Sunday, December 16, 2012

The One About The Broken World

I don't have anything amazing to say about the recent events in the news.  I don't have a son that I can write an article about or the gift of turning traditional Christmas poems into a poem of comfort. I'm just a Mom who is heartbroken over the recent events.

I have a son who is the age of the children in that class.  I cannot tell you how many times since Friday that my eyes have welled up with tears as I watched him playing without a care in the world. His laugh, his joy, his creativity has always warmed me.

 My heart is broken for the families of the children who were lost.  No laughter on Christmas morning, no giggles and yelps of delight as they open their gifts.  Even the families who have surviving children will not experience it in the same way.  Everything will be a reminder of the children who are missing from their homes.

 A friend & I were texting about this earlier and it really struck me that we live in such a broken world.  It's been broken from the moment Eve took that step & listened to the Devil instead of to the Lord. It was *so* broken, God destroyed it with a flood.  It was *so* broken that God sent his Son to make the ultimate sacrifice to take away the brokenness and restore the life that God created the world to be.  And one day He will send His son back to claim it for His own. He will take away the brokenness and restore it to the beauty, fullness & perfection it was back on Day 1.

It's hard to watch the news, to read the news, to listen to the stories & see the smiling faces of those little ones.  I'm thankful for the reminder that one of our pastors gave us today.  It's ok to mourn.  Jesus wept with Lazarus' family even tho He KNEW He would raise Lazarus from the dead.  He wept with them because he mourned with those who mourn.  It's ok for us to mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep.  Even if we don't know them, it's ok to hurt with those who hurt.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The One About An App

I don't usually blog about iPad apps, but today, I want to share this one. And it'll take more than a Facebook post, so I'm posting here. :)

   I found an app called iallowance. Matt and I looked it over and decided it was worth the $4 to try it out. I love it!  In this app you can create a profile for each child. Under that profile you can make a list of all the chores that child has. You can put the chores on a rotating basis, which is great for me because I rotate the kids through chores every 4 weeks. You can choose if the chores are rewarded with stars or with $. If they are rewarded with stars, you can have those stars go to a bigger reward. For example, when my kids earn 100 stars, they get a special day  :)

   You can  also keep track of their allowance on this. It reminds me of online banking. You can set up as many banks as you want.  I set up a savings, spending and tithe bank for each of the kids. I entered the amount of their weekly allowance and split it between the banks. 10% to tithe, 25% to savings and the rest goes into spending $.

    The last awesome thing is that you can set up a negative "chore"that they need to work on doing better at and they will get negative points if they do it wrong. That doesn't make much sense... For example, I have one child who leaves the door open all the time. So I set it up so that when he leaves the door open, it deducts .10 from his spending money.

   I've had an iPod for a year and an iPad for 8 mos & this is the first time I've gotten really excited about an app. Talk about making my life easier!  It keeps track of chores and allowance for me!  And the kids like it so far. (Except the deducting $ part.)