Update, Snow, and Biographies

We've enjoyed a great start to 2008. For whatever reason, my kids at school have been terrific lately, and it's been very enjoyable to come to school each day. Tuesdays are chapel and 2 conference periods, so that makes it a pretty nice day as well.

Last weekend, Dustin and I had a blast celebrating our neighbor David's birthday with David and Leslie by going to the U of L/U Conn Gals' Basketball game (great game even though we lost), enjoying Leslie's yummy cooking, and savoring delicious Graeter's Ice Cream... and Blokus, of course. Happy birthday, David!

And the weather's been fun lately... with some snow. We have enjoyed lots of soup. I still find it REALLY weird to teach a room full of kids while the windows show a snowy scene that beckons the kids to come and play outside. I feel bad for them, but school must go on! And... I'm learning that scarves aren't just for decoration, like they so often were in Texas. I've also busted out my "recess coat" again.

David actually got a GREAT shot of the snow recently. I hope they don't mind me borrowing this photo from their blog. I just love it!

My time is almost up for blogging, but I wanted to say a quick note about reading biographies. Dustin's reading Pistol Pete's and I'm reading the Prentiss biography I referred to recently. There are many benefits of reading biographies, but one is that it gives you a more realistic view of how good we have it. My book is almost hard to read, because there is so much suffering and death, but it is real. It's not fiction. Life was hard. Sickness almost always threatened to take lives. Cooking a meal was hard. It was cold. Babies died. Money was tight. Suffering happens today, mostly in other countries depending on how you define it, but it also happened in other time periods. We live in a comfortable country in a comfortable time period. It is good for us to "visit" other places and times by way of biographies, so that our faith will be prepared to sustain similar trials and not be shaken among our own trials, which often are very small in comparison. You see how KIND God was to suffering believers and how their faith was built up. You can't help but be encouraged, walking away with a strengthened resolve to put your hope in God and remembering that this world is not your home.