Church at it's Best!

This last Sunday would have to go down as the best day of church ever! Our church held the first annual "The Church Has Left The Building" a day designed for us to go and BE the church to our community. We gathered at 9:30 a.m. for a service that felt more like a celebration rally. We sat in our teams divided between local elementary schools and a ranch for inner city kids. At the conclusion we were sent off, over 800 of us, to these schools to work in the heat and humidity to make improvements to the schools. Adults and kids ages 3 and up all participated at we raked, shoveled, weeded, pressure washed, planted, painted and worked tirelessly - many past our 3 p.m. end time. Some schools raised money to buy plants and supplies, other materials were donated by local businesses. The results were schools sporting flowers, trees and shrubs all freshly weeded and mulched. One school had an entire dirt track laid in, another benches and an arbor were built. Even a first time visitor joined in swinging a pick ax to break up concrete at a school. What a great - exhausting - day!

I can't help but wonder if that is how the first church met the needs of their community. Gathering together as a rallying point then launching out to their community to serve - I can't wait to do this again!

Reasons Why Computers Frustrate Me - #1

While I'm not sure if there will be any writings following #1, I am pretty confident there will.

The most recent act of frustration came from a virus placed on our computer when a child "accidentally" downloaded a program (three accidental programs to my count). I was smart enough to suspect when an XP window continually popped up telling me I had a virus and that I should download spy ware by clicking OK. Not to be fooled I ran my Norton Anti Virus - nothing found. I then downloaded a free Yahoo Spy ware application which found spy ware and a Trojan virus (how much did I pay for Norton again?). I rebooted and the virus pop up was still annoying me. Here are my steps I followed:

1. Backed up everything! (too many crashes have caught this girl off guard)
2. I deleted/removed the suspect programs. Rebooted - still the pop up teased me.
3. I then called in my husband to watch me as I hit the "OK" button to see what would happen
4. An instruction to run, or save program (once again burned too many times) so I clicked "save" to a disk. Up pops Norton saying a virus has been blocked. Great!
5. Supportive husband remembers an article he TRIED to get me to read when this first started. I follow the instructions from The Houston Chronicle http://blogs.chron.com/helpline/archives/2008/05/fake_antispywar.html
6. Following these instructions brings up a nostalgic DOS looking box. I run everything as instructed including the restore
7. I reboot my computer (this is now day 3 of the crisis) and.............it won't reboot!!!!!! Nothing but a blue screen. AAAARRrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhh!
8. Another 2 days pass and I decide in a calmer moment to reboot in Safe Mode and try again - this time without following the "optional" restore feature and...............it worked!
9. My desktop picture is gone, my parental controls were gone, my default Internet explorer was changed, and after all that was changed back to my settings I noticed my computer is now running faster than ever. Wonder how long I've had the virus?

Happy Mother's Day?

Ah Mother's Day - the day mom's dream of to sleep in a bit.....unless of course you live in Houston. This morning 5:30 a.m. to be exact we awoke to rain and wind hitting our window. Soon it was thunder, lightening, wind, rain and hail! Hail so large it set off our truck's alarm (it was parked in the driveway). Needless to say everyone was up - just in time for the power outage.

As the sun rose we found most of our neighbors' tree leaves in our pool, and our gazebo that was no more. So my Mom's day was spent bonding with my children, clearing a yard, cleaning a pool, and disposing of our gazebo (which had been turned inside out).

Truly a mother's day to remember!

Confessions of a Selective Pack Rat

The box had been broken for some time. The handles had snapped off from the weight. So today as I discovered an empty and sturdy bin, I began the process of transferring the contents.

I am a pack rat - at least when it comes to things my kids do. I have every Little League and Soccer picture button from every year of play. I have various t-shirts and articles of clothing that had meaning or memory (a quilt someday I tell myself). Today's box was filled with childhood papers of drawings, school work, artwork, folders, notes. It was wonderful to slow time down and return briefly. I found:

• a sincere apology card written in crayon for being a "smart mouth" along with two nickels taped inside to pay me back for the grief


• a notebook about artists and artwork studied in 3rd grade all wonderfully written in pencil and illustrated in different media (thank you Ms Freedman)


• a Playbill of a play to see a teacher perform (thank you Mr. Williams)


• notebooks filled with facts about life when they were in school


• a mock up of the twin towers created out of paper that was spontaneously made one day - a commentary of how 9/11 affected everyone no matter how young

I haven't added anything in the box for a while - the Wildflower Project will DEFINATELY be added. I pray that in the midst of cutbacks at schools, teachers can still teach about art and being artistic, expressive and creative. I hope parents today can still fill a box full of creative drawings, writings and memories......they're much more fun to look at than report cards!

Stating the Obvious

Watching CNN today about the Presidential Primaries today. They stated their "analysis" of the outcome: Clinton could win both; Obama could win both; they each could win one. Wow! What would we do without such insight? Do they really think viewers are that dumb?

The next story was about a study commissioned by Congress that emergency rooms would not be able to handle a disaster because of current overcrowding. Once again. Duh! Instead of issuing a study, they could have easily visited any emergency room on a weekend and witnessed it first hand. Anyone who has had to visit an ER only to wait 8 hours for their emergency knows this. The issue, in my opinion, is not preparedness, it is once again not having health insurance and medical care that everyone can afford and receive - but that is an opinion for another time.

It's the thought that counts

Yesterday we were at the ball field to enjoy another day of Sr baseball for our son. We come early for him to practice and I decided to watch the previous game finish. As I stood and watched, two very eager boys climbed onto the bleachers. They were probably 6 or 7 years old. I thought how cute it was that they wanted to sit and watch the game - until I noticed they weren't watching the game. They were just looking for a place to sit in the shade and play their handheld games. Well at least they were outside in fresh air.