Mandy and Jace

Ok I have a challenge for everyone. I read another website who did this and I thought it was fun. Turn on your ipod, iphone or whatever you have and put it on shuffle. Let me know the name and artist of the first five songs that come up by leaving a comment. You don’t have to listen to them all just forward through them and let me know. If you don’t have an ipod or something like it, I’m sorry. Keep checking in, I will have more challenges. Here’s my list.

1. Let’s Fall In Love- Diana Krall
2. River God- Nichole Nordeman
3. Pride and Joy- Stevie Ray Vaughan
4. Everyday- Lincoln Brewster
5. Dancing Nancies- Dave Matthews Band

Quite an assortment but nice mix if you ask me. I’ll be interested to hear your lists.

A couple of weeks ago we decided that for our sanity we needed to get out of town. So I booked the first weekend free to go to Dallas. We didn’t have anything planned. We just went. It was so nice to go and not have a schedule. We stayed at our favorite hotel and went to our favorite mall. It was all very refreshing.

Saturday afternoon we decided to go see a movie. I am a huge Angelina Jolie fan so we went to see Changeling. This was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. It definitely isn’t one of her tough girl movies. Angelina Jolie does such a great job that you forget that it is her and really believe she is the Christine Collins who she is playing. Be sure to bring your Kleenexes though, you will need them and after if you have kids you will want to hug them tight.

Sunday afternoon after we had lunch we went to the farmers market. This is my first time to go to one and it was so cool. Produce as far as you can see. It was so hard to just pick from one vendor. You actually felt bad turning them down and going a couple of feet down the row and buying from someone else. But we got the best produce. We bought blueberries, strawberries, sweet potatoes and the sweetest apples I have ever had.

All in all it was an amazing weekend. I highly recommend that everyone go see Changeling. Don’t let the R rating keep you away. It is an excellent movie.

I read a disturbing article this morning and was just wanting to vent a little bit. This article was about how American Family Radio has a “naughty and nice” list that lets everyone know who uses the words “Happy Holiday’s” as opposed to “Merry Christmas”. Those who use the term “Happy Holidays” are on the naughty list and those who use “Merry Christmas” are on the nice list. My question is, when did we as Christians decide that we can demand respect for our faith and yet totally disregard being respectful to other faiths. Fine, you don’t have to believe what they believe. They aren’t forcing you to. They just ask for a little respect just like we also want. I can’t help but wonder if you ran a business, like for instance Target, wouldn’t you want to be respectful to all of your customers and not just one group?

I know there aren’t only Christians shopping at Target. To me this is a big middle finger to all of the other religions saying “%$#@ you, we are more important than you and we couldn’t care less about your beliefs and you have to abide by ours even if you don’t want to.” That is not at all what Jesus preaches. He didn’t condemn the Samaritan woman at the well. He offered her living water. Do you really thing that by being so disrespectful of people in other religions we are being a witness? NO! We need to act like Jesus. He just showed love. He didn’t force anything on people. They wanted what he had just because he showed them love. Once he had their attention then he told them of the hope that God gives to those who believe. I think we need to show the love of God not by our protests but by our actions. Those speak louder than words.

I just got a new Ray Lamontagne CD. I bought it thinking it was the newest one and it isn’t. It is still good though. FYI, don’t listen to it if you are depressed, it won’t help.

I have been reading this Praise and Worship leader’s website for a couple of weeks now. He has a great balance between his home and church life and that’s something I have been struggling with lately. Just shows that it can be done. Also if you have an hour or so to kill he has a great set of videos from when he went and picked up his son from Vietnam. Get out your Kleenexes. His wife also has a really cool website called Whittaker Woman that is very refreshing to read.

Another website I found is called Better Living Through Design. It has tons of very practical stuff that is stylish as well.

We are off to Dallas for the weekend. I will do some posts next week with photos from our trip.

Last Saturday was Jace’s birthday and I loved that it was on a Saturday this year because I could do all the things I was planning on doing without work getting in the way. The week before we got him a new computer that he was very excited about.

Then the day before he got a new case to put it in. Apparently the one it came in wasn’t big enough or something. I don’t really know. All I know is that it looks really cool.

The day of his birthday we slept in late and I got up and went to the nail salon and HEB while he sat and played with his computer. Then I got home and made him banana bread since he doesn’t like cake. I know weird huh? I love him anyway.

That evening we went and ate at Luigi’s here in Midland. It was a great day of just relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. That’s not something we get to do very often. Most of the time we have at least one thing planned for the day. But it was nice not having anything planned and just doing what we wanted to.