Spring Break Fun!

Well, things have been a little silent over here.. because we have had good friends in town for my Spring Break!

Our good friends Julie and Chase proved their friendship to us by driving over 13 hours to come and visit us for about a week. It was a great time: we got our game fix for a while (Settlers any one??), went down to the beach in Destin for a day and a half, and I even planted some herbs to try and redeem my previous lack of success in the green thumb department.

It is such a blessing to have such good friends. It was another reminder to me about how important the body of Christ is for encouragement in running the race of life.

Here are some pictures from our fun times:

The Girls

The BoysThe Russells

The Andersons

Proud Moments in Husbandry

I was very proud of Nicole today. I was playing Halo 3 at my desk, and she was surfing the internet on the laptop - then all of the sudden she said, "Husby, is your game taking up all our bandwidth, because my pages are loading really slow?"

At that moment, I was a very proud of Nicole for her knowledge and proper use of technical jargon :)

Eric's new toy

Recently, for my birthday, I purchased a used xbox 360 from a guy in Montgomery, along with Halo 3 and Guitar Hero III. I couldn't be happier with it. Playing video games on a console again brings back all these great memories from earlier years, as well as being radically refreshing to just plug it in and watch it...simply work (as opposed to endlessly tampering with a PC).

I'm not the first nor the last, I'm sure, to say this; but Microsoft has a real good thing going with their Xbox Live service. I was a little skeptical at first as to how much enjoyment I'd get out of Halo 3 online since I'm usually not a big fan of online FPS play, but I've been blown away by the sheer amount of variety and fun to be had with Bungie's online play. The ability to edit my own maps and share them with others, plus seamless integrated voice-chat makes for a winner.

If there's anybody out there reading who plays Halo 3, shoot me a message and I'll give you my gamertag :)

Eric's New Sideproject

And now it's time for a shameless plug. Recently, I've been working hard on a new project, which I want to share with you all:

www.modernchristianity.org

With the help of a few friends as co-contributors, I've launched a new website devoted to Christian dialogue and discussion. There's not a ton of content on there yet, but it will soon begin to fill up. Please feel free to check it out (and even bookmark it) and leave a comment if you like.

I am excited about this project for a number of reasons, but most of all it feels good to be doing something worthwhile, and learning at the same time. I've been putting a lot of time into learning how to perform various website related tasks (web hosting, domain registration, HTML/CSS, wordpress setup, etc.) and it's been really rewarding so far.

Let me know what you think!

Sierra Leone

This summer, I will be going with seven other teachers to the West African Country of Sierra Leone.

I made my decision to go back in November but have not blogged about it previously. There really hasn't been a good reason... I guess it is just such a big thing for me that I am going, and I wanted to write a post that did it justice. Finally after spending some really good time working on prep for my trip today, I've decided to go ahead and just write about it...

I am going to SL through the organization Children of the Nations (COTN) which seeks to empower national teachers to be Christian leaders in their respective countries. My dear friend Sarah spent a year (06 -07) in SL training teachers and working with the children. Her desire was to lead a team of teachers back in order to train the national teachers in practical teaching strategies, and this has become a reality. We are a team of eight, including four of us who are all JBU education grads. It is neat to see in a tangible way how our time spent growing as Christians in college is continuing even after graduation.

For three weeks in June, we will be conducting inservices with the national teachers and working with the children. I will be conducting inservices about the steps of teaching reading- something near and dear to my heart.

My thoughts and feelings.... I am so excited to go and to learn from my brothers and sisters in Christ, to share my faith through relationships, and to be used by God through the talents/gifts He has blessed me with. I am also afraid that our team will fail to be a blessing or that we will allow our Western arrogance to get in the way of ministry. And, I am still doing a lot of thinking!

I would love for you to pray for Sierra Leone, our team, and specifically myself:
- That we will learn from the people of Sierra Leone, and that they can learn from us.
- That God would be working in all of our hearts- calling us to Himself and refining us to be more like Him.
- For safety
- For unity
- For clarity in our inservices- that God would use us to meet their need.

There. I blogged about it. Now you know.

More posts to come...

I Know, I know... but it was so cute!

So... I have another work story, which I've published quite a few of lately, but I can't help it that my kids say the cutest things! Maybe I talk about work too much... but at least I save my rants for Eric!

This past week we have been administering standardized tests (I'll pause for the gasp... yes, I do teach kindergarten... thank you Mr. President) and because of this our students have been receiving bagged lunches from the cafeteria. On Friday it was raining, so we took our lunches back towards our classroom and ate in the hall outside of our room. As I was sitting watching them eat, I happened to overhear a conversation between two of my more expressive female students. It went something like this:

Girl 1 (watching Girl 2 drink her chocolate milk): Oohhhh, I don't drink chocolate milk. Chocolate milk is nasty to me!
Girl 2: Why? I love chocolate milk!
Girl 1: Because when I drink it it makes my mouth all tired!
Girl 2: Oh (nodding her head). Well, pink milk (strawberry) makes my body hurt!
Girl 1: (nods her head) Yep.
Simultaneously both girls take a sip of their respective milks.

It could be in a commercial.

And now for some blogoughts...

* A story from Monday in the cafeteria... Whenever the cafeteria serves cookies, they put up a sign that clearly says "1 only." My students know this... I was cookie dictator/overseer at the beginning of the year. Chocolate chips ones were served on Monday... one of my students on her way to our table, "Mrs. Anderson, I accidentally took two cookies." She was so funny... all I could do was laugh.

*Our kittens are not normal... apparently they are products of their environment :)

Pounce (our gender confused kitty who we found out was really a boy a couple months ago) is obsessed with computers (takes after his dad). In fact right now as I type this, he* is trying to hit the little line that move on the text when you type. In addition to this he is also enraptured with the mouse arrow. *Pounce, not Eric.

Cuddles (who really is a girl) is obsessed with water. Yes, water. In fact, we've been having a problem with their water bowl drying out while we are away at work. Cuddles' favorite game is to hit the water out of the bowl. Her latest source of fascination though is the bathtub... she is moving on to bigger and better things. Yesterday after yoga, I decided to rinse off. Our tub has been draining slowly, and I came back into the bathroom to find Cuddles watching the water drain from the edge of the tub. She decided she was missing all the fun. In she jumped and splashed around two or three times before realizing she was soaked up to her legs in water... I don't know if she's learned her lesson. Maybe she realized she was dirty from all the times she has climbed up our chimney...

A Face-lift

of gigantic proportions...

in other words, my attempt to navigate blogger settings :)

What do you think???