Oh, Christmas Tree

Way back when, we would take the kids to Eby Pines and cut down a Christmas tree for the holiday.  A friend of ours managed the tree farm and comped us a tree several years.As the kids got older we found a new place to go - it offered wagon rides pulled by huge horses that took you out to the trees, free hot chocolate, and a Christmas shop where we let each kid pick out an ornament to buy.When we moved to Waterford, our tree-cutting tradition we...
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As the clock ticks down on 2020...

 This past year has been a hard one in so many ways, but before we file it away in our "bad memories" category, I thought it might be good to pause for a few moments to remember the good of the good of 2020.  So since it was 2020, here are 20 good things to remember - and even be thankful for.1.  That we have homes to live in.  Sure they may be drafty and creaky and may need some updating, at the same time they keep us safe and ...
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What about the change?

Years ago my neighbor across owned two lots. His house sat on one; he put in a tennis court for his kids on the other. By the time I moved into the subdivision his kids were grown and gone - so the tennis court wasn't used and fell into mild disrepair (but it was not an eyesore). Then one day a cell phone company approached my neighbor about buying his tennis court and installing a cell tower on it. The area where we lived was known for having bad cell coverage, bu...
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How to Love your Neighbor Idea

Here are some great ideas from Pastor Brent...

Hopefully you now know all your neighbors and have been praying for them by name every day - that's awesome!  Now we'd like to encourage you to take that next step and to figure out some way to actually do something for them. Here are a couple of ideas: 1. Take them a "lockdown survival kit/gift." Maybe it could be a simple game the...

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What's good about 2020

This year has been a rough one, no doubt.  The pandemic has created incredible fallout that has affected us all.  But beyond that we have had to / needed to deal with the issue of racism, but it has had all kinds of crazy repercussions.  And to describe our current political scene as turbulent is probably a significant understatement.  Yikes.There have been, however, some good things about this year.  Families have been able to spend...
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There's no name for me (evidently)

A person who makes maps is called a cartographer.  A person who collects maps is called ... wait for it ... a map collector.  Seriously.  That's the best we can do?There was a time in my life when I was a social studies / world geography teacher.  I think it was then that I became really interested in maps.  So I decided to collect them.  But I wasn't a very good collector.  My collection never got very large.  I f...

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Last Wednesday

Back at the beginning of 2020 my wife and I bought tickets to visit our daughter out in Los Angeles.  Her husband was graduating from his program, and we wanted to be there to celebrate with him.  Alas, his commencement was cancelled so we stayed home and watched the ceremonies on Zoom.  But we still wanted to see them.  So we rescheduled our tickets for June - and I got sick.  It was this little tiny fever that lasted about 30 hours - but it ...
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Real Football

Fall means football. And some of you are primed and pumped to get this season off the ground. Um,may I remind you that real football is played with your feet, not with your hands. In America, we call it soccer. It's always been my favorite sport to play - and I have had a ton of fun coaching it, too.In the past, the coming of fall meant that I would be coaching my middle school charges (both boys and girls) again. In the spring, I would coach in the...
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Prayers for the school year

While most schools are back in session, we recognize that huge challenges await our students, our parents and our teachers. Today we wanted to offer a prayer for all of them, and would invite you to join in praying for them, especially this week.A prayer for students:Dear Heavenly Father,We're grateful to know that you love our kids more than we do. That gives us assurance as we face these uncertain times knowing that you are looking out for th...

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Are you listening?

While I doubt that any of us has enjoyed the COVID situation, I'm sure that with a little prompting you could probably identify some positives. Maybe yours would be the fact that you have been able to work from home and avoided a long commute. Maybe with less opportunity to shop you have been able to pay down some debt. Maybe you've simply been able to spend more timewith your kids. And maybe you've been able to step back and rethink some priori...
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Olympic Doughnuts

One of my recent reads has been a book called Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang. It's the story of a young man who realized he had an unhealthy fear of rejection, so he set out to desensitize himself to the experience by deliberately trying to get rejected every day for 100 consecutive days.On Day One he asked the security guard at his office building if he could borrow a hundred dollars. He was told no.On Day Two...
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Playing the "What If" Game

Yesterday morning I was sitting on my couch and reading my Bible when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye (how exactly do round eyes have corners, anyhow?). It was a hot air balloon floating by in the morning sky. It looked very peaceful and serene and like something I would never like to try. Believe me, going up in a balloon is not on my bucket list. No thank you.If I'm honest, I don't do well with heights. Those sky scrapers that have th...
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My Teeter Totter Theory

First, we need to decide if the playground equipment above is a teeter totter or a see saw.  Where I grew up, it was called a teeter totter.  And if was a very important piece of equipment to me.  You see, I have trouble with motion sickness.  Merry-go-rounds were like an easy ticket to the nurse's office.  Even the swings gave me the yuckies.  So really the only thing I could play on was the teeter totter. But...

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