The Lord has truly blessed us this year: our home is nearly finished, He gave me a great new job, and we are joyously awaiting the birth of our eighth child, Micah Kathleen. God is good. Don’t forget to take time this Christmas to thank Him for all that you have and all that He is.
I can proudly say that I spent WAY more on gifts for my wife, mother, and in-laws this year than I did on my kids. That is saying something in light of the fact that I have 7 children. In previous years, Valerie and I have felt that the kids get too much and don’t appreciate things the way they should because they get too many presents. So, we tried to tone things down a bit this year.
First, I got Valerie a Kodak Z712 IS camera. It is a 2007 model that I got for a VERY good price. I, ahem…SHE, loves it! It is not too big, can act as a point and shoot, but also has the whistles and bells of a higher end camera (with out the price).
Then, we gave a Kodak P720 digital picture frame for both my mother and Valerie’s parents. This was the first year in a long time that we knew immediately that our gift was a hit with Peter: he immediately opened the box, read the manual, and went home and loaded the thing with like 300 pictures.
Like I said, we toned things down a lot for the kids. S has been longing for an American Girl Doll, so it was decided that we would go together with our parents to get her one. That would be her only present this year since it is such a large ticket item.
We got A a sketch book called “The Girl’s Doodle Book” along with a deluxe set of 50 Crayola colored pencils. I wasn’t sure if she would like it, but man, she tells me every day how much she likes it.
S wanted a Webkinz, but not just any Webkinz. He wanted a bat. The problem, however, was that the bat was a special Halloween Webkinz. It pretty much sold out in stores in October, so off to eBay I went. I actually got one for the same price I would have paid at Meijer.
We got N a G.I. Joe motorcycle/action figure set. He pretty much likes anything that S likes, and we figured that they could play with it together.
A is only two, so she has particular tastes. We say a pair of slippers that looked like princess shoes. She wore them for three days straight after she opened them, so I guess they were a hit.
C, our 16 month old, loves books. One in particular he loves is “Brown Bear, Brown Bear”. Our former copy was a traditional paper copy which had been toddlered to death. So, we found a heavy duty board book edition for him. I also gave him a board book copy of “I Love You, Stinky Face”, which is also a hit.
My wife saw how desperately I needed a new wallet, so she went to Khol’s (there was a sale!) and gave me a nice bi-fold. I particularly like the fact that it holds 6 cards in independent pockets and it has two separate bill compartments. Very nice.
Valerie also got me “Christmas Vacation” on DVD. I don’t know any guy in America that wouldn’t love that. Then, my mother gave me some money and I ordered “Lost: Season 4″ from Amazon (one click, baby!) and a few compact discs from Best Buy: Nickle Creek’s first album and Brad Paisley’s “Play”. Good stuff.
Someone once told me that contentment is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. I feel very content this Christmas. That’s a good thing.
I took a few pictures on Valerie’s new camera to give you a taste of what Christmas was like at the Burton home this year.
Well, actually, it’s Amazon’s gift to you, but I am claiming a finders fee. Amazon.com is having “25 Days of Free” this month and is giving away a new digital download Christmas song every day until the 25th. Some of the songs are not worth downloading, but there are some that are pretty good. Leigh Nash’s version of “Last Christmas” is great (better than the original, in my opinion) and Rosie Thomas’ “Why Can’t It Be Christmas Time All Year” is just plain fun. Other artists that you can find on the tightwad list are Big Daddy Weave, Jars Of Clay, BNL, Vince Guaraldi (think Charlie Brown), and Trio West. If you are looking for some new Christmas music but not willing to part with your cash, this is a good way to get your fix without breaking any copyright laws.
Merry Christmas!
Dear Friends,
God has blessed us in many ways this year. A new home, a new church, and best of all, a new baby girl. We pray that God will bless you in the coming year as much as He has blessed us in 2008.
Merry Christmas!
Luke, Valerie & Family
View our Smilebox card here.
Let me start by saying that I attribute much of my marital bliss to my wife’s KitchenAid mixer. She received one for Christmas the first year we were married and it is running at least 2 hours a day, I kid you not. Women, if you don’t have one, it’s a good bet they are on sale at Kohl’s, so go pick one up…your man will thank you.
Well, I have been searching for quite some time for the man’s equivalent to the KitchenAid mixer and at long last I have found it. It’s called a sliding compound miter saw and it is 15 amps of beveling, cross-cutting bliss. I picked one up on sale at Sears a week ago because I am pretty much circular saw incompetent. I can’t cut a straight line with one of those to save my life, but with my new love, I am practically Bob Vila and Ty Pennington rolled into one. I can’t make a bad cut! It cuts anything under 12 inches wide and 4 inches deep. It even has a cool laser to line up everything. I strongly encourage every guy reading to stop what you are doing and immediately go and get one. Yeah, it’s that important.
Oh, the house is going well, by the way. If you feel like lifting some trusses, feel free to stop by this Saturday. We will get started around 7 AM…and bring a hammer.
Did you watch LOST tonight? Was that the best episode ever or what! They have written many neat, weird, quirky twists into this series, but the whole time/mind travel thing was really cool. I have to say that I think that this is my favorite episode so far in the whole LOST experience. There have been like 80 episodes, right? This one is by far the top of my list.
For those of you that don’t know, I started watching LOST when the network was running re-runs between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2004. I just happened upon the first episode and told Valerie about this new show where a bunch of plane crash survivors were on a strange island with polar bears and stuff. She watched episode 2 with me and we have been hooked ever since. It is the only show we watch.
The thing that makes it so unique is the character development. So many shows anymore are all plot or just use sarcasm or filthy humor as the basis of the show. LOST lets you into the lives of these people and you begin to understand them, see yourself in them, and realize that they are not much different than yourself in a lot of ways. Sure they survived a major plane crash and are stranded on a tropical island with a bunch of strange Others who have lived there for a while and there are these crazy hatches everywhere and no one from the main land seems to know the place exists, but other than that, they are just like you and me. Oh, and they had to push a button every 108 minutes or the world would blow up…and these certain numbers keep popping up everywhere…and everyone seems to have murdered someone in their previous life…other that that, they are just like you and me. That’s why the show is so good.
As many of you know, I like coffee. I recently read a study that got me thinking about which kind of coffee I like and why I like it. The study used wine and had tasters pick their favorite glass of wine from a line up ranging in price from $10 a bottle up to $100 a bottle. People consistently rated the expensive wine as their favorite. Here’s the catch: the wine that they were served didn’t necessarily match the label on the bottle. They THOUGHT they were drinking expensive wine, but they may have actually been drinking the cheap stuff. Nevertheless, they rated it as their favorite. Similar studies have produced similar results with perfume. It seems that the image we have in our minds of what a product SHOULD be like effects how our brain likes or dislikes a product.
So, I got to thinking about coffee. Is Starbucks REALLY that good, or does our brain just process it as desirable because of the expectation we have of it? As with all good opinion pieces, I will use anecdotal evidence to support my theory.
Not long before my grandmother passed, she came over to the house with my mom to see our kids. I offered to make them some coffee and when they tasted it, grandma made a point to tell me how good it was. I mean she REALLY liked it. She was drinking Aldi coffee.
We had the family over for Christmas breakfast this year and I made a big carafe of coffee in advance. I like the glass lined carafes with the pump top. They keep the coffee hot for a few hours without cooking or burning the flavor. Anyway, my mother-in-law mentioned how good the coffee was. She even joked about how you can’t beat a good cup of Starbucks thinking that it was Starbucks. She was drinking Foldger’s Columbian that I picked up on sale for $2.50 a pound.
So, as you can see, it has been my experience that people tend to think favorably about coffee when it truly tastes good, even though it may not be what they traditionally think of as being a gourmet brand, if they don’t have the bias of packaging and marketing to interfere with their taste buds. I wonder how many poor tasting cups of coffee are served every day at Starbucks but people think it is good? You know, the best cup of coffee I have ever had was served to me at a Waffle House in Virginia. I think I paid ยข50 for it. They guy who served me had a peg leg, but that is a story for another day.
I was at prayer meeting a week ago and one of the requests that has been on the list for a while is for a person to coordinate community relations for the church. I inquired about this and found out that it is primarily a need to promote “Experience Bethlehem”, the church Christmas ministry. Anyway, the conversation lead to discussion about a church web site and I discovered that Clear Fork Alliance does not have one and the creation of one is not eminent. I told Pastor Mike that I have done that kind of thing before and would be interested in working on it if needed. He said he would check with the person who had been working on a site and get back to me. Well, last Wednesday at prayer meeting, PM said that I could have at it.
For some time I have been thinking about how to make a church web site into more than just a virtual visitors guide. I mean, let’s face it, that’s what the majority of church sites are. A static list of data that never is updated. Since Joe average visitor prefers to find info via the web, the site is used the way a yellow pages ad or newspaper listing was used 20 or 30 years ago.
Then I watched my wife blog. Man, can Valerie blog! I’m proud to say that there are no Google Ads adorning her blog and she is in it purely for the relationship building value blogging brings. It is the growth in her relationships that really started me thinking about having a church web site be a ministry.
That’s when the light went on. Why not make the church site a blog? Why limit the content of a church site to static data like times, locations, and a list of core beliefs? Why not allow the people in the church to express themselves by posting about their lives…what God is doing, how He is working, their faith in Him. Readers (church members and potential visitors) would be able to better know the body of believers and see what the church is REALLY about. Let’s face it, can a person really know what a church is like by looking at a picture of the building and reading their mission statement?
I think it would be great to have two main areas: static info that will serve as an advertisement for potential visitors and a blog area where there are new postings daily or weekly. Obviously, in order to have new posts, we will need writers to submit work and topics for them to write about. Here are some possibilities I have thought of:
I think if we had 2 or 3 regular people submitting posts weekly and then asked people for testimonies (we could post a new one each week), we could have enough new content to keep the site fresh. If people wanted to subscribe to the RSS feed, they could even get the posts delivered to their in-boxes! Also, if there is anyone into photography or video production, this could be a great way for them to express themselves.
I will post on how this church blog goes. I think the biggest challenge is going to be to make it visually look like a church site rather than a blog. Also, getting writers on board with the concept of it being a ministry may be a challenge. We’ll see how it goes.