Thankful Thursday.

Yet another Thursday that I need to remember the things that are good in our life.

-1-

All the children and Steve ended up getting the gastro that was going through the house. I am the only one that hasn't got it and I am very thankful for that.

-2-

I am thankful for the doctors that look after Tom and that we have the technology to get him well quickly.

-3-

I am thankful for all the people that read about Tom and prayed for us.

-4-

I am thankful that we just have one day and one week left of term 2. Next week will be a bit of a quieter week and I will start planning for term 3.

-5-

I am thankful for the new spelling program that we have for Tom and Amelia. I have always struggled with the best way to teach them spelling and it was certainly their weakest subject. The new program I have seems to really work for them. The program I am using is called The Phonetic Zoo.

Therese.

Wordless Wednesday

Last night at the hospital. today he is much better thank goodness.

Gastro.

Don't come to our house. We have 4 children sick today.

At 10.30 this morning, just as I was serving up our morning tea, Christopher threw up all over my kitchen floor. Not long after, Joseph did too. Then in the afternoon, Tom and Amelia were both sick too. So far the rest of us are okay. We have disinfected the whole house and hopefully this bug will pass quickly.

If you could all please pray for this bug to pass quickly and that Tom and Christopher can keep their diabetes under control while we are battling this. They can get pretty sick pretty quickly when they have gastro.

Thanks

Therese.

Smart Martha Monday

From last week, I have prayed every morning. Some mornings were a bit more rushed than others and I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked on Thursday and Friday but I did get it done.

I did check the boys bsl each morning and they all got breakfast but I didn't get our bed made every morning. I think Tuesday was the only morning that we got it done.

On Wednesday I was sick and stayed in bed so I didn't do any of the morning routine.

My aim for this week is to do the morning routine again.

I also want to keep a good eye on the children's jobs. We have just changed around the jobs that each child does.

Sam will be cleaning bathrooms and toilets.

Madeline will be cleaning up our lounge room and folding washing.

Brigette will be mopping main living area floors.

Tom and Amelia are going to alternate between helping with dishes in the kitchen and hanging washing.

Christopher will help with the dishes in the kitchen too.

I am going to check the children's jobs every night and make sure they are done. If they are not done.

I hope everyone's week goes well.

Therese.

Weekend Wrap Up.

Well after my rough week last week, I have had a wonderful relaxing weekend and feel ready to cope with whatever is thrown at us this week.

I think a part of the feeling down was the lack of sleep that I had last week. Whenever the boys sugars are too high or too low, I need to do checks at 12.30 and 3.30 every night. If they are too high for too long, the boys can get ketones and dehydrate very quickly. If they are too low for too long, it can be deadly so we need to get sugar into them.

Our Saturdays are always busy now. Steve and I usually try to get to mass and adoration every Saturday morning and then we have netball. I also do our food shopping on Saturdays. In the evening we usually go to the Vigil Mass.

Because it is so busy, I try to plan very little on Sundays and today we had a wonderful day out in the garden. The sun was shining so we sat out there for most of the day. The children got out and played on the trampoline, in the sand pit and on the swings. Steve and I had a couple of cups of coffee, talked and just enjoyed the sun. It was great and just what I needed.

In the afternoon, we had a hour of prayer at the church for the feast of Corpus Christi. It is great to have my batteries recharged. We only have two weeks left of this term and then I will have a lot of time to really recharge. So looking forward to it.

Fire!!!!!!

Last night our fire alarm went off and when we looked around, Joseph had dropped one of our carb counting books into the heater. It had caught on fire and given him quite scare. It had started a small fire. We got the book out, turned off the heater and put the fire out. thank goodness we were all close by and it wasn't too serious.

YUM!!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight Red Rock chips were on sale at Coles so Brigette said, get these sea salt and balsamic vinegar ones. I bought them and boy they are great. I think I might be buying these from now on for our chips snacks but hiding them for Steve and I to share when everyone else is in bed. Oh I forgot, our teenagers stay up later than us now. Oh well, I will have to hide them in my room and sneak off for a snack.

Thankful Thursday.

This week has been a tough week. I have had a lot of trouble with Tom's blood sugar levels. Whenever things get tough, I really start to hate this insidious disease. I start to wonder why me and wish that both my boys didn't have to deal with it.

This was topped off by waking yesterday with a pretty bad headache. I felt so bad that I asked Steve to take a family leave day to help out with home schooling and all the other things I need to do for the day.

My natural reaction to all these negatives in my life is to sit and mope about it and how hard it really is. I mope around and feel sorry for myself. This is very self destructive though. To get over it, I really need to sit back and be thankful for all the good things in my life. That is why I decided to write another Thankful Thursday post tonight.

So today I am thankful for the research that could lead to an artificial pancreas and would help both my boys lead a more normal life:

I am thankful that we have the means to check our boys blood sugar level and treat with insulin.

I am thankful for the boys team of doctors and diabetes educators that can support and help me look after the boys.

I am thankful for carelink. I can upload the boys pumps onto the internet and the endocrinologist and diabetes educators can look at all the data. This has been a great help to the boys management.

I am thankful for the online diabetes community. I have a couple of support groups on facebook and yahoo groups. They have been there whenever I have felt down or wanted advise about what to do to look after the boys.

I am also thankful for all you that read and follow my blog. It is always good to know that if anything goes really wrong with either of my boys, I can type up a prayer request and will have people praying for me and my boys. Thanks for all those that have supported me spiritually and given words of encouragement.

Hug a Diabetic day.

Today is hug a diabetic day. Since we have two boys with this in our house, I wanted to take some time to educate and let people know what type one diabetes is and how it is different to type two and gestational diabetes.

Here is a great video by an online friend of mine that tells you all about type one diabetes:

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here is a fact sheet about type one diabetes that tells you all about it too.

There is also a series of posts that I wrote back in 2009 about type one diabetes.

Here is:

Part one.

Part two

Part three

Part four.

The Problem of Evil

In the last post I mentioned a common argument put forward by atheists. If an all good and all powerful God exists, then he would not allow evil to exist. Evil does exist, and so an all good and all powerful God must not exist.

The fact that this is an unsound deductive argument is not the only problem it has. It is only on the basis of a theistic worldview, in which God exists and provides an objective moral standard, that we can call anything objectively evil.

As I have pointed out in previous posts, atheists can’t really speak about good and evil if they are to be consistent. For if there is no supreme standard of ‘good’ which would be God, then nothing can be rightly called ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ Everything just is and therefore any given human act such as murdering an old woman for the money in her purse or starving mentally ill people to death because they are inconvenient to have around cannot really be classified as ‘evil.’ You may not like their actions but if God does not exist you have no basis higher than your own private preferences for labeling them as ‘evil.’

In a naturalist universe, nothing exists but particular material things simply doing what they naturally do. The problem of evil can only be a problem with a theistic worldview. Within a theistic worldview one might ask the question: Since God is all good and all powerful, I wonder why he allows evil to exist as he does?

Atheists must assume the existence of God and of moral absolutes in order to even pose the problem of evil. How then can the problem of evil be used as an argument against God’s existence?

From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.

Smart Martha Monday

I haven't done a smart Martha Monday for ages. I decided it was a good way to keep me focused on what I need to do and keep our house running smoothly.

My plan for this week is to get a fly lady morning routine happening again and to do it every morning.

This is what my morning routine will be:

1) get up and pray.

2) have coffee and read email.

3) get children up.

4) Check boys bsl, get breakfast ready and feed baby.

5) make our bed.

6) take Brigette to school.

On Wednesday and Fridays, I go walking with a couple of friends so pray and email is not possible.

I have to get the children up by 7.30 to get everything done and get Brigette to school on time. That means that the longer I stay in bed, the less time I have to read emails and check blogs.

I will let you all know next week, how I went with it.

Therese.

The Twister

The sun came out for 5 minutes today so we decided to take the children down to the foreshore to go on some rides and play a game.

Here are Tom, Amelia and Christopher on the twister.

Quick 7.

-1-

Netball.

Tomorrow morning the girls have games first thing in the morning. Amelia plays at 9.00 and Brigette at 10.00. At least it will be over early and we should get a lot of other things done.

-2-

Sewing.

I have traced most of the pattern that I was frightened to sew. Looking at the pattern, it doesn't seem as frightening and the instructions make more sense. I am hoping to finish tracing the pattern tonight and get it cut out tomorrow morning. (If I can get up early enough).

-3-

Musical Theatre.

This year, Madeline, Brigette, Tom, Amelia and Christopher are all in musical theatre. It takes up a lot of our time but they all enjoy it a lot. On Sunday, there is going to be a sewing bee for it so I am going along to help sew some of the costumes.

-4-

Pumps.

Christopher is having a lot of trouble with his pump breaking at the end of the tubing. I think he is just too rough with it. I think he will need to have the pump put in a backpack where he cannot touch it. I am the one that operates the pump all the time anyway so there is no need for him to have any access to it. I hope I can work out a pattern for a backpack fairly easily. Tom had one before but they were way over priced so I am going to have a go of making one before I buy one.

-5-

Joseph.

Joseph is walking with one of his feet turning out. We are noticing it more now that he has been walking for a few weeks. He pulls it around in an odd way too. Next Tuesday we are seeing the doctor and seeing if he thinks we need a referral on for it. Prayers for him would be appreciated.

-6-

Second Term.

Second term only has another three weeks to go. We will have two weeks holidays and then term three will start. I cannot believe we are already half way through the term.

-7-

St Ann.

I have a picture of St. Ann on my sewing table now. Steve is going to put it on the wall in there this weekend. Honey found out that St. Ann is the patron saint for sewers. I am going to be asking for her intercession a lot when I do my coat I think.

Have a great weekend everyone. Don't forget to drop over to Jen from Conversion Diary for other people's quick 7.

Does the existence of evil prove the non-existence of a good God?

If an all good and all powerful God exists, then he would not allow evil to exist. Evil does exist, and so an all good and all powerful God must not exist.

This assertion is an unsound deductive argument. It’s unsound because it assumes the truth of a premise that cannot be known. It takes for granted that an all good and all powerful God could not or would not allow evil to exist even for a limited time. Since evil does exist, the God Christians and other believe in cannot exist. If it is true that an all good and all powerful God could not or would not allow evil to exist even for a limited period of time then of course the argument works.

How does the atheist know that an all good and all powerful God could have no possible reason for allowing evil to exist for a time? The atheist cannot know this. In fact, a good, loving, and all powerful God might conceivably have a number of reasons for allowing evil to exist for a time and apparently he does.

It may be hard for us to understand why God allows evil, but the existence of evil does not prove the non-existence of God.

From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.

Wordless Wednesday: Sturt Desert Peas

Steve has grown these again in our garden. The flowers are so pretty and colourful.

Tasty Tuesday: French Onion Soup

Ingredients:

45 grams unsalted butter

1 small red onion

400 g (123?4 oz) white onions, finely sliced.

1 clove garlic, finely chopped.

25g plan flour

200 ml (6.5 fl oz) white wine.

1.5 litre brown stock (see recipe)

Bouquet garni (see recipe)

1 tblspn sherry

Brown stock:

roast 1.5 kg (3 lb) beef or veal bones, one onion quartered, 1 chopped leek, and 1 chopped celery stick at very hot 230 c. (450 f) for 40 minutes

Transfer to a clean pan. Add 4 litres water, 2 tblspns tomato paste, bouquet garni and 6 peppercorns. Simmer for 4 - 4 hours, skimming often.

Ladle the stock in batches into a fine sieve over a bowl. Gently press the solids with the ladle to extract all the liquid and place in the fridge to cool. Lift off any fat. Makes 1.5 - 2 litres.

Bouquet Garni.

wrap the green part of a leek loosely around a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, some celery leaves and a few stalks of parsley. Tie with string. Leave a long tail to the string for easy removal.

French Onion Soup:

Melt the butter in a large heavy based pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for 20 minutes stirring often until caramelised and dark golden brown.

Stir in the garlic and flour and cook, stirring continuously for 1-2 minutes.

Add the white wine and stir the mixture until the flour has blended in smoothly. Bring to the boil and slowly stirring continuously. Whisk or briskly stir the the stock. Add bouquet garniand season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes then skim the surface of excess fat if necessary. Add the sherry to the soup and adjust the seasoning to taste.

Sewing a new jacket

This is a jacket pattern I bought a couple of years ago. I opened it and read the instructions and frightened myself. I love the style and think it would look great but the pockets are welt pockets. I haven't ever sewn welt pockets and the instructions looked quite complicated. So instead of having a failure, I put the pattern away and haven't attempted to sew it since.

This weekend I was going through my patterns and decided to get this one out. I read the instructions again and thought (quite dubiously), well maybe I can do it. I looked at the review for it at Pattern Review. One review said it was a great pattern for someone to learn some new techniques like the welt pockets. I am encouraged. I am going to have a go at it. I will trace the pattern tonight and hopefully get it cut out during the week. If I have a chance this weekend, I will start. The welt pockets are one of the first things to be done so I will know fairly early in sewing it if they are too hard or not. Once I have completed the welt pockets, I am fairly confident that I won't have any problems with the rest.

Maybe I need a patron saint for sewers.

Happy Birthday to the Church.

Today is the churches birthday. Over 2000 years ago, the church was born at Pentecost. We had an ecumenical service with the Anglicans in our church tonight followed by cake and drinks.

Happy Birthday to the church.

A long weekend.

This weekend is a long weekend in Australia. We have Monday of to celebrate the Queens birthday. It will be great to have an extra day off.

Joseph seems to have picked up a cold and spent a lot of time yesterday sleeping in my arms. Today he seemed a bit better but still has rosey red checks.

Hopefully he will improve because I am hoping to do some sewing over the next couple of days. Today he was pretty happy playing with the other children while I did some cooking so I hope he will be tomorrow too.

I hope all the other Australians have a great long weekend.

What do Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot have in common? They were all atheists.

Atheists have used their amoral principles to wreak unthinkable violence against their fellow human beings around the world.

Joseph Stalin was a man committed to the dream of a civilization of power set free from the constraints of belief in God. Early in his life he had been a student preparing for ministry in the Russian Orthodox Church. He eventually came to reject God and all religion as the mere invention of man. Later in life he went on to build one of the first officially atheistic states in the world.

Stalin was probably personally responsible for the deaths of more innocent people than anyone who has ever lived. In the forced famines of 1932 he engineered to bring about the collectivization of Russian farming. It has been estimated the he purposely starved to death some seven million land owning farmers. Millions more were executed or taken to the gulags.

Mao Tse-Tung, the infamous Communist Chinese dictator, was a committed atheist – so committed, in fact, that he exerted the considerable might of the Chinese army and political apparatus to force, as far as he possibly could, all Chinese citizens under his regime into atheism.

Mao Tse-Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of a quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime.

In Cambodia, under the dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, more than two million human beings were executed or worked to death by their atheist guards acting under orders from their atheist boss.

It would be dishonest to suggest that these dictators had no connection with their materialistic worldviews. Atheism as a worldview teaches us that right and wrong are a matter of subjective personal opinion – entirely relative and thus, gives us reason to treat others as a means to our ends. In essence, the naturalist worldview doesn’t teach us to be good.

How were Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot able to commit such horrible crimes? Because they viewed these human beings as the mere product of evolution. How can anything be wrong if God does not exist? We may not like what some have done. But how can it be objectively wrong?

From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.

Small Successes.

Sherri from Chocolate for your brain now hosts the Small Successes. This is my first time participating since Sherri has taken over hosting. I suppose that could be a small success all on its own but I am not going to post it as one.

So these are my small successes for this week:

(1) We found 5 of the 8 missing library books. One of the three that is missing was broken by Joseph so we will have to pay to replace that one anyway. Hopefully we will find the other two this weekend. I have a few more cupboards to go through.

(2) been up the last two nights at 12.30 and 3.00 for Tom since he has been having high sugar levels. It is much easier to get up to him now that Joseph sleeps mostly through the night. It was pretty cold though and I really didn't want to get out of my nice warm bed.

(3) Joseph now sits quietly through our family prayer time. He was becoming a big distraction to everyone walking around and being cute so we decided it was time for him to sit on my lap for prayer. The first couple of nights, it was a fight to keep him there and we had a great screaming match with him. He sat quietly tonight for the whole time so I think we have a break through. Our next step will be to get him sitting quietly through mass.

Wordless Wednesday: At the Arid Lands

One of my favourite pictures of Steve and Christopher.

16 months.

Today Joseph turns 16 months. He is just so cute. I love a baby between 12 months and two years.

Things he likes:

- bottles of milk,
- bath time.
- going for a walk in the pusher.
- riding his bike.
- playing with the other children.


He can clap his hands and give a high 5 when we ask him too.

When we say lets go, he heads straight for the door and knows that we are going out.
He also knows that if mum grabs her handbag, we are probably going out too.

If we say to him, do you want a bath, he heads straight into the bath.

Words we have heard him say so far:

mum. hot. Jett (Brigette). Nam (Sam).

Here he is tonight when I asked him if he wanted a bath.

Our weekend.

I have been feeling a bit off this weekend. I woke up yesterday with a headache and today I woke up with a sore throat. I have taken it easy today especially and think I should be okay for this weeks school.

Yesterday was pretty nice. We took the children down to the foreshore for a play. They like going to the playground there.

Here is a video of Joseph on the swing.

Adolf Hitler was clearly committed to a vision of the world that was essentially Darwinian, Nietzschean and atheistic.

Freidrick Nietzche, the father of modern atheism believed that man was an animal evolving from beast to what he referred to as the “Superman” A race of supermen unchained from the shackles of religion, belief in God and morality, who would use their intelligence and will to create their own world.

Adolf Hitler was clearly committed to a vision of the world that was essentially Darwinian and Nietzschean. Hitler had his own twisted version of Nietzsche’s “superman” – the infamous Aryan master race. He admired Nietzsche, read his work and visited the archives in Berlin where a photo was taken of him gazing up at the philosopher.

Hitler despised as did his atheist mentor, the core moral values of Christianity – goodness, mercy, love and forgiveness. Instead, he worshiped the gods of power and lived by a morality that was akin to Nietzache’s new ethic for a new age. He saw himself as implementing a Darwinian law of nature that would result in the elimination of the unfit and bring about a civilization fit for a master race.

In the atheist world view of nature, it is good for the strong to devour the weak, because that is how the evolution of species progresses. If human beings are nothing but accidents of chance and time, material substances and nothing more, why shouldn’t Hitler eliminate those he perceives to be inferior and weak?

If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. The gas chambers of Auschwitz are the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment. The gas chambers were not prepared by some ministry in Berlin but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

Although atheism need not necessarily result in immorality and violence, it certainly leads some adherents in that direction. It removed from consideration the existence of a good and loving God – and with him, any objective standard by which the actions or moral choices of another can be judged.

From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.

Quick 7.

-1-

Another driver in our house.

Today Madeline got her Learners permit. She did the test a couple of months ago and passed but life has just got in the way of her going and getting the permit. Today we took her down and finally had enough id that she was able to get her permit.

-2-

Netball.

This weekend, Amelia plays at 10.00 and Brigette at 11.00. Fingers crossed they will both win.

-3-

Pumpkin cooking!

We have been cooking plenty of pumpkin treats. I have made 4 pumpkin loaves and 2 of Tania's pumpkin tea cake. I am going to do a few more this weekend and get them in the freezer.

-4-

New Computer.

We have another computer. I have Steve's old one and he has the new one. He has been telling me all the components that his new one has and I keep on saying, I don't care. Tell me how to work xyz on this one.

-5-

Sewing.

Joseph needs some new overalls. I am going to cut them out this weekend and hopefully I will be able to start sewing them.

-6-

Joseph.

Here he is falling asleep in his chair after tea one night.

-7-

Missing.

We have misplaced a couple of books that we borrowed from the library. I am going to be having a good look through our book bins this weekend for them and asking St. Anthony for help in finding them. If you could also pray that they all show up, I would appreciate it very much.

Don't forget to visit Jen from Conversion Diary for other people's quick 7 posts.

“God is Dead” says Freidrich Nietzche, the father of modern atheism.

In the previous post I pointed out that if atheistic naturalism is true, ethics must therefore be personal and relative, that men and women, families and nations must simply choose for themselves what they will consider ‘right for them’ and ‘wrong for them’.

This thought seems harmless at first, but as you read through “The Godless Delusion” this harmless thought becomes very problematic.

Freidrich Nietzche, the son of a Lutheran minister, has been spoken of as the father of modern atheism. He came to reject Christianity and saw that atheism implied not only moral relativism but also the death of morality.

According to Nietzche, man is an animal evolving from beast to what he reffered to as the “Superman” A race of supermen unchained from the shackles of religion, belief in God and morality, who would use their intelligence and will to create their own world.

In the meantime, whatever stands in the way of this evolution must be obliterated. More than anything else, Christianity stands in the way, especially with its teachings about humility and compassion, ideals that Nietzsche detested. He asked the question, how can man erect a civilization of power on pathetic ideals about love, peace, and kindness? Christianity must be ruthlessly destroyed in order to make way for the race of supermen who would rise above Christian superstition about the God who isn’t there.

Once Nietzche’s ideas began seeping into European intellectual circles, things started heading downhill rapidly. These ideas coupled with Darwinism and other naturalist sources were instrumental in propelling Europe towards the worst era of violence it had ever experienced.

From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.

Wordless Wednesday: at the foreshore