Small Successes and Thankful thursday - St. Patty's Edition!!

Top O' the blog to ya!

Happy Small Successes Day!!! I hope this finds you well! I look forward to finding some time to see all the great successes out there today. I love getting inspired!

1. I managed to blog this week!!! I'm getting back into the rhythm of updating! It was nice to share some needs and life in general!

2. I have so far stuck to my 40 bags/40 day challenge! It's been so great. Our house still needs loads of help, but this is the longest I've been successful. I helped Hubby straighten the garage (we can't park in one side still, but it is STRAIGHT. So I'm not ashamed of people walking in the garage now). I also fixed up our master closet. You can walk in it again. Bags of stuff left our home to donate and to trash. 

3. I got together with some friends today and learned more about ethnic cooking. I got to see how they cooked the foods, try them, and get the recipes. It was great. I can't wait to bring more foods into our home! It was a fun way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!

How was your week??!!!

Bless you!!!

Ben Stein's Final Column

 I got this directly from Colleen


For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called
''Monday Night At Morton's.''  (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.)  Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life.  Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it.  I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even  recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it.  On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..?  I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?  Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be  interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.  A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked  his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq .  He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.  Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad .  He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station.  He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.  He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad ..

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines.  The  noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I  do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.  I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or  Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald.  Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me.  This came to be my main task in life.  I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help).  I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years.  I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York ...  I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can.  It is knowing that God will.

By  Ben Stein

The great mysteries....

that happen while living on earth can never be answered until we reach heaven, but I still struggle with some of them - like childhood cancer, or anything bad that happens to children.

Please pray for my friend's great niece, who is nearing the end of her 4 year life on earth (2 years battling cancer in the brain and spine). Pray for a speedy, peaceful end for her and her family, and for strength for her mother  and 2 baby sisters as they learn to live beyond her.

God hold her and keep her. Her family too.

Pinch me. I'm BLESSED!!

 

God is GOOD. 

Mr. Fantastic

Look at my almost 10 month old....where is the time going?  Love each roll and CHUNK!!

and....look at the back of him....he's getting.....

CURLS!!!!! 

Be still my heart!

Just had to show off my boy!! :)

Small Steps Together - "No complaints"

A while back, Elizabeth posted the above button so people could share their journey of "Small Steps" along with the book Elizabeth co-wrote for moms. I've been meaning to do this. Today seems the perfect day.

Today's fast (not to be confused with their Lenten version of Small Steps fast today) is to "fast from complaining." With everything going on in Japan and the Pacific ring of fire today, I will be doing just that. I will also offer up my trials today for the utter devastation. I can't imagine.

Prayers for Japan and the Pacific. God carry you through this....may the world come together for you as we should do everyday, not just every tragedy.

Small Successes "Start of Lent 2011" Edition

I almost forgot about this today!! Maybe I can make the rounds and read other ones. I could use some uplifting reading as part of my "Small Steps" assignments and the Lenten Meditations.

I'm still sick (doc appt. tomorrow - another sinus infection), so this will be short and sweet!

1. We've managed to homeschool this week despite me being sick. We did take off yesterday - Lovely's 1st official sick day of the school year - because she had a low fever and was super tired.  She slept most of yesterday. Today she is much better and we just finished schooling for the day. I LOVE our schedule!

2. I am aiming to journal more about this here at some point, but I have in the past month and week started to work on my emotional health. Since Gift has been born (and my blues lasted longer after him, but faded) my always present anxiety issues have grown past where I had viewed them as "tolerable." My anxiety simply was growing more and more, and I wanted to do something about it before it got worse. So, I'm working through things outside of my past prayer and meditations. I just got started, so I look forward to the fruit of figuring out my hormones and internal monologue. I hope to touch on this more soon - but already a weight I hadn't noticed was on my shoulders has started lifting.

3. While sick, I've been doing what I can around the house - some folding, some cleaning, and straightening with the kids help  - so I'll take that as a success too lol!!

How has your week been? Blessed Lent to you!

Thankful Thursday
This week I'm thankful for...

1. naps.
2. breath right strips

3. Lent.
4. my husband.
5. my kids.
6. my family.
7. my friends.
8. prayer.

Take care!!!