A blessed weekend

As I shared on Facebook earlier – we had a wonderful weekend celebrating a dear friend’s birthday on Friday night, celebrating my sister’s adoption of two amazing kids yesterday and then taking part in their dedication on Sunday.

Each of the events were great reminders that I’m blessed with amazing friends and family and have so much to give thanks for.

I wasn’t able to take as many photos as I would have liked at any of the events but I do have a few videos and photos from Aaron’s party Friday night.

For what it’s worth:

Spanking and Proverbs

UPDATE: I thought this article offered an interesting perspective:

I learned to fear my parents – especially my father, to lie whenever possible to spare myself the possibility of being hurt/spanked again, to not trust my parents, and to hide my innermost thoughts, feelings, and struggles from my parents because I feared and did not trust them. I did not seek out their wisdom and teachings at the times I needed it the most because I did not trust them to understand and not hurt me. I have friends who sought out their parents’ guidance about nearly everything in their lives during their teen and young adult years. Those were my friends who were not spanked regularly or at all as children.

UPDATE: I got a text from my sister thinking this was a post written by me. It’s not.

The above paragraph is a quote from an article about spanking and different translations of “the rod” in Proverbs 13:24 and elsewhere. I offered the quote without any commentary because I’m still chewing on some of these ideas.

When you see a black bar with a chain link above a post on my site – it’s a link back to another article I’m sharing. You can click the title and it will take you to the linked post. Also, a green bar on the left (now with an orange box behind it) with an indention means the text next to the green bar is a quote. Also, a blue box with a quotation mark on the left signifies a quote.

Apparently the usability is not as usable as I thought. One of the first rules in usability is if you have to explain how to use it – it’s not user friendly. So maybe I’ll need to go back to the drawing board.

Our Zambian son

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We had a dear loved one pass away recently and someone asked, “Was it family or a friend?”

I had a hard time knowing how to answer it. Technically and officially in the light of the law he was “just a friend.” But to our family members he’s so much more than that.

“Friend” just doesn’t do the relationship justice.

In the same way, calling my best friend Matt, “my best friend” or just “Matt” doesn’t really do him justice either. Which is why we always refer to him as “brother” or Uncle Matt with our boys.

Have any “friends” like that?

All that to say, while it may confuse some, my “sister” Kathryn is living and working in Zambia right now and just sent us a number of photos in an email titled, “Your Zambian son.”

That does my heart good.

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Our family has sponsored Lupiya through Family Legacy thanks to Kathryn’s work. He lives with his grandmother and several cousins in Lusaka, Zambia.

Separated by thousands of miles and yet we can still call one another family.

Isn’t it good to know that family goes far beyond anything a law, a blood relationship or even geography can define?

There’s no blood or law uniting us – it’s something much stronger – love.

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Find out more about child sponsorship through Family Legacy.

New photos 9/23/12

I’m realizing it’s been a while since I’ve done any regular photography (outside of snapshots with my iPhone) so I want to work at getting to refresh my memory and my new camera better — so I’m going to try and take a photo a day for the rest of the year – trying new tricks each day.

Today I played with the aperture and ISO a bit and grabbed a few shots of Laurie and the boys while they watched TV.

The only alterations were size and removing the red eye from Hayden’s photo.