Merry Christmas!!! 2.0
We in the Hull house are doing well! We are all healthy and well. Here are some things we have been doing to prepare for Christmas:
- Went to Christmas Eve service tonight at The Well! Then, of course, had to stay for the "sugar rush" hour of hanging out and eating goodies!
- Lit our advent candles
- Been reading through bits of the Christmas story through a cool calendar/mini-book/ornament thing we have (you pull the appropriate mini-book out and read it together and then someone hangs it on the tree as an ornament). This is WAY cool for use with the kids!
- Talking about the Christmas story over meals
- Shared what things we were glad we have been able to give this year (i.e. able to share our time serving, able to give the gift of hospitality, etc)
Here are our plans for Christmas day:
- Sleep in!! (yeah right, but I thought I'd attempt it!)
- Share the Christmas story together
- Share gifts
- Play (kids) and sleep (parents)
- Have some friends over for Christmas dinner! (Ham, cheesy potato casserole, fresh made bread, pies, yes!)
- Thank God for another great day and for Jesus!
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
New Blogger Beta is Good!
I just updated my blog to the new beta and it is far superior. One of the two major drags before were not being able to label the posts and not being able to easily manipulate your template. Both are remedied here and so my hats off to the Google folks for this upgrade. If you are in blog land, then I'd recommend the upgrade for sure.
I just updated my blog to the new beta and it is far superior. One of the two major drags before were not being able to label the posts and not being able to easily manipulate your template. Both are remedied here and so my hats off to the Google folks for this upgrade. If you are in blog land, then I'd recommend the upgrade for sure.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Merry Christmas!
It's been a wild and wooly couple of weeks here in O-town, Kansas. First and most important is my wife's recent post with pics of our family! Since I know a good portion of you squatters out there (squatters = people who come and see but don't comment, which is fine) stop by only to see if there are any pics or stories of my fabulous children, you'll love these.
But in other news, the small project I'm working on - Nazarene Youth Confernce - Water Fire Wind -had the final week of its initial registration. We had almost 3000 registrations last week alone! This is good, but also means a lot of phone calls, emails, etc. So my office and I have been a tad busy. I do want and need to praise God ofr his faithfulness to us. In the times when I doubted He brought me the Holy Spirit (who often speaks through my wife!) to bring peace and hope.
Our family, including me (see above paragraph for context), has been battling some flu bug that includes fever and vomit. But we have survived and come out stronger!
We are now focusing all of our possible efforts on anticipating as a family the coming Christ. We are trying to "make the way straight" of our hearts for Christ's coming, removing obstacles and anticipating the good he brings. For Advent we have been using this calendar that has very small books in it. Each day leading up to Christmas we remove one of the books and read its portion of the Christmas story and then hang it on the tree. Our family LOVES this small ritual each day!
One final thing... my wife's name is Carol, as in Christmas Carol, because her birthday is Dec. 23rd! We are looking forward to that celebration too. You could drop her a birthday note on her blog!
It's been a wild and wooly couple of weeks here in O-town, Kansas. First and most important is my wife's recent post with pics of our family! Since I know a good portion of you squatters out there (squatters = people who come and see but don't comment, which is fine) stop by only to see if there are any pics or stories of my fabulous children, you'll love these.
But in other news, the small project I'm working on - Nazarene Youth Confernce - Water Fire Wind -had the final week of its initial registration. We had almost 3000 registrations last week alone! This is good, but also means a lot of phone calls, emails, etc. So my office and I have been a tad busy. I do want and need to praise God ofr his faithfulness to us. In the times when I doubted He brought me the Holy Spirit (who often speaks through my wife!) to bring peace and hope.
Our family, including me (see above paragraph for context), has been battling some flu bug that includes fever and vomit. But we have survived and come out stronger!
We are now focusing all of our possible efforts on anticipating as a family the coming Christ. We are trying to "make the way straight" of our hearts for Christ's coming, removing obstacles and anticipating the good he brings. For Advent we have been using this calendar that has very small books in it. Each day leading up to Christmas we remove one of the books and read its portion of the Christmas story and then hang it on the tree. Our family LOVES this small ritual each day!
One final thing... my wife's name is Carol, as in Christmas Carol, because her birthday is Dec. 23rd! We are looking forward to that celebration too. You could drop her a birthday note on her blog!
Monday, December 11, 2006
Where we come from
It's always interesting to me how I try to think more highly of myself than I ought. I'd love to think that I'm somehow better, smarter, cleaner, more worthy than others. I don't know if it's natural to want to be special or something, but I know for me it is true.
I also know its not true. This is not in any way a reflection of how I feel about my own family, but rather the truth of me. I'm a sinner. I sin. I do things that I wish I didn't. I struggle with things that I wish I didn't. I react in ways that I should have outgrown long ago. But somehow God is changing me. God is making me new again. God is revealing himself in me as he changes my tastes, changes my ways. It's this part that I like and its this part that I'd like everyone to believe is the real me that has always been me... but it just ain't true.
But then none of us start so clean, so perfect. Look at Jesus. A boy born in a manager in a small town known for raising sheep (clean sheep mind you, but sheep nonetheless). A boy who grew up in the "blue collar" out of the way town called Nazareth. As it was said, "what good can come from Nazareth?" Even his lineage is not so clean. There's a prostitute in there plus plenty of other unsavory characters.
Where do we come from? It definitely impacts who we are, shapes us, forms us. But perhaps more important than where we come from, is where we are going and whose we are. If we are allowing God to form us, trying to obey and follow, trusting in Him, then perhaps that is what matters most.
I wonder how my own actions and identity would be different if I lived in that reality? A reality of anxiously expecting God to work in me, change me, form me, come to me, to us, to those who don't come from such great places.
It's always interesting to me how I try to think more highly of myself than I ought. I'd love to think that I'm somehow better, smarter, cleaner, more worthy than others. I don't know if it's natural to want to be special or something, but I know for me it is true.
I also know its not true. This is not in any way a reflection of how I feel about my own family, but rather the truth of me. I'm a sinner. I sin. I do things that I wish I didn't. I struggle with things that I wish I didn't. I react in ways that I should have outgrown long ago. But somehow God is changing me. God is making me new again. God is revealing himself in me as he changes my tastes, changes my ways. It's this part that I like and its this part that I'd like everyone to believe is the real me that has always been me... but it just ain't true.
But then none of us start so clean, so perfect. Look at Jesus. A boy born in a manager in a small town known for raising sheep (clean sheep mind you, but sheep nonetheless). A boy who grew up in the "blue collar" out of the way town called Nazareth. As it was said, "what good can come from Nazareth?" Even his lineage is not so clean. There's a prostitute in there plus plenty of other unsavory characters.
Where do we come from? It definitely impacts who we are, shapes us, forms us. But perhaps more important than where we come from, is where we are going and whose we are. If we are allowing God to form us, trying to obey and follow, trusting in Him, then perhaps that is what matters most.
I wonder how my own actions and identity would be different if I lived in that reality? A reality of anxiously expecting God to work in me, change me, form me, come to me, to us, to those who don't come from such great places.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
BCS = Brian thinks College Football Postseason STINKS!
I will be the first to admit that I have not been lock-stock and two smokin' barrells sold out that a college football playoff is the way to go. I have a bit of traditionalism in my blood when it comes to college football. I like the rivalries that mean something because they've been rivalries for so long. I like the way college sports are broken down into leagues and that those games always mean more. I like that at the end of the college football season lots of teams have a chance to go to a "big game" and finish the season feeling like they accompished something. I like that while everyone will always say, "my team could beat yours," in college football there can be a lot of great teams who do well. The late, great Bo Schembecler used to always put highest priority on winning the Big 10 above anything else, and I think that thinking those ways helped a lot of people not be just good athletes, but good people.
I know there are many out there who have long disagreed with me and my thoughts about college football and the postseason. I also know your arguments so please don't send them to me as if somehow I'd never thought about the joy of clarity in determining a national champ on the field ("like in college basketball" you'd say, which i think is a totally broken and not appropriate anaolgy). I stood by thoughts and reasons when my mighty Wolverines could have played the cornpuff Cornhuskers and whooped their butts to outright when the national championship a few years ago. I have lived through the BCS fiasco year after year and yet somehow I remain loyal to the bowls and their system. I have also had to put up with the unfair, unscrupulous and downright completely biased agenda of all of TV to advance Notre Dame the school that should be ranked in the top 10 rarely, but always is AT LEAST 5 spots higher than they should be... because people want them to play in big games and come to their bowls because all their alumni are rich.
But NO MORE.
This year's farce of a finale to the season has brought me to change. It has shaken their earth to cosmic ptoportions. It has revealed clearly that the hearts of the NCAA and the BCS beat - which we all have known in our hearts all along, but have wanted desperately to believe wasn't true - money.
Now for my take on the issue at hand...
If I'm Ohio State, I definitely wouldn't want to play Michigan again. For one, if they were to beat Michigan again and Florida would somehow escape another team with victory, Ohio State would never hear the end of it. Now they have beaten Michigan and after they beat Florida they can say they've beaten all comers (do I get a Boise State boo-hoo?). Secondly, I truly believe they don't want to face Michigan, because if they had to play the Michigan team of the second half, they would lose badly. Hey, Tressel didn't with hold his final vote of the season because he wanted to be unbiased, he wanted to sleep at night... on second thought he did recruit Maurice Clarrett (maybe morality and ethics are such a big issue).
If I'm Florida, I'm thrilled to death. I've narrowly escaped at least twice this year games that I should have lost. I've got a young team for whom the extra time and coaching will pay dividends. Besides, I've lucked out and squeaked into the national championship game. Maybe now people will stop longing for "ball coach" all the time.
If I"m Michigan, I've gotten what I deserve. You have to win the games on the field that matter and you have to beat Ohio State if nothing else. You didn't. so you're at the mercy of a mystery computer (has anyone ever seen this computer by the way????) and some money hungry grubs who lock themselves in a room for a short time (I'm betting to compare notes on the best places to eat in different cities and talk about solutions to world peace.... er... well one of those).
Having said all of that... clearly the best two teams in football are Michigan and Ohio State. I don't think Florida has a chance against Ohio State. I think Michigan would destroy Florida as well. I just hope that the Wolverines don't quit the season all together once they get to Disney Land and that they beat the trojan off his horse against USC. That way people will be forced to talk about the reality of our situation... there needs to be a college football playoff to detemine the best team in the country. It's just not going to happen because it would expose Notre Dame as a first round out every year and the Wolverines as the best football program in the world.
I will be the first to admit that I have not been lock-stock and two smokin' barrells sold out that a college football playoff is the way to go. I have a bit of traditionalism in my blood when it comes to college football. I like the rivalries that mean something because they've been rivalries for so long. I like the way college sports are broken down into leagues and that those games always mean more. I like that at the end of the college football season lots of teams have a chance to go to a "big game" and finish the season feeling like they accompished something. I like that while everyone will always say, "my team could beat yours," in college football there can be a lot of great teams who do well. The late, great Bo Schembecler used to always put highest priority on winning the Big 10 above anything else, and I think that thinking those ways helped a lot of people not be just good athletes, but good people.
I know there are many out there who have long disagreed with me and my thoughts about college football and the postseason. I also know your arguments so please don't send them to me as if somehow I'd never thought about the joy of clarity in determining a national champ on the field ("like in college basketball" you'd say, which i think is a totally broken and not appropriate anaolgy). I stood by thoughts and reasons when my mighty Wolverines could have played the cornpuff Cornhuskers and whooped their butts to outright when the national championship a few years ago. I have lived through the BCS fiasco year after year and yet somehow I remain loyal to the bowls and their system. I have also had to put up with the unfair, unscrupulous and downright completely biased agenda of all of TV to advance Notre Dame the school that should be ranked in the top 10 rarely, but always is AT LEAST 5 spots higher than they should be... because people want them to play in big games and come to their bowls because all their alumni are rich.
But NO MORE.
This year's farce of a finale to the season has brought me to change. It has shaken their earth to cosmic ptoportions. It has revealed clearly that the hearts of the NCAA and the BCS beat - which we all have known in our hearts all along, but have wanted desperately to believe wasn't true - money.
Now for my take on the issue at hand...
If I'm Ohio State, I definitely wouldn't want to play Michigan again. For one, if they were to beat Michigan again and Florida would somehow escape another team with victory, Ohio State would never hear the end of it. Now they have beaten Michigan and after they beat Florida they can say they've beaten all comers (do I get a Boise State boo-hoo?). Secondly, I truly believe they don't want to face Michigan, because if they had to play the Michigan team of the second half, they would lose badly. Hey, Tressel didn't with hold his final vote of the season because he wanted to be unbiased, he wanted to sleep at night... on second thought he did recruit Maurice Clarrett (maybe morality and ethics are such a big issue).
If I'm Florida, I'm thrilled to death. I've narrowly escaped at least twice this year games that I should have lost. I've got a young team for whom the extra time and coaching will pay dividends. Besides, I've lucked out and squeaked into the national championship game. Maybe now people will stop longing for "ball coach" all the time.
If I"m Michigan, I've gotten what I deserve. You have to win the games on the field that matter and you have to beat Ohio State if nothing else. You didn't. so you're at the mercy of a mystery computer (has anyone ever seen this computer by the way????) and some money hungry grubs who lock themselves in a room for a short time (I'm betting to compare notes on the best places to eat in different cities and talk about solutions to world peace.... er... well one of those).
Having said all of that... clearly the best two teams in football are Michigan and Ohio State. I don't think Florida has a chance against Ohio State. I think Michigan would destroy Florida as well. I just hope that the Wolverines don't quit the season all together once they get to Disney Land and that they beat the trojan off his horse against USC. That way people will be forced to talk about the reality of our situation... there needs to be a college football playoff to detemine the best team in the country. It's just not going to happen because it would expose Notre Dame as a first round out every year and the Wolverines as the best football program in the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
