I am SO excited about the approach that Britain is taking with Christmas…revisit my “rant” about Christmas from last week to see why this excites me 🙂

Those who know me know that I love editing papers…I would gladly edit the R.B. paper for free, just to make sure that they no longer have spelling/grammatical errors!

Well, the picture above amazes me. It’s one thing to have spelling errors in newspapers, where there are thousands/millions of words…And I can even somewhat understand billboards (though those mistakes drive me crazy! Come on, people, it’s a huge sign!)…but a street sign? With two words?

Best part is that BOTH streets are spelled incorrectly! Franzel and Thistle would be the correct spellings…

I love my hometown… 🙂

At our church’s Christmas banquet…

It boggles my mind when I hear about things like this… ONE person complained about a Christmas tree being put up, and they school takes it down (though they put it back up). Why does it seem like the only religion people ever complain about is Christianity? If someone had a dreidel on a table, or any other item symbolizing a religious holiday, no one would complain–why is it only Christian holidays that are criticized? I never seem to hear about Christians claiming to be “offended” by other religions celebrating their holidays! (I have a theory about this as well, but we’ll save that for another time)…

In my home county, Tehama County, the county offices are not allowed to decorate with angels or Santa–because they are “religious symbols“…

DUH! The entire holiday is religious! It’s about the Son of God, coming to earth as a human baby, born in Bethlehem two-thousand years ago…that’s what Christmas is about. Even Linus from Peanuts knows this (see “Charlie Brown Christmas”)…It’s not about presents, or anything else that the secular world has made it to be. It’s about our Savior’s marvelous birth and life…

To those who want the “religious symbols” taken away from Christmas, I ask this question: Why do you even celebrate Christmas if you don’t understand/appreciate the true meaning? It would be like someone celebrating/participating in Ramadan, because they wanted to diet and Ramadan includes fasting from sunrise to sundown…what a dumb reason to do something! If you are celebrating Christmas just to get gifts…I don’t even know what to say to you…

I think it’s kind of ridiculous to make a holiday into something that it’s not (i.e. Christmas and presents with no Jesus, Easter and the candy/”Easter bunny” with no Jesus), and I think it’s even more ridiculous to ignore that which you choose to ignore–like the fact that these holidays are about JESUS.

If “Christmas symbols”–like angels and nativity scenes, and apparently even Christmas trees–offend you, then don’t celebrate. BUT, don’t prevent someone else from celebrating the birth of their Lord and Savior…

And don’t even mention the “Separation of Church and State” to me in this situation–because the majority of citizens in this country use that phrase out of its true context constantly. I’m not going to go off on that tangent right now (if you are curious, you can ask)…just know that it doesn’t apply to decorations in a cubicle!

I am SO thankful to work for a company that truly embraces diversity and allows associates to express their religions/cultures. In two weeks, I’m participating in a Christmas Caroling performance at WORK–and we’re singing “religious” songs! How awesome is that?! No one is forced to come to the performances, but nearly everyone does, because they understand that it’s stupid to be offended by something like that, and they enjoy the celebration. We have Christmas trees in the lobby and in the cafeteria. And I have never heard anyone complain about that.

Yes, I’m on a soap box. But it’s absolutely amazing to me how far this country has gone to be “free from religion”. If you don’t want to be “religious”, that’s your choice (though it breaks my heart because you are missing out on the most marvelous relationship available to you)–but it’s also my choice and freedom to be “religious”.

The Constitution of the United States of America grants us the freedom OF religion, and the right to practice it freely. And I take that right very seriously.

This is really great…click here…

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve really blogged…life just didn’t allow time for blogging in the past few months! But, I think that things are going to be much better from now on…

Let’s see…where to begin? I drove home for Thanksgiving with my cousin, Kristin…and no one except my parents and our grandmother knew! We surprised her parents (who thought we weren’t coming home because we couldn’t get cheap plane tickets–partially true), and that was awesome.

I made a major purchase/investment on “Black Friday”–I finally bought my Nikon D-80!! It’s SO amazing! I took some pictures that I posted in an online album (click here), but I still have SO much to learn about the camera. I have two books to read about it, so I need to get on that. 🙂

Next Thursday (December 6th) is the next big “cook-off” at work that I’m organizing/coordinating/directing. Now that I’ve done this before, it’s much easier to pull off without being stressed. Last time, we had 24 teams, and they all did such an amazing job! (click here for pictures). This time, we have 26 teams (many are returning teams)–and now that they know what it was like last time, I expect that things will be even more creative and incredible!

We started decorating our house for Christmas last night, and it will be a continuous process for the next week or so. We hope to get our tree this weekend (still not used to having to go to a tree lot to BUY one, LOL), which will be awesome. I’ll post pictures once we’re closer to being done.

The Lord has continued to bless our New Orleans team–even though we don’t officially have a team yet 🙂 We interviewed applicants last week, and we have submitted the list of “accepted” applicants to the Office of World Missions. We are super excited about the applicants the Lord brought to us, and we pray that He will continue to bless our humble efforts…

I am going to be 25 next month…it feels like I’m going to be a “real adult” for some reason, even though I’ve been an adult for years now…it’s the last “landmark” age for awhile–insurance goes down, I can rent a car without paying a lot extra, and I can run for the U.S. Congress if I wanted to. 🙂

All in all, life is good…tiring, but good…God continues to be so active in my life and the lives of my friends, and it has been amazing to watch.

Hopefully I will blog more often 🙂 We’ll see how it goes…

The average cost of one year of school for me while at APU was around $25,000. What did I get for that amount of money? Food and shelter for a year…great learning experiences…opportunities that have shaped my future…it was an investment, which is why I don’t mind have student loans to pay off (about one year’s worth of school).

I say all that because I cannot fathom spending the same amount of money that I paid for one YEAR of school on a frozen dessert that will last maybe 15 minutes…It even has “edible gold” on it! Why on earth would you want to EAT gold, when you could use it for something far more useful?

If I had that kind of money, the last thing I would spend it on would be stupid “luxury” items like that. As cliche as this may sound, how do people justify that kind of expenditure–one dessert–when $25,000 could feed thousands of people?!

I’m glad that there are always headlines that make me think and that amaze me…no matter how stupid they are… 🙂

I understand why the Writer’s Guild is striking–it makes sense! But, it’s still frustrating when we hear that our favorite shows will not be showing new episodes after November 15th…or maybe at all, in the case of “24”…

I never really get attached to shows, as I’ve written about many times…but “The Office” is more than just a show to my friends and I–it’s a chance to get together, to laugh really hard, and to just enjoy an evening without stress (well, except for when Michael Scott makes us squirm and get nervous, LOL)…so I’m going to miss it.

I eagerly await the return of the show…but until then, I have an evening free for awhile 🙂