How a Penny Taught My Daughter About Diversity

All this month, because it is black history month, I have been thinking about how might be the best way to talk to my children about race.  My half-brother is bi-racial, and it's important to me that my children be aware that God made all of us the same inside no matter how we look on the outside.  I've constantly been at work with this whenever we see somebody who is in a wheelchair or who has a visible deformity. For instance, last week at the post office, we saw a man who had a severe limp. "Why does that…

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Why We Celebrate Lent

To put it simply, Lent, according to History.com, is the forty-day period leading up to Easter (it's actually more than forty days, but it doesn't include Sundays).  Lent is supposed to be, for Christians, a time period where we reflect on the past year and confess our sins. Why forty days? This forty-day period represents the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his ministry--a time in which he was tried, tempted, and tested by Satan.  Typically, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday.  The day before, "Fat Tuesday," is the day when everybody consumes the fat remaining in…

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You Never Really Know Which Day Will Be Your Last

As I was working for my dad yesterday morning, he broke the news to me that Pope XVI will be resigning at the end of the month. I was shocked to hear this, not surprised to discover later that there has not been a pope to resign in nearly 600 years. Now to understand these next statements, you have to understand that my dad is very interested in the rapture, Armageddon, the end times, whatever you want to call it. He is constantly listening to preachers who speak on Revelations and the end of days. After announcing to me that…

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Friday Family Movie Night Review: ParaNorman

Every Friday night is movie night at our house.  Pizza and a movie in the living room.  I don't know when or why exactly we came up with this, but we like it (most of the time) and it works.  Tonight we rented ParaNorman, which I thought might be a doable movie, but I was highly disappointed. First of all, with this movie having been rated PG, I thought that it's scariness would be limited to that of, you know, something more like Monsters, Inc. scary.  Boy was I wrong.  Twenty minutes into the movie, we had to turn it…

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Bean and Cheese Quesadillas

Here's another recipe that we had recently.  I found this one at Parents magazine. Ingredients:  1 tablespoon olive oil  1 small onion, finely chopped (we used half of a large one, because that's what we had) 1/2 small green pepper, seeded and chopped (we only had a large one, so I just used half of that) 1 15 ounce can black beans, drained and lightly mashed 1/2 cup lower sodium salsa 1/2 teaspoon chili powder 1 package (10-count) fajita-size flour or whole-wheat tortillas (I made two quesadillas with whole wheat tortillas and one with flour tortillas) 8 ounces reduced-fat pepper Jack cheese, shredded (we didn't have any, so I used 4 ounces of Mexican blend cheese…

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