Give Thanks

First off, I just wanted to say THANK YOU for all of the well-wishes for Jacob :) The kids is feeling MUCH better. He was excited when he came downstairs today and was able to smile. LOL! He's happy for small blessings. The medicine is working very well and fast. He's not so much of a zombie anymore. Thank goodnes.

As for the route to go with the Scouts. I just wanted to say that we LOVE the Boy Scouts of America program. My husband, before he joined the Army, was a professional with the Boy Scouts for 9 years. He knows the program inside and out. He knows the rules and procedures. We know that if our specific leaders had followed the rules, it would have been avoided. The Boy Scouts of America are not liable for this. They have rules in place to keep everyone safe. It was just the individual leaders that I had an issue with. They are the ones that choose not to follow the rules. Captain America looked it up online, and BSA policy says no more than 10 miles a day for water trips. Clearly, our troops 28 miles in one day was WELL over the limit.

I believe that the Boy Scouts of America is an inspired program. Run by humans. Who make mistakes. Hopefully they'll learn from their mistakes, and fix it in the future. If that doesn't happen, my boy will find another troop, which follows the rules, to participate in. Either way, Scouting will be a part of our life.

Boy Scouts is a WONDERFUL program, designed to help our boys grow into strong, responsible men. It is a great tool, which, if executed properly, will effectivly do its job.

Yesterday, I went to the first day of our Marriage class. It was pretty fun. I left a good 20 minutes early, to get there in plenty of time. Well, the interstate wasn't cooperating. There was a wreck ahead of me, and I ended up getting there 10 minutes late. 6 lanes of traffic were condensed down to 2. Not so good :)

But, it turned out that the first hour was just registration and meet and greet. So, I wasn't really late. In fact, I had about 30 minutes to kill. It was nice to drop the kids off that the child care place (on site), and sit and relax. That doesn't happen too often - LOL!

Only Laurie and I, of all my friends, ended up going. Everyone else had things come up. It was nice to sit and chat and learn with her.

We had some good presenters, and learned quite a bit. We learned about the different things that men and women want out of marriage. Women want "security" and men want "significance" (or to feel that they are important to someone). I can TOTALLY see that.

We learned about the 5 threats to a happy marriage:

• difficult adjustments (our cultures, different backgrounds, superficial motivations for getting married, differeing expectations)
• getting too caught up in the "worlds" idea of what marriage is supposed to be (performance based - only worth while if living up to your "standards")
• selfishness
• failure to work though trials and difficultiies
• extramarital affairs (activity affairs, materialism affairs, career affairs, family affairs, love affairs)

We learned that when we do these things, we're choosing the path that leads away from "oneness" and that leads to "lonlieness". And none of us go into marriage saying "I want to be lonely".

And then it started to get churchy. Don't get me wrong. I'm a very religious person. I have nothing against religion. I just don't like it when I hear things, being taught as truth, that I don't agree with. Most of it I agreed with, though.

They said that Satan is very real (which I agree with), and is doing everything he can to destroy the family. So, those with strong families are the ones he's gonna try the hardest to get. Makes sense. They talked about 3 things to do to realize that your spouse is a "gift from God". It's LEAVE, CLEAVE, and RECIEVE.

• Leave - leave the family of your origin. You need to be with your spouse, and function as your own unit
• Cleave - during tough times, you need to go to your spouse. They need to be your best friend. We need to need our spouse.
• Recieve - We need to recoginze our spouse as a gift from God. We have differences, but they're not there to hurt us, but to help us come closer to each other by working through them.

Then it came to the Adam and Eve thing. I just hate it when they're portrayed as "the bad guys". Especially Eve. She made a choice. She was given 2 sets of directions. One was to multiply and replinish the earth. One was to not eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Conflicting directions. You can't multiply and replinish without having a greater knowledge of things. Had they not eaten, they'd still be in the garden. She made a choice. She chose to have free agency. To have children. It was a noble choice. And she's smeared for it. Poor Eve.

I'm not big on the whole "original sin" thing. Adam and Eve transgressed the law, which is different than sin, in my book. They chose a path that would be hard, but that would allow all mankind an opportunity to come to earth and be tested. The presenters kept talking about how we were all born in sin. Not true. Babies are not full of sin. They are clean and precious and good. We are given the right to choose. Good or evil. But we are not inheriently sinners. We came from God, so of course we have good inside of us. Sigh. To me, it's not a hard concept to grasp.

Then, they came to the God is Jesus, and God is the Holy Ghost, and God is God. Multiple personalities? I believe that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are 3 distinct, separate personages. And it's not that I want to force everyone to believe what I believe. It's just that it was presented like fact in this class. And I knew that it wasn't true. It was all I could do to keep from raising my hand, and debating it with him. Which, if you know me, I'm NOT a debater. Hehehe. But, it would have been distracting from the overall flow of the marriage class. I understood the feel of what they were trying to tell us. Even if I felt they got a few of the details wrong.

What they were saying was that a marriage based on God will survive, if both persons are trying their hardest to follow him. I totally agree. That's spot on.

Wow, sorry about that. I kinda went off again. I just really wanted to say something in the class. I guess I'll suffice it to get my opinion out here. You'll listen to me rant, right? hehehe.

So, it was a good class. A bit preachy (and not totally correct in my opinion), but the overall message was a good one. Today, we're learing about Conflict, and Sexual Intimacy. Wow - we're learning how to fight and make up??? ROFL!! I'll give you a re-cap tomorrow too - hehehehe.

We got home at about 5:30pm, and I threw together a quick dinner for the kids, dinner for me, and was exhaused. I applaud all of you single working moms out there. It was hard for me, and I think that I'd easily get burnt out if that were my normal routine.

This WordArt request is from Catherine. Her church group is making signs with vinyl lettering, and wanted to know if I'd make up this WordArt for them. Well, I thought that it would be a great saying for everyone to have, so I went ahead and make it up. AND, as a bonus treat, I'm including the layered, rasterized PSD file for you all. That way, all you have to do is select the layer you wanna re-color (in the layers side bar), then click on the layer while holding control. That "marquees" it, or puts "marching ants" around it. Then, select the correct color in your color finder, and right click on the actual words themselves. Select "fill" from the drop down menu, and then select "foreground color". It should re-color that part for you.

I made the PNG have red, but if these above directions work for you, you should be able to re-color it any color. AND, if I explained it wrong, one of you ladies who know SO much more than me about scrapping can leave a comment with more, um, er, CLEAR directions - LOL!

Click on the link below to go to my account to download the zip file, which includes both the layered, rasterized PSD files, and the black/red PNG file. Thanks!

4shared