Fellow Bloggers Share the Love Shout Out

After a bit of a lull in the blogging world (at least among my friends), everyone put up a new post, all of a sudden. Go check them out! (And I have to say, it's always a little thrill when you get a comment, so be a peach and leave some while you're poking around.)

Courtney is lamenting the Astros and thinking about her daughter's tiny feet.

Meredith and Ken are learning how to sew--Ken made his own shorts! I talked to him today, and he said his next project is a shirt for the cat. Not sure how well that will go over. :) But Meredith's pillows rock.

Lori is the bargain queen and is testing a new online coupon class. Let her know if you want to be one of her test subjects.

Amanda wrote a great entry on temptation and our calling to make sure there are no chinks in our armor.

Major Prayer Request

Before I move on to posting a fun post, I wanted to ask you to pray for our friend's sister, Sara. Her husband, Joe, was killed in an accident last week. They had 4 children, and obviously, the family is really struggling. Here's a link to an article about what happened: http://www.twincities.com/ci_6489960?source=most_emailed

Prayer Requests, Round 2

Here are some more prayer requests:

1. The S's just had a miscarriage and are devastated. Please pray for peace and healing for them.

2. Praise: Jeremy came home from the hospital! This is great news! However, please pray for his continued recovery--Julia says it will be quite a road. They are still trying to figure out which drug to give him long-term, and it's a long process.

3. Pray for Brittany and Matt, who are taking a big leap and moving to Indiana for Matt to pursue a master's degree in atmospheric science, something he has always been interested in. They are excited about this new period in their lives and glad to be pursuing something Matt was so obviously created to do, but they will miss Boston a lot, especially their friends and their church. The move is happening extremely fast, too, so pray for as little stress as possible!

4. Sarah & Ryan are going on a mission trip to Haiti this Saturday. Pray for safety and God's effectiveness. Pray they'll be open to whatever the Lord has for them to do.

5. Pray for Liz as she takes the Bar this week. Also pray for the remainder of the funding for the Monk Tour to come in quickly.

6. As far as I know, we should continue to pray for Matt, who needs to hit bottom with his drug addiction. His parents are very worried about him but are trying to handle the issue with godliness and tough love. Pray that he hits bottom hard and soon so that recovery can begin.

7. Pray for Brittany, who needs to hit bottom, as well, in order to learn some wisdom. She is a very young woman trying to make it on her own without having had much parental guidance or support. She is spurning wise counsel, lying to those trying to help her, and being manipulative. Pray for hard lessons to be learned so that her life won't continue as it is.

8. Will is looking for a police job in New Haven, CT, as well as some other small towns. It'll be awesome for him and Stephanie if he gets one of these jobs, so pray for that to happen!

9. Pray for Baby Benesh. Please pray for his/her health, and you can just go ahead and start praying now for us to be good parents! I'm sure we will need all the wisdom we can get.

I Killed It

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready for work on my late day (when I don't go in until 12), and I popped a potato in the microwave to bake while I was getting dressed.

So I finished blowing my hair dry, came out of the bathroom, and smelled smoke. Actually, I saw smoke, too. I immediately started running around the apartment, trying to find the source of the smoke, because I'm thinking, "Dangit, I'm late for work, but I can't leave until I make sure the house isn't burning down!" I checked the candle--it was fine. I checked both laptops--they were fine. Then, as I was trying to figure out in which area of the apartment the smell was strongest, I thought, "My potato!" So I went running into the kitchen and opened the microwave door.

I have never seen anything like this. At least, not in a microwave. This potato was not just burnt; it was totally charred. You know how when your campfire is about gone, there are black embers that still glow red around the edges? It was like that. Totally black, but with some bright red, glowing edges. It looked like a piece of charcoal.

So I tried to pick it up with a spatula so I could put it in the sink, and the thing broke in half. It was then that I saw that it was totally charred throughout.

When we got home that night, I showed Nathan what had happened, and he laughed. Then he tried to use the microwave, and that is when we realized that it was dead. I had killed it.

I don't know what exactly killed the microwave, but I have a hunch that the potato might have been flaming.

Lesson of the Day: Do not microwave a tiny potato for 10 minutes. (I blame this lack of common sense on my pregnancy brain.) Reasons not to turn your food into charcoal:
a. You avoid your house smelling like a smoker lives there.
b. You avoid the embarrassment of calling the landlady, who is 72 and lives above you and will freak out when she smells smoke, to tell her not to worry, that you simply nuked a potato.

The Obligatory Comment on Harry Potter

I read online today that the latest (and last) Harry Potter book, HP7 we'll call it, sold so many copies this weekend that its revenues were higher than opening weekend for the HP movie. HELLO. That is huge. I think that there were 8.3 million copies sold--just in the U.S.--this weekend. That worked out to 5000 a minute.

And yes, Nathan and I were one of those 8.3 million. We really like Harry Potter. We have all the books, and Nathan re-read all of them in preparation for reading the last one. I re-read the last two. I pre-ordered the book from Amazon, got a huge discount and free shipping, and didn't even expect to get it until Monday or Tuesday (we weren't one of those people in costume standing in line at midnight on Friday--although there were a ton of them in Harvard Square, renamed Hogwarts Square, on Friday afternoon, and we did enjoy walking around and seeing all the costumes). However, our copy arrived the day the book came out, on Saturday, so I got to start reading right away.

I finished that sucker in 24 hours. All 759 pages of it. And it was great.

That's all I can really say. I don't want to give anything away for any of you who want to read it but haven't yet, and Nathan has sentenced me to silence until he is done. It was killing me, not being able to talk to him about it when I got to an exciting part. But in a nutshell, a lot of questions are answered, a few people die, and the end is very satisfying. I liked it. :)

Blueberry Picking

We went blueberry picking this weekend! I love blueberry picking. We've been once before, a few years ago, when we picked a whopping 12 lbs. of blueberries. It was ridiculous. Ridiculously wonderful. We had blueberry crisps all summer long, and it was awesome. We didn't pick 12 lbs. this time, but we got plenty! And we had some fun. We headed out early in the morning, before it got hot and crowded, and we had a really fun time picking, eating, checking out the animals, and going through the hedge maze. The place is called Honeypot Hill in Stow, for anyone who wants to go.

The New Hair

Oh my gosh, I love my new haircut! Compared to that last picture, it just looks 100 times better. Yay!

Month 4 Belly Picture

Nathan took this picture of me the other morning. This is Month 4, or Week 16.


Check out the difference 3 weeks makes! Here I am just 3 or 4 weeks ago:

Benesh Bonanza

As most of you know, central Texas has been deluged lately with a ton of rain. Nathan's parents live there (Nathan's college roommates dubbed their place the Benesh Bonanza), and Deborah went out and took a few pictures of how green everything is. She also got some awesome shots of storm clouds. Thought y'all would enjoy these. They sure made us homesick!

Livvy the Water Snob

One of our cats, Livvy, is a water snob. She would much rather drink from the bathroom sink or the bathtub than her water bowl. We have almost broken her of running into the bathroom, jumping up on the sink, and meowing expectantly every time we go in there. I was getting a little tired of cleaning up cat footprints in the bathroom sink--that cannot be hygienic. But the thing we'll probably continue to let her do is jump into the bathtub after we get out of the shower. She LOVES this. She does it every single time she gets a chance. We are not really sure why she likes it so much. You'd expect that the reason is so she could drink all the water, right? Well, she doesn't drink that much--rather, she watches it. Yes, our cat likes to watch the water drip. This is a little weird. We think maybe she thinks it's cooler in there than the rest of the house because she gets a little wet, or else she just likes to watch the water drip.

Anyway, it was cracking me up this morning and thought maybe someone else would think this odd behavior is kind of funny, too.

What is a Meme, Anyway?

So apparently part of the blogging world includes memes (see post below). The person who tagged me for a meme didn't know exactly what it was, and the best we could figure--based on other people's blogs--is that a meme is a list.

But I got curious and looked it up on Wikipedia. Wow, I am now officially a nerd. There is a whole academic article on memes. Basically, memes are pieces of information or ideas that spread from one person to another until they're a cultural phenomenon.

Or, in the words of Wikipedia, a meme is "a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution, or diffusion — propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution." Wow, that's a mouthful.

In a nutshell, a meme is something that proliferates the culture. For example, have you seen the video of the kid who filmed himself going all out with a light saber to Star Wars music? What about the Yale grad who fabricated all kinds of ridiculous claims about himself and sent in a video to an investment banking firm as a resume--"Impossible is Nothing." What about the dancing baby in the 90's? They all got passed around to tons of people. All examples of internet memes.

So now we know.

What I still don't get is why a list is considered a meme, unless that particular topic is hugely popular or something.

Five Things I Dig About Jesus

So I have been tagged by Courtney to write a meme on the five things I dig about Jesus. To my understanding, a meme is just a list, but correct me if there's more to it than that. I'm basically just copying her. :)

These are the rules for "meme-ing":

1. those tagged will share 5 things they dig about Jesus.

2. those tagged will tag 5 other bloggers.

3. those tagged will post a comment here with their name and a link to their “dig” Jesus list.


So here are my five:
1. He saved me. I know that is not exactly insightful-sounding, but where would we be without it? That is the foundation of my life. Everything I see is filtered through that fact. It reminds me of this C.S. Lewis quote: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

2. I don't understand everything about him. I mean, really, some of the things Jesus says in the Gospels are beyond me. Perhaps it's because I don't have a sophisticated theological education, or perhaps it's because I don't understand all of the context. But what I think it really comes down to is the fact that he is God, and I can't even approach his wisdom or begin to understand the way he thinks. I think that for some people, the fact that they don't understand everything God is, the fact that they can't take God apart and tinker with the parts, like something mechanical, is a turnoff. (I have seen that a lot in academia.) They brush him off as unreal or even unkind because they can't understand him. But the mind of God is so far above ours. And, personally, I don't want a God I can understand, because that means I'm almost as smart as him. I would rather have one that holds the universe in the palm of his hand, one that is so far above me in intellect and wisdom that I can trust him completely.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Ps. 8:3-4

3. His glory. Not just the intellectual acknowledgment of his glory, but the actual experience of it. I'm talking about what it feels like when God reveals himself, just a bit, to me. It's like the ultimate aesthetic experience. You know, an aesthetic experience being when you hear an amazing piece of music performed, or when you read a poem and every line hits home. All of a sudden it feels like time stops, you get a swelling in your chest, your breath stops fast in your throat, and you want to cry because something is so wonderful and so real. That's what it feels like to me, except 10 times stronger, when God reveals even the tiniest glimmer of himself to my heart. I am convinced that the only reason it stops there is because I wouldn't be able to handle any more of him. At least, not until heaven.

4. His sense of humor. Sometimes, if I have my sense of humor intact, and if I'm paying attention, some of the stuff God does cracks me up. Mostly the irony that is in everyday life. Or how I thought one thing but he makes the point I was wrong in a funny way, and I end up laughing and saying, "Okay, okay, God, I get it."

5. The Body of Christ. Okay, maybe that is not directly one of the reasons I dig Jesus himself, but without him, there would be no body of believers, right? One of the things I like about blogging is finding other people who believe what I believe and reading what they have to say. I also love reading others' comments on those blogs. I love our Bible study group. I love my girls' dinner group from a couple of years ago. I love the godly friends I grew up with. I love the people I know from my old job at a Christian college. I do not have that kind of fellowship anywhere outside of Christian circles. We can relate in ways and talk about things that other people simply do not get. I don't know that I appreciated this very much until I moved to Boston and worked at a very secular university (Harvard), where Christianity was tolerated rather than embraced or even respected. When your whole world view is filtered through the reality of Jesus, it really does set you apart from people who do not see the world the same way. So building relationships with people who do see things the way you do is very special.

Random Movies

So now that I know how to post movies, I'm just going to add all the ones that have been sitting on iPhoto for a few months. One is from Ken's wedding, and one is from my Arbonne trip to Las Vegas.

The fountains at the Bellagio:


Ken's Wedding:

Fourth of July in Boston

So one of the reasons I've been a little slow with postings on the blog lately is because I've been wanting to get our 4th of July pictures up before it was, say, the 4th of August. :) I didn't want to have too many entries before I figured out how to post videos, and finally today I sat down and figured it out.

By the way, props to Google for making it uber-easy. (Does anyone say "props" anymore?) Nathan was like, "Wow, you're a whiz!" And I said, "Actually, Google just makes it really easy." Plus, he helped me. And he said, "Yeah, you're right. Nevermind." :)

Anyhow, I thought you might like to see some of our pictures and videos. We've never been in Boston for the 4th of July before--we've always traveled home to Texas--but I have always wanted to be here and experience it at least once. What you do is you go down to the Charles River and camp out during the afternoon, and later the Boston Pops play in the Hatch Shell (an outdoor theater on the Boston side of the river), and the music is piped all along the banks of the river. Then, after the concert is over, they do a huge fireworks show (supposedly the best in the nation). The whole thing is televised nationally. A lot of our friends go down and spend their 4th of July this way every year, so we decided we'd do it, too.

However, the weather turned freakishly chilly and rainy. So we stuck it out for a while in our t-shirts and shorts, but then some MIT alums told us about a particular building we could go into that overlooked the river. We were really glad they knew where to go! It turned out to be perfect (except that we couldn't really hear the music, which I was a little sad about, but I would rather have been warm and dry than out there listening to the Pops while wet and cold). So we sat in the lobby of the 2nd story of a building and played games and ate for a few hours, until it was time for the fireworks.

The fireworks were pretty cool. I've posted some short videos of them for you to take a look at. I was able to get some fun stuff, like comets, smiley faces, and the finale. All the fireworks are shot off from a barge in the middle of the river, and you could feel all the shockwaves in your chest. When the finale came, I was thinking, "Boy, this is borderline painful!" It was really powerful! Anyway, we had fun. Enjoy!

A Little Subtle Jab

Okay, tell me that Queen Elizabeth II does not look like George Washington in this picture:


I find this hilarious. I saw an article with this picture today, and it just really struck me how much she looks like George Washington.

Exhibit #1: The hair. Enough said.
Exhibit #2: The cloak, with brass buttons and all.
Exhibit #3: The very American-looking background. I don't know about you, but that sure doesn't look like England to me.

Annie Leibowitz took the picture, and Sarah F. and I think she did it on purpose (Leibowitz is American, right?). That would be too funny. We're rebelling to this day.

July Arbonne Specials

Hello everyone,

As always, Arbonne is running some great specials this month. The one I am the most excited about is the FREE RE9 Travel Set. Check it out!

Free RE9 Travel Set
Travel wrinkle-free this summer!
In the month of July, everyone who refers 5 friends who get an ID this month will receive a FREE NutriMinC RE9 Travel Set. The Travel Set includes not only the RE9 skin care but also every RE9 body product, and it comes in a very cute bag. Not only is it usually valued at $49, but you also usually have to have an order of $250 to even qualify to buy it.
How do I get it?
Call or email me to set up either a presentation or a catalog party, or simply call with the names and phone numbers of people you think would love Arbonne! I only do two presentations maximum each week, and I don't want you to miss out. This special is available in July only.

Thermal Fusion Hair and Scalp Revitalizer for $9.50
Qualify to purchase the Intelligence Thermal Fusion Hair & Scalp Revitalizer, a $23.50 value, for only $9.50 in July with every $75 SRP purchase.

20% Off the Intelligence Daily Balancer
In July, save 20% on the Intelligence Daily Balancer, only $18, regularly $22.50.


As always, let me know if I can help you in any way!

Best,
Lauren

Stuff to Pray For

So a lot of my friends have a lot of things worth praying about, so I thought I'd pass some of them along to my most awesome blogger readers so they're lifted up even more:

1. Liz has two major things going on this summer. First, she is taking the Bar exam July 24-25 and has been studying furiously for months. Secondly, her Monk Tour (see this post) is coming up Aug. 8-30. Pray for the trip and its effect on the spread of the Gospel in Asia. But also pray for funding, as they are still short.

2. Will has applied to become a police officer in New Haven, CT, and would love to work there. Pray for the interview process. He is a great guy and will make an amazing policeman.

3. Jeremy is in the hospital again. I don't know all the details about this particular stay, but he has been struggling with major problems with his digestive system since about last Sept or Oct. I think they narrowed it down to an auto-immune disorder. He has not been able to work and has been very weak, but recovering. He had been able to be home, with his awesome wife, Julia, taking care of him (as opposed to in the hospital), but now had to go back. Jeremy is a Ph.D. student at MIT, so pray not only for his recovery but also for his work when he goes back. MIT has been great to him, I believe, but I know the stress of not being able to progress through your degree, and I'm sure that weighs on him and Julia at least a little.

4. Aaron is on his way to Rwanda to preach. Pray for safe travel for whole team, smooth transition in each airport and city, ease through customs, health (jet lag, sleep, immune system), and peace.

5. Daman's business is suffering, and he is working very hard to make it successful. The beauty in this situation is that God has done such huge things in Daman's heart over the past few years that he is a new creation, truly, and Daman puts the success or failure of his business in God's hands. Pray that God honors his work, and also that if he has a lesson to teach Daman, that it takes root.

6. Matt's parents are convinced he is back on drugs. They asked for prayer that he hits bottom soon so that recovery can begin. Please pray for a miraculous change in him--that he, too, would be a new creation.

7. The D's are considering moving several hours away from their home to pursue a ministry opportunity in another state. They are going to go visit the area later this month. Pray that if that's where the Lord wants them to go, that he makes it very clear and gives them a real peace about it.

8. Nathan's mom is having arthroscopic knee surgery on 7/11. Her knee has been giving her a lot of pain, and this surgery is to basically postpone a whole knee replacement. The doctor is giving it about 50/50 chance that this particular procedure will help and will postpone the knee replacement.

9. Praise: my sis-in-law, Meredith, got a job offer today! It is exactly what she wants to do, working as a grants manager at a local food bank in Austin, and the pay is good. It's a huge blessing for Ken & Meredith, because she's been looking for a job for a few months and was going nuts with staying home all day.

Gardening Update

So I thought some of you might like to hear how my little garden is going. Well, some of you might not, actually. Poor Liz is getting worn out with all the domestic blog entries lately, I know. I will have to post something intellectual for her benefit soon, but plants are on my mind today.

Well, the short version is that THEY'RE GROWING! Seriously, this is a red-letter summer for me. Plants that I, Lauren, am in charge of are NOT DYING!

Okay, so the dill died, but it was yellow from the get-go, so I don't think it had much of a chance.

But the tomato plant is about 8 times the size it was when I bought it, and it has little buds that I hope start developing into lovely little tomatoes. I absolutely adore fresh summer tomatoes. I can't wait. The basil plant is growing nicely, too. I think I need to start harvesting some of the leaves--apparently that helps it grow even more. And I can think of a million ways to use basil. In fact, I might use some for the 4th of July tomorrow. The lavender is bigger and still smells fabulous. The oregano and the rosmary are doing okay, but they aren't growing as fast as the other things. That is okay. They look healthy, and I'm happy that the other plants are growing quickly. Besides, there is only so much I can do. Only God knows how to make the plants grow. I certainly don't. :)

By the way, I am still waiting to hear from a lot of you on the haircut issue. I really do want to hear what you have to say about it!