I read this over at Mommy Life and have laughed so hard about this. Try it. Then get your kids to try it. Why does your foot do this?

How Smart Is Your Right Foot?

This is so funny that it will boggle your mind. And, you will keep trying it at least 50 more times
to see if you can outsmart your foot. But you can’t!!!

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change directions!!!

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep
oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27


A local friend of mine has adopted two precious little boys from Russia, increasing her family size from three to five children. In the past year, her new sons (who are brothers) have learned English and love living out in the country, where they raise sheep and other farm animals. We were blessed to be present when the older boy (7) was baptized after accepting Jesus into his heart.

Only a few months before, the boys had little hope for their future. My friend has visited the orphanages in Russia twice and feels a deep calling to raise up families in the U.S. to adopt these children.

The organization is called New Horizons for Children, and they’re currently hosting a group of children from Latvia. It’s my prayer that if anyone reading this is longing to raise a child, will you consider adopting an orphan? These children are so beautiful and in need of Christian families to love and teach them.

You can learn more about their needs through visiting the New Horizons for Children website. Here is the contact information:

Le Ann Dakake
Renee McAlpin
New Horizons for Children, Inc
678-574-4677
www.newhorizonsforchildren.org

My friend writes:

There are so many awesome stories out there about churches and people who have taken orphan ministry to heart and are really making a difference. My favorite story is the church in Texas of about 600 members that took James 1:27 to heart and shut down an orphanage in Russia by adopting around 50 children. Voice of the Orphan has some great information about orphan ministry.

God predestined us for adoption into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
Ephesians 1:5

My new issue of Today’s Christian Woman magazine arrived this week, and Elisa Morgan was on the cover. In her interview, editor Jane Johnson Struck asks her some tough questions, yet her answers are filled with encouragement. I hope you can read it here.

How I wish there had been a MOPS (Moms of Preschoolers) group in my area when my oldest child was born. I was desperate to be around other first-time moms, so I joined a church preschool moms group — but it wasn’t long before I realized the church was only a meeting place — the group really lacked a Christ-centered focus, so I didn’t stay in it for long.

If you’ve got a MOPS group in your area, I hope you can go! If you don’t, why not start one?

Here’s a snippet from this interview:

JJS asks: “Why is it important for older women to reach out to moms of preschoolers?”

Elisa Morgan answers: “It’s a mentoring opportunity. You have something to offer, even if you’re only a few months further down the road in parenting. But I think the younger generations have so much to teach us. There’s such mutuality in mentoring.

I want our world to remember the importance of those early mothering years. The purpose of those developmental tasks, those close bonds we forge with our children, is to be able to launch individuals — ourselves included — who can make a wider investment in God’s kingdom.”

Laurel Wreath is collecting new year’s meditations here. I think today’s the last day, so I wanted to jump in.

I’ve thought about this for several weeks, and I finally sat down and wrote out my GOALS for 2007. I divided them into five categories:

1. God (Growing my faith and sharing it with others)
2. Family (Husband and children, extended)
3. Friends (local, distant)
4. Self (personal goals)
5. House (projects we’d like to accomplish this year around the house and yard)

Instead of posting this list though, I printed it out and put it in my journal. It will be something for me to refer to privately throughout the year. I’m excited to see how God will work in these areas of my life — and I’m going to commit to the discipline required to meet several of these goals.

It does me no good at all to write down vague, general goals without turning these into monthly, weekly, daily, and even hourly lists of tasks. I’ve not gone that far … but I do have daily lists that give my day structure and prevent me from thinking, “Where did all my time go?”

Discipline doesn’t come in the big areas; it comes in those tiny 15-minute increments where you decide whether to wash the breakfast dishes or “check email real quick.” I’ve lived and learned and am still in the midst of trying to be more disciplined with my time!

Here, I wanted to state publicly (for anyone who reads this) that my goal this year will be to put FIRST THINGS FIRST.

For me, here’s a choice I’ve made: I’m not going to read or write anything until I read my daily Bible passage and write a response in my journal. Even if I get up at 4 am to catch up on writing (which I do sometimes), I’m first going to pry open my eyes and read the day’s passage (which is reading the whole Bible in a year, chronologically). It’s too tempting to check email, check a blog or two — then suddenly the house is up, the day is off and running, and I haven’t read God’s Word for the day.

I love my new Bible, and I’ve made this fresh commitment, fully aware that this will cut into my writing time. But I’m praying God will bless it because my heart is to please Him by putting His Word first in my life.

Secondly, another FIRST THING FIRST is to take better care of my health, seriously. This means filling up with water all day (ten glasses for me, according to my weight), so that I don’t stay dehydrated and crazy for sugar. I knew I was starting to put on some weight last month — but I avoided the scale. That’s pure denial for me. I finally got on it Monday, and discovered to my horror that I’d gained six pounds! Nothing like a dose of reality to get me up and running. Literally.

Last month, after much prayer, I decided to turn my Lively Women blog over to someone else. Kristin King is the new b5 media blogger, and she’s doing a fantastic super-lively job over there! It was a great place for me, and I learned so much about women’s health and wellness through writing about it — but after six months, I realized that in order to be a lively woman, I needed to quit writing so much and go live it! In other words, get off the computer and go exercise.

I worked out at Curves this morning and had a great time laughing and swapping stories with the ladies who were working out there. I don’t know if I burned 500 calories, but it was a small step for me to get back in shape. I felt blah before I worked out and great afterward! I can’t go every day, but on the days I don’t go, I’m going to get back on my treadmill and RUN.

Running burns calories so much faster than walking, I’ve learned. And the simple truth to losing weight — no matter how many millions of diet plans are out there — is that you have to burn more calories than you consume. That’s it. If I had a safe place to run outside, I’d rather do that — but I don’t now. And today is cold and rainy where I live. I worked out at Curves while the rain came pouring down.

No more excuses!

Here’s what I’ve discovered:

God’s Word + Laughter + Exercise = Happy Me

Happy Me = Happy Family

Skipping God’s Word + Stress + Sugary, starchy foods = Unhappy, Frumpy Me

Unhappy, Frumpy Me = Unhappy Family

There you have it. It took 15 minutes of writing here for me to reduce my goals this year to three: Bible Reading, Laughter, and Exercise. Putting first things first.

Have you written your goals out yet? Are they measurable? Have you reduced them to daily tasks? Let’s encourage each other to take baby steps each day toward becoming the best we can be for the glory of God.

If you’d like to join in at Laurel Wreath, write your goals somewhere and leave a link here.

I haven’t done one of these blog quizzes in a while, and I was curious about this one. The last time I was in New York was via the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, which is actually a cute movie about a girl working for a fashion magazine in NYC.

Meryl Streep’s role as power editor is amazing — and the theme is about a woman’s dilemma of whether to put her job or her personal life first. (If you’d like a quick laugh, click here to see a snooty-hooty clip from this film, where editor “Miranda” first meets journalist wanna-be “Andy.”)

All of the racing after cabs made me appreciate my simple life driving my own mom vehicle, no Prada required.

You Belong in the East Village

A little bit arty, a little bit punk – you seem to set trends that many people follow. It’s likely that you’re an academic of sorts, even if it’s just on the weekends.

Do you wear an apron in the kitchen while you cook? I don’t, but if I had one as cute as the one Barbara Curtis is wearing in this photo here, I might!

Barbara is hosting an “Apron Power” contest at her Mommy Life site that I think is fabulous! Here’s what she says:

Announcing the Apron Power! Contest

I say it’s time to bring back the apron – and I don’t mean the unisex cloth chef’s apron, but the frilly feminine – even to the point of useless – kind.

Send me a picture of you in your apron and I promise not only to run it, but to send the best ones a copy of my new book, The Mommy Survival Guide. Remember, practical is okay (mine is practical because it covers a lot and is made of oilcloth), but the criteria for this contest includes femininity.

The top picture – according to your votes – will win an apron just like mine (I managed to track one down on Ebay!).

Other criteria:
You must be wearing the apron
Context and creativity

Please spread the word! Our last photo contest – Meet Me in the Laundry Room (winners here) – was so much fun.

Entries due January 12. I will post them as I receive them, but also in a batch on January 13 for voting. Final day of voting January 19. Winners announced January 20.

So if you send her a picture of yourself wearing an apron, you may win her cool-looking vintage apron AND her new book, The Mommy Survival Guide.

A few months ago, I reviewed Barbara’s book, Lord, Please Meet Me in the Laundry Room and announced her Laundry Room contest, where you can see the winners here. (Still not quite sure HOW second place winner HolyMama! got her picture made on top of her laundry room cabinets!) Barbara’s publisher decided to give ALL of the entrants a free book. So I’d encourage you to enter if you like her books — and the one I read was great.

Any mom of 12 who can find enough time to be a mom AND write books is a hero to me!

I’m sorry if you’re viewing my blog using Internet Explorer. It’s looking very funky right now, with half the screen blocked in blue. I use Firefox so I wasn’t even aware of this problem until someone wrote and told me.

Apparently, it’s something to do with a change in CSS coding as a result of an IE update. It will be a while before I can get it fixed, as my designer is currently writing a book and is very busy!

If any of you have experienced this problem and know what I can do, please let me know. Otherwise, I apologize, and I hope you can view using Firefox. This kind of stuff is way beyond my comprehension!

The January issue of Christian Women Online has an irresistible cover, don’t you think? I love, love, love it. Especially since I love seeing the smile on Liz Curtis Higgs’ face. What joy!

And yes, it’s a bit thrilling as a writer to have MY column on the front cover — even better, because it’s not about me. God only used me to help spread the message of Liz Curtis Higgs — her journey of grace, forgiveness, and hope.

It all started with an email I received from her publicist several months ago — offering me the opportunity to interview her. I about fell out of my chair. You see, last summer, I read her book, Grace in Thine Eyes, which I reviewed for Christian Book Previews here. I remember thinking — wow, Liz is living the dream life of an author!

Liz is one of those rare modern novelists who takes enough time to thoroughly research her historical fiction — so that readers are completely transported to 19th-century Scotland, or whatever era she’s writing about.

If I’m going to take the time to read a novel, I want to be transported, don’t you? It’s the second-best thing to actually visiting a place — which happens to be the romantic isle of Arran, off the coast of Scotland. And Liz stayed there, in a real castle, talked to real people — then brought it all back for us armchair travelers through her delicious prose.

I ate it all up — piece by piece — not even realizing that she was taking me along for a spiritual ride as well. Ah, the power of words.

So I had a great time asking her about her most recent trip to Scotland (did you know she’s collected over 800 books on Scotland for her personal library?) She’s been there so many times it’s like a second home to her. I just stare at these photos and dream.

You can also click here to learn more about her new book that is coming soon, My Heart’s in the Lowlands: Ten Days in Bonny Scotland, which is “an entertaining armchair travel guide to Dumfries and Galloway—the land where fictional Jamie, Leana, Rose, and Davina have roamed through our imaginations, and where fascinating, real characters live today!”

And I hesitate to share this with you because it will lower my own chances of winning (heh heh) — but her publisher is offering a free nine-day TRIP FOR TWO TO SCOTLAND if you click here. You must go to the Waterbrook Press website to learn all the details — the deadline is April 30, 2007.

The rest of the January issue of CWO is great as well, with a brand new column debut from Allison Bottke, Boomer Babes Rock! Allison writes:

Did you know there are over 38 million baby boomer women? Considered to be some of the healthiest, wealthiest, and best educated women to ever hit midlife, we’re a diverse group between the ages of 42 and 60, born from 1946-1964. An obvious example of diversity is our age range, which spans 19 years and means that while some boomer women are grandparents (like me) others on the lower range who started their families later in life are still getting kids into preschool.

The other columns and articles will give you plenty to read this month, keeping you inspired to start your new year with fresh steps of faith.

From our house to yours, we wish you a wonderful year ahead.

This is a picture of our little prodigal kitty, Briar Rose. She ran off for a while to live with the neighbors, but she came back a few weeks ago. God is good. We missed her.

P.S. Yes, she is as soft as she looks. Can you believe I get to go pet her? Right now. And she doesn’t mind being picked up by children — she seems to thrive on the attention. Gotta love this cat.