The Burnt-Over Blog: January 2010

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Bekah's 3!

Bekah finally turned three yesterday! She has been telling everyone that she is three already so its good that she really is now. We took her to Chuck-E-Cheese and she loved playing all the games and getting all the tickets.

They have a blue screen there that the kids can dance in front of and of course Linc loved it!

Bekah's cake that she helped me make.

Super Why books from Amma.

Fun train set from Grandma Joyce!

Horse carriage from her cousins! Thanks guys!

And her kitty piano!

It even has a microphone to sing into.

Amma, Papa, and Annie also got her Tinkerbell bedding which though hesitant about it at first she now loves it! Annie also got Bekah a Kelly Clarkson CD to sing along with.

Thanks to everyone for the fun presents which she hasn't stopped playing with since she got them! It was a great birthday and now my sweet little girl is three years old!

We Love You Bekah, Happy Birthday!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Christmas, Birthday and Snowstorm

Here are the pics from Christmas morning and then Lincoln's 6th birthday celebration!

Daddy read their new book Super Why, the Night Before Christmas on christmas eve in their new pajamas.

Linc woke up to a new bike and Bekah got a slide.

Lincoln also found a note by the cookies from Santa thanking Lincoln for them.

Lincoln's dance over Grandma Joyce's present to him.

Bekah got a Super Why wand.

Annie got her PlayStation 3!

Bekah got a cute puppy from her cousins Lexi and Brynn.

It was a great Christmas and the kids had lots of fun with all their new toys!

Only a week later we then celebrated Lincoln's 6th birthday! While I took the kids to get their Happy Meals for lunch, Daddy decorated the house for Linc! It was awesome!

Making a wish.

Blowing out his candles.

All Lincoln wanted for his birthday was "cake, candy and balloons." A reference from his new favorite movie Monsters and Aliens! So he got cake, candy and a lot of balloons, most of which are still floating around our house.

He loved all the presents he got from his cousins, Riley, Connor, Lexi, Brynn, and Trevor, thanks guys!

He also got Sid the Science Kid movie from Papa and Amma!

And Diego coloring book and markers from Grandma Joyce and Papa John.

Linc had a great birthday and has put all of his presents to good use as school has been canceled this week because of our latest snowstorm.

Here is how much snow we have had fall. I'm sure our friends in the west will appreciate how funny it is that school was closed over this snowstorm!

It has been a couple days from that first picture and the snow is still falling, see how much has been added! The grass actually has a little snow now.

It has also brought the deer to our backyard frequently to eat. These next few pictures you can play Spot the Deer! Good luck, they blend in really well.

That has been our winter so far! How is yours?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Christmas Time

Okay I finally have some free time to update the blog with all of our fun Christmas Adventures with Seth's family. But first, we have pictures of the Down Syndrome Christmas party we went to. Lincoln had fun and got to sit on Santa's lap.

They had some games set up for the kids to play. Here Linc and Bekah are bowling.

The chairs had wheels on them so Bekah liked Daddy to push her around. And notice Seth's cool new beard. He surprised his parents so I haven't been able to post any pictures of him for awhile. I love the beard!

And of course Santa himself showed up.

Bekah will do anything for candy, including sit on Santa's lap!

Cute Christmas pictures in front of our cute little tree.

Seth took his parents to the National Corvette museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Dan was in heaven.

We also took them to the cool tour at the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg. It was the warmest day they were here.

Doesn't Linc look like E.T. in Annie's jacket.

With Jack Daniels.

One night we went It to the Gaylord Hotel. It consists of four different atriums inside the hotel and they had them all decorated for Christmas.

This is inside the hotel.

And this is outside the hotel.

Next time I will post pictures of Christmas morning and Linc's sixth birthday! Happy New Year!

Doctrine and Covenants 163:10a-b

Del Gue's Parting Words

I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest sculpturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent...

The Meaning of Christ on the Cross

At the heart of divine love is sacrifice-the willingness to be diminished so that another may be increased. This is the meaning of Christ on the cross. God, who could have insulated himself from pain, descended to earth, assumed the aspect of his children, and bore the greatest pain in his own person. Rather than hoard the heavenly feast for himself, he invites beggars to his table. He breaks bread with us and drinks from the cup our lips have touched. When he speaks to us, it is no longer from a great white throne, centered in a vortex of light, surrounded by celestial griffins, warding off the unwashed. He speaks to us eye to eye, from a traitor’s gibbet, with his blood and sweat and shame upon him for all to see, and with his wounds forever open. He comes not as king, but as slave. He comes not as judge, but as accused. He comes not as patriarch, but as bastard. He comes not to punish us, but to let us punish him. He does not ask us to love him until we are first certain that he loves us. He is the great failure who saves us from our success. He is the great fool who spares us from our wisdom. He is the rejected lover who will not, in turn, reject his love. He is a prophet without honor, a citizen of a despised nation, a poor relation, an unwanted guest. He is the voice of one crying in the wilderness of every human heart. He is the God of grief and sorrow who is the joy of our desiring. He is utterly good because he loves us in our sins and imperfections, because he freely made himself equal to us, and because he freely opened the way whereby we may be made equal to him.

--Paul Toscano's "Priesthood Concepts in the Book of Mormon," Sunstone (Dec. 1989): 17.

True Conversion

Conversion is a permanent process in which very often the obstacles we meet make us lose all we had gained and start anew. The fruitfulness of our conversion depends on our openness to doing this, our spiritual childhood. All conversion implies a break. To wish to accomplish it without conflict is to deceive oneself and others: "No one is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me." But it is not a question of a withdrawn and pious attitude. Our conversion process is affected by the socio-economic, political, cultural, and human environment in which it occurs. Without a change in these structures, there is no authentic conversion. We have to break with our mental categories, with the way we relate to others, with our way of identifying with the Lord, with our cultural milieu, with our social class, in other words, with all that can stand in the way of a real, profound solidarity with those who suffer, in the first place, from misery and injustice. Only thus, and not through purely interior and spiritual attitudes, will the 'new person' arise from the ashes of the 'old.'"
--Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 118

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