Mood:  cheeky

OK men. I have tortured or made your wives torture you all week long, so now it's time for my answer to -

How do you divide up the work at home? Do you help out with housework?

We have a very unusual situation at our home. We run a mission to the low income housing area in our town, and we live in a house attached to the mission. So, we both work from home. And, not only that, but we also homeschool, so our children are always at home with us! Another interesting dynamic in our household is that we have two children that have sensory issues - one has been officially diagnosed with asperger's syndrome. A typical middle class home we are not! 

Having said that, Sarah's and my personalities are totally different than what you might expect. For example - Sarah likes to mow. It is her time to talk with God, so, although I enjoy it as well, she probably mows a little more than I do. I, on the other hand, don't mind doing laundry. It is kind of a challenge to me. Joshua, our aspy, showers and changes clothes two to three times a day. Sometimes he'll put on the same clothes, often not. Joshua, our youngest, has bladder problems. It's something that we have been to a specialist to see, but to no avail. He drinks a lot, and he wets a lot - even at night. So, we are often having to change the bed. A typical household with three active boys would have a ton of laundry on its own, but with the two problems I just mentioned, our laundry is enormous. I like the great feeling of having it all caught up (which doesn't happen too often).

Therefore, I would have to say that we split the outside tasks and the inside tasks pretty evenly. I do most of the homeschooling and help out inside. She probably does most of the inside, but enjoys working outside as well. Both of us don't do enough to plan our time wisely, but I am probably worse in that area. We tend to find other ministry or family things to do that are more pleasurable to us. We also need to train our boys to do more work around the house. We have focused so much on finding help for our special needs kids, that we have failed in training them to do the every day things that kids should be trained to do. We are getting better at that, but we still have a lot of work to do in that area. 

So, you see, we do have an unusual family. I'm sure that no one would say that their family is totally normal. There probably isn't really any cookie cutter households out there, but ours is pretty uncookiecutterish. Is that a word? Oh well, you get the picture! I guess you'd have to say, considering the topic for this week, that we have our work cut out for us !

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Mood:  happy

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Mood:  a-ok

Tomorrow's it! It's the first day of the New Thru 30 Challenge! Are you ready. Some of you may have already started. Really, if you have been using the plan, you know that it officially started yesterday, but the first day of reading is tomorrow. But, I decided to get a head start, and I read the first day today so I could have a full day to think and pray about it before I blog about it.

Now comes the "Shhhh! Don't tell Angelfire" part. I've begun a new blog! In fact, the above picture is the header for my new blog. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it's started. Angelfire has been great to me, and I probably will never completely leave it, but I have been having some technical problems with it lately. If you have noticed, I haven't added any links on the left for quite a while. That's because for some reason the blog platform won't let me. The place where I go to add the links etc. is all messed up. I don't know if it is Angelfire's fault or my fault, but even after contact with Angelfire, it still isn't working. That's one of the biggest reasons for starting the new blog. It isn't all the way up yet, but I am going to start out by posting my thoughts from New Thru 30 on it. We'll see where it goes from there. I would love for you to visit me over there as well. The address is http://familiesagain.blogspot.com/ . Please come over and visit! At least for a little while, I will be posting a link here every time I post something new there (did that just make since?). For right now, unless I say otherwise, this will be my main blog and I will point you over there when I post something new. When you visit the new blog, you'll see that I should have posted a "Pardon Our Dust" sign because it is still "in the works", but thanks ahead of time for visiting and being faithful readers.

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Mood:  chillin'

One of my New Year's resolutions was to set aside one blog day a week to tell you about our ministry at Good News Ministries and about the ministry of the mission that we are under BCM International. I am planning for Sundays to be that day. I have already shared three short videos about BCM's core ministries, but today I wanted to be a little more focused as to one thing that BCM does.

Although BCM is a small mission compared to some, it does a tremendous work with disaster relief and special projects. About three years ago, Christmas day 2007 to be exact, Hindu radicals destroyed many Christian churches and the homes of many Christians in Orrissa, India. As you will see in the following video, the Christian's there continue to be persecuted. This video will tell you a little about what BCM is doing to help the persecuted Christians there.

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Mood:  mischievious

The Redhead Riter and her husband have been so faithful in posting something for my Men's Monday Meme, that I wanted to repay her by posting on her meme. Besides, hers is fun. It's called Tell the Truth Thursday (OK! I know! I'm a couple days late!). She asks a question, and you have to tell the truth no matter what - even if it's a ticklish subject. Well, this one is easy for me, because I ALWAYS tell the truth! I would never lie about anything, even if it was a "ticklish" subject. Of course, if it were too ticklish, I just wouldn't answer it for that week !

This weeks is about the "L" word...Lying! The question is: 

What is the biggest lie you ever told your parents?

Hmmm. The biggest lie that ever told my parents? That's a toughy. I really didn't lie a whole lot when I was young. Honest! If it were something I didn't want to tell my parents, I usually didn't lie. I just didn't tell them the whole truth. So my sin was more the sin of omission. 

I remember one time my cousin had come to visit. We totally destroyed my room. When our parents said it was time to clean up, we cleaned up. The floor was perfectly clean. We stuffed everything under the bed and in the closet! It didn't work. They figured it out and we got into even worse trouble. 

That's the type of dishonesty I got into. Nothing spectacular. I was the baby of the family. And when I say baby! I mean BABY! My sister is 15 years older than I am and my brother was 10 years older than me. My sister got married when I was six years old, so I hardly remember a time without my brother-in-law being around. It was like I had two sets of parents and an older brother who was a fantastic older brother. I was truly spoiled. I didn't have to lie. I got almost whatever I wanted and got away with murder!

Really, although I was probably spoiled more than other kids, my parents did set boundaries and raised me to be basically honest and truthful. Except, of course, for those little sins of omission. There were, however, other areas in my life where I wasn't so angelic (I know, you can hardly believe it). Thankfully I don't have to answer about any of those subjects. Let's just hope that The Redhead Riter doesn't post any questions about those in the near future. I may have to have a chat with Redhead. Maybe drop her a few hints on questions for the future. Safe questions!

Please stop on over to The Redhead Riters blog. She does an excellent job. Just click here, on her "Tell the Truth Thursday" banner, or on any one of the hi-lighted links above. If you have a blog, you should consider participating. It really is a lot of fun. Honestly! Would I lie to you? 

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