Some more pictures from COLORADO!

I can't remember if this is Breckenridge or Vail, but it really doesn't matter because they are both fantastic! If you want to see more pictures from the trip, go to:
http://www.shutterfly.com/view/pictures.jsp

More Pictures from COLORADO

Joel's thinking hard about his next sermon...
OR MAYBE NOT! I think he is thinking about making it down the next black diamond alive!

COLORADO SKI TRIP

One of the ski lifts. It's a lot different scenary than Chicago, IL--there's SUN!

A highly recommended movie

Don't worry, you will get pcitures from Colorado, but I wanted to post this first. This is a highly recommended movie (from me anyway). It has not come out yet, but comes out this Friday. It is called End of the Spear and is the story of the five missionaries in the 50's who were killed taking the gospel to the Aucha tribe of Ecuador. Jim Elliot was one that was killed. This obviously has special meaning for us since we were in a lot of the places where this movie was filmed. The other fact is that it is a movie (it sounds like) about forgiveness, the gospel, etc...
If you want to read more about it and see the trailer, go to :
http://www.endofthespear.com/
Please go see it this weekend. It comes out Friday! Happy watching!

More Christmas pictures

The doggies wanted to give kisses too! They're good at that. I will post more pictures from Colorado when I download them!

Christmas time pictures!

It's been a LONG time!

Hey everyone!
We are finally back in Chicago and recovering from the holidays. Pretty crazy since it is the middle of January! We had a great holiday season. Joel preached at both of our Christmas Eve services at church, and I had to work on Christmas Eve. Joel picked me up early after work and then we went to Goshen, IN to see his family. We had little sleep that day, but enjoyed spending time with 3 out of our 5 nieces. We played games together, went to see Chronicles of Narnia, and ate our traditional SEAFOOD Christmas dinner. It was fabulous! We spent a few days in Goshen and then went to Hartford City to see my family. We had a great time with them as well. My brother, sister-in-law and nephew came over for a late Christmas. It was great to spend time with them all. My dad and mom recently purchased a convenience store in Hartford City, so we spent time there helping as we could and 'testing' all the goodies my dad has brought in to sell. I defintly don't mind testing out pecan and cinnamon rolls, biscuits and gravy, etc...
Joel and I had our Christmas with the puppies a couple days before Christmas. It was a fun time. It was nice to just be able to spend a couple days together and relax.
I didn't have to work on New Year's, but I made a BIG dinner for us and then I fell asleep and woke up 5 minutes before midnight! Pretty pathetic huh? We had intentions of going downtown Chicago to spend New Year's, but that obviously didn't happen. Are we getting old or what?
Here are a few pictures from our Christmas. I will post more soon. We just got back from skiing in Colorado. When I download all the pictures, I will post some of them as well.
Hope everyone is getting back in the swing of things after the holidays. Hope to hear from you soon. Happy 2006!

An Interesting Article to Create Discussion

Click here for article
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/national/09church.html?ei=5070&en=189228fcbdb045fa&ex=1135314000&pagewanted=all

Many of you may have been hearing, as I have, the many different debates going on this Christmas Season. What is politically correct?
"Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays"? People are wanting to take the meaning of Christmas out of Christmas and put in Holidays instead. That is interesting enough, but I recently heard a radio show that got into a VERY heated discussion regarding mega churches not having services on Christmas. Even the NY times got into the discussion. The above site was for the NY time article that was written. THe spokesman for WIllow Creek here in the Chicagoland area said that they would like to not only allow their volunteers to have time off, but for all to have time with their families.
“If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don’t go to church, how likely is it that they’ll be going to church on Christmas morning?” Willow Creek’s Cally Parkinson said, according to the Associated Press.
Interesting question?
Back to the debate that I heard on the radio. Regarding the issue of spending time with family...
Who is our family? In Luke 14:26, Jesus says, "If anyone cones to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes even his own life-he cannot be my disciple." This was the argument made in the debate. If we say we are taking time off from church to be with our family, what are we distinquishing as our family? Of course our parents, wives and children, but is the more important family the family of God? If the head of the family is being celebrated on a day and that is not celebrated, what does that say?
There will always be debate. No matter what decisions are made, someone will always have an opposite opinion. But, as fellow Christians, what do y'all think about this issue? Let me know.
Merry Christmas!

The FINISHED product

Well, after a few hours, and a few strands of lights, the tree is finished. It was fun to have it all up and to finally have our apartment looking like Christmas! After Joel's Greek paper is finished, it will probably feel more like Christmas to BOTH of us. We are looking forward to the Holidays-even though I have to work some of it, but we will still have time with BOTH families-so that will be fun times in INDIANA! Hope you are all enjoying the Christmas season, but remembering what it is all about in the midst of getting ready for family and gifts and everything else.

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace."
Isaiah 9:6

A day of Fun together!

Our Saturday started off with sleeping in and then going out to breakfast at...you guessed it-IHOP. International House of Pancakes! It was a great time to get to spend time together before a big day of decorating (for me) and writing a Greek exegesis paper (for Joel). I liked my day better! We didn't think that IHOP would be as busy as it was since when we went it was almost lunchtime instead of breakfast-but we had a great time anyway-yummy breakfast too! We then started looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Now, I am sure there is a whole etiquette and strategy for picking out a Christmas tree. We however don't know what it is-we just have fun looking and smelling them all. It's always a great thing to watch all the people there to get trees. You don't see too many unhappy people there. The place we went had Christmas tree selling down to a science. They had people to carry them out for you and also tie them to your car. Since we have an apartment, we couldn't (and wouldn't ) buy the $100 15 foot tree. We really liked one tree-since we were both taller then it, but didn't figure that would be that great of a tree-so this one is the one we chose. Buying a Christmas tree is a fun event, and a tradition that we love doing. I grew up with an artificial tree (which I see the logic in when I have to clean all the needles up-even through May). ANd Joel grew up getting real trees. It was a place I noticed where most all people come to buy their signature part of Christmas.
Our final product all decorated looked like this...I will do another posting for that.

Another question for you

Did everyone or anyone see or hear about the shooting in the Miami airport on Wed by the Federal Air Marshall? Well, this story hit home for both of us and got us thinking and I just thought I would share it with you all. First of all, when we first moved to Chicago, Joel worked with the Federal Air Marshalls. He didn't actually ride the planes, he did all the computer work for them (top secret security stuff), so he knows a lot of them here in the area. The other part of the story is that that plane was coming from Quito, Ecuador. We made the exact same flight this summer! I am not exactly sure how to feel about the whole situation. I mean, I'm sure we can all agree that it is such a sad situation and absolutely devastating. That is not in question. I mean the Federal Air marshall is trained to take people out, especially if they are at risk for security and safety. This of course generated an on-going conversation for Joel and I. As Christians, how are we to react? Before 9/11 and since 9/11 should we not be taking precautions for security? And especially in the idea of killing those that are a threat (our enemies)-what are we to do? Are we supposed to take the Sermon on the Mount as it is written to 'turn the other cheek'? Is there a limit to turning the other cheek? I won't tell you what conclusion we came to, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
Anyway, I was just thinkin...
For more about the story go to www.msn.com

Another one of my favorite things...

I know this is kind of funny, but I absolutely LOVE chocolate chip cookies-all forms of them. I love to make the cookie dough and eat it as well as the cookies with a tall glass of milk. What a better time to talk about cookies than Christmas. Everyone likes cookies right? OK, so maybe not everyone, but most people.
So, WHAT"S YOUR FAVORITE COOKIE?

One of my favorite things!

Since Oprah recently did her "favorite things" show, I thought that I could post some of my favorite things as well. One of my favorite things is MUSIC! I love it! As I am sure most of you do too. I listen to just about any type of music. I listen all the time, especially in the car. I have about a 45 minute trip back and forth to work, so that makes for lots of music listening time. I am one of those people that loves noise. It's kind of hard for me to just have quiet. All of you psych majors and psych people could probably analyze something bad from that, and I know I have issues with being quiet-which is a WHOLE other blog. Back to music...
These are two of my favorite CD's right now. They pretty much just stay in my CD player all the time. the first is Bethany Dillon's first CD-Revolutionaries! She's a young girl-but has HUGE things to say to us all. I highly recommend her.
The other is Caedmon's Call most recent CD-Share the well. It talks about their trips to Brazil, ECUADOR(WOO HOO!) and India. I appreciate this CD so much because I feel like it really captures the essence of need around the world. Since I want to help people in a foreign country and because I have been to Ecuador, I guess I relate wellto it. Plus, I have loved Caedmon's since I was in college.
One of my favorite things-
I highly recommend these two CD's and I promise they are "lighter" than my last recommendation of Crash. (Congrats to Bethany M for seeing it.)
Hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving.

Happy Birthday to my Dad!

Well, today is my dad's birthday. I had planned on posting some really fun pictures, but for some reason, they wouldn't work. Maybe I will try later on. Just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my dad! He's such a great dad and I am so blessed to be his daughter! So, here's a post for you dad! I love you very very much! Happy Birthday!

More pictures

Here's "Uncle Dole" and all 3 nieces-Brianne,Bailey, and Braedyn! Braedyn calls us "Uncle Dole" and "Aunt Tim" (she's still working on saying K and J. But because she calls us that, most of the rest of the family does too! It's so fun! So, we had a great weekend and I think Joel had a good birthday. His mom even made his favorite dessert! Go Ruthie! So Happy (Belated) Birthday to Joel! 30 is just another birthday!

More fun weekend pictures!

This is our oldest niece-Brianne! She's such a cutie!

Fun Weekend (A little belated)

Well, I am going to do a couple of posts with a bunch of pictures from our weekend. We had a fun fun weekend, although much too short. It started with Joel's birthday on Firday! He woke up that day to a fun present from me (I almost couldn't wait till his birhtday to give it to him). A little background...Joel is not a surprise kind of guy. He likes to have things planned and for the most part-that works. But, I wanted to surprise him this year and it worked. Hehad no idea what I was going to do. Anyway, I got him tickets to his favorite musical-Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!! I was so excited. He had only mentioned it once that it was playing in Chicago and I just happened to get tickets! Yeah KIM! I actually surprised my husband. Well, Joel is 30! It's pretty crazy and doesn't seem to effect him. It looks pretty good on him by the way! So to keep on celebrating, we went to Goshen, IN where Joel's parents live to have an early Thanksgiving dinner and to celebrate Joel's birthday more. He got lots of fun cards from our nieces. Here is a picture of 2 of them. Braedyn is the one on her head and Brianne is the one that Joel is putting something on her head! We have 3 other nieces-one more from this family and 2 in Japan-Sheena and Reenna. There dad works for Toyota and so they are in Japan for 2 years. We miss them! So here is the first of our posts!

Holiness Debate

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while. We had a crazy busy weekend (Joel's birthday, school work, church commitments, visiting fam, etc...). I will post pictures of those things later, but right now I thought I would share something that happened over the weekend and get your opinion. So Joel and I are in the car driving to see his family and, as usual got into an interesting discussion. Now, our discussions range from food to farts, religion, and end of life issues. You never know what we're going to talk about on a roadtrip. Well, during this roadtrip, we discussed religion. Since he is a seminary student and I am not, I tend to bring lots of questions his way, and very often too-especially with work issues. Anyway, I asked him the questions, "Are denominations good, bad, or ugly?" Then I asked, "What denomination do you think has the closest interpretation to the Bible?" As you can imagine, we both had interesting points to both questions. I think (and so does he) that denominations are good and bad. I will explain at a later date. As far as denominations and interpretations...well...maybe I won't go there now either. However, another thing that was brought up is the Wesleyan church. I grew up Wesleyan and although he grew up mennonite, he did go to IWU! We both like the Wesleyan church a lot. OK so I am making this really long, but the final question I thought I would post to you is this...you tell me what your thoughts are: Do you think a majority of the Wesleyan church views sanctification as a ONE TIME EVENT or do you think it is viewed as a LIFELONG PROCESS? I will leave you now with your thoughts...

My Best Friend's Wedding!

My most loyal and best friend Christa Davis got married on October 22 and I was honored to be in her wedding. I met Christa my first year out of college at Asbury and we have been friends ever since. Although we have lived miles about, we have remained close. I hadn't seen Christa in 3 years-since she was in my wedding. It was so great to see her and meet ALL of her family and friends. She married Bart Sims and they live in Evansville, IN. A cool thing is that they met on E-Harmony! He's a wonderful man of God and makes Christa very happy. Most of you probably don't know her, but enjoy the pictures anyway.

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Posted by j3delp

Ohio State still has a chance

Although our Buckeye's have not had a HUGE season, they are actually still in the running for the Big Ten Title! How great would that be with a record like theirs. They had a great win over Illinois (it's crazy we live here and don't root for Illinois) 40-2. Let's hope they can keep it up as they play another Illinois team-Northwestern. Have we mentioned we live about 10 minutes from Northwestern...we don't root for them either.

So as we celebrate Joel's birthday on Friday, let's hope Saturday we can celebrate a win for the Buckeye's!!!

Any other Ohio State fans out there on the edge of their seats?