Science Experiments

From reading Miriam's blog, I learned of the Science and the Bible experiment books. After reading several of her posts about how she used the experiments in AWANA counsel time; I purchased the books and lent one to our counsel time leader. Last night he tried his first experiment. The illustration involved wrapping our biggest/toughest male AWANA leader with cassesste tape. The first time, he was only wrapped a few times and then he tried to brake free which he was able to do. The second time all the tape was used to wrapped him. This time he was unable to brake free. The leader then explained that we might think that those little sins in our lives are not a big deal that we can "brake free" from them at anytime, but those sins can easily ensnare us. The experiment was a very effective visual, especially for the boys. The experiment is in Book 1 or the yellow book, sorry I don't know the page or title. (I don't have the book right now.)

Oh My! Look who's 35!

That's right, thirty-five years ago today, Christopher Guy Hitz was born. Here are just a few pictures from that wonderful day. Happy Birthday Chris! Looking forward to at least another thirty-five more.

Answer to Prayer

For the past few weeks, I have been praying that God would help me witness at work. Every time an opportunity comes along, I never think of the correct response until later. Usually the opportunities aren't specifically related to salvation, but other topics. I always think of all the Bible verses and examples to use after the conversation is over.

Yesterday, while working with IT on a computer problem, the IT guy mentioned that he had been doing some interesting research that he was really excited about. He said that he was researching angels and that his research revealed that there were several levels of angels He also mentioned a few specific angels and told me about one "special angel" that was a man who had walked with God and he was so close to God that God made him an angel. When this angel was a man his name was Enoch. Knowing that I was a Christian, he also mentioned that Enoch was in the Bible as well as 11 other Hebrew manuscripts.

Though I know the true story from the Bible about Enoch, I told him, I thought it was interesting that God would make such a "close man" an angel. If "close to God" meant he was a Christian then making him an angel would be a demotion because the Bible says that Christians are the sons and daughters of God making us co-heirs with Christ. Since Christ is higher than the angels, this would have been a demotion.

This seemed to cause him to question some of the things he had researched and I asked him were he had gotten his information. He said the internet.

Praise the Lord for giving a quick response! Hopefully, this will lead to more discussions and an opportunity to explain that we shouldn't worship angels; only the Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of our praise.

Shopping Buddies

After work today, Dani, Lori and I went shopping. Of course, Zoey and I are best buds so we stuck pretty tight as we shopped. While we were in Charlotte Rouse, looking for shoes, Zoey and I also tried on hats and we were able to snap this quick shot of our shopping experience. Though we didn't purchase anything, we had a lot of fun just spending time together.

"Students of the Snow" (I mean COLD!)

So . . . It's been almost a month since my last post. Ugh! It's not because we have been bored out of our minds with nothing exciting to write about. Oh no, quite the opposite. Since my last post, we have been very busy with Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, Christmas parties and more Christmas parties followed by ice storms and most of Tulsa without power. Thankfully, we didn't lose power and were able to allow family and friends to stay at our house.

During this whole time, Colorado has been getting plenty of snow which gave Chris and my Dad the Ski bug. Thursday, during all the power outages, Mom, Dad, Chris and I packed up our ski gear and headed too Winter Park Ski Resort. Below are some pictures from the very VERY cold trip. As you can see from one of the pictures, the temperature was well below freezing. The Weather Channel recorded the temperature at -18F! I don't think I have ever been this cold before. BRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed the trip.

Thanksgiving Favorites. . .

Thanksgiving is my most favorite holiday. I love . . .

• The color of the trees
• The smells of all the different kinds of foods
• Of course eating all the good food
• Cramming all four or five of us girls in the kitchen and trying to cook all at the same time
• Decorating the house and setting the table to look festive

My most favorite activity is sitting around the table and telling of the many things or one special thing we are Thankful to God for. Its like our own time of setting up stones as memorials to God’s faithfulness, grace and mercy. Just like the Israelites did after crossing over the Jordon River.

Here is a few other Thanksgiving Day thoughts . . .

Tradition
Unlike Chris’s family, we were never allowed to have dessert for breakfast . . . except at Thanksgiving. Each year at Thanksgiving, we make about 10 pumpkin pies and we are allowed to have a piece for breakfast on Thanksgiving Day and every day after for as long as there is pumpkin pie (which only lasts until Friday or Saturday)

Memory
My most unusual memory about Thanksgiving occurred while we lived on the farm. We were about 15 minutes from sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, when we realized that Red (our cow) was giving birth to her first calf. We had never had a cow give birth before so this was a new experience. Needless to say, dinner was postponed until after the calf was born. In honor of Red having her calf on Thanksgiving, we named the calf Pilgrim.

First
After eating “mold injected” turkey for Thanksgiving dinner at college for three year, my senior year we had a real Thanksgiving dinner. We called PCC’s turkey “mold injected” after taking some engineering class because the turkey looked like it had been chopped up and then pressed into a mold to look like a turkey. I was married my last year of school, so dinner was at my house. The night before, Miriam, Tamra, Amber and Julie all came over each person made a special Thanksgiving dish that their family always made. It was really neat to see the different types of food people call Thanksgiving. One fun memory from that night was that we had to make an emergency run to wal-mart for NEW shortening. As Miriam and I made pies, we could never get the pie crust dough to the right consistency and we finally determined that our shortening must be bad. Once we had new shortening, the pie crust came together beautifully.

Resolutions

It is really hard to break a habit you didn't even realize you had.

When purchasing laundry detergent, I have always wondered if you really get as many loads out of the bottle as they claim, because it just doesn't seem like it. So, last time I got a new bottle of detergent, I actually read the bottle instructions. The instructions really surprised me. They stated that level 1 on the measuring cup is for NORMAL loads and level 2 is for LARGE or heavily soiled loads. The measuring cup didn't mention anything about level 3 which is clearly marked on the cup. My own determination of what the levels meant was obviously wrong. I had assumed that level 1 was for small loads, level 2 for medium loads and level 3 for full loads. I wonder if the manufacture actually intends for us to use level 3 or if I am blindly using it and wasting 1/3 of a cup of detergent on every load.

Since realizing this, I have determined or resolved to use level 1 on the measuring cup only. I would never of thought this would be such a hard resolution; but every time I do laundry, I fill the cup and empty it without even thinking about what I am doing. It is certainly interesting the things that become habits. Do you have any unusual habits?