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Families Again
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Tuesday's Toolbox - WOOD
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Blog Carnivals!

 

A fellow blogging friend of mine from over at Homeschooling Hearts and Minds has begun a new meme this week as well...AND, she even thought of me and designed a blog button that wasn't too feminine! It's called Tuesday's Toolbox and it invites bloggers to blog about a common household object that can also be a teaching tool. You can click on the above picture to find out more about it and read what some of the items are for this week. I thought it was a great idea, so I wanted to be involved. And my first toolbox item is...

WOOD!

Any item made of wood will do. Even a wooden pencil will work. I have used this as a teaching tool to explain why it is important to study. I've also used it as an object lesson to talk about how God has to reform us in order for us to be a useful tool for His use.

Let's use the pencil for an example. You see, this pencil didn't begin as a useful object...it began as a tree. If you would have asked the tree if it wanted to be cut down it would have said "NO!" right away. It didn't realize that although God can use anything in it's natural form if He wants, He often has to refine us and shape us in order to make us into something beautiful and useful for His work. The tree would have to be cut down, sawed into pieces, shaped, sanded, and painted in order to be turned into a pencil. If the wood could speak, I'm sure it would tell us that it was a very painful experience. It's not easy to be refined into something that we don't want to be shaped into. But, the Master Potter knows what we need to go through in order for us to be valuable to Him.

The athletic saying "No pain, no gain" is very true. In order to be the best that we can be, we usually have to go through much pain. It's not easy to be an A Honor Roll scholar or a star athlete. You have to sacrifice to reach your goals. Sometimes you have to go through many failures before you gain the success. It's not easy being a child of God either. But, if we want to be the best that we can be for Jesus, then we have to realize there is going to be some pain along the way. Just as the wood became beautiful and useful in the end, so we will become beautiful and useful to God...and the rewards are out of this world!


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Posted by tink38570 at 1:41 PM CST
Updated: Wednesday, 16 December 2009 10:02 AM CST
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Monday, 14 December 2009
It's Here! Men's Monday Meme!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Men's Monday Meme

And the winner is - A TIE!

Yep! It was a tie between button "1 and button "2! Here they are:

 

 

I will be alternating using them as the banner for the meme each week. The codes for both of them in my sidebar to the left. Please feel free to pick your favorite and put it on your blog. Thank you to all that voted!

And now what you have all been waiting for!

The first question for the very first Men's Monday Meme!

And here it is! 

Is there a favorite holiday tradition that you had when you were young and would like to pass on to your children or grandchildren?

Here are the rules:
  1. This is a man's meme, so the answers must be the answers from a man. Either the man can answer on his blog, or a wife can interview her husband for her blog. However, if the wife puts it on her blog, she must stay true to what her husband said.
  2. You are encouraged to put one of the Men's Monday Meme buttons found to the left on your blog. Just copy the code below the button of your choice. The more folks who link, the more readers you may have to visit your blog.
  3. You may answer the question any time during the week up through next Monday. After you answered the question, add the address to your post to the Mr.Linky below. If you could, please only add the direct link to the post to make it easier for readers to find the entry.
  4. My answer along with a new question will be posted next Monday. The new Mr. Linky will be added at midnight Monday night.

Note: I have a new found respect for all of you who run a meme. I had no idea how much work it takes to get one started. Hopefully all is fixed and everything is working. Thanks for participating!

 


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Posted by tink38570 at 5:07 PM CST
Updated: Monday, 14 December 2009 7:40 PM CST
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Sunday, 13 December 2009
Help Us Donate $10 to a Great Cause! No Purchase Necessary!
Topic: General

BlogFrog holiday challenge

Most of you know the trials that Sarah and I have gone through with our children. Because of John Allen's retinoblastoma (rare childhood eye cancer), Joshua's asperger's syndrome and our challenges with Jacob, we have been blessed by two different Children's Hospitals - Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, and Erlanger Children's Hospital in Chattanooga. Recently, as a way to promote my blog and to interact with other bloggers, I joined BlogFrog. In t BlogFrog, you can set up your own discussion groups and join other people's discussion groups. The owners of the BlogFrog website have generously set up a challenge for the discussion group owners. For every group that has 20 new people join in a discussion or start a discussion on someone's group, they will donate $10 to The Children's Hospital Foundation. Children's Hospitals are near and dear to our hearts and we would love it if you would join in a discussion on my group by the end of the year, in hopes that we will gain 20 new folks and $10 will be donated! Just click here to go to my discussion group and you'll see all of the topics that you can add your 2 cents to. You don't have to join BlogFrog to join in a discussion, and it's an easy way to help promote a good cause. I've even started a new discussion for those of you who can't find another topic to add something to. It's the top one - you'll see it when you click on my page!  Thanks for helping!

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Posted by tink38570 at 9:31 PM CST
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I'm Not Too Pooped to Peep!
Topic: The Kids

Ok! I know! It's a catchy title to get you to read my funny story. However, recently, my "First Mate" (group leader) on the TOS Homeschool Crew sent us all a link to a blog post that she had written a couple of years ago. Penny, also has a child on the autism spectrum and she used a funny, but great illustration to talk about the challenges of autism. It seems that a neighbor had put up a lovely light display on his home. Unfortunately, the trees between Penny and the neighbor turned his light display into something completely different than what it was intended to be. I won't tell you anything else, except that it has to do with the word "poop". You'll have to read Penny's blog to find out what I'm talking about! Here's the link - http://notnewtoautism.blogspot.com/2008/12/view-from-my-kitchen-window.html.

Anyway, her story inspired me to write my own post about Joshua, our asperger's child, and the word "poop". Some of you have kept track over the past year of our quest to find ways to help Joshua. It was almost exactly a year ago that Joshua was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome, which is also on the autism spectrum. Some folks classify asperger's as high functioning autism, while others put it in a totally separate category. Whatever the case may be, "aspies" are very challenging to raise. No two aspies are the same, they each have their own peculiarities, but one frequent tendency of aspies is phobias. Although he still has a few, thankfully, Joshua has outgrown many of the fears that he had when he was younger. Some fears that he had were common, like being afraid of bugs - we had to create names for them like "Oh that's just Martha Moth. She would never hurt you. And look! There's more of her family!" or "Look at Betty Beetle. Isn't she cute?". To this day, whenever Joshua sees something flying out of the corner of his eye he'll say "Oh, there's Martha's brother. He won't hurt you."

But, some phobias were completely odd. Like his phobia of bird poop on the car. We used to attend, as a family, a Bible study that had a homeschool group for the boys to attend while the adults were in their own class. One day we were running late so we chose the closest parking space. A parking space that was right under...you guessed it...a tree with beautiful red berries on it. Joshua must have been 4 or 5 years old at the time and when he came out of the Bible study, he would NOT  set foot in the car with all of the bird droppings on it. There was nothing we could do! He screamed, cried, ran...he was terrified! Thankfully, we had a good friend that went to the same study. She finally offered to take Joshua in her car and follow us to the local car wash so that Joshua would be able to ride in a clean van while we continued to run errands around town.

As I said, Joshua is doing much better, now, but he still has his moments. We have learned how to spot things that might cause a "meltdown" and stop the situation before it gets out of hand. Now we have Jacob, our youngest. He is beginning to display some of the same tendencies that Joshua did at this age. Thankfully, however, we now know the signs and caught it early and we are in the process of getting him tested now. As I've said before, there is never a dull moment in the Tinkel household. Ah well, at least we don't have to worry about poop on the car anymore but, tomorrow is another day.

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Posted by tink38570 at 8:12 PM CST
Updated: Monday, 14 December 2009 12:04 PM CST
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Saturday, 12 December 2009
#1 - It's Been A Great Day! #2 - I Didn't Lie, I Promise!
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Ministry

 

 

Why has it been a great day?

It's always a great day in the Lord, but this day was especially great. God blessed us with feeding right around 200 people at our annual Good News Mission Holiday Meal! We prepared and delivered about 100 take out plates for shut-ins, elderly and sick folks, and then fed about 100 folks at the mission today! It was truly a great day.

We want to thank all of the volunteers who helped, all of the churches and individuals who provided food or financial help and all of the businesses who donated or gave discounts for food or materials. But, I would be very remiss if I didn't give a special Thank You! to my wife, Sarah, who once again organized the entire thing, and then cooked 12 turkeys to boot! At the time of this writing, she is now in bed for a well deserved long sleep! 

Why no pictures of the great event? Because with all of the cooking and serving and delivering and greeting and emptying trash cans etc. etc. we all forgot to take some! Oops! So you'll have to put up with the not-very-good-imitation-for-a-picture above!

What was is I didn't lie about?

In my mysterious post last evening, I promised that something was coming and I would have more than one post today. Well, it was actually two things. One was the big holiday meal which I just posted about, and the other was an exciting review for Tektoma, an item that we reviewed that John Allen loved.

Well, I love writing reviews, and I love to blog, but I have a hard time loving blogging platforms (computer programs that folks use to write and host their blogs on). I knew that I was going to finish and post my Tektoma review today - hence the mention of a second review. However, what I didn't know (or really had forgotten) was that when you start a post on one day but don't finish it and actually publish it until another day, it shows up on your blog on the day you began writing it. So, the Tektoma review showed up as saying it was posted yesterday, but, it was actually posted today (did all of that just make sense Undecided?).

So, to make a long story short. Something big was coming - the holiday meal; I did write two posts - the review and the meal posts; and, so, I didn't lie! And with that, I'm going to bed...zzzzzz!


 

 


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Posted by tink38570 at 11:10 PM CST
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