"God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him"                                                                                           ~John Piper

New Header

It was about time to say goodbye to the orange look, so I tried my hand at designing a new header for my blog ... let me know which one you like better!  ;)

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Insight on the World Today . . . A letter

A friend shared this letter with me this morning, and I thought that it was very insightful ... and very true.  Just thought I would return the favor and share it with all of you guys:

Take a second to read this:

Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as “Holiday Trees” for the first time this year which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece which I would like to share with you. I think it applies just as much to many countries as it does to America . . .

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejewelled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crib, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her: “How could God let something like this happen?” (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said: “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

"Leftover" Burritos and a late happy Thanksgiving!

Well, I got up the nerve to make some more tortillas this afternoon, and they actually turned out to be pretty good (I tried a new recipe :) and I went down on my time!!!  Instead of 3 hours, it only took me 30 minutes! I figured out the trick...don't use a wooden rolling pin to role them out.  Also, I figured that if I really wanted to learn how to make them, I'd have to fish around for different recipes, and then practice, practice, practice.
...yet another thing I found helpful this go around - don't make tortillas for Lunch (until you are good at it that is,) ...much better to make them in your free time when you're not starving :D
Anyways, I did make the tortillas for Lunch today and ended up eating at 2:30 (better than 3:00 I guess), but that was just because I was making a "leftover" burrito.

{picture from google}

For me, the basic components of a good burrito are:
Some kind of meat (I like chicken or hamburger the best)
Cheese
Onions
Beans and/or rice (if I have them, which I usually don't)
Some sort of sauce or salsa.
I haven't been able to find a good recipe for sauce online yet, so I'm in the process of coming up with one myself.  I'll post it if I can figure one out.  Otherwise, I just use salsa instead of sauce.
We usually don't have anything fancy in the fridge for most lunches, and eating a plain old ham 'n' cheese or PBnJ is almost a crime, so I decided to cram anything I could find into a tortilla to make a burrito.

We had turkey from last night's supper (I try to avoid turkey as much as I can, but this time it turned out ...not so bad... with LOTS of seasoning), so I heated some of that, onions, cilantro, taco seasoning and salsa in a skillet.
Then I spread some sour cream and more salsa on a large tortilla, put my turkey skillet stuff on top of that, and made a thick cheese sauce out of cheese, sour cream, butter and milk to pour over it all . . . . Wrapped my bundle of joy up and cooked it on a griddle until both sides were golden brown.  Um, um good stuffs!
...Really though, you can throw just about anything into a tortilla and it will come out delicious :)
Happy experimenting, and hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving this past week!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I was just thinking about all of the things that I have to be thankful for -but mainly for grace.  Without the grace of Jesus Christ, where would I be right now?  what kinds of things would I be all caught up in that have absolutely no value in the end? ... I wonder ....
Because of his grace, I can fully understand what it is to be truly thankful for anything and everything that I've received.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!  {a bit late}

{Picture from google}

When I clicked "log in" to blogger, I had absolutely no idea what to write about, but I just knew that I had to write something....well, I still don't know what I'm going to write about, but I'm sure there are plenty of topics to choose from....say...Oh!  Did you know they are already playing Christmas music on the radio???  (I personally think that it is still too early...but, whatever) Just going into Walmart gives me a wave of nostalgia, but I keep pounding into my head, "wait until after Thanksgiving".... it's not working...

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Ok...this picture might give some people nightmares for 6 months, but I've found that if you don't put at least one picture in your blog post, most people just skip over the whole post entirely, so...I thought this pict was enough to make people at least somewhat curious about clicking it  :D

{Don't worry, this isn't a real picture}

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The other day, I was talking with a friend about her many speeches that she had to perform the next day, and she couldn't think of another word for "a whole bunch of something", so I interjected, "A retina of speeches?"...she just looked at me kind of weirdly and then started to laugh .....
Later that night (after much puzzling over), I sat up in bed and laughed at myself..."Plethora!" ....  I had meant to say, "you had a whole plethora of speeches", but instead I said, "you have a whole retina..." ...anyways... I tend to do that a lot more than I used to for some reason...

{ :D  } 

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Resolution and Rebelution

Wow!  Its gettin more chilly every morning . . . I lOVE it!  :)  

Ok, I don't have enough time this morning to post anything creative, but I did want to share a "resolution" that I made this morning . . . I say "resolution", because I don't know how well it will fit in with this weather . . .  but . . . anyways...
Everybody knows how this goes... you have a whole bunch of clothes, but most of them stay in the bottom of your drawer, or on the last hanger in your closet all year round, so what I'm going to try to do, is wear everything that I own . . . ok, wait!  That sounds weird . . . Not in one chunk you understand, but over an extensive period of time until just about everything has been worn, and I can root out the clothes that I want to keep, and the ones that I don't.  The only thing is, now that I am pulling out my "Winter box", I'm finding that most of my warm stuff is probably hanging on a rack in Goodwill right now . . . I have a feeling that I am going to freeze in all of my short-sleeves as I'm going through the clothes . . . Its time to go shopping . . .

Another thing that I've been really inspired by lately, is the Rebelution: A teenage rebellion against low expectations . . . I don't have the time to dive in deep about this, but here is the website, please check it out.  Hopefully it will inspire you to DO HARD THINGS to impact the world, and use the lives that we were graciously given - wisely!

~Hannah

Do you want to know the story of my blogging life?  (you probably already know it)

Blog

Feel good that I just updated my blog

Wait a week.....or two.....or three....

Life

Blog about random things that have happened in that interval

etc..

Oh no, don't worry!  Nobody is getting jipped here!  My journal is just as random and jumbled up as my blog...I just can't seem to find a good way to tie everything into a nice, perfectly synchronized post.  It is so much easier to write in spurts and pictures!  That is why I am going to start to read  through a website that should inspire me to become more consistent in blogging. (I'll tell you the name of the website after I've browsed through it a bit more ;)

~ 

But it's just little things that are on my mind tonight, like:

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Did you know that you can wash off speckles from a speckled egg???  No, I'm serious!  Those speckled eggs are all frauds!  They really don't have any spots at all underneath!!!

I hate it when my camera tells me that I've only got 5 pictures left, and then actually ends up taking about 10 more! . . . it's very misleading . . .

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My rabbit had 8 babies and only 3 survived :( 

I came up with the very original name of Rigamortis for one of the babies, who seemed very stiff at the time. Sadly neither he, nor his brother, "Rig II" made it for very long.  I decided to stop naming them that after the second one died.   

{if you don't know what Rigamortis means, then here is the definition}...

{Bad picture, but it was raining that day, and my camera lied to me and said that I only had 1 picture left, so I only got this one shot of all 8 rabbits in the nest}

{pictures of the babies at 2 weeks, on Bloom}

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This afternoon, I found out that if I don't want to eat another sandwich for lunch, and decide to make tortillas instead . . . . I'd be better off to just stick with the sandwich.  Those tortillas just about killed me!  I spent literally 2 hours trying to make those things, and for what?  Some irregularly shaped, square pieces of hard tack!!!  

Ben tried to "boost my spirits" by saying that they tasted really good, they just took way too long to make.   :)

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I've realized that doing everything with excellence, even means to wash those extra dishes on the counter that I didn't see an hour ago when I started washing the massive pile up.  Although I feel like saying, "I've already done all of these dishes and enough is enough!", I found that it really feels good (besides its being the right thing to do :) to go the extra mile and get it all done.  

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Recent stats have shown that Autumn is (hands-down) the best season of the year.

{no biased person was present when this statistic was made}

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I feel better now.  I've done my good deed for the day.

I've come back to life in the blogging world and just graced it with some more ramblings...I'm sure it needed that... :)

~Hannah