Ev. Bev.

Feeding himself.

sitting in the oven.

"drinking" the latte he found in the trash can.

Evan has been bored these last few days, begging for attention and wanting to play with Max. Maxwell has held a fever the last few days so has been on the couch all day. I have been tending to him and Evan is craving back to "normal". I love this little guy.

sickness.

Just when I thought the boys were over their mild colds they both wake up with fevers this morning.

Cousins!

We have had visitors pretty much for a month straight, but we love it! To finish off the visits until we head back to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, my cousin Sara and her son Paul came. We had a blast together!

Book Giveaway.

We're having a book giveaway this month at Ungrind.

Come check us out and enter to win!

arrrrrrrrrrrrrr matey....

Both boys are a bit under the weather as you might be able to tell...but we blame it on too much rum. Scurvy Pirates!

Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go
And if we're parted by a shot
We're sure to meet below!
Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
Yo ho, yo ho, the pirates life for me!

update.

I don't know about you, but we find it hard to believe it is almost Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to our time back in Wisconsin with friends and family.

The last few months have been a whirlwind, we finally found a church home in August, and we are loving getting involved there. A place where Christ is the proirity, where the word is taught as we cultivate health and holinesss as a church body, and we have already made some amazing friends. We are so thankful for Providence and for Gods work in leading us there.

Justin is enjoying his job, and he always has a good story to share from his day at work. He has Fridays off which is so nice so we have a long weekend together as a family. About a month ago he actually got a raise, so he is obviously doing a great job. I am thankful for his hard work in providing for our family, and that I am able to be at home with the boys. I was reading the advice column in the paper this morning where a girl was asking about her friends who were about to get married and the wife made like three times as much as the man and how should they spilt their money. I guess I always assumed that it would all go to one pot and together decisions together would be made how to spend the money once the bills were paid. She mentioned that if they split the bills 50/50 he would have hardly any money leftover. The whole thing seemed like unessesary conflict and the advice columnist actually gave pretty good advice saying perhaps they should postphone the wedding and step back and realize that they may want the security of marriage but without the sacrifice, trust or commitment. Interesting.

Anyway, makes me all the more glad I can stay home. I digress.
Maxwell is such a little boy now. No longer a baby. He talks in full sentences, understands what I am saying most of the time, and is a great big brother. He is very good with Evan and they play very well together....for the most part. There are times when Max gets very frustrated with Evan and he grunts at him but he is very good (again for the most part) with not hitting him or pushing him down. They wrestle and one of my favortie things is when Max makes a funny noise and it makes Evan laugh and laugh. Max continues and they go on and on in laughter. It is the best when we are in the car.

Speaking of Evan he is in the midst of a nasty little cold, but being the trooper he is, he is handling it quite well. He doesn't let it slow him down one bit. He is so funny, he wants so, so badly to be just like Max. He knows how to irritate Max, he will grab a car and take of running as Max is playing with them on our fireplace. Max chases him and Evan loves it. When Max takes the car back Evan whines like he wants me to yell at Max but then goes back and does it again. It is cute, but eventually usually needs my intervention so there is not a brother brawl.

It is fun having two boys just two years apart, and they are so very different in their personalities but love each other so much.

I have been busy with stuff. You know the usual household stuff, being the Neighborhood treasurer, getting involved with a few different ministries at church.

So there you have it. A short little nutshell of what we have been up to the past few months.

Hope you are all well too.

this is my life.

Dumpster diving and roadside finds!

this is my life.

Socks are always missing...and why do boys always have holes in their socks?

this is my life.

Cooking with my 3 year old....even when it means a little extra clean up.

this is my life.

Things are never where they belong. My Evan has a thing for the toliet.

Poor Jack (aka- the dog).

this is my life.

Jumbled up train table.

this is my life....

...catching my 1 year old in the kitchen sink with the dirty breakfast dishes.

this is my life.

I was totally inspired by Bethany's "this is my life" series that I decided to join with her.

Rocked my socks off.

A New Kind of Urban Christian
As the city goes, so goes the culture.
Tim Keller

In the winter of 2006, two movies mirrored the fractured and confusing
relationship between Christians and culture. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe struck fear in many secular hearts. Some journalists saw it as an ominous sign of growing right-wing power that a company like Disney would make a movie that had such profound evangelical appeal (and, arguably, content). And why did Disney pull the plug on the gay-friendly TV reality series Welcome to the Neighborhood? Isn't this, the pundits asked, what happens when you let Christians influence culture?
At the same time, The End of the Spear, the account of five evangelical missionaries martyred in Ecuador, upset some Christians when it was discovered that an active gay man was playing Nate Saint, the lead role in the movie. Conservative cultural commentators were divided. Some, like Eugene Veith of World magazine, urged Christians to see the movie and judge it on its artistic merits, not on the morals of its actors off screen. Others urged a boycott. Major questions about Christianity and culture were raised on hundreds of websites. What makes a movie "Christian"? Do all the actors have to be Christians? If not, which kinds of sinners are allowed, and which are not? Is spiritual compromise inevitable when Christians try to enter mainstream cultural production?
The relationship of Christians to culture is the singular current crisis point for the church. Evangelicals are deeply divided over how to interact with a social order that is growing increasingly post-Christian. Some advise a reemphasis on tradition and on "letting the church be the church," rejecting any direct attempt to influence society as a whole. Others are hostile to culture, but hopeful that they can change it through aggressive action, often of a political sort. Still others believe that "you change culture one heart at a time." Finally, many are attracted to the new culture and want to reengineer the church to modify its adversarial relationship with culture. Many in the "one heart at a time" party play down doctrine and stress experience, while some in the reengineering group are changing distinctives of evangelical doctrine in the name of cultural engagement. That is fueling much theological controversy, but even people who agree on the need for change disagree over what to do to our doctrine to reach the culture.
None of the strategies listed above should be abandoned. We need Christian tradition, Christians in politics, and effective evangelism. And the church has always contextualized itself into its surrounding culture. There are harmful excesses in every approach, however. I think that is because many have turned their specialty into a single magic bullet that will solve the whole problem. I doubt such a magic bullet exists, but just bundling them all together is not sufficient either.
Instead, we need a new and different strategy.City Within a City
My first strategic point is simple: More Christians should live long-term in cities. Historians point out that by A.D. 300, the urban populations of the Roman Empire were largely Christian, while the countryside was pagan. (Indeed, the word pagan originally meant someone from the countryside—its use as a synonym for a non-Christian dates from this era.) The same was true during the first millennium A.D. in Europe—the cities were Christian, but the broad population across the countryside was pagan. The lesson from both eras is that when cities are Christian, even if the majority of the population is pagan, society is headed on a Christian trajectory. Why? As the city goes, so goes the culture. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flow outward to the rest of society.
People who live in large urban cultural centers, occupying jobs in the arts, business, academia, publishing, the helping professions, and the media, tend to have a disproportionate impact on how things are done in our culture. Having lived and ministered in New York City for 17 years, I am continually astonished at how the people I live with and know affect what everyone else in the country sees on the screen, in print, in art, and in business.
I am not talking about the "elite-elites"—the rich and famous—but about the "grassroots-elites." It is not so much the top executives that make MTV what it is, but the scores of young, hip creatives just out of college who take jobs at all levels of the organization. The people who live in cities in the greatest numbers tend to see their values expressed in the culture.
Do I mean that all Christians must live in cities? No. We need Christians and churches everywhere there are people! But I have taken up the call of the late James Montgomery Boice, an urban pastor (at Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church) who knew that evangelical Christians have been particularly unwilling to live in cities. In his book Two Cities: Two Loves, he argued that evangelicals should live in cities in at least the same percentage as the general population. If we do not, we should not expect much influence in society.
Once in cities, Christians should be a dynamic counterculture. It is not enough for Christians to simply live as individuals in the city. They must live as a particular kind of community. Jesus told his disciples that they were "a city on a hill" that showed God's glory to the world (Matt. 5:14-16). Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city, an alternate human culture within every human culture, to show how sex, money, and power can be used in nondestructive ways.
Regarding sex, the alternate city avoids secular society's idolization of sex and traditional society's fear of it. It is a community that so loves and cares for its members that chastity makes sense. It teaches its members to conform their bodily beings to the shape of the gospel—abstinence outside of marriage and fidelity within. Regarding money, the Christian counterculture encourages a radically generous commitment of time, money, relationships, and living space to social justice and the needs of the poor, the immigrant, and the economically and physically weak. Regarding power, Christian community is visibly committed to power-sharing and relationship-building between races and classes that are alienated outside of the body of Christ. The practical evidence of this will be churches that are increasingly multiethnic, both in the congregations at large and in their leadership.
It will not be enough for Christians to form a culture that runs counter to the values of the broader culture. Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole. We must move out to sacrificially serve the good of the whole human community, especially the poor. Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world, but to renew it. God's purpose is not only saving individuals, but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.
So Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their city and their neighbors, loving them in word and in deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, Israel's exiles were called not just to live in the city, but also to love it and work for its shalom—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. The citizens of God's city are the best possible citizens of their earthly cities.
This is the only kind of cultural engagement that will not corrupt us and conform us to the world's pattern of life. If Christians go to urban centers simply to acquire power, they will never achieve cultural influence and change that is deep, lasting, and embraced by the broader society. We must live in the city to serve all the peoples in it, not just our own tribe. We must lose our power to find our (true) power. Christianity will not be attractive enough to win influence except through sacrificial service to all people, regardless of their beliefs.
This strategy (if we must call it that) will work. In every culture, some Christian conduct will be offensive and attacked, but some will be moving and attractive to outsiders. "Though they accuse you … they may see your good deeds and glorify God" (1 Peter 2:12, see also Matt. 5:16). In the Middle East, a Christian sexual ethic makes sense, but not "turn the other cheek." In secular New York City, the Christian teaching on forgiveness and reconciliation is welcome, but our sexual ethics seem horribly regressive. Every non-Christian culture has enough common grace to recognize some of the work of God in the world and to be attracted to it, even while Christianity in other ways will offend the prevailing culture.
So we must neither just denounce the culture nor adopt it. We must sacrificially serve the common good, expecting to be constantly misunderstood and sometimes attacked. We must walk in the steps of the one who laid down his life for his opponents.The Worldview of Work
There is another important component to being a Christian counterculture for the common good. Christians should be a people who integrate their faith with their work. Culture is a set of shared practices, attitudes, values, and beliefs, which are rooted in common understandings of the "big questions"—where life comes from, what life means, who we are, and what is important enough to spend our time doing it in the years allotted to us. No one can live or do their work without some answers to such questions, and every set of answers shapes culture.
Most fields of work today are dominated by a very different set of answers from those of Christianity. But when many Christians enter a vocational field, they either seal off their faith and work like everyone else around them, or they spout Bible verses to their coworkers. We do not know very well how to persuade people of Christianity's answers by showing them the faith-based, worldview roots of everyone's work. We do not know how to equip our people to think out the implications of the gospel for art, business, government, journalism, entertainment, and scholarship. Developing humane, creative, and excellent business environments out of our understanding of the gospel can be part of this work. The embodiment of joy, hope, and truth in the arts is also part of this work. If Christians live in major cultural centers in great numbers, doing their work in an excellent but distinctive manner, that alone will produce a different kind of culture than the one in which we live now.
Jewish society sought spiritual power, while Greek society valued wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22-25). Each culture was dominated by a hope that Paul's preaching revealed to be an idol. Yet only in Christ, the true "wisdom of God" for Greeks and the true "power of God" for Jews, could their cultural storylines find a happy ending. The church envisioned in this article attracts people to Christianity by showing how Christ resolves our society's cultural problems and fulfills its cultural hopes. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

"This article first appeared in the May 2006 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."

Hooray for a sandbox!

sandbox on the hill.









having fun playing!











Thanks Grandpa and Grandma!

Ever since we moved to this house I thought it would be great if the boys had a sandbox under our tree on the hill, because there is a little path leading up to a flat area that would be perfect for a sandbox. Well, this past weekend, while my parents were here they purchased the supplies needed, and Justin and my Dad built this sandbox! The boys are in love!

Congratulations Chad and Mel!

Juliana Piper Mondragon

was born this morning at 12:09am.

Chad (pastor at our church) and Melody are her proud parents.

She was5 lbs 15 oz and 19 inches long...a peanut!

Isn't she just adorable?!!!

Love him more.

Ah Monday. Here we are again.

Last week was a long one. Once Friday hit though, I was happy. Justin golfed in the morning, we had dinner with friends, and Saturday was spent watching college football. Relaxing, yeah, that's what it was. Very relaxing. Sunday we went to church, had a nice lunch, watched some more football and went to our Community training at church Sunday night. It was a refreshing time, and I spent some good time in the word.

During the week, like most people, I am busy, keeping up with laundry, cleaning the house, cleaning up after a three year old and one year old, playing with a three year old and one year old, and various other things like running errands and cooking. These things seem to take precedence over my time with God too often.
I was hoping to start off Monday with a bang! Ready to go. It started with a bang alright, a banging, throbbing headache.
Oh boy.
I am tempted to go into complain mode, and list off all the things I really do not want to do this week, but instead this week I find myself wanting to be in the word. To focus on Christ and his goodness. To nip that bad attitude before it starts, to be ready for whatever life throws my way because I have spent time with God, in his splendor, glorifying his goodness and can glorify him amidst whatever is going on in my life.
Isn't it so easy to cry out to God when we are sad, hurting, and needy? I find that it is most times for me. Times when I am really down, feeling lost, feeling hopeless I then cry out to God and ask, beg for his mercy, his help his guidance.
Um, Hello?
Does anyone else see the problem here?
I am ashamed (as I should be) to admit that lately I have been tending to ignore God until I need him. Well, how in the world can I expect to grow, to encourage others, to be encouraged, to give him the glory he deserves, to be happy? No matter what there will be ups and downs in life, but we need to love God and get to know him more ALL the time. Not just when we need him to comfort us.
In life we look for happiness in all the wrong places, we all do it, in different ways. Whether in things, in our homes, in our beautiful gardens, in our rockin' car, in our husband, in our children, in our work, in whatever it may be when the ONLY thing that can truly satisfy us in every way is Christ. I mean that should be so obvious. None of those other things are perfect. Our homes come with it's problems, perhaps a leaking roof or broken kitchen drawer, in our gardens sometimes all our plants do not always flourish, our cars get a flat tire, or in a fender-bender, our husband and our children will disappoint us, but Christ, Christ will NEVER disappoint. He is perfect! The only perfection we can have in our lives.
I came across this quote awhile back and I think it is very encouraging.

"I cannot bear it—that we should love Jesus little. It seems to me horrible. Not to have your heart all on fire for Christ—this is execrable! Let us love him to the utmost. Let us ask him to give us larger hearts, and to fire them with the flame that is his own, that we may love him to the utmost possibilities of affection."- Charles Spurgeon.

I encourage you today to be in his word, to be thinking and mediating on him so that you may be satisfied in him and more importantly that he may be glorified no matter what.

church home.

Finally, we have found a church home (and no that is not the building, this one is in the United Kingdom)! We have been going for about a month and we like the preaching, the pastors, and the people. In fact, the church is a church plant, so there are only about 30 people who currently attend, but that's okay too! We are excited to finally feel more settled in somewhere where Gods word is preached, and maybe we can finally make some friends here in Kentucky! We have joined a small group and soon they will be launching a class on Sunday nights where we will be going through the church values.

Thank you all for your prayers.

I don't want to assume, but in my experience...

Silk soy milk is the only soy milk worth drinking.

The more homeless the person looks who is taking your blood or administering your shot, the better.

If a photographer has pictures of cats dressed up in their store front window, you do not want them taking your family portrait.

A coffee a day keeps the headache away.

Dusting is overrated.

Driving through a college campus will make you want to roll your windows down and blast some great music...or npr.

Cottage cheese and pineapples is an incredible snack. It also reminds me of my Grandfather.

Winnie the Pooh is so over, for nurseries anyway. I am so sick of that silly ol' bear.

Oranges are way better than apples, but let's be frank apples are easier to eat.

A good high-calorie burger is well worth it every once in awhile.

Pretty dish towels inspire cooking.

Labor Day at the Louisville Zoo

polar bear having an apple for lunch.

lazy rhinos.

break time.

Lucky boy.

Happy, as usual.

on the zoo train...

When we pulled up to the Zoo parking lot, we looked at each other with an "uh-oh" in our eyes. Once inside the park however, it was not as bad as we thought. It was busy, but the park is so big that it was grand day at the zoo!