A child of God educating other children.

I am watching the Tyra Banks show right now. They are doing talking about chatrooms and myspace and how dangerous it is for kids. A lot of the information and things they are showing are shocking. Pornography and sexual conversations are easily accessible to kids. With web cameras and all the technology that is available it's more dangerous. Live with her study audience Tyra is posing as a 14 year old girl in a chatroom getting hits buy way older men showing their everything with their web cams. Theres no special access you have to get to see things like this, only have the knowledge how to get a screenname and sign in.

This reminds me of about a month ago I was bored one night and decided to look around on craigslist.com Tim and I were looking for furniture before, and I decided to see what type of people had put adds on trying to find a mate. The women I saw on there seemed innocent and genuinely wanting a friendship/relationship. The first man's add I saw had a horrific pornography picture of him. And that was on craigslist that you can use to find jobs and furniture and tons more.

Most of all I want people to be aware of the online dangers out there. Whether you get in chatrooms and have myspace, or know someone who does, especially your kids. Keep an eye on it, have an accountability partner for it, just be safe.

I do believe that there are safer online communities. For one, I use Facebook. I through out my Myspace and switched to Facebook. No one can see your profile unless you approve them as a friend. I like that very much.

There are still lots of precautions to take even if you believe you're in a safe community. Especially with blogs. I try my hardest to not reveal the town/city I live in, where I work and so on.

Over all, be safe and be smart. And don't disregard all the warnings people try to give about things. It's easy to shrug something off thinking, "it wont happen to me" but I bet there are a ton of people out there who regretted having that mentality.

I recorded this episode of the Tyra Banks Show to watch again and catch things I missed 'cause I was typing on here. I have really come to like her show. It's a girly show, talking about important issues to girls and women. I have come to like Tyra Banks more and more over the last year. I don't approve of all the photo shoots she has done with her modeling, but I think she has a lot of good advice and wisdom to share with women.

Posted in: on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at at 7:22 PM 1 comments    

Baptism has been a common topic between Tim and I lately. When we first started dating we talked about all our differences in beliefs and were able to come to an understanding on each others beliefs and knowing that the purpose of being in a relationship with someone is to see if they are a fit mate for marriage. With this we knew we had to be equally yoked in faith. With Tim growing up Baptist and me growing up United Methodist there were a few differences. The first 3 months of our relationship were really tough finding out if we were equally yoked with each other or not. But God used that time and each other to sharpen our faith and study the Bible and learn why we believe what we do, or change our reason for believing something to fit what we learned from studying the Bible.

Tim and I were both baptized differently, and accept each others baptism. I spent some time Friday afternoon studying scripture about salvation, really enjoying my time I had with God. Tonight I did a little internet searching on baptism.
I looked up baptism in Wikipedia.org and here is a section of what I found.

Form of Baptism

Among those Christians espousing the practice of baptism, the ritual is performed as:

Aspersion - sprinkling water over the head,

Affusion - pouring water over the head, or

Immersion - lowering the entire body into a pool of water.

For Christians who baptize by pouring or sprinkling, the washing with water from above pictures the cleansing of one's sins by the blood of Christ, by the Holy Spirit, who unites the baptized person to Christ in his death, and in His resurrection from the dead. It is administered from above to point to that gift of the life-giving Spirit, and to portray baptism as an act not of man, but of God. In contrast, a person baptized by immersion is enclosed under the water and brought out, to signify cleansing through death and burial with Christ, and consequent raising again in newness of life by the Holy Spirit. Regardless of the form, baptism is a public rite, in testimony to others of the grace of God bestowed upon the person, and as a seal of God's promises in Christ to those who believe.

If you want to read more from Wikipedia you can go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism

Posted in: on Monday, September 25, 2006 at at 8:03 PM 1 comments    

I read my first book about Ann Frank this weekend. I had heard her name growing up and heard people having to read her diary for class, but while in school I didn't like to read, and I wasn't about to read something I didn't have to for class.

Now I really enjoy reading and am working through a box of scholastic books I have bought over the last year. I read a biography on Ann Frank and am completely interested in her. I want to go and buy her diaries now to read next and add to my library. I stayed up late reading because I was so mezmorized by everything Ann and her family went through. The events of the Holocaust have always struck me hard. It is such a horrible event that it's hard for me to grasp the reality of it. And then noticing that it really was not very long ago that it happend is even harder to grasp. I started to calculate the years to see which of my relatives were around during that time. I'm curious to know their view on everything while it was going on.

Events of her life that I read about continue to run through my head after reading about her life. I am so grateful for the life God has given me.

Posted in: on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 at at 8:49 PM 1 comments    

Ice cream use to be on our grocery list every week. We've been trying to eat healthier, but still crave a sweet cold treat. We've been mixing yogurt and fresh fruit with whatever else a recipe might call for, but usually having to substitute for something else we have. Some have turned out okay, some could be better, and some have been pretty good. I think we've had a smoothie every night this week. Tim has been experimenting most of the time, but tonight was my turn. I made an Apple-Blueberry smoothie. I've been craving that combination for a few days now. I found a recipe online and then had to tweak it a little because of some items we didn't have, but we had something close.

It called for the same amount of yogurt and apples so I used the yogurt cup to measure with. Instead of vanilla yogurt we had blueberry yogurt. Then instead of fresh apples I used apple sauce. So I did one yogurt cup of blueberry yogurt, one yogurt cup of apple sauce, a few fresh blueberries, half a yogurt cup of milk, and 4 ice cubes. It turned out pretty good. A little too much blueberry, I could've done without the fresh ones. Towards the end I was able to taste the apples more.

Posted in: on Thursday, September 14, 2006 at at 7:33 PM 0 comments    

The manager had me crunch some #s for him, but first I had to blow up the paper he gave me so I could see the numbers a little better to work with. So I had to figure out how the enlarger works and how to make it back to normal. When I went out onto the production floor to pick up some papers to enter into a database one of the ladies was having trouble with her copier and couldn't figure out how to make it print normal again instead of enlarged. I was so excited to get to help her. And so thankful that God had me do something earlier in the day that dealt with that so I could help her. Praise God for experiences we go through that help others! I introduced myself to her after I helped and found out her name. It's good to know people by name. I go out to production every day, but don't know many of the people who work out there. I know the front office staff, and thats about it.

My not so good for the day is:
When I was on our street almost to the apartment I passed a school bus going the other way noticing the driver yacking away on her cell phone with lots of kids in the bus. I got pretty irritated with it, but then thought "Well maybe she has to talk right now and can't help it. Maybe she is taking care of something." But then about 5 mintues later as I was about to walk inside I saw her again still yacking away with kids in the bus. The first time I saw her I decided to let it go, but when I saw her the second time I made sure to see what district it's in and the bus number. Now I just need to figure out what number to call and report it. That's really scary having a bus driver talking on the phone. For one, it's a really big vehicle, and for two, there were many students lives in her hands at that time.

Posted in: on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at at 7:53 PM 1 comments    

I go from blogging a lot in a condensed amount of time to not blogging at all. With work I haven't been able to find a good routine to get into yet. The only pattern I've made so far is not cleaning anything during the week and leaving me lots of work to do on the weekend which usually ends up making for a late Sunday night. Which I need to get started on so it's not too late. But first I think Tim and I are going to watch a movie. We try to fit in as much together time as possible on the weekends before we're apart all day long during the week.

I tried to make cookies from scratch yesterday. I had about 5 turn out okay. The rest I burnt. It's probably a good thing 'cause they were so high in fat and sugar. It'll probably be about another month or so until I make them again...for our health. I bought a blender last week with our Dillards wedding money. I was saving the Dillards card for work clothes, but after shopping a couple hours, walking all over the store and not finding anything I liked, I called Tim and asked if it's okay that I buy us a nice blender. We've used it many times. Tim has gotten good at making some really healthy smoothies. We're trying to go without buying icecream, so our healthy smoothies are a good exchange for a good fun dessert.

I have been a success in cooking some things though! I'm not a complete failure in the kitchen. :) My roast today was awesome. And I was able to make good gravy with the juices. I was very excited about that. We had one of the youth guys over for lunch and he even got seconds on the gravy!
Also, last week I cooked us a chicken and had guests over. With the chicken broth and chicken left over I made homemade chicken noodle soup. That turned out really good too. And Tim went back for seconds on that!

I love it when people go back for seconds on my cooking!

Posted in: on Sunday, September 10, 2006 at at 6:44 PM 3 comments