Christina G

My friend, "home groupy," and photographer extraordinaire, Christina G, has just finished her new website. To celebrate, she is giving away lots of fun stuff on her blog: jewelry, Starbucks, gift certificate for her services, etc. Hop on over to her site to see her great work, and her blog to check out the giveaways!

Death by Hand Sanitizer

True Story: Last night, I was deep into thought and prayer during our Friday night worship service. It was communion time. I swigged my grape juice and ....gasp! What was that? It wasn't juice! It tasted like Chloroseptic. (BTW, did you know you could by Chloroseptic on Amazon? Who knew!)

Anyway....I looked around wondering if everyone else was gasping - or was it just me? No one else really seemed phased.

I sang the next song. My tongue started to feel heavy. Suddenly, I was gripped with paranoia. I've been poisoned. I know I have. I felt hot. My skin was crawling. I was sweating. I left everything in my seat and walked out the back.

Now, our church is rather large. We have a security team. They are good. I love them.

A staff friend so the look on my face as I emerged from the auditorium. I told her my weird story and how dumb I felt. She radioed security and three big guys walk up to handle my grape juice cup.

"Really," I said. "I'm not insane."

My friend, Shannon confirmed. "No, she isn't a crazy person."

"I don't know what I just drank, but it wasn't juice."

Burly guy #3 grabs my cup and takes a whiff.

"NO! That is not grape juice!"

Burly guy #1 doesn't smell anything.

Burly guy #2 is seemingly there for support.

Burly guy #'s 1 and 2 run off with my cup.

Burly guy #3 takes me to the security office and takes down all my information and tells me if I start to feel bad, to come get them, and they will get me to the hospital.

Great!

Now, weird things have happened at our church. Why?

Well, anytime you put 8,000 people in one place at a time, weird things are bound to happen.

Anytime God is moving, the enemy likes to make weird things happen.

Hence, the security team and the radios on every chilldren's service lead, and the Fastpass check-in system that we use for kids (and I man every Friday night), and the guy guarding the stage entrance, etc.

SO. The top concern, of course, was. Did someone intentionally tamper with the communion? How many people drank this? What did they drink? Do we have a "situation" on our hands?

So after the kitchen was inspected and foul play was ruled out as much as possible, burly guys started to look for a reasonable, logical explanation for my tainted juice.

The conclusion? Hand Sanitizer. That is the other thing about my church. We buy Germ-X by the cases. You can find a bottle by every Fastpass computer station, the nursery counter, the bathrooms, and apparently the kitchen. They mixed another cup intentionally with hand sanitizer and juice and smelled it. Yep! It smelled the same.

They called me back to the security office to confirm their finding. I, too, couldn't tell the difference between the two cups. It seems that someone simply overshot their squirt of hand sanitizer, and I got the lucky cup. Woo hoo!

They assured me that it shouldn't put me under.

Though all my friends encouraged me not to drive home.

I'm still alive today, so that is good news.

My Morning Menu

I have way too many things to try to accomplish in the morning before work. Try as I may, I just can't get them all done. It just isn't possible, no matter what time I get up in the morning.

It is like picking from a menu.

• Exercise
• Shower
• Dress
• Read Bible
• Do Hair
• Do Makeup
• Eat Breakfast
• Switch a load of laundry
• Empty Dishwasher

They are all important. If I don't exercise in the morning, it rarely happens, and I NEED to be exercising. If I exercise and don't shower - well, that is just gross. If I don't do my hair and makeup, I look like a hag all day and avoid going anywhere in public if at all possible. If I don't read my Bible in the morning, then I just don't start off right. If I don't empty the dishwasher, then the whole day's dishes pile up all over the kitchen until I get off work.

The problem is, I can only pick five of the nine....on a really good morning, I might get six.

Can you guess which ones I've been skipping lately? Have you seen me lately? Well, there is your answer. Am I using my own picture on my Facebook profile? Has anyone run into me in public this week? Do I really exist?

Back to the days where makeup was for special occasions and my hair gets done twice a week. I've been fairly humbled this week. I've had to go into my kids' school three times.

This morning, we were 30 minutes late for school. Unbelievable.....and it wasn't because I took time to look beautiful - but of course, I had to go in and sign everyone in looking lovely.

I had to really focus myself on their sweet prayers the night before to get through the hassle of this morning. Last night, they were praying for Haiti. It was so priceless. So special. Two of them prayed that we could adopt one of the babies. ...a boy of course!

Follow Shmollow!

Woo hoo! I've finally figured out how to actually follow the blogs I'm supposedly following. I've discovered that most of my friends don't have an option to subscribe to their blog - just to follow them through blogger....which is a great idea, if I ever remembered to log into Google reader and read everyone's blog! But I don't. I need to get an e-mail. Then I will read the blog. Until now.

I've fallen in love with live bookmarks, so I keep track of a few favs very easily that way. AND yesterday, I discovered, that I can send Google reader to a live bookmark. I can just hit "next" and it scrolls me through all my friends' latest posts. So I spent today catching up on all of you!! Yippee!

Let's Talk About Boys

See the new little link grabber to your left? Yep! I did it again. I started ANOTHER blog. I must truly be insane.

Let's Talk About Boys is just what it sounds like - targeted to moms raising their boys.

I haven't wanted to muddy up my Those With Young site with ads, but keep it simple and peaceful and focused. But I'm hoping to explore the field of earning an income through blogging with this particular site.

Wish me luck!...and come check it out! :D

Oops!

Signs that your husband may have shaved himself almost completely bald:

• You get a text message saying, "Be aware that i made a pretty big mistake cutting my hair. I'm sorry..."
• You get a voice mail to make sure you got the text message, asking you to not be mad and telling you how much he loves you.
• A large pile of hair in the trash can

• Resistance to removing the hat
  

• Waking up screaming in the middle of the night because you think a different man is in bed with you. (O.K. that didn't really happen.)

Ian tried to cheer him up and let him know that he looks 20 without any of his gray hair showing.

So....should he shave the rest of it off?

January Randomness

Today is one of those days when you are face to face with the fact that you live in a sinful world...and tomorrow Momma Bear is going to have to rise up and hold some people accountable. Ugh! On a good note, we've had a LOT of good conversations this week about appropriate speech and actions. It is a bit ironic when you have to undo a bit of your child's innocence just to explain to him why his actions were wrong because he didn't even understand why he was in trouble. I'm grateful that my kids are so innocent (most of the time) and that they come home and talk about things the way they do. I'm grateful for the way they go back at it the next day even when they feel misunderstood. Thank you, Jesus!

I got my annual haircut last week. Yay!

We had some Christmas money left, and on my way out the door, Bill said, "Why don't you get it highlighted?" I haven't done anything like that in years. It was fun to get really done up! :)

I can't say enough how much I love being on the same work schedule as my husband!

I'm finally getting my groove on with some exercise, and can't believe what I lie I've fed myself for so long about being too tired to do it. I've had so much energy this week! Last night I swept and vacuumed the basement, cleaned out a bunch of tubs and drawers, put away all the random tubs sitting in the basement, hooked up a new monitor, caught up the laundry, and cleaned my bathroom....after working all day and doing two workouts! Wow!

I'm finally getting in a groove with writing time and Bible reading time again. I'm reading my Bible through again this year and am always amazed at the new things I learn.

Both of the above two things have a lot to do with Bill and I having the same work schedule.

Did I mention that I rarely have to pick the kids up from school anymore? Yay!

Thinking a lot about Matthew 18 again this week and wondering why on earth it is the hardest passage for Christians to pay attention to.

Am wondering, based on the amount of extra long, size 7 pants Ian and Hayden keep inheriting, if God knows they are getting ready to hit a growth spurt.

I read Isaac and Rebekah's love story this week. I love this story because it is the story that helped me know I was supposed to marry Bill. His proposal came as quite a surprise, and even though I had loved him for a long time, I was uncertain about how I felt at that time. I had really gotten to a place of letting him go and being content with singleness. When I got to verse 58, God said, "Hey! I'm talking to you!" I had Genesis 24:58 engraved on the inside of Bill's wedding band.

....and that is it for January Randomness.