by 8:15am and I will be able to get to work right before 9am. I know, it kind of sucks to leave your house at 7am and not get to work until 2 hours later, but we are used to adjusting and doing what we have to.

Praise report: My friend Chrissy L was able to bring her son home from the hospital on Friday! His surgery went very well, and he did a lot better than even the doctors expected. I'm so thankful and very happy for them! We've had a crazy weekend, so I haven't had time to call them when it wasn't to late in the evening...I'll touch base with them tomorrow to see how the little guy is doing. Thanks for the prayers and love for them!!

Wishing you a great and productive week!

Privacy is becoming a thing of the past...

This tech-savvy world that we live in is pretty cool. I'll be the first to admit this. One of the more interesting things to me about this age we're living in is how readily available information is. I'm not even referring to everyday things such as searching for "World War II" or browsing youtube.com for your favorite video. I'm talking about the fact that with the click of a button, you can pretty much find out ANYTHING you want about someone.

Let's go even further. We have Facebook.com, which is by far the BEST online social networking site of all times. Even CNN utilizes it while reporting news stories! At its inception, Facebook seemed completely unique and much "safer" than Myspace. Privacy options within Facebook are more detailed; in fact, the default privacy settings are always pretty high, which means you have to intentionally make yourself available to be found.

If you're heavy into Facebook, then you know that it has become almost a brand new animal over the past 24 months. External applications can be built by developers and hooked into the Facebook API and used by any "Facebookers" that want to install them. One such application is the "Compare People" application developed by Ivko Maksimovic.

Compare People allows you to rate your friends. Upon running the application, you will be asked 20 questions. EX: "Who is smarter?", "Who would you rather sleep with?", "Who is more punctual?" With each question, two of your friends Facebook profile pictures are randomly selected and displayed on the screen. You click on the picture of the friend that you would like to select as an answer to the question. So if, say, my boss has Facebook and has added me to his friend list, he can run the Compare People application and get a question that says "Who is prettier?". My profile picture could be one of his choices. If he selects me as "prettiest", my "social rankings" will change within the Compare People application. I happen to have the app installed; here is a list of my current social rankings:




Seems pretty slick (from a programmer's point of view) and pretty harmless (if you've already graduated from high school/college or are over the age of 25, at least). The good news is that even though you can check your social rankings, you can never actually find out who voted for or against you for any given category. Even though the anonymity is comforting, there is a caveat. Also available within the social rankings list are specific details of who you won and lost against! You may be thinking NO BIGGIE since you still don't know WHO voted for or against you. Not so fast. Take a look at specific details of who I won and lost against in the category "Who is Prettier?":



Notice, the person I lost against is anonymous. This probably means 1 of 2 things: either they don't have the Compare App installed, or they installed it and later changed their privacy settings so that they will not be shown in the Compare App or listed in the Social Rankings. That's fine, but here's why it still kind of sucks. Look at the image directly above again. The two individuals that I won against happen to be my co-workers. Both of their profile names and pictures are displayed (I removed their names and whited-out their faces) which means they have the Compare App installed. I only have a small amount of co-workers listed as Facebook friends, and an even smaller number who installed the Compare People app! Like 6 or 7 tops. So it's not difficult to narrow down who probably voted. Doesn't seem so cool anymore does it?

I'm not trying to make something out of nothing. Just wanted to point out that we still have to be socially responsible and sometimes pick things apart a little bit deeper on our own to discover what we're making available. Happy Facebooking! :-)

Ash Wednesday

Today feels really good. I feel really clean and full of purpose today. I can't explain it completely, but I honestly feel as though I have been cleansed and refreshed, and prepared for a new endeavor.

The thought of what to "give up" or sacrifice during Lent kept running through my mind all day yesterday. This morning the answer was as clear as crystal. I will be giving up idle behavior. This includes the hours of time per day that I spend aimlessly surfing the net perusing for celebrity gossip, the hours per day that I spend watching reality television (that one will be REALLY tough for me), and the spontaneous actions I take when I feel that I can sneak in some previously unscheduled me time. Not only am I suffering as a result of all of this idle time, but so are those around me who depend on me.

So here's the plan: For the next 40 days I will spend the evenings with my children. Cooking dinner, playing, reading to one another, family bonding. By 7pm, I will be bathing them, and by 7:30pm they will be in the bed. I will give them about 30 minutes of playtime before lights out. Successfully implementing this is going to be drama in the beginning. They DO NOT listen to me at all when I tell them to go to bed. I mean, they will lie down and close their eyes while I'm standing there, but as soon as I close the door, they are back to playing. Lately, they've been going to bed around 12 midnight!! They are up at 6:30am, and they are only little tykes who need lots of rest, so this just can't be good long-term. This will not be easy, and will require some real stamina on my part. My kids are worth it, though. I will also be spending this extra time cleaning up after everyone once the kids are in bed. If I do this daily, it should only take a half-hour tops. Also, I will be spending a minimum of 1 hour in daily prayer and meditation. I am really looking forward to this. Life feels so much more worth living when you are closely connected with the Heavenly Jehovah through the Holy Spirit. No other way to explain it other than that.

My hope is that by the time we're about halfway to Easter Sunday, this new behavior will become a normal habit for me and not something I have to remind myself to do everyday. We shall soon see!

Super/Fat Tuesday

Forgive the rambling...I've spent the last 5 hours listening to Super Tuesday elections results. It's got my head spinning. Also, Wednesday (which it technically is now, considering it's after midnight) begins the season of Lent. I need to think of something to sacrifice for 40 days (leading up to Easter Sunday).


It's time to kick it into gear. Period. For example, even though 2007 was better career-wise than 2006, it still wasn't even close to meeting the goals I had for myself. To be honest, I never actually set realistic, concrete goals in 2007. I just knew that I wanted to "be better" than I was the year before. I definitely accomplished that, but I still feel pretty crappy about where I am.

1/12 of 2008 is already over. What will I do differently in 2008?

I need more rest. I have started off this year not being in bed before midnight, every single night which is really bad. I am always SO tired every morning and usually don't drag my lazy butt out of bed until after 7am. That is ridiculous. We should be leaving the house by 7am at the latest. Before I go to bed, I should be laying out everyone's clothes, straightening up the house a little, bathing the kids,etc...and when we get up in the morning I should be fixing the kids a nice warm breakfast and able to leave the house without being frantic about the fact that I won't make it to the office until 9:30am. I have to leave work by 5pm at the latest, so I need to be in the office by 8am. Sux.

I need to spend MUCH MORE time with the Lord. My mind just isn't clear. Everything is so muddled in my head, and sometimes there's a feeling of dread. If I would fit an hour of time in with God, I would be able to hear Him more clearly and every little thing that seems to go wrong wouldn't affect me so drastically. Not to mention the fact that I would have a much stronger relationship to God, and be much more accessible to Him in order to actually live out my true purpose in His eyes.

I should be spending more quality time with my kids. By the time we get home I'm so wiped out that I barely feel like making anything for dinner, let alone engaging them in playtime or anything related to learning. To put it plain and simple, lately I haven't have much left emotionally for my babies by the time I get home from work. This is probably related to the lack of sleep we just went over.

See how everything goes back to ONE thing? Life is like that. We read self-help books, ask questions of people who know NO more than us, keep doubting ourselves, when the real answer to our questions and the real resolution to our problems always boils down to ONE thing. Lack of relationship with God. I'm not even sure that I'm living according to His will because I hardly fellowship with Him these days. What if everything I'm doing is going completely against His plan for me? It would definitely explain why I'm just coasting along looking for some shred of happiness. Yes, 2007 was a rough year for my family, but how much longer can I use that as an excuse? It's beginning to fray my nerves somewhat, which is a bad sign. Time to get back on track!

Nasty Hotel Glasses

This is just great. We already have nasty top covers and sofa cushions to be concerned about while staying at hotels (blacklight anyone?) Now, we get this awful story. You know those glasses that are sitting on the sink in the bathroom? The ones that you most likely use to take your medication or rinse out your mouth while brushing your teeth? Well a few investigative reporters from different cities have been doing a little in-the-field research for us. After watching the video below, I would like to recommend that you do one of two things while staying at a hotel: 1) Run all of the dishes that you intend to use through a few cycles in the dishwasher. Be sure that the water gets BLAZING hot! 2) Just bring and use only paper plates and utensils.

When we're in Orlando, we stay at a villa that has a dishwasher that we can use, so I will be sure that we use that from now on. YUCK!

Urgent Prayer Request

One of my best friends that I've spoken about on here before, Chrissy L, can use the prayers of everyone that's reading this right now. Specifically for her nephew Kevin, of whom Chrissy is the legal guardian. He is only 11 years old, and is about to endure something tomorrow that most people may never have to go through. He has had a heart condition since birth. Over time, due to his heart muscles not being very strong, his heart has become weaker and weaker as his family knew would be the case. The time has come for him to have major open-heart surgery. He will be having his heart valve replaced. The surgery takes place Monday, February 4 (tomorrow).

If you are reading this, and you are a parent, picture your 11-year old having to go through something like this. So this is how the family is feeling right now. They are being incredibly strong, mostly due to their faith in God and the hope that He gives us. If you are reading this and you are not a parent, just try and remember what it was like to be 11-years old. Please lift up your fervent prayers over Kevin, and ask the Lord to hold him in His powerful, loving hands. Please also pray for the Lord to give the family strength to endure what Kevin will have to endure during the surgery and the healing process afterward. And please speak whatever prayers are on your heart for what we know this must be like for the family.

Thank you SO much for reading this and taking the time to care for someone that you may not even know. God Bless You and Keep You!!

Here's the link to Kevin's care page