Church Notes

Due in part to his status as the eldest child and in part to his superior level of responsibility (superiority is relative when compared to a 6 year old space cadet and a 3 year old diva), Micah has earned the privilege to sit on the front pew of the sanctuary next to Jason each Sunday morning during worship, meaning he sits alone once J gets up to preach. Recently, Micah has begun recording copious notes while listening to his father's sermons.

Clearly, he learned that skill from me.

Tonight, I stumbled upon his filing system for his notes while cleaning out his chest of drawers. Each page was carefully folded into 16ths and thoughtlessly tossed into a giant heap in the top drawer next to some misplaced gloves, unmatched socks, and sundry odds and ends.

Another skill he gleaned from my superb organizational ability.

Because we can all use some Biblical edification, I share his truths with you.

"Jesus Christ sees you everywere. do't run away from Jesus christ"

"God is faithfull and he will do wut he says. he will not do you roung."

"no one is pirfict. only god is good."

"hope in Jesus christ and keep doing the right thing."

"walk in faith and Love and you will go to Heaven and see Jesus Christ our Lord."

"do't worship a thing. worship god. only worship god. worship the Lord god Jesus christ."

"When Jesus Christ is not Doing waut you want it is good. another page says somting abot this."

"ask god to forgive you" (This particular note is addressed "to India." I suppose he feels the entire country needs to be called into repentance?)

"do't run away from God Jesus Christ. worship him. If you do't you will die so worship him. do't worship things."

"Jesus over looked our sin and layed down his life so we will be safe."

"the person who Loves his brother will live."

"Jesus will turn bad into good."

"Jesus Christ is good. god is a good god. Lison to him and it will be good.

Amen.

Summer is going to kill me

Please remind me tomorrow, when I wake up and can't move a muscle to get out of bed, that the cause of my temporary disability is due to all the "fun" that was had at the water park today.

The children had FUN. I had "fun," mainly because there were 68 stairs up to the platform that housed the starting point of the 2 water slides. And because we climbed up that set of stairs approximately 184 times, only to be deposited right back down where we started.

My math skills may be rusty, but my mental calculations tell me that 68 x 184 = 2,476,423 steps (when you take into consideration that the amount of effort it took to climb those steps increased exponentially with each subsequent trip).

My quads say that number feels just about right.

Linky Love 07.06.10

If you're looking for a fun thing to do with your kiddos this summer, this 30 minute jam recipe from Sandy at Reluctant Entertainer will fit the bill. We made this today (although I don't think I used the right kind of pectin, so we have some delightful strawberry syrup) and the kids loved it! It's so easy, despite my own stupidity.

In light of our own recent celebrations of freedom, please do not forget that slavery is still alive and thriving, even in our own "free" country. You can find out more about the tragedy of human trafficking here. You can also support businesses like Sari Bari whose mission is to help women rescued from slavery make a living wage.

Finally my newest blog discovery is Style Your Life. She has great outfit ideas and most of them are so affordable!

Enjoy!

Independence

When we lived in a different town Fourth of July was quickly becoming my second favorite holiday, just behind Christmas. Since we moved to a town where most of the people we know are students who don't profess to consider our city "home" July 4th has been a wee bit lackluster. This year being no exception.

We worshiped at church in the morning followed by our monthly fellowship meal with the congregation. My contribution to lunch was the traditional 4th of July meal of pizza casserole, minus the pepperonis which, although purchased just yesterday, had already gone bad.

After church, Jason and his buddy went fishing while the children and I took a nap and then I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince them that inside voices are a Good Thing when you are playing INSIDE. My ulterior motive was to keep the noise level down to an appropriate decibel so that I could watch the Criminal Minds marathon I DVR-ed on A&E without turning the TV up so loud that it drew their attention.

We had leftovers for dinner, and when J got home we set out to watch the fireworks. When we got to our usual spot (and by "usual" I mean the same place we watched them last year) at the parking garage and were saddened to discover that the police were not allowing cars to actually PARK on the top. This was Kink #1 in our plan for World Domination Operation Watch Fireworks.

Our familial operations often take on Top Secret Titles. Our code is hard to crack.

Because we were planning to use the truck bed in lieu of lawn chairs, and we had no lawn chairs, we chose the most comfortable-looking patch o' concrete and settled in. Actually, I settled in, Jason stood up, and the little ones took great pleasure in chasing and stomping crickets.

Don't feel sorry for the crickets. They totally had it coming.

Once the fireworks got started, J and I discovered Kink #2 in Operation Watch Fireworks. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that we seated ourselves in front of Over-Enthusiastic Fireworks Commentary Man. OEFCM commented on 89% of the fireworks displayed throughout the 15 minute spectacular.

"Ooooh, that was a green one!"

"Wow, that one was sparkly."

"That one was 3-D!"

(Sidenote: I'm not sure what type of alternate dimension this guy occupied, but pretty much my whole life is in 3-D. Including 100% of the fireworks I've ever had the privilege of viewing.)

"Cool, that one was red and purple."

"Look, that one had a star in it!"

And so on.

I might not have minded so much if he had actually had fresh pyrotechnic material to share. Rather, he just stated the obvious.

Micah declared each firework the new "record-breaker," but I could never get a straight answer from him regarding the standard by which he rated each one.

So the day wasn't fantastic. Please don't mistake my whining about our painfully ordinary day for lack of gratitude for those who sacrificed their lives for the freedom we enjoy every day by God's grace alone. I'm thankful for our independence and for those who protect it daily. Happy (belated) Fourth of July, everyone.

I wish I'd been there

Y'all. J and I have friends who attend this church! How cool is this?



I wonder how long it took those young 'uns to realize WHO that was? Hilarious!

It's Summer...What else can I say?

My nigh-to-one-month bloggy silence was not a planned hiatus, and it's been an interesting change. Not that I haven't started writing approximately 73 various blog posts in my head, but summer has put a significant halt to all activities not related directly to my children and/or my household.

If I'm being honest, I'll admit that the idea of making loads of cash by blogging is appealing on the surface, but it's times like these that make me SO THANKFUL my little no-name blog with its ones of readers is under zero pressure to churn out posts on any sort of "regular basis." Unless by "regular basis" you mean "whenever the heck I feel like it, GAH!"

(By the way, it is FAR beyond my comprehension how bloggers with below-school-age children can make any time for blogging EVER. Much less multiple times per day. You have my utmost respect, because clearly you must never sleep.)

Lately, if I haven't been alternating between loads of washing clothes and loads of washing dishes, I've been walking a fine line between keeping my children busy enough that they can't argue with one another and not keeping them so busy that they're exhausted and start arguing with one another.

As if.

In a nutshell, the last 4ish weeks have found me in a sunscreen-applying, pool-swimming, library-enjoying, cable-fixing, bathtub-repairing, pool-swimming, birthday-party-planning, errand-running, cake-baking, birthday-party-executing, sugar-coma-recovering, shelf-painting, craft-space-organizing, gift-buying, birthday-party-attending, closet-cleaning, suitcase-packing, conference-attending, friend-visiting, pool-swimming, pre-teen-camping, pool-swimming, book-reading, crappy-food-eating, weight-gaining, internet-connection-desiring, suitcase-unpacking, TV-watching frenzy.

FRENZY!

While that's not an exhaustive list, my activities have decidedly NOT included twitter-following or blog-reading. My most sincere apologies to my blog/twitter buddies. I understand if you never wish to cast your eyes upon my blog again.

I'm trying to catch up, but 4 weeks is like 10 years in the virtual community. I may have to declare Google Reader bankruptcy and click the dreaded "mark all as read" to get a necessary fresh start.

Speaking of fresh, I have clean laundry to fold and put away. Catch you in a few. More weeks, that is.

Bcause I don't have much to say right now

**The following is basically a reprint of an email I sent to a friend. She encouraged me to post it here, and since I don't have anything else to talk about right now, I thought this might be beneficial to someone. At least more beneficial than my usual drivel about nothing. I've seen a few posts about Swagbucks recently, and thought I'd give you a bit of a different perspective.**

Swagbucks.com is a search engine, like Google or Yahoo. The major difference is that when you search using the swagbucks website, you earn, well, swagbucks. These SBs, once accrued, can be traded in for various merchandise, with the most popular items being gift cards to places like Amazon or iTunes.

I spent a LOT of time thinking swagbucks were a waste of time, but I've slowly come around to the idea that it can work for me, if not to the extent that it works for bloggers with more readership (not that you have to be a blogger to use SBs, but I'll get to that in a minute). There are bloggers that I read who claim to have bought ALL their Christmas presents with SBs. I probably won't get to that point, but $30-$40 in Amazon gift cards is nice enough to make it worth it, in my opinion.

Once you've signed up for SBs, there are 3 things you need to do EVERY DAY to get 3 SBs. It might not sound like much, but 3X365= 1095, so it's worth it in the long run. 900 SBs gets you $10 at Amazon, which is basically a free book or CD, so why not? Here's what you do:

1) Install the toolbar. I almost always get 1 SB each morning just for opening my browser b/c I have the toolbar installed.

2) Under "Ways to Earn" on the SB homepage, go to the daily poll. You answer the daily poll and get 1 SB.

3) Under "Ways to Earn" on the SB homepage, go to "Special Offers." You can click on the link on the right that says something about "no obligation offers" and skip through all of those. No personally identifiable information is required, so just click "skip" on all of them and you get 1 SB at the end. Sometimes there are 6 or 7 and sometimes there's only 1 or 2, but just click away until you get to the end. You'll get 1 SB.

A few other tricks/tips I've learned:

1) You'll usually get SBs when you search in the AM, then again in the PM. I get 7-10 SBs when I win, sometimes higher (14-15). This morning I got 8 on my 2nd search. However, I probably won't get anymore until later today. It's generally a few hours before I'll get anymore from searching. I always use SB as my default search engine just for the possibility that I'll get some SBs, but I usually only get them in the AM, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening.

2) I've found that going to "page 2" of my search results often nets me SBs. If I search and don't get SBs the first time, I ALWAYS click to the 2nd page of search results and often get them then. I've also found that if I click a link from the SB search results and then click "back" to get back to the search results, I will get SBs.

3) I frequently check a blog called we-love-swag-bucks.com and they often post when a swag code is released. Follow them on Twitter, b/c they generally (but not always) tweet when they post a blog, too. But I still check their blog several times a day. Sometimes there will be codes on the SB Facebook page or on Twitter, and WLSBs posts to let you know so you don't have to try and follow SB all over the social media sites. I also check the "swidget" on my own blog b/c sometimes there will be swag codes available that WLSBs doesn't catch or post about. I always try to get the swag codes (at least one, sometimes 2 or 3 per day). I've heard that if you sign up for the SB email newsletter, you will get a code when it comes, but I haven't received a SB newsletter in my inbox yet (I think they come monthly?).

4) IF you get referrals (people who sign up for SBs under you) you get however many SBs they get, one for one, up to 1000. This is where having a large blog readership comes in handy. I think this is the most profitable, yet most difficult, way to get SBs. If you have a ton of readers and you post about SBs, you can include a link for ppl to click to sign up under you and when they start searching and winning, you win, too. I am of the opinion that those who win hundreds or thousands of dollars of merchandise/GCs are those who get tons of referrals. So far, I have 2 referrals (one is my mom) and neither one of them has won a single SB yet, so that's not exactly working out for me.

5) You can also win SBs by purchasing through their links (kind of like ebates, if you are familiar with that). Obviously, though, it can take awhile to get those credited to your account (30 days, maybe?) b/c I bought some stuff on iTunes through SB a couple of weeks ago and I still haven't rec'd credit. So we'll see about that...

6) One drawback is that the search engine isn't that great. You have to be careful what you click b/c there are usually 4-5 "sponsored by" links that come up as legitimate search results. You always have to look at the url before you click the result to see if it says "sponsored by" b/c those usually aren't what you are looking for. Sometimes I revert to google after I've tried SB, which adds time to your search, but it's negligible. I always search SB first, ALWAYS, and sometimes I make up searches to win SBs. OK, I USUALLY make up searches if I think it's a time when I can win SBs.

The moral of this epic tale, is that, not counting referrals, it can be worth it over time to use SBs. I've tried to be faithful to using it (having the toolbar installed helps tremendously) and, since I'm a huge nerd and started keeping track of how many I get each day, I discovered I average about 30 SBs daily.

Yes, it takes a few extra minutes (seconds, really, but those seconds definitely turn into minutes), and the search engine doesn't yield perfectly accurate results, but slow and steady wins the race. Or at least wins the Amazon GCs.

**This post contains referral links for Swagbucks.**