Junk Drawer - Why it's called "Junk"!

The Junk Drawer challenge is a good one....to clean it out would be wonderful and here's why...

Look at that mess, I can hardly shut the drawer and there's stuff falling behind into the abyss.  There are multiple rolls of duct tape, batteries, receipts, panty hose, I could have been wearing those, rats! - I'm guessing they were there to tie up tomatoes, patches for the pool we no longer have, 35 mm film, wow, scraps of material, old broken cell phones, canning lids (I've never canned anything), tons of chargers to various things (I can only guess what they belong to) and who knows what else.  I just snapped this pic this morning...who knows what lies beneath the surface.  To make matters worse, the drawer below it is becoming a junk drawer as well, probably because there are things falling into it.  If you look in the upper left hand corner you can see a plastic tooth, it is a tooth necklace that the school nurse gives a child if they lose a tooth at school.  I was curious to see which son's tooth this was...

It's Cameron's...it has a filling and Christian didn't have any fillings, perhaps it was his last baby tooth and I had trouble letting go.  Well I didn't today, I threw it out, plastic tooth and all.  I haven't cleaned the junk drawer yet but will post something when I do.

I also found 4 broken cell phones and a tangle mess of chargers to various things, I will figure that out later.  And a coupon for a pizza that expired in 2008.

Drum Roll Please...

Wowee!!!

Invasion of the Pepper Snatchers

I love bell peppers in my salad, as I was cutting one up yesterday this was what I discovered...

A green bell pepper growing inside my red one.  The red pepper didn't taste so good so I threw it out and didn't even attempt to try the green one...weird!

52 books in 52 weeks

I couldn't resist the picture.

My cousin, Jennifer, has once again inspired me.  I read her post '52 books in 52 weeks' and thought to myself....I might be able to do 5 + 2...but we will see.

These are the books I can remember that I read last year:

• Crazy Love by Francis Chan
• Captivating by Staci Eldredge
• Your Whole Life by Carol Showalter with Maggie Davis
• Shades of Blue by Karen Kingsbury
• A Prairie Christmas Collection (9 stories) by various authors
• More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell (haven't finished though)

Well that's not even close to 52...closer to 2.  But maybe I really did read more than that...I just can't remember, that shows you what an impact they made.

Here are a few I'm going to start with for this challenge:

• When Godly People Do Ungodly Things by Beth Moore
• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• Created to Be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl
• Forgotten God by Francis Chan
• Radical by David Platt
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (no, I haven't read any of the Lord of the Rings books either but I love the movies, maybe I'll tackle those as well)
• Called to Love by Kaye Miller
• Breaking the Surface by Vicki J. Kuyper
• I'm Not Wonder Woman but God Made Me Wonderful by Sheila Walsh
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
• Something by Nicholas Sparks (but not The Notebook, I bawl every time I watch the movie)
• Something by Karen Kingsbury
• Something by Max Lucado
• and maybe a couple off Jenn's list, ha!

I have a lot of these books.  I get old books from garage sales, weeded out books from the church library, or the clearance section at Christian book stores.  I'm working full time now so I don't know when this is going to happen but I'm not going to let that be an excuse.  Of course, I will read my precious bible first and foremost, it's the best book of all because it's God's Holy Word and it's alive!

Thanks Jenn for the challenge, not many read my blog but I want to put a plug in for yours anyway :)
Jenn's blog is called whitetrashmama but I prefer the Classless and Lovin' It.

Awake for over 24 hours...

On New Year's Eve, James and I chaperoned a youth lock-in at our church. It began at 7 pm and lasted until 7 am...I know what you're thinking, crazy people. We are too old to stay up all night, I knew this before but went with it anyway. 116 teens arrived along with 20 to 30 adults. The church booked the christian band "Bread of Stone", they were amazing. They were there early to set up, gave testimonies, played with the youth, loved on them, and gave an awesome concert at midnight to start the new year. They played some mean dodgeball, very competitive. I took tons of pictures, some video, and ate a lot of pizza and other non-good for me foods. The kids played "Minute to Win It" where the winner received VIP tickets for a Toby Mac and Skillet concert and backstage passes. We played "extreme" trivia...this was more than extreme, there was an onion challenge (4 participants had to eat 1/4 of an onion), an soda chugging challenge, and one of the worst - a glass full of blended up Italian dressing, French dressing, Mtn. Dew, and sugar cookies (a girl won that one, booyah!) It was a fun night for the youth and most importantly, decisions for Christ were made.

Check out this band at http://www.breadofstone.com/

Merry Christmas, Dad!

My boys made this for James for Christmas...I am so proud.