Being someone who is subscribed to the Answers Magazine that is put out by Answers in Genesis, I really enjoy reading their magazine. So, while reading this month’s issue, I got this really great idea for a post. I’m going to let you read the section of the article about all the Christian holidays that have been made not so Christian. Here it is:*

As Christians, we don’t know whether to be sad, angry, or indifferent. The frustrating reality is that, for most in our culture today, secularism has almost fully obscured the roots of many holidays. In many cases religious tradition has overgrown its original intent—so much so that we must ask ourselves a few very important questions: What are the foundational origins of the holidays? How are Christians to correctly lead their families as they seek to worship the Lord during these special seasons of the year?

Answering these questions is not as simple as it might seem. Every Christian holiday has become a mixture of the secular and the sacred—a smearing of the historical and the fable, and often it’s hard to tell which is which.

Christmas

96% of all U.S. adults celebrate Christmas. Amazingly, even 84% of those who claim to be non-Christians celebrate this religious holiday.¹

During the Christmas season, believers in Christ commemorate the coming of Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). This miraculous and holy event is illuminated in the beautiful words of Scripture that detail the events surrounding Christ’s amazing birth.

The Christmas season has long been a mixture of both the secular and sacred. During the church’s first three centuries, Christmas wasn’t even on the calendar yet. Initially, the celebration of Christ’s birth was lumped in with Epiphany on January 6, one of the church’s earliest feasts. Some thought that it would be wrong to honor Christ’s birthday since birthday celebrations were for pagan gods. The date December 25 places Christmas in the middle of a significant pagan winter festival that celebrates the rebirth of the sun using bonfires and evergreen trees. The mixture of traditions between the pagan holiday and the Christian holiday is seen today in everything from snowy nativity scenes to stars on decorated pine trees.²

For hundreds of years, Christmas has also been the flashpoint of bitter legal and social battles. During the 1500s and 1600s, the celebration of Christmas was banned for a time in Scotland, England, and Massachusetts, but not for reasons you might expect. Many Puritans and Protestants believed that the holiday was so secularized that it had become a blasphemy against God. The opposite is the case today as Christian aspects of the holiday are brought under attack by liberal government and special interest groups.

Something that I might add to this is that the word “Christmas” and/or the phrase “Merry Christmas” are being replaced almost everywhere with “X-mas” and “Happy Holidays”. I mean, come on, you have to admit that all most everywhere you go, stores and restaurants have the ever popular “Happy Holidays!” sign in the door or window or hanging from the ceilings. Oy. It makes you feel sick, doesn’t it? Think about it: to take Christ out of Christmas is like taking the writing of the Constitution out of American history or turkey out of Thanksgiving or something like that – it just doesn’t work. And it can’t happen: we, teens, as the next generation, should try to do everything we can to put Christ back into the holiday of Christmas. I, who am planning to be a lawyer one day, am certainly going to fight for things like this and believe other teens should plan to also.

In Christ,

HRTF

*to view the full article go to http://answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/happy-holidays.

I have finally gotten around to posting about this little incident that happened a few weeks ago. Wait, make that very unfortunate little incident that happened a few weeks ago. Very unfortunate.

Okay, so now I have probably freaked you out. What happened that was so unfortunate? Did I perhaps explode a can of gasoline? No. Or how about this: maybe I got liver cancer and will die in a few weeks? Again, no. Actually, the "little" thing that happened to me (actually, that I did) was way more complicated than that. But perhaps I should give you a little more background on what led up to the very calamitous thing that I did.

Setting- Day: Sunday; Time: 8:50 a.m.; Where: my room/closet

Story: Okay, so I'm ten minutes from leaving to go to church, and I have neither eaten nor gotten completely dressed (as usual). When I say that I was not completely dressed, I mean that I was actually almost dressed excepting my belt, which I could not find. I was very distressed, knowing that one can certainly not go to church without one’s belt. I had already frantically searched my clothes drawers, the laundry room, my bathroom, and my belt rack. So I turned to my last resort: the closet. Now you must understand something very key to this whole story: my closet is in no way big. It is in fact, dinky, with two sliding doors that have mirrors on the outsides (a very common closet thing). Sure, the closet is very long, but only about three feet deep, thus making it very hard to move around in. Also, my brother and I share a room and had, in recent months, somehow managed to allow quite a pile of boxes full of nothing other than junk (paper, school stuff, books, toys, and other countless items which together become known as junk). A few comforters and sleeping bags were in my closet too, along with our nice clothes that were hanging about three feet from the ground. In other words, our closet was a mess.

Now, two of the said boxes of junk that were in our closet were inside of each other, with a few blankets and a lot of books stacked on top of them. I had (after looking through the rest of the closet) a strange suspicion that my belt was in the bottom box. So, without caring to remove the other stuff on top of the box (which was a plastic laundry basket, I should mention, not one of those wimpy cardboard boxes that can be manipulated and bent easily), I dug through it, searching by feel for the belt. When I was through, I tried to remove my hand, but found it stuck between the boxes. So I tried to shift the boxes and junk with my other hand, but to no avail. I was well and truly stuck. And five minutes before leaving for church too! ‘AAAAH!!!’ my brain was screaming in frustration and my mouth felt like following suit. But I wasn’t going to let that happen (since when do teenage boys scream about getting their hand stuck? Never). Instead, I gathered all the energy of that waiting scream and used it to lift the box and junk off of my hand. I yanked my hand out from under the box and…slammed it against the wall. Ow. I groaned in anger and then it happened: I, lying on my side and twisted around the open closet door and also completely exhausted after having just used almost all of my energy to lift a very heavy box, let the very heavy box drop and crush my other hand, bending my fingers back and scraping the top layer of skin off of the back of my palm. So now I had two hurting hands and a newly stuck one. I wanted to tear the boxes into little shreds, but couldn’t. I was so frustrated and mad at my predicament that I was about to try to lift the boxes off again when my dad called to me from downstairs, telling me to get moving and get in the car. That was it, the last straw. I yanked my throbbing hand out from between the two boxes and…smacked my elbow into the backside of the door. I heard a loud crunch and knew that I was dead. I crawled/shoved my way out of the closet, and rolled back the closet door to see my “handiwork”. There, across the bottom two-thirds of the mirror, was a huge crack. This crack was not your normal straight-line, hair breadth crack. Oh no. Of course not (why would it be?). This was your completely huge, spider-web like, very deep crack. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. That hurt. Here's some pictures of the mirror after the incident:

Mirror 1

Mirror 2

Mirror 3

Suffice to say, I still ended up going to church without a belt . Now, the fact that I wrecked my loset door wasn't as bad as you think, seeing as we were going to rip the mirror out anyway. But it was still pretty bad...and I know, I'm a little clumsy...okay, fine, a LOT clumsy! Whatever. Fine. You're embarassing me, so go away. Goodbye!

HRTF

Okay, so for the last three days I've been taking an hour or two to snap photos, just to give you an idea of what (some of) my life looks like through my eyes, and then (conveniently) ending with Thanksgiving. Of course, each hour was split up into about ten minute sections throughout the day; therefore, you'll get a glimpse of quite a few things that I or someone else did. Now, to work: for your convenience, I have just placed links instead of pictures. Just click each link to view the picture. Okay? Coooolll…

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
Monday was actually the day that I got the idea to do this, but Tuesday was when I summoned the initiative to do this project. Here are the photos for Tuesday:

Brother #2 making a face at Brother #1

Brother #2’s Lego Spaceship

Mom making gravy for Thanksgiving

Brothers #2 & #3

Brother #3

Sister #3

Mom tasting her food for Thanksgiving

Brother #2 with his “Light-saber-broom-thing”

Mom with Brother #3

Brother #3 being held by Brother #2 while in dino pajamas

Wednesday, November 21^st, 2007

The majority of these are of Brother #3:

Brother #3

Brother #3

Brother #3

Sister #2 with her Dora the Explorer Disposable Camera

Brother #3

Brother #3

Brother #3

Dad & Brother #3

Brother #2 jumping on the trampoline

Thursday, November 22^nd, 2007

All of these are from Thanksgiving:

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a family tradition (and look who’s in the background!)

Mom’s cinnamon rolls, freshly baked

Sister #3, enjoying her cinnamon roll

Brothers #1 & #2, both freezing

Brother #2 watching the parade on Grammy and Pop-Pop’s TV

The Thanksgiving Dinner Table

Gramps and Brother #3

The Thanksgiving Dinner Table, invaded

Sister #2, enjoying a candy stick

The leftover turkey (which resulted in two days of turkey sandwiches, and probably more to come)

Fire!

Sisters #1 & #2 enchanted by the flames

Okay, that’s it. My three-day project is over. Phew! Okay, well, I guess that leaves only one more thing to say: hasta la vista, baby!

HRTF

Tenna’ ento lye omenta,

HRTF

1st of many

Just to start this post off on a weird note, I like naming my posts wierd things (kind of like every one of the Jamestown 400 things). For instance, this post has a wierd name relevent to only one thing in the entire post. I'll leave it up to you to comment and tell me what it is.

I, HRTF, have decided to add another thing to my sidebar: the Quote of the Month. This thing will list a really great quote that I deam worthy of my blog. This month's quote is already up, but I think it needs a little background. About a month ago, I was reading Of Plymouth Plantation for Omnibus III (which I despise). The author, William Bradford, was talking about a really bad decision that the Pilgrims made which almost cost them their lives, when he said this: "Man doth propose, but God doth dispose".

Isn't that a really great quote?! I read it a couple times of through and dog-eared the page for later reference (a.k.a. my blog). This is one of my favorite quotes, as it talks about the providence of God and how man thinks "Oh man, I'm so big and awesome!" Right. Uh-huh. Sure. We are shrimps and nothing more. S-H-R-I-M-P-S. Little pink things (actually, that's not far from the truth: we are little and pink  ).

Now, another thing: ever heard of...coincidence? R-I-G-H-T, sure. Whatever. Well, here's some for you: right after I finished reading that chapter of Of Plymouth Plantation, I walked into our kitchen and saw this magnet that my mom had just fixed on our fridge door:

Now there's some coincidence for you! It's kind of like a modern version of the quote. It also proves itself: that was no mere coincidence, that was the providence of God.

Even though this is the first quote of the myriads more to come, I already believe that it's the best one.

Aa' i' cam en' i' Heru na yassen llie mankeoio llie aut,

HRTF

Postscript: YES!!! I did it! I used the word "myriads" in something! I've been wanting to do that for months! Yahoo! -HRTF

Eragon

One word: Alagaesia. Have you ever heard of it? It’s the country in Eragon by Christopher Paolini. But why should I tell you about all of this? Why not let the author of this great book do it? I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking you! Anyway, here’s a link: http://www.alagaesia.com. Visit it. Read the book. Join the adventure! (BTW: if you have already read this book, tell me; my brother and I will then become your best friend J).

Aa’ lle cael Aman re, melloneamin,

HRTF

N-n-n-nineth grade?

Many of you mat know that I love  waterpolo. If you don't know that, you're gonna learn.

Waterpolo is by far the best sport ever. For a brief summing up of the sport, it's like soccer in the water (but you use your hands, not your feet). A little yellow ball gets passed up and down the court while you swim to go intercept it. Very tiring. And you don't sweat like in football (awesome).

Anyway, I was taking a class this summer in which I learned how to play waterpolo. There were about thirty other Jr. High - Highschoolers in the class, male and female. I was probably the oldest one there. We learned (aka did) about six different strokes, about thirty different exercises and a lot more stuff. One day, during one of said exercises, these two girls (obviously best friends from school) were chatting about school. I was standing there, nonchalantly listening and minding my own business, when one of the girls says to me:

"So, what school do you go to?"

"Who, me?" I say to throw her off her guard and appear as if I don't know what she's talking about, "I'm homeschooled."

"So what grade are you in?" she says.

"Umm, ninth." I say slowly.

"No, no, no, what grade would you be in if you were in school?" she asks.

"Umm, ninth." I say again, wondering if she even knows what she's talking about.

"No, I mean If you were in public school." she asks, as if she was annoyed with my "incompetence".

"Ninth. I would be a highschool freshman if I was in a public school." I say through annoyed, gritted teeth.

"Oh." she says with surprise at the annoyed tone. "So, what do you like about homeschooling?"

"Umm, the amount of freedom to rush through your day and get all your stuff done really fast." I say after a short pause (I've always hated that question).

"Oh really? I like the amount of socialization that public schools give you."

"Yah," her friend pipes up, "schools are a lot more social!"

Thus ended the conversation.

*sigh* I know, public school systems aren't the best, but hey! I don't want to be unsocialized or weird or anything like that. I walked (swam) away from them as the girls began to chat again, utterly bewildered. My mom posted about this incident too. Ouch.

Tenna' ento lye omenta,

HRTF

End

Okay, that's it. That's the end of the post. Don't blame me for your insanity.

Tenna' ento lye omenta, Taraerea,

HRTF

Today I wrote an essay for Omnibus II on "What is the purpose of discipline?". In that essay I included a short story as an example for why discipline can protect you. I thought that I would post that story for you to read:

Little Bobby

Little Bobby was playing outside. He kicked his ball. He kicked his ball again. Little Bobby was having fun.

Little Bobby accidentally kicked his ball into the street. ‘Uh oh!’ thought Little Bobby. He started to walk into the street to get his ball. What Little Bobby did not notice was his mom, glaring over him. Little Bobby looked up at her with a cheesy smile.

“Little Bobby,” his mom said, “Get out of the street and go get a different ball. If you go back in the street again, I will discipline you.”

Little Bobby continued playing outside. He kicked his ball. He kicked his ball again. Little Bobby was having fun.

Little Bobby accidentally kicked his ball into the street. ‘Uh oh!’ thought Little Bobby. He started to walk into the street to get his ball. What Little Bobby did not notice was his mom, glaring over him. Little Bobby looked up at her with a cheesy smile.

“Little Bobby,” his mom said, “Get out of the street and come here.”

Little Bobby’s mom spanked Little Bobby.

“Now go get a different ball.” she said.

Little Bobby continued playing outside. He kicked his ball. He kicked his ball again. Little Bobby was having fun.

Little Bobby accidentally kicked his ball into the street. ‘Uh oh!’ thought Little Bobby. He started to walk into the street to get his ball. What Little Bobby did not notice was the eight-wheeled, “Hot Baby” monster truck ripping down the road, blaring rap all the way.

(choose your own ending from this point)

G-Rated Ending

A few weeks ago, Deus Primus posted about a plumbing job that he had to do. I've posted it below for your enjoyment:

Let it be known far and wide that I have decided not to be a plumber!!!!! Not that I was seriously considering this occupation as my dream job, but on the offhand chance that the idea may have slipped into my mind at some weak moment of contemplating the potential glory and honor derived from such an occupation, even this infinitesimally slight possibility has been forever killed, destroyed, nullified, annihilated, extirpated and quelled. (As a disclaimer for any readers who may have relatives, friends, or vaguely known acquaintances who are plumbers, and may be offended by my remarks, please know I have an enormous amount of respect for members of this long and distinguished profession, God simply decided not to grant me the abilities needed to excel in this field. [As you will soon read.])

Some of you may know that the faucet in the "Boy's" bathroom has not been working for a couple of months. This has led to the rather inconvenient situation of a mixed gender bathroom for the various times that water and a sink are needed, such as brushing one's teeth or the gelling of one's hair. (Did you know that the imperfective tense of "to gel" has to "L"s in it? Very strange. It makes me want to ask what "gell" means.)

In an effort to end this unfortunate standoff between the genders of our house, though I might add that the fair females of our family have very graciously accepted this intrusion (Could I expect anything less from the lovely ladies?), a faucet was purchased to take the place of the non-working spigot. In truth, this was the second such faucet that was purchased, it was found during an attempted installation that the first did not fit in the area allotted for its habitation. That occurred last month; the turnaround time is quite lengthy in the faucet world.

With a correctly fitting faucet in hand, I decided that an hour or so could be spared in my schedule to take care of this small project. (Ha!)

First, the old faucet needed to be removed. Sounded simple enough, so gathering my wrenches about me I attacked the various washers and nuts with a fury that would have made the Mario Brothers proud. (Before they entered the princess saving business, Mario and Luigi were plumbers, ergo the many plumbing related items in the game.) It should be noted that there is no conventional adjustable  wrench that expands to the width needed to remove the round thingamajigs that are attached to the underside of a faucet, this is learned by experience. Also learned was that you can remove them if you twist hard enough, while yelling for them to release their death grip on the pipe.

Once the faucet was off I made another disturbing discovery. Whoever makes the faucets found out that they can force the unsuspecting self-plumber to also change the drain at the bottom of the sink, regardless of whether this needs to be done or not. This is done through the cleaver method of making each drain the same color metal as the faucet, instead of a generic color that matched the sink. This has the effect of making it rather difficult to replace the faucet without someone noticing the drain. (I can just see all my brothers standing around looking at the drain saying, "Isn't that drain the same color as the last faucet?"). Not wanting to be criticized as being deficient in my duties I next tackled the drain. With the first twist of the pipe wrench the entire sink shifted two inches to the right. Even I with my limited plumbing knowledge realized that the sink is supposed to stay in one place, not be floating around like a soap bubble on the surface of the dishwater. It turns out that the grout was cracked, and now I would have to reattach the sink to the counter. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I decided to pull up on the sink, since it was no longer attached anyway, and separate the pipe this way, instead of wrestling with them in the rather cramped spaces under the sink. This worked well, until  the plastic u-shaped thingy that attaches to the bottom of the sink snapped in half. Ok, now I had another thing to fix.

At this point I was about to renounce hand washing for good, maybe advocating going back to the old method of rubbing our hands in the dirt to clean them off. In the interest of preserving my heath and well being I decided to work on the other sink. What other sink you ask? Perhaps I forgot to mention that the "Girl's" sink had a minor leak, not a huge problem, simply enough to make life annoyingly difficult for the person in charge of cleaning said sink. That meant that this faucet was also being replaced, and since it was a simpler design, it should be really easy to replace, right? For those of you who said right, please join me in the optimist's group, we are wrong, but at least optimistic.

The faucet lulled me into a false sense of security by coming out quite easily, but the sink hit me with reality (which feels about the same as being hit by a 2X4, for those of you who were wondering) when it also decide that it if its fellow sink could break from the restrictions of being attached to a counter, then by-golly it was going to do the same. Now I had two sinks to re-mount. (At least the u-shaped thingy stayed intact.)

Not to be put out by such a setback I replaced the faucet, which turned out to be easier then the other was becoming, and turned on the water, much pleased that even though there had been several setbacks, one of the faucets was going to be working. Hearing a hissing noise I leaned over and saw that the hose which connects that funny looking valve to the faucet had started leaking. (I didn't know it was possible to reach such a high note during a scream.)            

Again, someone decided that replacing just the hose would not be satisfying to the home-repair person, so they make the hose one piece with the valve, if one breaks you replace both. (I can hear their sardonic laughter now.) At this point I needed supplies, and that meant a trip to the hardware store.

There are few stores that I do not like. In fact, I can count them on one hand. Hardware stores are one of those few, spending money there, when it could have been spent on books, or saved for my world vacation, seems so unfulfilling. However, it had to be done. I ran in, got the needed supples, and ran out with all the haste fitting such an event. Once I got home I noticed that four hours had passed since I started the project. My first hope was that my watch had broken. Alas, this was not so.

Replacing the valve and hose required my turning off the water. The rest of the family was outside planting plants (Someone has got to come up with another word for planting, it seems so redundant when paired with "plants"), so now was an opportune moment for such a task. (At this point, please be so kind as to remeber that the main valve to turn on and off the water is in the garage, and the bathrooms are on the other farthest most end of the house. This will prove important later.) In a valiant effort to follow Adam Smith's rule of specialization, I decided to remove the valves from under the other sink at the same time as the one I was finishing up. (Both of the valves leaked under the boy's sink.) Having removed those, I returned to the girl's sink and attached the evilly designed valve, hose combination. Just as I was tightening the connectors, my dear brother Anthony asked if he could turn the water back on to take a shower. Since this valve was already replaced, and I was gluing the sink, I gave him the green light to proceed. Soon I hear the sound of running water in the boy's bathroom, assuming that it is Anthony preparing his shower. A few moments later I see Anthony strolling down the hall towards the boy's bathroom, which strikes me as odd, since it sounded like he was already in there. Soon he starts yelling that there is water pouring out from under the sink. If a member of the Olympic running team had seen my sprint to the bathroom, I would be going to Beijing next summer. I emmediately grabbed the nearest wastebasket, and frantically tried to catch the flood eminating from the wall, at the same time screaming for Anthony to turn off the main valve. Anthony should also be going to Beijing, but again we had no witnesses. Once the water was off we surveyed the damage. Most of the water had been soaked up by the rug, which held almost enough water to end the current drought in Australia.

Sticking the old valve in the hole we turned the water back on, and Anthony started his shower while I finished up the girls sink. This finished, as well as Anthony's shower, I returned to the first crime scene. (This was now seven hours into the job.) Suddenly I realized that the u-shaped thingy I had bought did not match the u-shaped thingy that I broke. (So much for their one size fits all claim!) This meant another trip to the hardware store. (I will gloss over this trip, and only mention that I listened to some Country-Western music to calm my rapidly deteriorating state of mind.)

Returning home, I again turned off the water, and dove into valves; putting the u-shaped thingy off until I could think of it without my eye beginning to twitch. The valves were replaced without to much trouble, only requiring a propane torch, a pair of pliers, about fifteen minutes of yelling, and three burnt fingers; but, considering how the rest of the project was going this seemed like the world was getting better. At least I could turn the water back on for good. (For those of you who fear the thought of my being in possession of a torch sending out a 500 degree flame while inside, please note that the house did not burn down.)

With a new sense of accomplishment surging through my veins, I went back to the u-shaped thingy; immediately all sense of exaltation drained from my arteries.
Apparently, the same diabolical mind that thought of the valve-hose partnership had enough spare time to alter how the u-shaped thingy attaches to the rest of the pipe, I needed one more part to make it work, and the hardware store was now closed. (I had been working for ten hours at this point.) Resisting the urge to curl up in a corner and start whimpering, I quickly moved on to putting the faucet in, without allowing my mind to dwell on this setback. (My again twitching eye lent credence to the wisdom of this idea.) This faucet assembled fairly fast, and each of the parts went together very nicely. Though interestingly enough, one of the handles had a piece of red tape attached to it, and the other did not. Strange, I thought, and peeled the tape off. (Bad idea!)  Once everything was all attached I breathed a sigh of relief, and turned on the valves; water began coming out of the faucet, into the cabinet below. This surprised me, seeing that the handles were in the "off" position. In a brief moment of quick thinking I turned the handles to the "on" position, and the water stopped. It seemed a logical thought that the designers had not planned this to happen, which prompted me to consult the directions. It seems that the funny looking piece of tape had been to distinguish left and right, and in my fifty/fifty chance of placing the handles correctly, I chosen the wrong one for left and right. This meant that the whole faucet had to be taken apart, again, and the handles switched. At the end of correcting the handles my sanity was only hanging on by the minutest of threads, and wanting to be able to use the sink TONIGHT I decided that something had to be done. (The "short" project was over eleven hours long by now.) The solution implimented was, in my humble opinion, sheer genius. Since there was a pipe coming down from the sink, just not a curve to take it to the wall, why not put something under the pipe... I wanted to keep the bucket like this, and not bother with fixing the u-shaped thingy. The boy's could empty the bucket once a day, almost like living in a bygone era. When I suggested this to mom she gave me a look that implied greater suffering would await me if this stroke of genius was permanent. A prophet is never respected in his hometown, nor a genius either. Tomorrow I will try to finish what I began.

Now you have seen why I do not feel that plumbing should be high on my potential future employment list. Proficiency in this area just does not seem to be what God intended when he was dolling out skills.

It is getting late, and I need to get to bed. I have ballet class tomorrow! (Now that is something a little more fun!)

G'night!

I had one of these experiences lately too. Yesterday, I was instructed by my dad to build a set of two deck chairs. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. What I thought was going to take fifteen to twenty minutes turned out to be a project that stretched out to four and a half hours long. Now to get on with my story: I, the dummy that I am, decided to build the chairs on our back deck, which is where they were eventually going to end up anyway and right next to our back deck is our pool. Big deal, right? Well, there was a very strong wind blowing that day...right towards the pool. As soon as I opened the box that held one of the chairs, everything blew out, including the instructions. I had to run after the instructions that nearly landed in the pool. I walked back to my worksite and began to assemble the chairs.

Something I should tell you is that we have had these disassembled chairs sitting in our garage for a few months, crushed by other boxes filled with Legos and Brio Trains and other such weighty items. So when I started to assemble the chair, I soon found that the metal had been bent by all of this weight. Great. So now I had to bend 1/8 inch metal tubes into place while trying to bolt them to another piece of such bent metal. Arrgh...

When I had finished assembling the back of the chair, I had to do the arms. I soon found out that this involved eight teeny, weeny screws. Wonderful. And one of the holes that one of these screws was supposed to go into was way to small. Even more wonderful.

So after spending about half an hour trying to get a screw into its proper spot (which I eventually did), I had to connect the back of the chair to the arms. To do this, I had reach way under the chair to screw a super long bolt into place, four times. Also, I think I failed to mention that the ground that I was working on was covered in that cement that has all those sharp (emphasis on that word) little pebbles in it. Ouch. So while those pebbles were digging into my knees, I bolted the chair together.

Then I had to put the leg support onto the chair. Now, this wasn't to hard, except that when I got the thing on, it pinched my finger and gave me a blister. Double ouch.

One chair down, one to go and we're at about two hours of working on these things so far. Everything went pretty smoothly with the second chair until I had to assemble the arms. The metal was so bent, it was almost impossible to get it together. Of course, right as I had set perfectly to where I could just bolt it together, my dad called me for lunch. So I had to leave the project and come back to it later.

When I did come back, I began to bolt the arms together when the wrench I was using snapped in half. Luckily for me, the geniuses (I use that word in its broadest extent) gave me three extra. It's like they knew that that was going to happen or something.

This time when I tried to bolt the chair to the arms, I actually found out how to do it (flip the thing upside down). I then put the leg support on and sat down in the chair. Aaaaah... after four and a half hours, I'm finally done.

It is at times like these that we must remember Who is in control of everything that has ever, is, and will ever happen.

Until we meet again,

HRTF

I was reading my mom's blog today when I noticed a post she did a while ago. She was telling about us watching Chariots of Fire, a movie about the Scottish runner, Eric Liddell who won the Olympics in the year 1924. He was a Christian and also had his own unique style of running. What caught my attention was a phrase from that movie that she posted:

“You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection.  Don’t compromise.  Compromise is a language of the devil.  Run in God’s name and let the world stand back and wonder.”

This is a very good phrase to live by as it shows us that in anything we do, whether it's peeling spuds or winning Olympic medals, we can please God if we do it to our very best. If you do the dishes without a good heart, that doesn't please God. Sing out and do it to your full extent (okay, so you don't have to sing, but you know what I mean).

So remember, even if you don't think what you're doing is very important, if you do it With All Your Might, it pleases God.

Until we meet again,

HRTF

This is a limerick that I wrote for Omnibus II on Erasmus of Rotterdam, a guy who had different ideas than Martin Luther. It was written during working on tackling The Bondage of the Will, a very tough book, I assure you. It is not really a limerick, rather, more like a poem. I hope that you enjoy!

Erasmus of Rotterdam was such a stinker,
When he wrote his book, he did not use his thinker.
 
He declared, “We choose God!” in his book On Free Will,
Page after page made Martin quite ill.
 
His pen remained quiet, which was so unlike him.
The people believed that Erasmus did smite him!
 
But, a-ha!  They did err, in this they were wrong,
For Martin was writing a retort awfully strong.
 
“Your book is quite lame!” said old Martin, hotly
“You, Erasmus of Rotterdam still haven’t got the-
 
Thing that you need to write a good book,
In other words- truth.  In the Bible, do look!”
 
And so to this day the debate doth continue,
You’ll see its effects on the modern church’s menu.
 
The question remains, “Does man choose God?”
Now don’t you think God thinks that’s very odd?
-HRTF

If you would like to see my dad's post on this limerick, visit his blog at themangotimes.com.

Until we meet again,
HRTF

Some things in life just so happen to be naturally funny. Some things will obviously make you laugh. This post is on some of those things that have made me laugh in the last few months. Take my little sister, for instance. She is three years old and does funny things every day, especially things that she takes to be serious but that you think are amusing. A few things that she does you would not understand, whereas others, you will. For instance, for the past two years, my family and I have been watching the TV show from the 90's called Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (see picture below).

We watch one episode a week as often as we can and love this show very much, my sisters especially. They play Lois and Clark almost all day long, even though they are all girls and Clark is male. To get to the point, my littlest sister will often come up to me or one of my brothers and say the following: 'I Lois. You Clark. We go flying.' Since Clark is Superman and she has clued in on this, she tells us to carry her around and fly with her like Superman, a very hard thing to do I assure you. She will also come up to me while I work on schoolwork or something else and start patting and rubbing my back and say: 'I love you. I rub your back. I hug you. Can I have some candy?' She will also come downstairs from her nap and say: 'I gotted up. I had grefas (breakfast). I played. I had lunch. I tooked a nap. And now I need a snack!' as if you owe her a snack. In other words, she is a very funny three year old.

Another funny thing in life was this video, on the Bluedorn's website.

Another funny thing that I did lately was make a movie with my brothers called The Chocolate Bar. This movie is about two boys who are having a rather bad day, when, all of a sudden, they both see a chocolate bar at the same time and grab it. It turns out that they start fighting and kill each other and at the end something very funny happens that I'm not going to tell you because it would spoil it for you as a viewer. I will post it in a later post so that it is available for you to read and laugh at (hey, if it turns out really to be a really good movie, I may even put it up for sale  ).

These are a few, but not all, of the funny things that have happened to me lately. If any funny things in life have happened to you, please comment and tell me. I'm sure that they will make a lot of people laugh!

Until we meet again,

HRTF

Hello! Hola! Bonjour! Hallo! Ciao! Olá! Vedui'! All of these mean the same thing: a simple, short greeting that people around the world use daily, simply, Hello (except the last one. it's in elvish and the dictionary wouldn't accept hello, so i had to go with greetings, which means the same thing)! That's what this post is about: other languages and cool things that you can do with them (for instance: impress your friends, freak your parents out, conduct secret conversations, learn them [okay, so that's not as cool as the first three, but hey, it's still cool...sometimes.])

Spanish is nice to know if you live in the western world, especially California and Brazil, but not good for secret languages or things that you want no one to know about, since a lot of people know it.

French is cool and sounds neat, but not very many people use this one.

Italian is nice and reminds me of Michelangelo .

 German sounds agressive, but is nice for WWII reenactments.

I use languages other than english a lot, two to be specific and these two happen to be Tolkien Dwarvish and Elvish (my mom thinks this is really dumb because no one speaks these languages, so who really cares, right? wrong). I use these two languages for taking notes, writing letters and other cool stuff. But to get to the point: languages other than english. I don't know about any of you, but I prefer Tolkien's languages best. Elvish sounds like an angelic form of french, and dwarvish sounds really cool too. They are both fun to write in, but dwarvish is a LOT easier if you are using a pencil. And, like I stated before, almost nobody knows them, so they're good for secrecy. Check out the link above for some cool LOTR fonts.

We can also use other languages than english for Christ's purposes too. In order to be a missionary to Africa, you probably want to learn the language. Same with Brazil or Antarctica or Hawaii . Languages really help in missionary work (I mean, supposing you were a missionary and you walked into an African village and tried to tell them what you were trying to do, but they couldn't understand you, so they killed you with a spear? That would not be good). Other languages are useful in the business world too, especially if your business is in a country where the people don't speak english

Anyway, it doesn't really matter what language you choose; they are all cool. But if you want to have some really cool languages to write in, choose Elvish and Dwarvish.

Until we meet again,

HRTF

This has nothing to do with the purpose of my blog (to show people cool projects to help fill up spare moments in their days), but I thought that this was so cool that I decided to post on it. Don't worry though, I've managed to squeeze a few crafts in here somewhere, so that should keep your spirits up.

Today while I was doing my biology, I was directed to visit a website that would help me with the course. While on that site, I encountered the amazing article which I have linked below:

The Lion that Wouldn’t Eat Meat

by David Catchpoole

I thought that this was a perfect testimony to God and the Creation of the World. Also included below are the craft projects I promised :

Lion Circle Craft

Paper Lion Model

This one isn't a craft, but, hey- Lion Marionette

Okay, that's all for today.

'Til we meet again,

HRTF

Okay, you may be wondering what this is all about (actually, I know you are). Well, a couple weeks ago my mom was teaching history (big surprise. we do history all the time around here). Well, I opened my notebook to find that we were learning about Charles Darwin. As I am an expert on this guy, thanks to Jonathan Park and Vision Forum, I was thrilled (why, you ask? oh, you'll soon see). This may seem strange to you because why would I be thrilled? I mean, I still had to write the paper on the dude. How thrilling is that?

Well, I will tell you that it is very thrilling for a person whose church quarterly holds an Elocution Club where people from our church come and, by either reciting things memorised, or demonstrating something, or proving a point. Why is this thrilling? Well, when somone (like me) has made an entire presentation on Evolution and Charles Darwin but decided not to use it and saved this presentaion on one's computer, that is very thrilling because it means that I didn't have to write a paper and, with a few clicks of a mouse and a few seconds of waiting for a printer to print, I had a fully detailed and 100% true four page long paper on Charles Darwin. I have included this paper in this post for you to read below:

Charles Darwin

An Exclusive report by HRTF

  Although evolutionary ideas have been around for thousands of years, Charles Darwin is often credited for inventing the modern theory of evolution. He is most famous for his book, “The Origin of Species.” Even though Darwin loved science, his only official training was to prepare him for the ministry. He studied at Christ’s College in Cambridge, England.

 Sadly, Charles Darwin lost faith in God’s Word. While there were many factors that influenced his unbelief, one of the most powerful was “the problem of evil.” He could not understand why a good and loving God would allow death, pain, and suffering. One of Darwin’s favorite books was “Principles of Geology” by Charles Lyell. Before Lyell published his book, most people thought that a worldwide flood formed the huge rock layers found around the earth.

 However, Charles Lyell proposed that these rock layers were actually deposited very, very slowly over millions of years. In his book, he ridiculed belief in a young creation and taught that the earth was very old.

 On December 27, 1831, Darwin boarded a ship named the HMS Beagle. They sailed from Plymouth Harbor, England to the Santa Cruz River Valley in Argentina.

 When they arrived, Darwin looked at the small river that its way through the huge valley. After reading Lyell’s book, Darwin wondered if it were possible that this little river carved out the canyon over millions of years. It made sense to him.

 It was here at the Santa Cruz River Valley that Darwin really accepted geological gradualism – the idea that geological formations take millions of years to form.

 After the Santa Cruz River, the Beagle continued on its way to the Galapagos Islands.

 Darwin observed the finches that lived there. He collected some back to a man in England who studied them and divided them into 13 different species. The man noticed some of these finches had long beaks and others had shorter ones.

 When Darwin returned home, he began to wonder if the finches were changing slowly over time. He remembered the observations about the river valley being carved slowly. That’s when he took the idea of geological gradualism and made a new theory – biological gradualism, the idea that one type of animal can slowly change into another. That was the birth of modern-day theory of Evolution.

I hope that you liked that and that it informed you on our friend Charles Darwin.

This is totally changing the subject, but FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ARIZONA FLETCH!!! I have started a new blog about Arizona Fletch entitled Arizona Fletch- the blog (what else?). Here you may read the whole story of Arizona Fletch, front to back, and I will keep adding new parts, probably 2 - 4 times a month.

Ciao,

HRTF

           Today as I watched my sister watching a movie, I decided to post a little about me and my personal life. So, I begin............................................now!

Everyday Life

I am a fourteen-year-old boy who lives in the Central Valley in California. I am in a family that includes a dad, mom, three brothers and three sisters. My great-grandfather's wife's uncle's great-great-grandson's sister's grandmother and her father's son-in-law's son's father (try to figure that one out            [the answer is at the bottom of the page]) live next-door to me. I go to a church called Central Valley Evangelical Reformed church (CVERC [see-verk]) that was started my dad and some other men (here's a link to the website: CVERC.org)

My Favorite Things

Favorite Food: steak, mashed potatoes, artichokes, hamburgers, Mcdonalds french fries

Top 7 Favorite Movies:

1. Pirates of the Carribean

2. National Treasure

3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

5. Jurassic Park

6. Star Wars series

Favorite Book: The Chronicles of Narnia

Favorite Thing to Do: play Star Wars Battlefront II (and work on my blog  )

Favorite Drink: Sarsparilla or Root Beer, by far!

What I do Daily

Get up at the crack o'dawn, do school, do school, do school, do school, do school, do school, do school, do school, do school, go to bed

Okay, that's about all about everything about every bit of me. Talk to you later.

HRTF

P.S. The answer to my problem is MY GRANDPARENTS!!!