4th of July parade

I know this is backtracking quite a bit but I'm mostly putting these up for my Mom and sister to see. Dove, Eden and Memory were apart of the parade in Kirkland this year. We normally do the Bothell parade but our neighbor owns a Bridal shop and asked if the girls would model her dresses in the parade. They had a good time, especially Dove. She really got into it as you will see. They were supposed to wave and hand out candy. Normally the candy is thrown, but some kid last year got hit in the eye so they banned the throwing part. Although I heard people still threw the candy. All and all it was a sacrifice for me because normally we come away with bags of candy and this year I had to give it out :)

Eden on a date with her Dad

Drinking Bubble Tea with tapioca balls mmmmm...

Kicking and Screaming

Ben and I have created a schedule or rhythm for our day to day lives in an effort to live out our lives more purposefully. We have always had goals for our family but realized very little of these goals were actually being reached without making them apart of our daily schedule. So this is where the kicking and screaming comes in. I do not naturally swing with schedules. They make me feel claustrophobic. But I realized that I CAN adapt but there just will be kicking and screaming going on. And I WILL adapt because I know that big-picture wise this is better for our family as a whole. We've been doing this for the past six months and its been a process. I don't always even realize I haven't been following my schedule until Ben asks me how its going. Some days I forget that there was a schedule. Other days I just throw the schedule out because my house is messy and I want to clean it. Can you tell I don't naturally put a whole lot of worth in a schedule? But I put a lot of worth in a clean house:) However, if I keep forcing myself to see the bigger picture then there is a ton of worth in having a schedule. A few of the things that we have on our weekly schedule are:
walks/exercise with Dove & Eden,
library,
family swim,
homeschooling,
reading time,
date night (Ben and I),
kids date night w/ Dad,
Seven raquetball w/ Ben,
kids discipleship
Every so often we tweak our schedule but these things mostly stay the same.

Mere Christianity: Faith

I read Mere Christianity about 10 years ago and I just started reading it again. I feel like I'm reading it for the first time because I don't remember much from the first time I read it. I was only 18 and distracted, I guess. I've grown a lot since then. And I wanted to share as best as I can what that looks like now in regards to my faith. Since going through The Story Formed Life discipleship class several times over the last 9 months I feel like my faith was challenged a lot. I was forced to look at what I believe or don't believe and to what degree do I believe it. This caused a lot of doubts in my heart in regards to my faith in God and the Bible. But I feel like God took me through that and produced an even stronger faith than I ever had. Reading C.S. Lewis' chapter on Faith help put some of those experiences into words for me. It helped me understand what was really going on.

"It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other."

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

"That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith."

Since starting to function as a body with other believers I've noticed that this also increases my faith. God knew what He was talking about I guess;)

Hmmmmm...Fasting

I don't know why it's so hard for me to keep up a blog, but it is!

Part of it is I like to use pictures to tell stuff and all our pics are on Ben's computer and so it's harder to find time to transfer the pics to my computer.

I'd thought I'd just go for it anyways...

Ben and I started the Master Cleanse last Wednesday and only made it to Sunday night. We made buffalo chicken strips and ate them together at 11pm. Believe me, food NEVER tasted so good. It was almost worth it for just that moment. So the reason why we cut it short was that neither one of us was doing it for the cleanse part, well at least that wasn't our first reason for doing it. And if you don't know anything about the Master Cleanse your supposed to do it for 10 days to have the full effect. (I know there's a lot of controversy on whether or not the thing even works or is dangerous...etc.) We both realized that the reason we were doing it was more for fasting purposes. And after four days we both felt that it served its purpose. That was the first time that I ever did any type of hard-core fasting. (I guess it's not as hard-core as not eating anything) Well, I learned a ton! And Ben and I both agreed that we wanted to do something like this on a more regular basis. I learned all the ways I viewed food that were healthy and unhealthy. It made me realize that in a land of plenty (and our human nature) it is so easy to overdue things and use them for the wrong reasons. And I know for me that happens with more than just food. I hope that I can hold onto the things that I've learned. One way to make sure that happens is to keep fasting on a regular basis from things. It's only when you take things away that you realize what a hold it had on you to begin with.

We are starting another discipleship course!

We are starting another discipleship course.
Called: The Story Formed Life. *This is God's story not ours. We are apart of His story.
Each week has a topic with applicable scriptures that we midrash (discussion with a leader) for about 2 hours. Then we break up into smaller training groups to apply what we learned to our lives in a personal way.

1st week: Creation
2nd week: The Fall
3rd week: The Gospel
4th week: Lordship
5th week: Sonship
6th week: The Holy Spirit
7th week: Disciplined Life
8th week: The Church
9th week: The Kingdom
10th week: Re-Creation

*If you are already a Christian and looking for a way to grow deeper in your faith and exploring what you do believe about these topics this is the place you want to be. And if you aren't a Christian this is a place to get answers and truth from God's Word. Also, this is a doorway if you are interested in a different way (then you may be used to) of living out being the body of Christ to one another (church) and living a common life with fellow followers of Christ (community). You'll hear more about this during week 8: The Church.

*Mini Testimony from Kami: "I've been a Christian for most of my life, but never have I grown in my beliefs and faith as a Christian as I have in the last 6 months. And the biggest reason is because of this class and how God has used it in my life. It's not a magical formula but it really dug into my false belief's about some things and my lack of belief about other things. So I would highly encourage people to come to this class if you don't already have something like this in your life."

It will be at My house in Kirkland.
First week is THIS SUNDAY 6-9pm.
Childcare is provided.
Come check it out. You don't have to commit to all 10 weeks to check it out.
If you are interested contact me on this blog
We would love to have you!

Discipleship Class: "The Story Formed Life"

So...I wanted to invite anyone who reads this blog and is interested in finding out what it means to be a radical disciple of Jesus Christ to come to my house on March 5 for an informational dinner about what this class is all about. If you are interested or have any other questions email me and I'll send you our address.

This is a class that both Ben and I went out to Kentucky to take with our family for 9 weeks about 5 months ago. Most of the content will probably not be new to you but we found that the methods were really quite effective in helping to transform people that are interested in becoming radical disciples of Christ. There is quite a bit of dialogue and discussion with the intention of digging into Scripture and our own beliefs as opposed to just lecturing or answering form questions. The class takes 9 weeks and will start off with an informational dinner. At the dinner we will explain everything about the class and answer any questions that may arise. There is no cost for the dinner or any course materials. Thanks for reading this. It's something that we're pretty excited about doing with anyone that can make it. If you have any other questions please feel free to contact me and we would love to see you there.

Kami

The Dinner - Come and check it out. We will go over the class and answer any questions...plus there there should be some good food

When - Wednesday March 5th, 7pm

Where - My house

Who - Everyone is invited, feel free to bring guests

RSVP - Email Ben or Kami with your RSVP so we don't run out of food and so we know how many children to provide childcare for.



The Story Formed Life

When - Wednesday Nights at 7pm. The Dinner will be on March 5th and the classes will start on March 12th and go to May 7th. You do not have to come to the dinner to be a part of the class and vice-versa.

Where - My House (Childcare will be provided at Colin & Grace's house 2 blocks away)

Who - Everyone