Dancing in the Rain

I know that my dog was the subject of a post yesterday , but having her around again got me to thinking about something today. Sugar is a loyal, dedicated dog (as most dogs tend to be), and she definitely knows that she is mine! Because she knows that she is mine, she follows me around wherever I go, my faithful "little" shadow. She loves so much just to be in my presence; it doesn't matter what I'm doing or what she's doing, she wants to be with me. And if I reach to pet her or talk to her, even though she doesn't really understand anything I'm saying, she gets excited like it's the greatest joy in her life to hear my voice and feel my touch. Some of you have probably figured out where I'm going with this. :D Yep...I wish I was more like my dog. Am I as loyal and dedicated to my heavenly Father as my dog is to me? He has done so much more for me than I will ever do for Sugar, and He loves me infinitely more than I ever could love my dog! So when ...

The sunrise through our bedroom window in Denison a couple years ago. taken by: me I'm thinking about changing this theme from "Silent Sunday" to "Simply Sunday", just because if I add a caption it's not exactly "silent", and if I don't add a caption everybody wants to know where the picture was taken and who took it. *shrug* What do y'all think?

My sweet, precious, most beautiful puppy came home today! While we were living in Midland, I couldn't have her at our house there, so my awesome aunt Sara has been taking care of her. But today, we went and picked her up and brought her home. Oh, how good it is to have her back! I've missed her so much... here is a picture; it's not from today, I'll have to kidnap my mom's camera at some point to get some new pictures of her. I think maybe I'll have to add a digital camera of my own to my Christmas wishlist... *shrug* I was going to post some other pictures of her, but I'm having trouble with the photo feature, so this one will have to do for now. Some other time I'll post a picture of when she was a puppy; she was SO cute! Brown Sugar ( Sugar for short) Well, I'm off to bed! Y'all have a great night, and a blessed Sunday tomorrow! Oh, and don't forget to vote on the "Tuesday's" poll at the top of the page; you have until Monda...

I can hear some of y'all laughing, but I have waited as long as I could to ask this question. I've forced myself to wait until after Thanksgiving so the number of weird looks I would get would be kept to a minimum. Don't get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving, too. But Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. It's so full of magic and mystery and wonder...how can I help but love it? The magic of soft little lights, emphasizing a feeling of peace and joy and rest that somehow fills this very busy season. The mystery of almighty God, come to us as a little baby, bound by limits of time and space. The wonder that He did it all for love. Just because He loved us . He loved me. He loved you. So He came. If it weren't for Christmas, there would be no Easter. If it weren't for Easter, there would be no Thanksgiving. And with no reason to give thanks, there would be no reason to live day by day, much less a reason for celebration of any sort. So when I say "I love...

Just a quick post before I go to bed...I meant to post this earlier in the day! Oh, well... I hope you all had a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving! Including my Canadian friends, who celebrated Thanksgiving sometime last month... :D Love y'all! Our Thanksgiving was great. We had some family that came out to our new house. Amber and Caleb were here, of course, and my dad's mom came. Two of his older sisters came--Janet and Sara. And Sara had her friend Michael and his son Richard with her. Richard is an absolutely adorable little 5-year-old, every bit as cute and charming as my brothers were at that age. He's got great manners, very carefully and diligently drilled into him by his father, and he's just so sweet. At lunch today, out of the blue, he made this announcement that totally stole my heart all over again: "Haley's my friend." :D He and I hit it off great the first time we met, a little over a year ago when I was at Sara's house for a writer...

I love the idea of "themes" for various days of the week, so I'm slowly coming up with some of my own. Be warned: I may eventually have a theme for every day of the week! :D I've thought of two different ones for Tuesday; both would have the same content, just different titles. The idea is that I'll post some interesting tidbit/trivia fact--from the Bible, history, science, whatever. So should it be called Tidbit Tuesday or Trivia Tuesday? You have until next Monday night to vote on the poll at the top of the page!! :D Here's today's little "tidbit": Moses and Aaron (from the book of Exodus in the Bible) were their grandfather's nephews. Their father Amram married his aunt Jochebed (his father's sister). Don't believe me? Read Exodus 6:20 ! :D In other news, Amber and Caleb came in from San Angelo really early this morning (as in, 2am). We've had fun with them today! This morning, we took our annual family pictures. We have decid...

I just have this little thought that has been spinning around in my brain since church this morning. The pastor at the little Baptist church we visited today said something interesting; he was talking about how people tend to not take hell seriously, and he said, "How terrible is hell? It's so terrible, Jesus died to keep you from going there. Jesus said, 'You'll go to hell over My dead body .'" (emphasis added) Over My dead body! Well, my little brain spun off like it does on occasion, all caught up in that phrase (I have notes from the rest of the sermon, but I couldn't tell you much about it *sheepish grin*). I've heard the idea before, just never heard it expressed like that, and something about the way he put it gripped me. Jesus Christ did, and is doing, everything possible, everything necessary to give us eternal life. He doesn't want one single person to die in their sins, to suffer eternal punishment. So He died. And rose again. And even ...

Hey, y'all! Well, slowly but surely we're getting everything unpacked and organized and getting settled in here in Springtown. We mostly just have little odds 'n' ends stuff to do and the decorating part (hanging pictures and, for me, my doll shelf :D). Hopefully we'll be done by next Wednesday, since we have some family coming in for Thanksgiving! Last night we played a game of Bible Outburst. SO much fun! :D We played Dad and Micah against Josiah, Jonathan, and me (Mom was out studying with some friends/fellow students). The J's and I won! :D Our last card was "Names, titles, and descriptions of Satan", so Dad and Micah were giving us a hard time about winning with the devil. :P Actually, the card that pulled us within winning range was "Events in the life of Joseph"... having just recently studied the book of Genesis, I had a bit of an edge. We got all the answers on that one. :D Oh, speaking of Bible-things...here's a taste of the kin...

OK, so if "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans", then we were really living this weekend! And if all it takes to make God laugh is to "tell Him your plans", then I think we've had Him in stitches. However, we did manage to break Murphy's law since there were a LOT of things that could have gone wrong but didn't. :D By the time we left Midland at about 5pm Saturday evening, we had to have at least been on plan R or something, but everything was finally loaded (into one big U-haul truck and 2 U-haul trailers!) and we were on our way. We got to our house about midnight, unloaded enough stuff to get mattresses out so we could sleep, and crashed for the night. Yesterday, we spent the day unloading stuff with the help of a family Mom met here, so now everything is in the house and we just have to unpack it. *rolls eyes* Definitely more fun than packing, but still not my favoritest thing in the world to do! (I know, favoritest ...

Hey, all! :D We're loading up the truck and trailer tomorrow, and will be headed to our new house either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning, depending on when we finish loading. We'd appreciate your prayers for safe travel, especially since I'm going to be driving the pick-up which will be pulling the trailer--yeehaw--thanks to my "little" brother Caleb not being able to come help us move. He'll actually be here tomorrow to help load up (we told him we need his muscles!), he just didn't get enough time off to drive over there with us. :P I love driving the truck, just don't care for pulling the trailer. Oh, well...I'm sure we'll survive! Those of you who remember my adventures in our 15-passenger van can just remind yourselves that it's been a couple years since then...and pray extra hard! :D (I'm just kidding, by the way; though "safe travels" prayers on our behalf are certainly welcome, I don't anticipate having any pr...

I found out about this from the 4littlemen blog . On Tuesday, November 11, 2008, Melody Joy and Madison Hope Delgado were born. They were conjoined twins, joined at the heart. They died about an hour after their birth. I don't personally know the Delgados, but reading their blog has made me cry! They are trusting in God's sovreign, mysterious plan right now, and I know they would appreciate your prayers. You can post a comment on their blog, Good Times Delgado Style , to tell them you're praying for them. Father, I pray that you would surround this sweet, young family with Your hope and grace. Wrap them up in Your arms of love and let them feel Your strong embrace. Amen.

So, I am officially tired of packing. Actually, I was tired of packing about halfway through the first box. :D We have a lot done--but there sure is a LOT left to do!! Right now, our plan is start loading the truck/trailer on Friday so we can head out of Midland either Friday night or as early as possible on Saturday. That only gives us about 2 and 1/2 more days to finish packing and cleaning. I think we can do it, I'm just going to be really sick of packing before we're done! :D Unpacking is much more fun... I have now had two people text me to ask, "Are you in Weatherford yet?!" No, but we're headed that way as fast as we can! However, the question reminded me of the very infamous one that children all over the world have been known to ask: "Are we there yet?" And because my brain tends to ponder a subject until it is either thoroughly dead or has me thoroughly confused, I got to considering that question as it relates to life. So many of us rush thro...

No, I am not proposing that we live in silence for this Sunday....goodness, my family wouldn't survive 5 minutes! :D Rather, I'm starting a new tradition. I found this other blog ( 4 Little Men and Girly Twins --check it out, she has awesome pictures!) and she does a "Wordless Wednesday" post, where she just posts a picture. I thought it was a great idea, but in order to just borrow the idea and not plagiarize it, I decided to do it as a "Silent Sunday". :D So, I'll try to post a random picture every Sunday... Mom took this picture in Colorado this summer.

Just a quick post, just because I had a kinda interesting experience today. I usually leave those to my sister, who works in an ER, has been to two different countries (Taiwan and Bolivia) and tends to create interesting experiences wherever she goes anyways, but I guess today it was my turn. I was just walking through Walmart, just there to grab a couple things real quick and head on to other errands, when suddenly the electricity went out. You could hear a collective gasp all through the store! Kind of funny, really. The lights flickered back on for a moment then went out again. It was not totally dark in the store, thanks to the skylights, but it got eerily quiet for a few seconds before conversations resumed, children started crying, and people went back to gathering whatever it was they were there to get. I guess we all figured the electricity would be back on any minute. Fifteen minutes later, there were long lines at the checkouts (where, of course, they couldn't check anyon...

Have I mentioned that I love all the cool stuff I can do on this new blog?! :D You may have noticed the music player between the header and the posts section; I have it set not to autostart, so you can click play if you want to listen to the music, or leave it off if you so desire. It's just a random, shuffled list of some of my favorite songs. I'll probably be changing it up every now and then. I love music!!! :D Well, we made our trip to Weatherford. We drove up there Saturday afternoon/evening, and came home Sunday night/Monday morning. Our house there is awesome! It's actually on the outskirts of the little town of Springtown, population about 3,000. The house has 4 bedrooms (one will be Dad's office), 2 bathrooms, 2 living rooms (one will be the classroom/library), a BIG entryway, kitchen (complete with a GAS stove! Thank God! :D), dining room, and a sun room (which will be Mom's scrapbook room). It's on 7 acres, with trees, a pool, and a trampoline. :D We...