Out of the mouth of babes.....

I went to the gym t his morning because I had an appointment with a personal trainer.  When I went to pick up the kids from 'tot drop' ( I LOVE the Wyckoff Y)  the woman who was working there asked me "do you go to church".  I frankly didn't think much of the question I had rushed my kids out of God's Little Singers in order to make it there on time so I thought that maybe that had come up with Kaity.  I just answered "yes".   She asked "what church do you go to"  to which I responded "Hawthorne Gospel Church on 208".  She told me that they had been watching "Sleeping Beauty" and the witch had come on the mirror and Kaity  had told her "she is NOT being nice and God tells us that we are always supposed to be nice to everyone".    How cool is that?  My 3 1/2 year old is unabashedly sharing what God's word says when she finds things in life that contradict it.   WHY do we feel the need to lose that?   I can tell you that it once again brought to mind Matthew 18:3 where Jesus says "Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (ESV)  

   My heart almost aches with how much I hope that my children never do.  We had a guest speaker come to our church last Sunday to speak about missions.   Tod Ahrend.  He was AMAZING.  I grew up as a missionary kid and this sermon was the best I have ever heard on missions.  I don't know that you could away unchanged after that message.  One of the things that got to me the most was him talking about his wife putting their year and a half old daughter to bed and having family devotion time with her first.  He gave us a glimpse into what the prayer time looked like.  That 'glimpse' was an impassioned prayer "the world is waiting for you'  the mother prayed about her daughter.  She prayed that her daughter would 'fall in love' with muslim women and be willing to 'live behind the veil' in order to reach them.   How many of us would be 'willing' to see our children go off and do that?  Let alone be praying for them since BIRTH that that would be the life that they would choose because reaching people for the Lord is THAT important?  I can tell you that my prayers for Kaity HAVE changed since hearing that sermon.  In complete honestly I can tell you that I am not nearly ready to pray that her life would lead her 'behind the veil'.  Maybe someday I'll get there, she may get there without me.  But I have prayed every day since October 19th that she would have a passion for winning souls for Christ and telling them about God.  I'd really like to think that this morning was God's way of telling me He's hearing my prayers.

  Here is a link to a youtube video of Tod Ahrend.  It's not the message he gave at HGC but it's still powerful and still shows his passion.  

I'm NOT as dumb as you think I am CONGRESS!!

I am soo tired of being treated like  your average working American is significantly  dumber than our congress men and woman! Yes, I think that we can agree that for alot of us money had gotten tighter and we were not enjoying the prosperity that maybe we had been fora few years.  Of course for a LONG time we were told that the sky was falling because of high oil prices...and at that  it was surprising  that they were willing to take a break from telling us that the sky was falling because of global warming.  And now of course it is the housing bubble and credit freeze (??) that is going to bring destruction down on all of us.   I mean if you are going to preach the apocalypse would it kill you to pick WHAT it is that is going to bring about the end of the world and stick to it?  Trying to keep track of what it is that I am supposed to be terrified of this week is getting exhausting. 

  However, after the government had to step in to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers went  bankrupt, suddenly oil prices are no longer a concern (kind of a shame because it's down to  $95 a barrel).  The government had to come in riding on it's white horse and save us all from certain disaster.  It had to be done NOW, I mean if we didn't have the bailout bill passed in two days......wait...what WAS going to happen?  I forget....fairly certain the sun still rose this morning because  the earth is still rotating around it.    The American people HATE this plan...they called their representatives in numbers RARELY if ever seen in this country to tell them to absolutely NOT vote for this bill.  Many did not.  The media roasted them for 'pandering' because they were concerned about  being re-elected.  THEY SHOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT BEING RE-ELECTED IF THEY VOTE IN A WAY THAT THE PEOPLE THEY REPRESENT DISAPPROVE OF".  There is a reason why they call them 'representatives'  they are supposed to represent US when they vote.  How dare they do what we told them to?  Of course the overwhelming implication (when it was merely implied rather than said out loud) is that we are dumb.  We don't understand the bill--THAT is why we don't want them voting for it. If it was presented to us more CLEARLY...if we UNDERSTOOD the ramifications...yadda yadda yadda.   Of course the people who live in their bizarre little political world in D.C.  who haven't lived on 'Main Street' in years if ever OH so clearly are better equipped to tell us what we like and don't like and what we want to see happen and don't want to see happen.  

  Here is something I want to be clear about and I think I can say it with certainty.  I UNDERSTAND THE BILL, I UNDERSTAND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF PASSING OR NOT PASSING THE BILL AND (congress are you listening)  I STILL DON'T WANT IT TO PASS. 

    I think that the bill is BAD for America.  I think that a market correction will be tough on America but we are a tough country.  If we can survive 9/11 we can survive a housing bubble letting some air out, we can survive the residual effects of what greed did to some areas of the economy.  We CAN not and WILL not survive the LARGEST EVER intervention of the government into the private sector and survive as a free market economy. 

  You can look at what happened in Japan in the 90's.  The politicians there tried to artificially prop up a real estate bubble, it led to a decade of economic stagnation.   I believe that what happened in the 1930's when the government raised taxes and spending turned a stock market crash into the Great Depression.  

  I don't care how often it is told to me on TV that they are not 'rewarding' anyone on Wall St. but merely trying to protect those innocent bystanders living on Main Street.  The free market works because people benefit from making wise decisions.  You or I are anyone can live the American Dream.  FIgure out how to provide a good or service either a new one or an old one cheaper or better than someone else and you can be rich.  Of course there is a downside.  You might not make it, your decision might not be as good as you thought it was and you could lose money and go bankrupt.  Same thing with people merely investing their money.  If you pick a good company your money becomes MORE money.  If you pick a bad company or make a bad choice you can lose money.  Quite often the higher the risk the greater the return if it succeeds.  Most of us have to balance how risky we are willing to be when we invest our money.   If you win money if you make good choices but get bailed out if you make poor decisions.  Why would you EVER make the safe investment choice?  If you don't believe me ...look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or study the savings and loan failures from the late 1980's and see what happens when profits are privatized but losses are socialized.  

     Let's also not forget that the people who we are looking to to fix the problem CAUSED the problem.  By lowering interest rates too low, by giving people mortgages they could not afford by the "Community Reinvestment Act"  which told banks to give loans to people with no or poor credit.  Even when the government was warned about the dangers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac they denied anything was wrong.  Largely because their hands were in those companies pockets.  They had a MAJOR interest in how those companies did....now we want to give them that same amount of involvement in ALL of our financial institutions and think that somehow this will make things BETTER...LESS corrupt?  Sorry Congress...I understand why all that would greatly benefit YOU...I understand that there is something for YOU to gain in making government larger than it has ever been...in having a personal interest in all of the financial workings of the greatest economy in the world, I know that you would LOVE to sell me that this is what MY FAMILY needs....but I 'm just not that dumb. 

   

Best Grammy EVER!

NO attempt to chronicle the important going ons in my children's life would nearly be complete without telling of the shopping trip that Kaity recently went on with Grammy and Myia.  

   I don't know how or when my mom came up with the idea....but she did and followed through in no time at all.  She found out when she could take a couple of days off of work in a row, booked a hotel room and they were ON their way.  

  Don't get me wrong I TRIED to talk Kaity out of going...oh I tried (knowing I would fail).  I asked her every day if she was SURE that she wouldn't just rather stay home with me (she was sure)....didn't she think that she was going to miss me too much (I'll miss you bu

t it's OK.).   She VERY impatiently counted down the days till they were going saved her own money ($17) and bounced off with grammy without so much as a single look back at her mom who was/is  pretty sure that her baby girl is WAY too young to be going off without her. They  stayed in a hotel room, and watched t

v and ate 'junk food' (all food was junk food merely because it was being eaten while on the shopping trip with grammy).  There was a pool in the hotel room and it was on THIS trip...under the supervision of GRAMMY (not her own mother who took her to a pool nearly every day this summmer...not that I'm bitter...much) that Kaity got over her aversion to putting her head under the water and did it over and over again. 

   

They went to Hershey where Kaity from the picture below apparently got into some sort of altercation that required her to demand her union rep be called in to mediate. 

   

I am just happy that SOME work was required of them after all the shopping and spoiling that was being done too them! 

Oh did I mention the shopping? There was apparently quite a bit of that going on...Most of the outfits that were bought had to be matching.  They also ate at Perkins quite a bit because according to Myia & Kaity  "they know how to make the best pancakes".  

  

Of course like everything else all good things must come to an end.  So finally it was time to pack up their bags, put on some new clothes ...and head home. It's still all that Kaity will talk about.  Every time she sees Grammy she asks her when they are going to go again.  Today we decorated a piggy bank so that she has somewhere to put all the money that she is saving for the next time that she goes shopping with Grammy.  She is particularly fussy about the clothes that they bought on the trip..Rodney can't pull on them, they can't get dirty, must be put away because "grammy says we have to take care of our clothes.".     They have plans for this being at LEAST an annual event.  I can only imagine the memories that will be formed over the years as I am still hearing all the memories of this one! 

Thanks Grammy (mom to me).  You really are the best!