What a Witness!

Watch what happens when you trust the Holy Spirit to provide your words.  This video is two years old, but I had not seen it before.

Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Take this quiz to find out.  I got 9/10.  How did you do?

For Beth, Whose Day As a Mom Was Long Today

I saw this on a church down the road:

When raising children, the days are long, but the years are short.  Then they cited Proverbs 22:6, which says:

Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.

–Proverbs 22:6

That training is hard work.  I remember.

I also found this quote, and it has always stuck with me:

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.

–Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Hang in there, kiddo!

Canning: Tuesday’s Project

When we lived in Ohio, we canned.  A lot.  Part of the reason was that we grew up with canning.  Another was that we generally had a garden.  The third was that good produce was always available at a reasonable price.

Since we moved to Indiana, I have had a hard time finding good produce, so we don’t can as much.  However, we did make Sweet Onion Relish yesterday.

Sweet Onion Relish

Now it’s on to the search for good green beans.  I’ll drive to Indianapolis if I have to, but I’d rather not.   Canning is best when your produce is of top quality.

Socialized Health Care–What’s Your Opinion?

There are many reasons that I am against socialized health care, but the two biggest are these:

1.  I have sero-negative rheumatoid arthritis.  Under socialized medicine, I would not be allowed to have biologic response modifiers like Enbrel that slow the progress of my disease and keep my inflammation level down.  I don’t know exactly what would happen to me if that were the case, but I’m pretty sure it involves more pain, more disability, and, probably, an earlier death.

2.  One of the best family doctors we ever had came to the United States  from Canada because, he said, he was tired of watching people die waiting for what is considered routine health care here in the United States.

I have a niece (Hi, Lillie) that I love who is in favor of the United States moving in the direction of Europe, Canada and other countries.  We haven’t talked about health care in that respect, though, and I wonder if she knows how things would change.  My niece plans on being a doctor, and I’m sure she’ll be a good one.  Isn’t the idea, though, to keep your patients–all of them–as healthy as possible?

Thinking along that line, I grew even more concerned when I received an e-mail entitled “Senior Death Warrants.”  I checked it out on snopes.com and found that it was, according to Snopes, a mixture of true and false.  Still, if even part of it is true, I think that a move to socialized health care would do more harm than good.

Finally, I saw this video over at Robin Lee Hatcher’s Write Thinking, so I thought I would share.

Whether you like this video or not, it’s some scary stuff if even half of it is true.  It’s all well and good to advocate for socialized medicine if you or someone you love are not sick, but when they are, I think pretty much everybody wants the best health care they can receive as soon as they can receive it.

What about you?  Are you for or against socialized health care?  I’d like to hear your reasons.  The nurse in the video says young people have time.  I’m fifty-four, which I don’t think is old, but under socialized medicine, I wonder how much time I’d have.

Grandpa’s Little Helper

The hubby is happiest when making sawdust.  Currently he is building row houses, playhouse style, for Habitat.  He has been trying to convert instruct the grandsons this summer, and yesterday he had a lot of help from Tony, age four.  Tony particularly enjoyed “bamming” the nails.

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Tony and the Great Train Robbery

Tony by the steps of the Wild West Train

We had the pleasure of our youngest grandson, Tony’s, company this week, and all week, except for going to his favorite playground, he wanted to ride a train.  So we found one.

Yesterday we took him on the Whitewater Valley Railroad.  Yesterday’s train was the Wild West Train, courtesy of the Circle D Rangers.  Many cowboys and sheriffs rode the train with us down to Metamora, Indiana, where we had a two-hour layover.  On the way back, the cowboys robbed the train, and at Laurel, Indiana, there was a big shoot-out.  All the money was recovered and, miraculously, all the cowboys got up and rode the train again after the sheriffs shot them down.

When Tony talked to his daddy after the ride, he told all about the cowboys “robbering” the train and how many times he had to put his hands up.  He was glued to the window during the shoot-out, and he did not appear to be afraid at all.

Tony is four, and we are hoping that he remembers this ride for many years.  His grandpa worked on the railroad for thirty-four years, and I think Tony enjoyed all the explanations he got of the way things worked, but if you ask him, he will tell  you that he enjoyed going into one of the train shops with his grandpa and looking at all the memorabilia there.

The sheriff comes to the rescue during the train robbery.

Giving Thanks for a Faithful God

I woke up with this song from Brandon Heath running through my head, so I thought I would share and see if it blessed anyone else.  How thankful I am that He who ” began a good work in you [and me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”–Philippians 1:6

This post is a part of Spiritual Sundays.  Click here if you want to see more.

The Wackiest, Wildest, Weirdest Animals in the World by Jack Hanna

The Wackiest, Wildest, Weirdest Animals in the World, by Jack Hanna, is a children’s book aimed at ages 9-12.  Hanna, an animal expert and TV show host, shares the knowledge that he has gained over the years about some of the world’s wacky animals and what makes them weird.  Some of them, like baboons, penguins, and brown bears, will be familiar to all young readers.  Others, like the blue-footed booby (it’s a bird), the bongo, and the naked mole rat, will be a trip into the unknown.

This book, through its colorful photography and easy-to-follow format, will leave young readers with a lot of fun facts about animals.  There are inserts in the large animal pictures that tell interesting facts about each animal.   Readers can glean more information from the section entitled “What Makes Them Wacky,” and quick facts, like what the animals eat, where they live and how big they get, are available as well.

I found the format of the book to be child-friendly, and I can see this book becoming a favorite because of its photography.  It comes with a DVD of behind-the-scenes bloopers that I don’t see kids liking at all because it’s more about Hanna himself than the animals, but the book itself would be a fine addition to any home or school library.