More Birthday Fun

The bit of girly face you can see in the first photo with Mia is Kennedy. I promise more photos to come that will do these kids justice. Kennedy's little sister, Taylor, was in attendance, jumping like a little frog...

T-Hawk got into the Mickey-Mouse spirit of it all. He and Aunt Suzy kept Mia for us so we could go to hear Rob Bell in Dallas last night. Suzy dressed Mia in a super-cute dress that looked like something Minnie Mouse would wear, bought decorations and tons of balloons for the party. I have to say that the party was great, especially because of all of the help we had throwing it.













Chad and Shannon, my favorite cousins, came to celebrate. They are the parents of Kennedy and Taylor, two of the cutest and smartest little people I know. This photo is blurry--it is not your eyes, or any physical issue with Chad or Shannon.

Morgan jumped so much that she had to actually stop and rest a little bit! She is a great friend to Mia, and her mommy and daddy are great friends to Stacy and me (touching moment, I know). "Are these kids all beautiful?" you might ask. "Yes. Yes, they are" would be the correct response.








Here's Melissa, aka "Moo," who was just turning four, herself, a couple of years back, with her eldest daughter, Ryan. Ryan and Reagan came to par-tay, and that's just what they did. The Lees are another group of people I categorize as favorites of mine--they are good at just living and being kind and fun.







This is Reagan "Ray" Lee, Moo's other babygirl.












Here is T-Hawk, Brandy, Moo, my big sister, Donna, and Connie's back. The adults seemed to really enjoy watching the kiddos bounce, so much so that we literally became spectators in the stands!

I will add more photos as I get them. I didn't get a good shot of Mark or Chris or James--I barely got to really speak to anyone, it seems.

Our friends Brandy and Chase came (poor Chase was the ONLY boy kid there), as did our friends Kathy and Emily (Emily always takes extra care with Mia--it is really touching). I know we got some photos of everyone, but Stacy and I left our camera in the gym, so I guess we won't really know what we got until we get it back. If you like birthday party pictures, then stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Party Extravaganza Day!

Here's Mia in distress in the bouncy moonwalk room. If you want to have a blast, throw eight kids into one of these and watch them go!

Radical Honesty

This post is not original to me; I copied it and literally pasted it from Emerging Penses. The concept of Radical Honesty is really attractive and intriguing to me, though--it is so far from how I live my life each day that it seems revolutionary to me! It is though-provoking, at least. Anyway, all of the green is Mike's post:

AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, recently wrote an article for Esquire about a movement called Radical Honesty. According to Jacobs:

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough -- a world without fibs -- but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

It's an interesting theory, and this guy apparently seems to really live by it. Jacobs describes his initial contact with Blanton:

I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: "I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you're not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists."

I'm already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail -- that I haven't ordered all his books on Amazon yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: "Thanks for your honesty in attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been."

Blanton is not a Christian, in fact he doesn't believe in the categories of morality--only in pragmatism. He simply asserts that radical honesty is the only way to true relationships and real communication--it provides you with a better life. No hiding, no masks, no pretension. He says that even all the little white lies we tell in order to not hurt other's feelings are really harmful, and that people would be better served if we just told them the truth and allowed them to tell the truth to us as well. But he also says the point is relationship. After you tell the truth, even if it's offensive or hard for them to hear, you stick with them and help them work through it until the tension is resolved.

So here is a guy that is taking literally the bible's command to not lie, and yet how many Christians would be willing to adopt his lifestyle of radical honesty? Would you? And if not, what are the reasons we give ourselves for why we shouldn't be completely honest all the time? (In other words, why we shouldn't do exactly what the Bible says.)

Ecological Footprint Quiz

I stumbled onto this quiz through another Blog that I have been enjoying: Emerging Pensees. Mike Clawson is a young pastor in Illinois who wrestles with how we are to live our lives as authentic, vibrant and dynamic Christians who love everyone we come into contact with, even non-Christians (gulp!). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have recently learned that I am very sympathetic to the Emerging Church movement, and this is mostly because I see in its attitudes the love for one another that Christ commanded. Evidently, there are other movements in Christianity that consider the Emerging movement to be heretical (one writer went so far as to say that Kyle Lake--the Baptist Pastor who graduated from Lee just after me, who was Emergent and who was electrocuted while performing a baptism in front of his congregation--was killed by God for his Emergent message! I may be simple-minded here, but when offered two "versions" of Christianity, one which teaches love and tolerance and that focuses on Grace, and one which takes satisfaction when someone outside of its in-group dies, I findmyself attracted to the loving, graceful version.

Anyway, Mike Clawson is intelligent and thoughtful, and always respectful of all sides of the issues he addresses. I hope I am anything near like him.

Here are my quiz results:

	CATEGORY ACRES FOOD 4.7 MOBILITY 3.2 SHELTER 4.4 GOODS/SERVICES 6.9 TOTAL FOOTPRINT 19
	IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
	IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.3 PLANETS.

If you want to take this quiz, yourself, click HERE.