Well, the last week has been trying to get back into the swing of things. Spent last week working on the car, took it to a shop next to us, they said the water pump was leaking, but we should take it to the dealer to fix as it is still under warranty. Luckily Planet Dodge had a free shuttle service, and I talked them into driving me and all the kids back home. Poor guys, had to move all the car seats out, Autumn was crying the entire way back, I gave the guy a tip even though he said they were not supposed to accept them. We survived without a car for a few days, with rides from others and using the bike.
Doug got me a computer for Christmas! He is getting it all set up for me, I told him he could have the new one and I would take the old one, but he said no. It is down in the guest room so when we have visitors they can have a computer to use if they need it. He is linking it to the computer upstairs so we can copy stuff back and forth and use the printer. I need to fix up the area outside the guest room, so I can be on the computer, and let the kids run around outside in the greenbelt. It was really sweet of Doug to do this for me.
Another Christmas present, from mom and dad, I used their gift certificate to go get a bread maker. I have wanted one for quite a while, this will save money, and let us have better bread! We got it yesterday, and made our first loaf of bread. It made the house smell sooo good! When we went to pick up Doug from the park-n-ride, he asked if we had food in the car, I guess all of our cloths smelled like bread. All you do is throw the ingredients in, it mixes, kneeds, warms it (rise) and then bakes. You can make 3 different sizes of loafs, and it has a little cubby to put nuts / raisens / cheese etc. in for fancy breads. We have only made a plain whole wheat bread so far. There are instructions for how to start a sour doe one – I might try that next although it takes 5 days to get the starter going. It will be really nice to have fresh bread every day. Thank you!!!!
We had our book club meeting, our next book is “A Grief Observed” by CS Lewis, reading it I am going to try and get everyone to watch the movie “Shadowlands” first as the book makes more sense when you know all the background behind it, and who “H.” etc. is. Comments on Amazon were:
Amazon.com Review
C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings. --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A very personal, anguished, luminous little book about the meaning of death, marriage, and religion." -- Publishers Weekly
I also started reading “A Purpose Driven Life” chapter a day for 40 days with my mom. It is a generic Christian type book, so I would not agree with all of it, but I am trying to read it for what it does have to offer rather than does not. Mom and I are talking on the phone about it every day which is really fun to talk scripture together, and just chat about our days. Talk to you tonight mom!
