A Mom Speaks

This is the Feast by Diane Z. Shore

Courtney — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:28:02 +0000

Thanksgiving seems to get overlooked alot in favor of diving right into the Christmas holidays so I was excited to get the opportunity to review the book This is the Feast by Diane Z. Shore and share it with my children.

What I really enjoyed about this this book is that the author does not minimize the importance of the pilgrims spiritual life and how it affected their decisions. I also liked that the book not only shows the good stuff but also the bad stuff. The book shows the hardships the pilgrims faced such as illnesses.

From Amazon:

This is Thanksgiving, a time to remember the friendships and freedoms we all share together.

When the Pilgrims embarked on their legendary Mayflower voyage in 1620, they couldn’t predict what lay ahead of them. In search of religious freedom and a new life, the settlers faced hardships including harsh storms, illness, and unfamiliar terrain. Thanks to their natural perseverance and the help of their neighbor Indians, the Pilgrims survived their first year. And when the harvest the next fall was plentiful, the Pilgrims and the Indians joined together in a three-day celebration, the first Thanksgiving.

Diane Z. Shore’s lyrical, rhythmic verse and Megan Lloyd’s lively, joyful illustrations bring the Pilgrims’ harrowing experience to life and demonstrate the strong bonds for which we give thanks every year.

You can read more reviews by visiting the following blogs:

The 160acrewoods, A Mom Speaks, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Homeschool Buzz, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maggie Reads, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Olive Tree, Our Big Earth, Quiverfull Family, Reading is My Superpower, SmallWorld Reads

I’ve been tagged

Courtney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:45:28 +0000

I don’t normally do these types of memes but this one involves books and as most of you know I love books.

Relimom tagged me.

These are the rules

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same

The closet book to me is Wild Horses by Jenny Oldfield which is part of The Horses of Half Moon Ranch and is one the next books I will be reviewing on this blog.

Here is the sentences asked for:

“You mean he started the landslide?” Matt frowned.

Sandy stopped work to listen.

Kristie untethered Silve Flash, ready to lead her out to the remunda, the strip of grassland by Five Mile Creek. “He’s the on who set the first rocks sliding by making his horse lope up the track.”

The 5 people I am going to tag are Louise, Ronnica, Jendi, Heather, and Candice.

Online Author Chat - Travis Trasher

Courtney — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:53:10 +0000

Back in September I reviewed the book Isolation by Travis Trasher. On November 12, 2008 the author will be participating in an online chat at Abunga.com. Here are the details:

WHO:

Travis Thrasher, suspense, adventure and drama novelist, shares thoughts about his new supernatural thriller, “Isolation.” With the dream of being a writer since the third grade, his first novel, “The Promise Remains,” was published in 1998 and received accolades from Publisher’s Weekly, which said it was “one of the nicest surprises in CBA fiction.” Now, with nine additional published books, Thrasher is known as a writer who remains ever-changing, tackling and succeeding in various genres. His newest novel, “Isolation,” is masterfully written and will keep readers on edge until the chilling end.

WHAT:

“Authors at Abunga” Weekly Online Chat with Travis Thrasher at Abunga.com, an online bookstore offering family-friendly materials.

WHEN:

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008

11 a.m. – Noon PST / 1 – 2 p.m. CST / 2 – 3 p.m. EST (LIVE)

At www.Abunga.com/AuthorsAtAbunga

DETAILS:

“Isolation” is a thrilling mystery about a missionary family that moves into a secluded mansion in the mountains of North Carolina, thinking they are escaping their nightmares. But when a snowstorm hits and they are trapped inside their new home, their worst fears become reality. As they fight to stay alive, they will be tested in ways they never imagined – spiritually and physically. Thrasher weaves suspense and drama into this gripping story centered around fear and faith.

Did You Know Jesus Prays For You?

Courtney — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:36:29 +0000

I have always believed in the power of prayer. I have seen prayers work miracles. I have lived those miracles. Prayer is our only way to communicate with the Lord. For as long as I can remember I have always prayed. I keep a prayer journal and my grandmother is my prayer partner.

Yesterday at church the Pastor brought a message about how Jesus prayed and still prays for us. I know from studying the Bible that when Jesus was on earth that he prayed continually but I never realized that he prayed for us. For you and me.

In the book of John, chapter 17 Jesus prays to God the Father and he prays for us specifically in verses 9 through 23:

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Jesus is praying that we may be one and that we will behold the glory of God. Once I starting thinking about it I realized that Jesus loved us so much that he gave his life on the cross, so why wouldn’t he pray for us?

This post is part of More of Him Mondays hosted at Not a DIY Life.

Technorati Tags: More of Him Mondays

Book Giveaway: House of Wolves by Matt Bronleewe

Courtney — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:39:22 +0000

*** THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO ALL WHO ENTERED***

Back in August I did a book review on the book House of Wolves by Matt Bronleewe. I loved the book. So when I was contacted about hosting a contest for an autographed copy of the book I was ecstatic.

Here is a little about the book:

A mysterious book with a dangerous secret. An evil brotherhood out to conquer the world. One man stands between them . . . with his family in the balance. In the twelfth century, Henry the Lion collected the rarest relics in Christendom. And to protect his most precious acquisitions, he encoded the whereabouts in a gorgeous illuminated manuscript called The Gospels of Henry the Lion. The manuscript has been showing up and disappearing ever since. No one knows where the relic has been hidden . . . or its ultimate power.

Only one man holds the key to the mystery. He’s carrying it in his briefcase at his son’s school for show-and-tell, and he thinks it’s a fake. But he’s about to find out just how real it is. Because the wolves are rapidly closing in. And if August Adams can’t decode the secret in time, the world’s balance of power will forever be altered.

The main character August has also come to life. August has a blog, myspace page, and even a twitter account!

Be sure to read my review and find out how much I enjoyed the book.

To enter the giveaway for an authographed copy of House of Wolves by Matt Bronleewe just leave a comment on this post by November 7, 2008.

This giveaway is part of the Book Giveaway Carnival at Bookroom Reviews.

Technorati Tags: Books, contests, giveaways, House of Wolves, Matt Bronleewe

There Is A River

Courtney — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:36:38 +0000

There are some songs that just give me chills - good chills. They just speaks to me in way I can not explain and this is one of those songs.

Forsken by James David Jordan

Courtney — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:00:06 +0000

It is time for the FIRST Blog Tour! On the FIRST day of every month we feature an author and his/her latest book’s FIRST chapter! The feature author is: James David Jordan and his book Forsaken.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:James David Jordan is a business litigation attorney with the prominent Texas law firm of Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr, P.C. From 1998 through 2005, he served as the firm’s Chairman and CEO. The Dallas Business Journal has named him one of the most influential leaders in the Dallas/Fort Worth legal community and one of the top fifteen business defense attorneys in Dallas/Fort Worth. His peers have voted him one of the Best Lawyers in America in commercial litigation.

A minister’s son who grew up in the Mississippi River town of Alton, Illinois, Jim has a law degree and MBA from the University of Illinois, and a journalism degree from the University of Missouri. He lives with his wife and two teenage children in the Dallas suburbs.

Jim grew up playing sports and loves athletics of all kinds. But he especially loves baseball, the sport that is a little bit closer to God than all the others.

His first novel was Something that Lasts . Forsaken is his second novel.

AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Even in high school I didn’t mind sleeping on the ground. When your father is a retired Special Forces officer, you pick up things that most girls don’t learn. As the years passed I slept in lots of places a good girl shouldn’t sleep. It’s a part of my past I don’t brag about, like ugly wallpaper that won’t come unstuck. No matter how hard I scrape, it just hangs on in big, obscene blotches. I’m twenty-nine years old now, and I’ve done my best to paint over it. But it’s still there under the surface, making everything rougher, less presentable than it should be. Though I want more than anything to be smooth and fresh and clean.

Sometimes I wonder what will happen if the paint begins to fade. Will the wallpaper show? I thought so for a long time. But I have hope now that it won’t. Simon Mason helped me find that hope. That’s why it’s important for me to tell our story. There must be others who need hope, too. There must be others who are afraid that their ugly wallpaper might bleed through.

What does sleeping on the ground have to do with a world-famous preacher like Simon Mason? The story begins twelve years ago—eleven years before I met Simon. My dad and I packed our camping gear and went fishing. It was mid-May, and the trip was a present for my seventeenth birthday. Not exactly every high school girl’s dream, but my dad wasn’t like most dads. He taught me to camp and fish and, particularly, to shoot. He had trained me in self-defense since I was nine, the year Mom fell apart and left for good. With my long legs, long arms, and Dad’s athletic genes, I could handle myself even back then. I suppose I wasn’t like most other girls.

After what happened on that fishing trip, I know I wasn’t.

Fishing with my dad didn’t mean renting a cane pole and buying bait pellets out of a dispenser at some catfish tank near an RV park. It generally meant tramping miles across a field to a glassy pond on some war buddy’s ranch, or winding through dense woods, pitching a tent, and fly fishing an icy stream far from the nearest telephone. The trips were rough, but they were the bright times of my life—and his, too. They let him forget the things that haunted him and remember how to be happy.

This particular outing was to a ranch in the Texas Panhandle, owned by a former Defense Department bigwig. The ranch bordered one of the few sizeable lakes in a corner of Texas that is brown and rocky and dry. We loaded Dad’s new Chevy pickup with cheese puffs and soft drinks—healthy eating wouldn’t begin until the first fish hit the skillet—and left Dallas just before noon with the bass boat in tow. The drive was long, but we had leather interior, plenty of tunes, and time to talk. Dad and I could always talk.

The heat rose early that year, and the temperature hung in the nineties. Two hours after we left Dallas, the brand-new air conditioner in the brand-new truck rattled and clicked and dropped dead. We drove the rest of the way with the windows down while the high Texas sun tried to burn a hole through the roof.

Around five-thirty we stopped to use the bathroom at a rundown gas station somewhere southeast of Amarillo. The station was nothing but a twisted gray shack dropped in the middle of a hundred square miles of blistering hard pan. It hadn’t rained for a month in that part of Texas, and the place was so baked that even the brittle weeds rolled over on their bellies, as if preparing a last-ditch effort to drag themselves to shade.

The restroom door was on the outside of the station, isolated from the rest of the building. There was no hope of cooling off until I finished my business and got around to the little store in the front, where a rusty air conditioner chugged in the window. When I walked into the bathroom, I had to cover my nose and mouth with my hand. A mound of rotting trash leaned like a grimy snow drift against a metal garbage can in the corner. Thick, black flies zipped and bounced from floor to wall and ceiling to floor, occasionally smacking my arms and legs as if I were a bumper in a buzzing pinball machine. It was the filthiest place I’d ever been.

Looking back, it was an apt spot to begin the filthiest night of my life.

I had just leaned over the rust-ringed sink to inspect my teeth in the sole remaining corner of a shattered mirror when someone pounded on the door.

“Just a minute!” I turned on the faucet. A soupy liquid dribbled out, followed by the steamy smell of rotten eggs. I turned off the faucet, pulled my sport bottle from the holster on my hip, and squirted water on my face and in my mouth. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt.

My blue-jean cutoffs were short and tight, and I pried free a tube of lotion that was wedged into my front pocket. I raised one foot at a time to the edge of the toilet seat and did my best to brush the dust from my legs. Then I spread the lotion over them. The ride may have turned me into a dust ball, but I was determined at least to be a soft dust ball with a coconut scent. Before leaving I took one last look in my little corner of mirror. The hair was auburn, the dust was beige. I gave the hair a shake, sending tiny flecks floating through a slash of light that cut the room diagonally from a hole in the roof. Someone pounded on the door again. I turned away from the mirror.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming!”

When I pulled open the door and stepped into the light, I shaded my eyes and blinked to clear away the spots. All that I could think about was the little air conditioner in the front window and how great it would feel when I got inside. That’s probably why I was completely unprepared when a man’s hand reached from beside the door and clamped hard onto my wrist.

Technorati Tags: book, FIRST Blog Tour, Forsaken, James David Jordan

Fitness Fridays - Week 1

Courtney — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:32:20 +0000

As most of you know I have been struggling to lose weight. I am the type that needs accountability. I joined the first round of Tweightloss and while I started out strong I ended up dropping the ball. I know the reason I started out so strong was that there were constant emails going back and forth between teams encourging excerise and food control but after a couple of weeks the emails faded into nothing and so did my desire to participate.

Thea at I’m a Drama is starting a new weekly meme called Fitness Fridays. I’m going to give it ago and try to get back to exercising and losing weight. I hope that the others who participate will help keep me accountable. I will be doing my weigh-ins on this day and setting my goals for the next week.

Weigh-in today: 226.5 lbs. (that is so hard to type!)

Goal Weight: Under 200lbs.

Goal for the next week:

Drink more water

Exercise 3 times a week for 15 minutes

The Right Kind of Charm & Beauty

Courtney — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:28:57 +0000

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” Proverbs 31:30 (NIV)

Charm is thought of in today’s society in a variety of ways. Dictionary.com defined charm in many ways as well, but as it is used in the Proverb, it is a noun. Dictionary.com says that the noun, charm, is “a power of pleasing or attracting, as through personality or beauty” or “a trait or feature imparting this power.” This is more often than not how females use their charm today. To impart power or control over someone in their life, especially their male counterparts.

The Bible speaks of this as being deceptive. Therefore, this is not the kind of charm you want to exude. As ladies we need to be careful about the way we use our charm and our beauty so that we can be sure we are not using it in a negative way. Beauty is not a bad thing. God created us to be beautiful. However, we want to do everything in our lives to please Him, rather than to draw attention to ourselves. We must make certain that we are doing “whatever we do, whether in word or in deed, to the glory of God.” It is not glorifying God to use your charm or beauty to control someone else.

Beauty can come from more than one source. Beauty is more than just outward beauty, it is also what’s inside. As 1 Peter 3:3-5 says,

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.” (NIV)

True beauty comes from within. True beauty exhibits qualities of character and that includes many things. Here are a few of those qualities:

Honor - honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions
Self-control – able to exercise restraint
Virtue – moral excellence
Chastity – pure and chaste
Purity – innocence
A Clean Heart – freedom from evil
Sweetness – kind and sincere
A Quiet Spirit – a sense of inner peace and calmness
Modesty – freedom from vanity

Take some time to evaluate your life, your heart, and how you are using your charm and beauty. If you do not already exhibit the above characteristics, make it your goal to instill some of these into your life.

Want your daughter to have social grace and charm? Get her the Christian Charm School Workbook (ebook) by clicking here! You can read my review of the Christian Charm School Workbook at Faith Approved.

You could win $1,500 at MindBites

Courtney — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:08:35 +0000

If you are a parent you could win up to $1,500 by entering the MindBites Parenting Video Contest. To enter all you have to do is upload a video showing how you solved a baby related problem. Some examples include how you calmed a cockily baby or decorated a nursery on a tight budget. You could make a video on almost any subject.

While you are entering the contest, be sure to visit the Explore section where you can purchase some great how-to videos cheaply made by parents. I especially liked the video about how to make a pillow case dress. The videos are separated into numerous categories and with two small children at home I found the children & parenting videos the most helpful but I also enjoyed browsing the food and cooking category.

By uploading your how-to videos you can also earn some extra money. Each video costs somewhere between $1.69 to $1.99. For each video someone purchases you or a charity of your choice gets $1. By posting your video on MindBites you don’t lose the rights to your video and can still do whatever you like with it such as posting it on your blog. You are paid through PayPal once you reach $25. This is a great opportunity for mommy bloggers who already do video posts or for those wanting to start. If you are going to create a how-to video anyways you might as well get paid for it.

What I really like about MindBites is that the how to videos are created by parents for parents. So when you purchase a video you are helping another parent by putting a dollar in their pocket. MindBites also has blog to keep you update, a forum where you can interact with other parents, and a wanted section where you can request specific how-to videos.