Love Brightly

Watch this 7 minute excerpt from 700 Club featuring Claire Culwell, who is the adopted daughter of some dear fellow CCC staff. She has an amazing testimony as an ABORTION SURVIVOR! She has toured the country telling her story, please pass it on. http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/700Clubi_122810_WS

I posted a quote in our Christmas Ask this year from a journalist, but didn't have room to print the whole story, so here it is... Have you ever eaten at an In-N-Out Burger ? It is AWESOME! It is to Burgers what Raising Cane's is to Chicken = Experts. And like Cane's, they only have 4 things on the menu.  I could write a lonng paragraph in tribute to why it is the best fast food burger in the world, but I'll keep it short--it's juicy, it's loaded, it has it's own sauce (which is NOT Thousand Island), it comes in paper that you must keep around it or the whole thing will fall apart, and the discussion ender: Our girls ate them happily, and they usually won't eat beef without a steep bribe.  The chain is only out west--Cali and Arizona, etc. (although they're building one in downtown Ft. Worth in 2012!!). It's cheap, it's yummy, and we ate there this past summer whenever we could get a chance.  Karl has the shirt.  And by now you're thinki...

Now that the girls are older, they anticipate Christmas, specifically the PRESENTS! In attempt to keep the focus of the season not on how and when they receive things, last year I made a poster of activities of Christmastime--things they could look forward to until present-opening-time, and things that keep us focused on Christ's birth and giving to others. We would check off each activity as the days in December rolled by.  This year, I wanted to give even more focus to the different categories of activities and why we do them.  I thought about making my poster say "Christmas JOY" and have each letter of the word JOY be a category with the good ol' acronym: Jesus, Others, Yourself.  But as I've seen more and more entitlement sins grow in my kids (and myself) in our materialistic culture, I didn't want to separate Christ from any of the activities.  I decided to use the word Noel. I always thought Noel meant "Good News" (probably because of the Chri...

I'm not naturally good at financial planning or saving money. I value saving money; I think it's important, and my husband and parents are gifted at this and have helped me stick to a budget (see previous post Saving Money & Other Things I Learned From My Parents ), but by nature, if I have a dollar, I want to spend it. "Burning a whole in my pocket", as my Grandma would say.  What my mom, sister, and others who know me well would say about me is I am a money-STRETCHER. I learned quickly that if I found ways to pay less for things, then I could BUY MORE within my budget. :) I have clipped coupons on and off for years, but last year my friend Kim helped me focus my efforts with a few money saving tips (click on her name and it'll take you to her blog). Last week I saved $68 off my grocery bill by combining coupons from the Sunday paper, web coupons, and store specials.  I learned quickly that the "total saved" doesn't mean much if you end up spe...

My parents were jumping up and down waving papers in their hands. (Well, maybe just my mom was jumping, the memory is foggy because I was in grade school, but knowing my dad's personality, I'm going to guess that only my mom was jumping). They were moving excitedly waving the mail saying, "This is our house!" "Uh, yeah...." I replied, confused since we had lived in that same house my entire life. They seemed to be excited about some very obvious and old news. "No, you don't understand, " they began to explain to me, "this house is paid for! We OWN it! No one can take it away from us! It is OURS!" "Oh, ok," I smiled, guessing that at some point they had paid money for it, and since knowing that fact didn't change one thing about my day, all I had to say about it was "Oh, ok." My parents discipline, values, and choices shaped the way I think about money and possessions.  I watched them sacrifice, save...

Every evening my 2-year-old has been asking me to read a little paper back illustrated version of the Gospel that was given to us by our church in Louisiana for our first Christmas as parents. We have multiple children's versions of the Gospel, and this one is not my favorite of them all, but we want them to hear God's word as many times and in as many different ways as possible, so this one remains in the girls' bookcase. Our eldest ("4-and-a-half, almost 5" she will tell you) never chooses this Jesus story--I think mostly because it shows a picture of the crown of thorns up close and says how it made Him bleed. She is very sensitive, and doesn't like to think of Jesus hurting. Usually she is taking her pre-bedtime trip to the potty when her sister brings the book for me to read. But on Wed. Aug. 11, she unusually finished quickly and plopped herself on the couch beside me and said, "Can I listen too?" "Of course," I answered. When ...

"90% of kids who grow up in church turn their backs on God by the time they graduate college." It is a statistic that is staggering, hard to believe, but we see it everyday. People think, "That won't be my kid. My kid will be the one who stays faithful." (That's what I think about my kids). But for 9 out of 10 college students, that won't be the case. This article helps pinpoint why that is while calling teenagers "fake Christians": http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html?hpt=C1