Invested in some kind of fruit company…

Yeah. I did it.

I caved.

What do you guys have that is made by Apple?

How old were you when Toy Story came out? How old will you be...?

Well, the title says it all.

I was 11 when Toy Story came out.
I was 15 when Toy Story 2 came out.
I will be 25 next summer...

Man, how time flies.
Somehow, I'm having this fond appreciation for all things in the childhood days.
From Sesame Street to Super Mario Bros. to all things Disney.
When it comes to computer-animated films, Toy Story was no different

Kids these days have no idea how revolutionary these icons were to the world today.  At least not now...maybe until they are adults.  Haha.

But I digress. I can't wait for this film to come out next summer.




So how old were you when each of the films were/are released?
Sound off.

A Poem for a Special Mom

I found a poignant poem for this special day.


It seems to sum up a lot of things up.




The Lanyard – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

A fellow blogger wrote that the gift to any mother is her child.



I hope I have been a good gift in return.


I hope you know that you are someone's gift in this world.

I'm Still Here. Are You?

Man, the weather heats up one moment and cools down the next.

And so has this blog.

I was always bummed when a blogger would suddenly disappear.
And here I am, hypocritically abandoning my post (pun entirely intended).

My justification (i.e. excuse)?
Being too busy. Excuse me. I mean, lazy.
I was close, right?

But seriously. The past four months have been wild. Recap?

Chris Tomlin / Israel Houghton concert with youth worship team. Plain awesome. Connecting with people at my workplace. Singing my heart out. Confidence growing. Worship leading is an honor. Learning and loving it more and more. Counseling and teaching youth group. Time is flying. Feels like my kids. Watching friends get engaged/married/have kids. Celebrations. Meeting old friends. Fixing my eyes on God. Played Simon Peter for Good Friday service. Cried onstage. Someone broke my car window and took my work bag. God is good all the time. Computer crashes. Fixing and/or laptop? Mac? Led in worship by Starfield and meeting them afterward.  Fun. Retook second half of engineering exam. We'll see. Need for raw community. Where will I be in ministry next year? Wherever You lead me.

Truly, I have been stretched, challenged, excited, and confused by and about so many things.It's awesome to be living in the life of my Savior.

The one thing I'm taking away after four months?

Without God at the center of everything I do, things lose meaning.
That it's so easy to get caught up with yourself and the world we live in.
I guess I'm just realizing that dying daily to oneself helps to start over.
To refocus my eyes on Christ, who died for me.

At any rate. I'm still here.
Thanks for keeping up with me and my dusty blog.
Hoping to keep it cleaned up. Might even wax it soon.
Much love.

Caption Please

Caption please.

Green Day 09

So tell me…



…did you wear green today?  What was it?

Love by the book

Sometimes, I wonder if I got it all wrong…

Like I should not have listened to my friends and all those "Dating for Dummies" books.

Instead, I should have turned to the ONE book that had ALL the answers I needed…

As presented by Rick Holland, the college ministry pastor at Grace Community Church, 'lo and behold:

These are some of the ways that people found a wife or a husband in the Bible:

• You could find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes, and then she’s yours. (Deuteronomy 21:11-13)

• Hey! Go find a prostitute and marry her! That’s what Hosea did in Hosea 1:1-3.

• Find a man with 7 daughters and impress him by watering his flock. Moses did that in Exodus: 20:16-20.

• Here’s one for the ladies; ladies pay attention:
  Find a man who’s sleeping, lay down by his feet, uncover his feet so that he gets cold, when he wakes up, you propose. That’s what Ruth did in Ruth 3:3-9.
  

• Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one, and carry her off to be your wife. That’s exactly what the Benjamites did in Judges 21:19-25.

• Just have God create you the perfect woman while you sleep. Now this will cost you a rib, men. Adam did that in Genesis 2:19-24.

• Agree to work 7 years in exchange for a woman’s hand in marriage, (some of you guys worry about 7 days), but if you perchance get tricked into marrying the girl’s sister, which has happened, then work another 7 years for the woman you really wanted to marry in the first place—that’s right 14 years for that special bride. Jacob did that in Genesis 29:15-30.
  

• You could cut off 200 foreskins of your future father in law’s enemies, and get his daughter for a wife. That’s what David did in 1 Samuel 18:27.

• Even if no one’s out there, you just wander around a while and God will find someone for you. That’s what Cain did in Genesis 4:16-17. It’s all relative, of course.

• Become the emperor of a great nation and have a beauty contest, Ahasuerus did that in Esther 2:3-4.

• When you see someone that you like, go home and tell your parents, “I HAVE SEEN A WOMAN.”…”NOW GET HER FOR ME.” That’s what Samson did in Judges 14:1-3.

• Find a woman that you like who is married, and kill her husband and take her for your own. That’s what David did in 2 Samuel 11.

• You could wait for your brother to die, and take his widow—that’s what Boaz did with Ruth. Ruth 1-4.

• Or don’t be so picky. If you want to do it the way they do it in the bible, just make up for quality for quantity, and marry 700. That’s what Solomon did in 1 Kings 11.

We all want to do relationships biblically. But when you begin reading about relationships in the Bible, there is no one single, transcendent path that comes to the surface—they all didn’t do it the same way."

So that's what I've been doing wrong…=)  Read and learn.


So who do you think had it the easiest?  hardest?