Sunday, November 30, 2008

Truths

Great truths about life that adults have learned:

- Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
- Wrinkles don't hurt.
- Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
- Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
- Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
- Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

Great truths about growing old:

- Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
- Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
- When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
- You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
- It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to asks you the questions.
- Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
- Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.



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Deck of Cards Bible

A young soldier was in his bunkhouse all alone one Sunday morning. It was quiet that day, the guns and the mortars, and land mines for some reason hadn't made a noise.

The young soldier knew it was Sunday. As he was sitting there, he got out an old deck of cards and laid them out across his bunk.

Just then an Army Sergeant came in and asked, "Why aren't you with the rest of the platoon?"
The soldier replied, "I thought I would stay behind and spend some time with the Lord."
The sergeant said, "Looks like you're going to play cards."

The soldier said, "No sir, I've decided to talk to the Lord by studying this deck of cards.

The Ace, it reminds me that there is only one God.
The Two represents the two parts of the Bible, Old and New Testament.
The Three represents the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Four stands for the Four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The Five is for the virgins that were glorified by taking oil in their vessels with their lamps.
The Six is for the six days it took God to create the Heavens and the Earth.
The Seven is for the day God rested after working the six days.
The Eight is for the family of Noah and his wife, their three sons and their wives, in which God saved the eight people from the flood that destroyed the earth for the first time.
The Nine is for the lepers that Jesus cleansed of leprosy. He cleansed ten but nine never thanked Him.
The Ten represents the Ten Commandments that God handed down to Moses on tablets made of stone.
The Jack is a reminder of Satan. One of God's first angels, and he got kicked out of heaven for his sly and wicked ways and is now the Joker of eternal hell.
The Queen stands for the Virgin Mary.
The King stands for Jesus, for He is the King of all kings.
When I count the dots on all cards, I come up with 365 total, one for every day of the year.
There are a total of 52 cards in a deck, each is a week, 52 weeks in a year.
The four suits represents the four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter.
So when I want to talk to God and thank Him, I just pull out this old deck of cards and they remind me of all that I have to be thankful for."

The sergeant just stood there and after a minute, with tears in his eyes, he said, "Soldier, can I borrow that deck of cards?"



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Saturday, November 29, 2008

Friend or Foe

Christmas is coming soon!! I will pay attention to what stores I'll go to do my shopping. The ones that recognize Christmas in their adds will get my business. Some of them are:

Amazon.com, Bass Pro Shops, Bath and Body Works, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Best Buy, Big Lots, Home Depot, JC Penney, KB Toys, K-Mart, Kohl’s, L.L. Bean, Linens ‘N Things, Lord and Taylor, Lowe’s, M&M-Mars Candies, Macy’s, Sam’s Club, Sears, Target, T.J. Maxx, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Williams-Sonoma.

These stores will NOT receive my business:

Banana Republic, Bloomingdale's, Circuit City, Costco, Comp USA, CVS, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Disney, Gap, Honey Baked Ham, J. Crew Outfitters, Lane Bryant, Nordstrom, Old Navy, Sprint.


For a complete list: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=323412


If they don't acknowledge Christmas, why should I acknowledge them??



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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Best countries?

If you could choose any country in the world in which to raise your child, which would you choose?

According to the United Nations, the best places for you to raise your children are the countries in Northern Europe: Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, or the number one on the list: the Netherlands.

In 2007, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a study (http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf)that evaluated the quality of life of children in more than twenty developed countries and Netherlands was at the top of their list.

Everything sounds fine, right? Unless you want to know what's behind this high quality of life of children. Dutch children are certainly happy, but they are also the center of their society. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6360517.stm) Parents go out of their way to please them, and teachers expect less of them than some of their European counterparts. Children's wishes become so strong that parents have to work very hard to give them what they want.

When it comes to making personal decisions, children in Netherlands also enjoy an extraordinary amount of freedom. The Netherlands is famous for its tolerant attitudes toward activities like drinking, smoking, drugs and sex. Sex education begins at the age of 4 and the age of consent is set at 12.

Do you think that UNICEF is happy about the study? NO! It's still not enough! As a result, the Netherlands is ceding to its government even more authority to "look out" for children.

UNICEF may consider the children in the Netherlands to be the most fortunate in the world, but their happiness comes at a great – and often hidden – cost to their families. In a culture that revolves around its children and a government that affords them incredible freedom over their personal decisions, parents in the Netherlands are relegated to a position of mere caregivers: responsible to feed, clothe, and satisfy, but not to rear, guide, teach, and train. Of course, parents want their children to be happy . . . but at what cost?



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You don't say...

∙ No one is listening until you make a mistake.

∙ We have enough youth. How about a fountain of "Smart".

∙ Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

∙ I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

∙ Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else get your way.

∙ Energizer Bunny arrested; charged with battery.

∙ Evolution: True science fiction.

∙ IRS: We've got what it takes to take what you have got.



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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

And What Do You Do?









In searching for a better job title than "housewife", I was thinking that "housewife" might satisfy the IRS, explaining in one word my negative cash flow. But it doesn't describe what I do every day, seven days a week, with no sick days no holidays, and sometimes not even bathroom breaks.




"Full-time" mom doesn't begin to cover how much time I spend at my job. Most full-time workers put in 40 to 50 hours a week. I put that many by Wednesday. In my job, I'm on call around the clock. Add family vacations, where I take my "work" with me on a very, very long car ride, and "full-time" becomes "all-the-time".


"Homemaker" is a quaint title, but it's inappropriate. I haven't made any homes. I am not making a house so much as I'm trying to keep the kids from tearing ours down.


I wish I could think of a better title for the toughest job I've ever had. But no matter what I come up with, my accountant will probably just put "housewife" on my tax return anyway. And the Social Security Administration will keep sending me reports with zeros on them. Perhaps that's just how little society values what I do.


But the next time someone asks what I do, I'll say that I do what my mother did. I'll say it's such a hard job, my husband wouldn't want to do it, and my father wouldn't know how. I'll say my kids are very proud of what I do.And they should know, because they come to work with me every day.




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Thursday, November 13, 2008

A Salute to Freedom

Ronald Reagan revitalized the American economy and began an unprecedented period of economic growth. He rebuilt our armed forces. He restored the spirit of the American people. He rejected absolutely the idea of moral equivalence - the idea that there is no moral difference between free government and tyranny. Reagan adopted the policy of rolling back communism wherever possible.

The public unveiling of Reagan's anti-communist strategy took place when he spoke to the British Parliament at Westminster Palace. It was in that speech that he announced his battle plan for dealing with communism in the future. He spoke openly about the conflict between the principles of constitutional government and those of communism.

In March of 1983, Reagan gave a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, in which he said that those who promote the total sovereignty over the individual are the focus of evil in the modern world.

There are several other milestones in Reagan's campaign against communism. We should learn something from one of the greatest presidents of all times.


Being democratic is not enough, for a majority cannot turn what is wrong into what is right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law. Margaret Thatcher
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

English can be a strange language...

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is is a pig.

And why is it that writers write fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese?

Doesn't seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? That you comb through the annals of history but not a single annal?

How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?

You have to marvel at our unique language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).


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Friday, November 7, 2008

True American

One of the five greatest Senators in U.S. history, the State of New Hampshire placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. His career spanned almost four decades, serving as Secretary of State for Presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore.

His name was Daniel Webster, born January 18, 1782. From a New Hampshire farm, he attended Darmouth College and became the highest paid attorney of his day. He fought the slave trade, negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, setting the country's Northeast boundary, and when South Carolina threatened nullification, he stated: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

Addressing the New York Historical Society, Daniel Webster stated:
"If we and our posterity...live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country...But if we...neglect religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the Constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."

Do you think we should learn something from him?



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Saturday, November 1, 2008