I took the last of my homework to the college Tuesday and the kids went with me and got to see the church building. They have a lot of banners and things to look at like a Sword of Solomon and a couple of Shofars and world flags, etc... The kids enjoyed it. I also signed up for the next session which starts in July. I want to take the class on Covenant. I was told it is a very interesting class.

Then, Tuesday night, we went to Brenda & Larry's to work on some of their trim (base) around the floor. It is going to look really nice when it is all finished. Brenda and I got to chat and go look at land around where they live and watch Mariah sleep on the couch while Alex watched TV and Edgey showed Larry how to cut trim. It was actually very relaxing for me because the kids were totally occupied and played and chased kitties. It was great.

Wednesday we did the McDonalds thing and took the kids to the park by the zoo. They climbed on all the stuff and tried to play baseball. It was interesting trying to teach Elizabeth how to stand and hold the bat and hit the ball. I pitched for a little while and then let the kids play. Jesse didn't stay interested for too long. He wanted to climb on the monkey bars. When he got tired he would just lay on top of them at the very top. It was very warm but breezy.
I am looking forward to this summer and swimming but not the humid heat. The kids have been bugging me about going to the park we go to all summer. They have free kids lunches and they are actually good. Then they either play at the park or go to the swimming pool.
Wed night we went to church and pastor is gone to India so Layne (youth pastor) preached. It was a good word... He gets better everytime I hear him. He was talking about obedience and reasons we are not obedient to what God wants us to do. Part of the message was about dying to self and loving things more than God and taking up your cross to follow Christ. Anyway, I thought about what he said even last night because I went to the fridge to get some more ice cream (after I just had 2 little scoops) and stopped myself saying "take up my cross". Death to self. It's so hard sometimes. But, it was good because I caught myself renewing my mind with Layne's message. One person's disobedience causes many to sin... I can see my little sugar addicted children having food(sin) problems because of my disobedience to keep it out of the house. Just my stuff I am dealing with right now.

Yesterday mom watched the kids in the afternoon and I went to the healthfood stores to price things and see what was out there. That took all afternoon. I guess the thing that is hardest for me right now is that the kids want snackfood and I hadn't bought anything, so they were having a fit. When I went to the healthfood store, I bought good crackers and dried banana chips and stuff for them to snack on. If it doesn't look like a snack, they have a problem with it. So that is my main challenge at the moment. Finding cheap, healthy things that look like snacks (besides fruit).

Today was a laundry day and clean out closets day again. It's supposed to be 80's-90's this weekend. At least I will be in the air conditioning at the hospital.

I went out with my coworkers last night. Carlos O'Kelly's was nice. I had some enchilada thing with fahita chicken inside and a cream sauce. It was really good. Once gal had to take her daughter to the dr. at the last minute so we waited for a while before she was able to get there, but the other one took advantage of the Marguerita's and she was pretty entertaining. Me, I tried to figure out how much bad stuff was in my food. Oh well. Probably everything in there. Unless they were real pinto beans and not from a giant can, they probably had hydrogenated oils or lard in it. The tortillas and tortilla chips probably did too.

When I got home around ten, everyone was already in bed. So I finished reading the Sunday paper and then went to bed too. I got so much sleep, I was up at 6 something this morning and went out and planted more of my flowers I got from Menards on Sunday.
Now I am having my coffee with Elizabeth and trying to read blogs that nobody ever writes anymore and reading my emails and homeschool lists.

Hope you all have a good and productive day!

Aleph

I had to work on Saturday and it wasn't really busy but I did have a kind-of-busy patient who was very very sick. It always amazes me as many C-sections as we see in the hospital - It is still a major surgery and can still have many complications. I had the complications this weekend. I had to do things I haven't had to do since I was on the heart floor. Yuck.

Sunday I was home on call. It was also Edgey's birthday. I didn't expect to be home so I had not really planned anything for him. Anyway, he whined around because nobody loves him and nobody remembered his birthday; even though I did buy him presents and we went out for lunch and Auntie and my friend came to eat with us. My friend watched the kids and then Edgey and I went shopping for a while. We went to look at clothes that he likes, but he didn't find anything he wanted right now. Well, I thought he would like to go to Menards and look around because he usually wants to go there and I don't, but yesterday I guess he didn't want to go there and so I got to hear about that too. I bought a bunch of flowers to plant in the front and a couple of hanging planters. He says it's supposed to be his day not mine. I guess I can't do anything right. No I did not buy a cake and surprise him at church with it. I am not quite sure what he expected but I did not meet the expectation.

Tonight I am supposed to go out with the girls from work. I have never been to Carlos O'Kelly's so I hope it is good.

I was looking on a homeschool thing today and ran across this hebrew alphabet thing and checked it out. It was really interesting. It was a description of the letters of the hebrew alphabet and what each letter means. Each letter is assigned a number and has a specific meaning. Aleph is the first letter and is assigned as numerical value as 1. It is also the "father" of the alphabet. The word Aluph means "Master" or "Lord." The way it is written looks like a tilted cross almost like an X. In hebrew (Kabbalistic) writings, the upper yod (meaning an arm) represents the hiddens aspects of YHVH (this is a name of God). The lower yod (arm) represents the revelation of YHVH to man. The Vav which means "hook" represents the connectedness between the two realms. It is also diagonal because it is humbled in the face of God's mystery and his revelation. The cool part is that it is a picture of Christ - a God-Man composed of both the upper realm of heaven and the lower realm of earth, connected by the humility of the body. That was just really neat to me to see that all spelled out. There is so much we don't understand when we don't understand the hebrew language. It really makes me want to dig in and figure it all out. If you have time, you should check out the page - there is a lot more there about the trinity and the beginning and end.....

Da da da da da da da da - Batman!

This is Jesse Boy's rendition of Batman. This is what he was doing when Teletubbies came on the TV.

The boys are still asleep. Elizabeth and I are doing her school and having coffee.
Ethan had karate last night and went swimming afterwards. We figured out yesterday after he went to my mom's that he has poison ivy. Now we are trying to get it dried up. Gross. I hate poison ivy.
The little kids were outside yesterday and they were picking leaves along the fenceline to play with whatever they were imagining so I had to go see if there was any around where they were playing. We walked the whole fenceline and I didn't see any yet. Yeah! We have had some in the past. Ethan probably got his from tramping through the creek about a block away. That's the end of that! Last time he came home from the creek, his shoes and pants were soaked. "I fell in," he says.... yeah right. You jumped in. Anyway, everytime he and his friend go down there, his friend falls in and Ethan ends up soaked. Hmmmmm. When I was little and walked along the creek we tried to stay out of the water unless we wanted to get in trouble. We walked on stones and logs and sand and everything but water.

I do remember my dad taking us for walks in creeks and rivers when we would go hiking but he was always with us and we did have shorts on or rolled up our jeans and we carried our shoes. That was always fun. We even went swimming in a creek with a little waterfall out past West Des Moines. We found a baby beaver there too. He was so cute. We went for a real long hike up the creek and when we came back, the beaver was still there and his mother was still nowhere to be seen. Dad let us take it home. We were going to give it to the zoo or something but the little neighbor kid picked him up and threw him on the ground.... poor beaver died. Dumb kid. Don't you hate it when kids are mean? He's probably one that ended up in prison at some point.

Red & Blue

My children have reverted back to 2 again. I don't know what PBS is doing today but the normal programming has changed and they all ran in there and are watching Teletubbies???? Whats up with that. "I like the red one, and the blue one" "I like the bunnies." They are laughing hysterically. Can I just shoot myself now? Uh-Oh!
Who cares about Rover getting chased by Mother Duck and drawing batman and joker or adding measurements........ Let's watch teletubbies. Up down Up down. I'm not sure what is worse, that or Boobahs. :( And I used to think Barney was bad. What was I thinking?

Sorry - I'm sure you don't need a play by play of my problems. You are probably looking for something a little more profound than that.

Hmmm, let's see..... nope, nothing profound today. The coffee hasn't worked yet.

Here's a picture of my Mother's Day card....

I Am Poisoning Myself

I don't think I got much done yesterday. My mind was willing but my flesh was weak. My mom taped an Oprah show with Dr. Oz and oh boy that was good. My daughter had seen it at my mom's so she came in and was giving me a play by play until I kicked her out of the room so I could actually pay attention to what the Dr. was saying instead of her version. I don't think I know anyone who can talk as much as my daughter.
The show was mainly about how disgusting Americans' eating habits are and the physical effect the food we eat has on our bodies. The lady on the show was 42 years old and drank about 4 six packs of diet cola daily. She didn't drink any water. Everything she ate was awful. She wouldn't get out of bed and her 9 year old son would have to get her up every day. He said he felt like he was the dad and she was the kid. She went to have a work up and they said she had the body of a 56 year old. That put her into shock. She was tired all of the time and took out the garbage cans to the end of the driveway by dragging them with her SUV. She wouldn't even walk to get the paper - she drove the SUV to get that too.
The doctors came in and took everything bad out of her pantry and fridge and she had one little side table left of food. They gave her lessons and a personal trainer. She walked 30 min/day and weight training - changed her diet to good food and water and in 90 days she lost 40+ pounds and looked 20 years younger. It really was amazing. Anyway, I was inspired.
I think for me the hardest thing is just cooking things that are good for me but that the kids like too. It is really irritating to try something and the kids won't eat it or they will be starving 2 minutes after a meal. I have been trying to have healthier things in the house but still failing in the snacks area. I thought I was doing ok with granola bars, but the dr. said they were no no's and also roasted nuts are no no's because the roasting of the nuts changes the oil into yucky oil for your body. That was something I did not know. We are supposed to have raw nuts to get the good oils.

There are 5 things to watch out for and if they are one of the first 5 ingredients on the package then its a big no:

1- Sugar
2- High fructose corn syrup (this blocks the ability of lectin which is the way your fat tells the brain you are full - so if you are eating something with corn syrup in it, you will still be hungry and eat or drink more and more and more of that)
3- partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (body doesn't understand this and cannot process it- this is what lines your arteries like spreading margarine all over inside of your blood vessels)
4- animal fat (lard)
5- enriched anything (this means they stripped everything good out and put back a little bit)




I guess the one thing that really made me think (being a nurse and all) was that the Dr. said to look at each package of food like a prescription you are going to take and check out the ingredients. If you want to feel like crap go ahead and eat the crap. If you want to feel better, you need to take some better prescriptions. We pay a penalty for eating or drinking it.... It might feel good for a little bit, but then we are going to be tired, crabby, depressed, you name it, and we will pay a penalty for consuming it. I suppose I need to compare this to any drug, alcohol, marijuana, etc... We are addicted to these foods, just like drugs.

He said Americans ignore the reality of what they are doing to themselves...because it is the norm. 67% of Americans are overweight and we are being poisoned by our food we choose to eat. Selah.

Belly fat (what we carry around our waist) is where we store stress. The belly fat mainlines the fat right to the liver and is very unhealthy and dangerous. We should not measure more than 34 inches around the waist.

We remake our bones about every decade (10 years) and a 30 year old should be able to do 45 bent leg pushups daily. Each decade after, it decreases 5 pushups.

Well, that's a lot to think about for one day. Oh, and click on the high fructose corn syrup link. It gives a great laymans explanation of the whole thing if you can ignore all the political junk on there.

Sorry, not giving up the chocolate yet. :)

Mother's Day Weekend

First of all, if you're a mom, make sure you read Mary Lynn's blog.....so you can cry too. Second, Happy Mother's Day to everyone that I didn't see yesterday. I had to work this weekend, as usual. Of course, on mother's day, everyone wants to come in to have their babies, whether they need to or not, so it was busy towards the evening... just when it is time to finish up and go home. I had to stay late to finish charting and when I finally got done, I went to see my mom and tell her Happy Mother's Day. We watched the end of Survivor and chatted for a while. When I got home, my house was quiet and everyone was in bed.

Let's go back to Friday. Friday eve Edgey's dad came to visit for the weekend, mostly to surprise his sister for her birthday. My mom watched the kids and Edgey and I and his dad went to go get Auntie for her birthday dinner. Boy, was she surprised. We did go to Hickory Park and pigged out. We had 2 whole meals left to bring home. It was soooo much food and it was soooo good.

I went to work Saturday and it was a slow day and nice and relaxing with nothing exciting going on. I got to bed fairly early.
Sunday was busier. Patients going to deliver and we got to send our psycho patient to deliver. Yeah. It was not my turn for the mental patients this weekend. We try to rotate our suffering.
The gals I normally work with are all mothers and their kids and hubby's came up to see them and bring stuff. Edgey came with my kids and they had a nice card they all signed and the little kids drew me their own cards with lots of hearts and kisses and brought chocolate for me and some for my coworkers too. That was really nice. Chocolate is important on busy days at work. You can ask my coworkers and they will agree. I think that is why we get along so well. :)

My big mother's day present was a gift certificate to go get a pedicure. I have never had a real pedicure before. My sister goes to some place by Merle Hay mall and they massage your feet and legs while they are soaking in the hot water. She loves it. I recently bought some open toed sandal/tennis shoes. They are cute, but my toes are not and I was sort of whining about how I am not going to wear them until I sit down and do my toenails. So that is why I got the gift certificate. I was blessed.

I finished my very last DVD of "24" and now I won't have anything to watch. My brother was supposed to be taping this seasons "24" and he did but then he taped over it. He needs to have a sumo sit on him for a while. When we were little and he was bugging me, I would sit on top of him and hold his hands down with my knees and pound on his chest in one spot with my two fingers until he learned who was boss then he would run off and leave me alone.

Today I am chilling out. I slept in till almost 10. The kids were just getting breakfast when I came downstairs so they all slept in too. Now we are doing school. I am drinking a cup of coffee. The dog is taking a nap. There are Polly pockets and light sabers all over my living room floor and loads of laundry after the weekend again. There is a spot of dumped milk on my kitchen table and chair. I am thankful to be a mom...and I am not being sarcastic.

Zeh hayom asah HaShem; nagila venismekha vo! (This is the day Adonai has
made; we will rejoice and be glad in it!)

Marriage

Ok - it's cold again. I had to get out my sweatshirt and wear my coat.... and when we were watching TV last night we had to get out the little space heater and cover up with our blankets again. :( I'm not complaining, I just was cold.

Nothing much new on this end. Aunt Annie came to visit on Wednesday and we discussed a lot of the wedding details and tried to figure out the order of the wedding, setup, etc.... There are just a lot of decisions to make. You know, I was so hurried with my organization, I really didn't care how the wording of the ceremony and all of that was. I just told the pastor to do what he thought was best and we had communion and did the unity candle. One of Edgey's buddies sang a song and I taped The Communion Song and The Lord's Prayer since I would have been too nervous to sing it at my own wedding. I was just really really really glad when the whole thing was OVER!!!! We were very blessed because I didn't have a whole lot of money to spend and really didn't get help with the money. Edgey was in the ministry at the time and only made $325/month. He bought my ring and a new suit. He had to borrow black dress shoes. I bought my own dress and made my own veil and did my own flowers (a lady at the church showed me how to do them) and decorations and bought Edgey's ring. My friend did typesetting and did the flier for the wedding schedule. Another lady at my church did cakes and did the wedding cake as our gift. Other friends made mints, and punch and the ladies at the church had a wonderful potluck lunch for the wedding dinner in the church hall. Edgey's boss took the pictures - he did it as a hobby. It all fit together beautifully and we had a lot of comments on how nice everything was. It was a church family effort. Another lady at the church did alterations on my dress. It still amazes me how smooth everything went and how much everyone cared for us and helped out.

I barely remember the wedding day itself... thank God for pics and videos.

Anyway, Edgey's Auntie Deb's birthday is tomorrow. We are supposed to go out to dinner with her tonight. She wants to go to Hickory Park up in Ames. I haven't been there since Edgey's last construction job in Ames. We went for lunch one time. It reminds me of the old Kinfolks (smoked meat). It's really good.

Post Weekend Musings

I tried to get on the website earlier and it wouldn't even come up. None of the blogs would come up.

Elizabeth got up and did school early. Both boys are still sleeping. Jesse and Ethan didn't get up until after 10:30 a.m. yesterday. Then they didn't want to do school so :) daddy did it with them last night after he got home. They
"love" it when daddy does it with them because they have to do twice as much and then they are much more thankful to do it for mommy.

I was very tired yesterday, probably because the weekend seemed way too busy again. Maybe it was just draining because of certain people I had to take care of. Some people are just very difficult to take care of. You know how you can try and try to make them happy and give them everything they think they need and they are still unthankful and unhappy..... well patients do it too.
I had no energy to argue with my kids about doing school or anything for that matter. I just did laundry. That's very stable. It's always there for me and it doesn't talk back. Even though I am faithful about a load in the morning when I wake and one at night before I go to bed.... there is always a ton after the weekend. I think they all hide some around the house or something so there is a giant pile for monday. Then of course there are sunday clothes - church clothes then play clothes so that is extra.

I took Jesse on a "date" last night. We haven't been on one for a long time. He, of course, wanted to go to chinese, so that is where we went for supper. I had to go pick up my glasses. It has been almost a month and they finally came in. We went to Wally World to get a couple of things and look around. I did get him a Captain America that he had to have. Did you know Captain America is a big deal again? I also got him a new pair of sandals with the flashing lights. After we got home, I buzzed his hair like daddy's so he now has no hair. It's cute. I got almost all done and there was a big triangle of hair on the side of his head that looked like some squirrel attacked him.... he had to go look in the mirror and started laughing. It was very funny.

Aunt Annie (Edgey's sister) is supposed to come stay tonight again on her way back from Wisconsin. We didn't tell Elizabeth when just in case she doesn't get here until tomorrow. We don't want to hear her cry again.

Well, I better get busy blessing my house.

70's & 80's

Didn't have much time to write yesterday cause Edgey's sister was coming to town. We hurried up and did school. I dropped the kids off at my mom's a little bit earlier than normal and ran my errands fast then came home to make sure I had everything for supper and work on laundry. I did not have everything for supper that I needed. So later Edgey stopped at the hyvee and grabbed a couple of things. We grilled burgers and dogs.
Aunt Annie (sister) stayed in Elizabeth's room with her and had a girl sleepover and Robert(her fiance) stayed in Ethans room and snored really loud. Ethan woke up this morning and said, "Man he snores loud. He woke me up last night!" LOL Oh and Ethan was even in Jesse's room in the top bunk. That's pretty loud if you ask me.

Elizabeth cried this morning because Annie had to leave and go to Wisconsin for thier little trip to some wedding. She cried after she left too. Even when we were doing school she cried some more. I had to keep reassuring her that Annie would come back and visit and we will go see her this summer too. Poor Elizabeth, she needs some girl friends.

Tonight is a meeting for Children's Church. That should be fun. They are always kind of fun. :) We are looking at a new curriculum they are using for a while about camping and animals. It should be interesting.

Ethan is going to go to Josiah's birthday party so he will be tired again for the weekend. Hopefully won't get sick. When he gets too run down, he starts getting asthma more often and prone to colds.

My friend sent me an email this morning. I had to laugh because it is really funny. The young pups will not get any of it, but I just had to share for those of us that KNOW, you will understand and laugh.


YOU WERE A GIRL IN THE 70S (and 80s) IF...

You wore a rainbow shirt that had half-sleeves; the rainbow went up one sleeve, across your chest, and down the other.

You made baby chocolate cakes in your Easy Bake Oven and washed them down with snow cones from your Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.

You had that Fisher Price Doctor's Kit with a stethoscope that actually worked.

You owned a bicycle with a banana seat and a plastic basket with flowers on it.

You learned to skate with actual skates (not roller blades) that had metal wheels.

You thought Gopher from the Love Boat was cute! (Admit it!)

You had nightmares after watching Fantasy Island.

You had rubber boots for rainy days and Moon boots for snowy days.

You had either a "bowl cut" or "pixie," not to mention the "Dorothy Hamill"
because your Mom was sick of braiding your hair. People sometimes thought you were a boy.

Your Holly Hobbie sleeping bag was your most prized possession.

You wore a poncho, gauchos, and knickers.

You begged Santa for the electronic game Simon.

You could spend hours playing Pong!

You had the Donnie and Marie dolls with those pink and purple satiny shredded outfits.

You spent hours in your backyard on your metal swing set with the trapeze.
(The swing set tipped over at least once!)

You were really into ping pong and pogo sticks.

You had homemade ribbon barrettes in every imaginable color.

You had a pair of Doctor Scholl's sandals (the ones with hard sole &the buckle).

You wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder really bad; you wore that Little House on the Prairie-inspired plaid, ruffle shirt with the high neck in at least one school picture; and you despised Nellie Olson!

You wanted your first kiss to be at a roller rink.

Your hairstyle was described as having "wings" or "feathers" and you kept it "pretty" with the comb you kept in your back pocket.

You had to make sure that no boys would grab the comb out of your back pocket and
skate away at the roller rink!

You know who Strawberry Shortca ke is, as well as her friends, Blueberry,Muffin and Huckleberry Pie.

You carried a lunch box to school and it was metal, not plastic.

You and your girlfriends would fight over which of the Dukes of Hazzard, was
your boyfriend.

Every now and then "It's a Hard Knock Life" from the movie, "Annie" will
pop into your brain and you can't stop singing it the whole day.

YOU had Star Wars action figures, too!

It was a big event in your household each year when the "Wizard of Oz"
would come on TV. Your mom would break out the popcorn and sleeping bags!

You often asked your Magic-8 ball the question: "Who will I marry. Shaun Cassidy,Leif Garrett or Andy Gibb?"

You completely wore out your Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Fame soundtrack record albums.

You tried to do lots of arts and crafts,like yarn and Popsicle-stick God's eyes, decoupage, or those weird potholders made on a plastic loom.

You made Shrinky-Dinks and put iron-on kittens on your t-shirts!

You used to tape record songs off the radio by holding your portable tape player up to the speaker.

You couldn't wait to get the free animal poster that came when you ordered books from the Scholastic book club.
Double score if it was a teddy bear dressed in clothing. And the posters always had permanent creases because they came folded!

You learned everything you needed to know about "the facts of life" from Judy Blume books.

You thought Olivia Newton John's song "Physical" was about aerobics.

You wore friendship pins on your tennis shoes, or shoelaces with heart or rainbow designs.

You wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer.

You had a Big Wheel with a brake on the side, and a Sit-n-Spin.

How about drowning yourself in Love's Baby Soft? The first "real" perfume you ever owned!

You had subscriptions to Dynamite and Tiger Beat.

You spent your allowance on Smurfs and stickers for your sticker album!


KP

Donnie Osmond

Oh I just had to share that I had the Donnie doll and it had purple socks too. It was cool. I had forgotten all about ever having Donnie until my friend sent me that email. LOL

Spanish vs. French

Hola!

I had a great time at the new Spanish class. A young mexican gal teaches it. She is here on a 6 month pass, but she can't work, so this is a donation only class to help her out with her needs while she is here. She is a translator for some of the missionaries from the church and has taught Spanish and English in different countries and for YWAM (I think she said). Cool huh?

Her idea of teaching is to start like we are little children/babies and learn the sounds like little babies learn to say the sounds and hear them. I had a lot of fun. Once she got done with the explanation the whole class had to be in complete Spanish or for punishment you had to stand up on one leg and flap like a flamingo. It was funny. Everybody was laughing and being flamingos. It was difficult hearing the sounds sometimes. Now I can see why my kids have a hard time sometimes with their phonics lessons. She said English has like 19 different vowel sounds and Spanish only has 5. I will be going back. I learned a lot. Even the people that had taken some Spanish before learned a lot and said they heard things they never understood before.

I took French when I had to pick a language. Now I wish I would have taken Spanish. I'm sure it would have helped me out much more.... especially in California. LOL Mary. I have been on a mission trip to Mexico but never to the Eiffel Tower. I had 2 years in high school and 2 years in college. I only used it one time when I was working downtown and a lady from France asked where the pens were. I loved it (french) at the time, but you know, I really don't remember any of it unless I'm watching Madeline with my daughter. Elizabeth wants to learn Spanish too, so maybe I need to find some spanish videos. I guess I could start with Dora. Swiper NO Swiping. Oh man. Like I want to watch hours of that? Not. I guess I could get some Kim Possible DVD's and watch them in Spanish. : ) At least I would understand Bueno Nacho.


Buenas noches!

Lesson 4

We did school this a.m. and went to the park to meet my friend and her kids. We were going to walk around Grays Lake together. Well..... She locked her keys in her car and she had to take her kid to the Dr. at 2 this afternoon (it was 12:50 at the time). Soooo, I took the kids and walked over to the park while they rode their bikes and then watched them play at the park until she got back. She took my van and went and got keys to unlock her car. Therefore, we did not get to chat at all about anything adult like. I think I know why I like my classes so much. It actually challenges my mind to think about things instead of Berenstein Bears (which I have nothing against) or Comfy Couch or Arthur, etc..... And there are adults there for adult conversation. Yeah.
Tonight Auntie is going to take me with her to her church for some Spanish class that is just starting. I need to take Spanish. It is very difficult to work at the hospital sometimes and not know what your patients are saying behind your back OR to your face. Most speak a tiny bit of English, but over this past year, I have run across sooooo many that speak absolutely none. I have also run across several that speak Arabic. The thing that was very difficult with that is that there were different dialects and this gal spoke none of the dialects that were available to translators..... so we did a lot of made up sign language. Lots of Bosnians too. I only know a couple of words in Bosnian. When we were at First Assembly there were some Bosnians there and Edgey's boss had a heart for them. We hung out with a few of them when we were at his Boss' home. They had people over all the time. It was great. That is when Elizabeth was tiny and Jesse just born. I learned how to make Bosnian coffee - its like very strong camping coffee in little espresso cups. I had to use a lot of cream. LOL. Grinds right in the pot of water. I learned a lot.

So after the park deal, we went and got Elizabeth's hair cut. Its the first time she has ever really gotten the full shampoo thing and was really freaking out about it - "will the water be cold? I hate cold water." and "Will it get in my eyes?" At least the stylist was very patient. Her hair is all curly again and the bangs out of her eyes. Hallelujah! I will try to post a picture later.
*************************************************************************************

Back to the lessons...

Scribes transcribed the Word of God. The original writings of an inspired author are known as "Original Autographs." The "Original" Autographs have been lost through the ages. These writings were put into a "Text." A Text would be a collection of Autographs - a collection building up to be the Canon of Holy Scriptures. The "Canon" is those Scriptures which are considered to be the Inspired Word of God. There are many Autographs, things transcribed by Scribes, which reflect the history of the era, the customs of the people, etc.. but are not considered to be the Inspired, Infallible Word of God. Sometimes these manuscripts have been whole books of the Bible, or a few chapters or a few pages and other manuscripts have only a few words or a verse. These are known as fragments.

In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew Canon have been found there except the book of Esther. There are now identified among the scrolls, 19 copies of the book of Isaiah, 25 copies of Deuteronomy and 30 copies of Psalms. Prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel which are not found in the Bible were also written in the Scrolls. The Isaiah scroll was approx 1000 years old and is older than any previously known copy of Isaiah.

When the president of the college went to visit the Shrine of the Word in Jerusalem, the Jewish guide told them that at the college where they were interpreting the Dead Sea Scrolls, that once they were finished- or translated-when they lined them up against the Word of God (the King James Version) that there wasn't one jot or tittle changed from the original. This is awesome that the Word of God has been preserved for this amount of time.

After the original manuscripts were worn out they were destroyed. But they had already been copied by scribes and content was preserved carefully as seen in previous lesson 3. Every record of Scripture which we have is a copy. Copies are produced in Greek and are divided into 4 groups. Each group is coded. The main groups to look at (and there are a bunch) are as follows:

Vaticanus (B)
Sinaiticus (Aleph)
Textus Receptus (TR)

These are the texts which are used as the basis for the Bibles which we have available to us now days. The Textus Receptus is also known as the Antiochan Text, Byzantine Text, Imperial Text, Reformation Text, Traditional Text and the Majority Text or Received Text. This was also the text that was used to translate the KJV.

Manuscripts from which modern versions are translated include not only the text from the Textus Receptus but also the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. So what? you say? Read on......

Keep in mind the method of transcribing.....

1. The Vaticanus (B) agrees with the TR only about 50% of the time. It differs from the Majority Greek in nearly 8000 places, which amounts to about one change per verse. It omits several thousand key words from the Gospels, nearly 1000 complete sentences and 500 clauses. It adds approx 500 words, substitutes or modifies another 2000 and transposes word order in about 2000 places. It has nearly 600 readings that do not occur in any other manuscript. It was also written on vellum scrolls (skins which were obtained from animals not yet born) not the papyrus which were used among the "early Christians." It does not consider the following as part of the Bible: Revelation, Phil, Titus, 1 & 2 Timothy, large parts of Samuel, Kings, Nehemiah, Psalms, and Genesis. It omits crucial parts of Mark & Luke. In their place it adds the apocryphal books such as Bel and the Dragon, Tobit, Judith and Epistle of Barnabus. Protestant theologans questioned its lack of use by anyone for 1300 years and then its sudden discovery in the Vatican in 1481. It was used to suppress the Reformation. Also recent technology shows that it had been altered by at least 2 hands, one being as late as the 12th century.

2. The Siniaticus (Aleph) - Has been shown to have as many as 9 correctors during careless transcription. There are some 14,800 places of alteration. (Keep in mind the transcription process in lesson 3) Under ultraviolet lamp original reading in the manuscript were erased.
There are about 9000 changes from the TR. 4,000 omitted words from the gospels, adds 1000, repositions 2000 and alters another 1000. It has approx 1500 readings that appear in no other manuscript. It was found in a wastebasket at a Monestery and kept by the russian government from 1859 to 1933. Some pages were written on sheepskin and some on goatskin.

Mark 14:56
"For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together."

B & Aleph do not agree with the majority of the manuscripts. Not only do they not agree with Majority, but they do not agree with each other as well. The 8000 changes in B and the 9000 changes in Aleph are not the same changes. When the changes are added together they alter the text in about 13,000 places. That's two changes for every verse. It is easier to find two consecutive verses that disagree rather than agree.

More later......

Light

I made it through the weekend. I was very disappointed that I did not have a chance to go to the conference at the college over the weekend. They had a speaker there, Derek Kuhns. I went on Friday night and it was so awesome. The theme of the conference is "O God Give Me an Understanding Heart!" It was based on I Kings 3:9-12

Unfortunately it was very busy this weekend at work. Lots of people coming in for preterm labor and problems. I didn't get out on Sunday until 9:30 p.m. Oh well. I am going to try to get the cd's of the services I missed.

Anyway - I woke up today in the middle of a dream.... that I was in a muslim type worship service and I was in the traditional dress of the women - completely covered in black cloth, except on the heads we had beautiful lace coverings almost as big as a towel, but white lace. I'm not sure what that was all about. I remember being on my knees on some mat on the floor and worshipping God, no differently than I do now but it was in a mosque or something. There were men in a separate section of the temple and about 3 in the front with dark green mantles across their shoulders. The head of the service called several people out to help with certain things. He would tell why he chose them for certain qualities that they had, then he said that he needed a visionary and called me up to help create something he was putting together. Then Edgey called and woke me up..... weird huh? It was very vivid. Any interpretation would be helpful.

We did school pretty quickly this a.m. and I have been trying to catch up on laundry and emails and write on here. Tonight Edgey's friend is coming over to hang out and have me do some stuff on the computer for him. I am making fahitas for supper and I am already getting hungry for them.

I was hoping it would quit being so yucky outside. It was sort of rainy here this morning and has been cloudy and dreary all day. I need some sunshine. Do you know how important sunshine and light really is? This was really interesting to me because of my nursing background.

The light (Greek, luchnos, lamp) of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single (Greek, haplous, free from defect, unspotted), thy whole body shall be full of light (Greek, photeinos, full of light, shining, bright). But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light (Greek, phos, radiance) that is in thee is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23).

Most of us have seen this as an illustration of spiritual truth rather than a natural truth. Scientists, however, have "discovered" a natural meaning. To break it down into lay terms:
Light sensation in the eyes is needed for healthy functioning of the entire body. The pituitary gland which is the "master gland" of your endocrine system, the pineal gland which has to do with melatonin production and our sleep cycle and the hypothalamus which regulates most of the pituitary gland and some of our emotional behavior are all connected directly with optic nerve fibers separate from our visual perception.

We NEED to have strong light in a regular daily cycle, perceived through the eyes, for the well-being of the entire body.

They have also discovered that there is more blood flow through the eyes than even in the kidneys which filter our blood. Our entire volume of blood will flow through our eyes in approximately 2 hours. This is awesome! When the light that enters our eyes touch the blood cells, the cells become 800% more effective. The slides shown of the cells without this light work randomly and sort of chaotic, but the slides of the cells with light had ORDER inside of them and they looked like they were in "unity". Isn't that awesome?

Being outdoors, in unfiltered light, will improve your health and your children's. No wonder they act and feel better after they have been outside. It isn't from the fresh air - it's from light.



Quote for the day: The phrase "working mother" is redundant. -Jane Sellman-