Drive home

It always feels great to drive home at the end of a work day. For those of you who know I love cameras, I got a small pocket sized camera (Leica D LUX 2) used on eBay recently.

This afternoon I went to the chiropractor who is in Utica, about 8 miles south of Mount Vernon.
It is a beautiful drive. I really like the Ohio landscape that is in the area that we live. There are nice rolling hills all around. Below are some pictures that I took at a few points along the way home from Utica.

Also a nice scene is my beautiful wife waiting at the door as I park in the driveway. The days of
coming home to an empty apartment are over! Miriam has definitely been worth the 30 year wait to get married.

Don't be like Miriam

Numbers 12

1 Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. 2 "Has the LORD spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the LORD heard this.

9 The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them. 10 When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam—leprous, like snow.

13 So Moses cried out to the LORD, "O God, please heal her!" 14 The LORD replied to Moses, "If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back." 15 So Miriam was confined outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on till she was brought back.

It seems that Miriam was jealous for recognition. She felt that Moses had done something wrong by marrying a Cushite (possibly Zipporah). Maybe she felt that his wife was beneath his social standing. Maybe it was that she and Aaron were no longer able to influence Moses as they had before his wife was around. There are many theories about why they spoke against him because of his wife.

What we do know is that they were not happy and that Miriam felt somehow slighted. She felt that Moses had done something wrong and wanted to play judge.

God didn't look at it this way. He judged Miriam with leprosy for her comments. Thankfully he was also merciful to her and she was healed after one week.

What can we learn from this story?

1) That we shouldn't look for recognition beyond that which God gives
2) God doesn't look with favor on jealousy
3) God answers prayer and is merciful
4) We shouldn't feel superior as Miriam did because of the supposed sin of others. Let God be the judge

I'm sure there's more to be gleaned from these verses. Is there anything else you see?

Saturday Morning Walk

Saturday mornings are wonderful! Often we get a lot of extra sleep (like last Saturday when we were asleep until almost 11!). Today we did sleep in until almost 9, but then it was time to move. I have a brand new awesome pedometer that John gave me for Christmas. I've been using it for almost 2 weeks and love it. As I enjoy exercise that gives me constant feedback, wearing a pedometer is my favorite way to encourage myself to move. So, as I'm endeavoring to get 10,000 steps a day 6 days a week, I was eager to get up and run outside.

It has been warmer here (up in the 50s for a couple days), but this morning as I got ready to go, the temperature was 21 and "felt like 9." So, I added my coat to my clothes and decided to walk fast instead of jogging (it's annoying to run with a coat on). John told me he wanted to sleep longer and that he felt it was too cold to walk outside so I headed over to check out a path I've seen near our house.

To my surprise, as I drew near to the path about a mile from our house, I saw John crossing the street in front of me! He had planned to get in front of me and take a picture without me knowing he was there - come back here and post it on my blog while I walked! Boy would I have been shocked!


But as he was spotted, he decided to walk some with me. That path was short - just to a park and then it joined a street. So, we enjoyed a nice walk through a park and some neighborhoods.

I'm looking forward to weather that's above freezing in the mornings so I can more fully enjoy the outdoors. We have a wonderful trail only a mile away that would be perfect for running and walking. We are also next to a track that I could use if I want to see how fast I can run. I'm enjoying getting back into running once again. It's been eight months since I was consistent in exercising and a few pounds have been creeping onto my frame.

John's Gator Bowl (or Football Miriam's Style)

I did not grow up in a football family. The closest I ever came to watching football was the occasional youth group Super Bowl parties. I think I remember playing games in another room during the ones that I went to in high school.

So having a husband who not only likes the game, but knows the teams and watches certain favorite ones whenever he can is something unfamiliar to me. Of course we are not inundated with football since we don't get any tv, but there is plenty of statistics and highlights on websites that I have never felt the need to visit.

So, when we ended up being at my parents house on the day of the Gator Bowl, we found that they did not get the right channel. Never fear! We quickly made a call and were on our way to visit our friends!

The weather was perfect!

We enjoyed spending some time outside.

The zip line was loads of fun!

Kevin even showed us some tricks!

What fun we had!

Zip lines can even be ridden in a very dainty way :)

The dog was being crazy poking his nose into the ground. We weren't sure why.

The kids had a blast climbing all over John. This is one of my favorite pictures that day!

There was plenty of food.

And enough smiles to go around . . .

with some funny faces thrown in for good measure

Now you may ask . . . Did anyone actually watch football?


Indeed! John actually did watch most of the game. I even watched the last few minutes as well. If I remember correctly, those last few minutes were more exciting than the rest of the game.


All in all it was a fun day. John enjoyed the football and friends and I enjoyed the fun with friends!

The Spirit

Yesterday morning I read Numbers 11 where the people are complaining because they didn't have any meat to eat. Moses cried out and complains to God for putting him over all these burdensome people. He even asked that he be put to death now if this is how God is going to treat him. I've read about this before, but did not remember God's response.

16 The LORD said to Moses: "Bring me seventy of Israel's elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the Tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. 17 I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them. They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone.

At that time, God's spirit was not on everyone. In order to help Moses, there needed to be others on whom the spirit of God dwelt. So, he gave his spirit to 70 people at once. It is said later that they all prophesied once, but not again. I'm planning to read the next chapters carefully to see if I see any other mention of what these spirit filled leaders do.

Our churches should be full of spirit filled Christians and thus lesson the burden on the church leadership.

My Blog's Personality

What is your blog's personality profile? Does it have your personality?




Now there is a site that will tell you! According to typealyzer the personality of my blog or writing style is:

ISFP - The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of. They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

Hmm - follow the path of least resistance? That doesn't sound great. But, I do often try to do things the easy way. I don't know if it's really accurate. I typically score ISTJ myself when taking the profile from a list of questions such as this website. In checking out many other blogs, I didn't find any that came out with an ISTJ profile. I wonder how the site decides what the writers personality style is.

So - check out your own blog's personality here - Is it what you expected?

at

Game Night

Mom had organized a game night the evening after we got to Alabama so we could have some fun and catch up with several of our game-loving friends. It was a lot of fun!



Much of what I did was to just "be sociable" and talked with so many people. I tend to think that I'm not very personable at times so it was fun to just enjoy hanging out with my friends. Here Lori is showing us some pictures from the last camping trip.





Of course our wedding album had to come out once again and we had some fun looking over the pictures from what seems like quite a while ago now (we've almost been married for 6 months!).






Everyone brought so much good food! And it was just the right height for Sara Kate!





Some of the kids headed straight for the Foosball table. As so many kids have grown up at my parents house and due to keeping toys around for grand kids, there are still plenty of toys to play with.




Boys being boys!



I'm so cute - how could I ever cause anyone trouble :)

Another group of more serious game players played what sounded to be an exciting game of balderdash!

Look at that intense concentration!

Of course some people just have to keep having fun :) This is a great picture of Lori and Anna!

Kevin looking very studious

Eventually we all did play "the name game" together. It was a large group of people and there were a lot of laughs over the crazy names that many had made up. I'm looking forward to seeing many of these good friends (and others too) next month when we go down south once again for our annual spring camping trip!