Archives for 2008

My testimony

June 2, 2008 by Amy 4 Comments

My testimony is a little fuzzy. I have no date marked in a Bible or person that I prayed with that might remember. But the time that always stands out is when I was about 7, lying on a couch in our church (a very small church which met in a living room in a house) and asked Christ to come into my heart. I “got saved” 182,000 times after that. I can’t count the number of times I asked Christ in my heart. My fellow Southern Baptists would say just the first time counted. My pentecostal roots might say just last week I got saved again. I believe I have been saved since I was 7.

But to me, my testimony is not when I got saved, but how God has kept me so close to him for 22 years. I humbly say I was kept from many “pitfalls” as a teenager. Since childhood, I believe I have been bearing many fruits of the Spirit and with every trial as well as celebration, Christ has been with me. He has blessed me beyond words. Sure I’ve been closer to Him at times more than others but my real testimony is this…

Hebrews 13:5 “Let your conduct be without covetousness, and be content with such things that you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you,’

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Phillipians 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

To read others’ stories, check out Heather@Desperately Seeking Sanity

The school thing

June 1, 2008 by Amy 8 Comments

Thursday night after Emma’s preschool graduation ceremony Scott and I had a quick but serious conversation about Emma and school. I think we’re going to look into a few local private Christian schools for her to go to.

I realized at that ceremony Thursday that public school was going to be so different. No more praise songs as closing ceremonies. No more prayers. No more pledges to Bibles and Christian flags. No more (publicly) Christian teachers lining the halls. No more Bible Stories. No more Christian environment. In fact, in some cases, they’d be teaching exactly opposite of what we believe. I have never been a huge advocate of private Christian schools but for some reason both Scott and I felt like maybe it is something we need to look into.

And then randomly, Heather spouts out this weekend that Mom has been thinking the same thing.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

We had cousins that went to a private school and they did fabulously. One is now a lawyer while the other is going to be a nurse. They both moved away for college and have done great. I’ve also known a handful of other kids who “turned out bad” even though going to Christian schools.

I was taught completely in public schools and I think I did well education wise and it didn’t “damage me” too bad socially or spiritually. There’s something to be said for plopping a person right in the middle of everything you don’t want them to know just if, for nothing else, a teaching moment or even the ability to adapt to a world that will never be exactly the way you’d choose.

I’m really torn. We have some of the best schools in the state. People move here for our schools. It’s 3 minutes from my house. It’s free. I realize we would be setting the standard for what to believe and not to believe and not the school.

But then, there was that ceremony. Where a group of 40 kids stood together and praised God as part of school. And it wasn’t even a side note. A moment. God was the center of that ceremony. And my mom grew up where they said the Lord’s prayer and I grew up where there wasn’t so many sinful things running so rampant and so blatantly public. Where God meant more than political correctness.

It’s just not the same these days.

Yes, our job as parents is to raise our children to know God but there’s something to be said when the people they spend the majority of their time with every week has the same message as you instead of you double-checking and fighting many viewpoints and attitudes.

At 5K per year vs. free, it’s something to SERIOUSLY consider. I don’t know what we’ll end up doing but I do know we’re going to spend some time this week looking into it.

If you so choose, I’d like to hear your opinion on the public vs. private school–not what you think of OUR decision–but if you’ve had experience or have some strong opinions with public vs. private, I’d like to know.

FYI, homeschooling has been thought of. For many reasons, I just don’t think that’s the path we want to go down and I’ll leave that there.

Now that was a Saturday

May 31, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Wow, what a great day. MIL kept the girls last night and I stayed out until 1 at my mom’s watching One Tree Hill DVDs again. Scott worked last night so I slept in with him until after 11! I got up and did some cleaning around here. The girls got home around 1:30 or so.

After Scott left for work, Heather, the girls and I went shopping for the girls some shoes and a few outfits. We also stopped at a Mexican restaurant to eat. After all that the girls were asking to quit walking and head home. We ended up at my mom’s for them to play and I watched some more OTH before heading home a few minutes ago.

I’m taking my Sunday School class to IHOP in the morning to celebrate the graduates since tomorrow is their recognition at church. So…I have no lesson to study for tonight. Probably going to spend a few minutes straightening up a few more things and Internet for awhile longer before trying to make it to bed before 1:30 again. Surely can’t sleep in until 11 tomorrow.

Here’s a few cell phone shots from today…

Taking a break at the mall

Heather snaps a shot of us all primping at the table

Motherhood in action, as Heather said…one on my lap, one asking questions, and packing a to go box.

“Shorty”

May OTH Blog Report

May 31, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

As predicted, May was a great month for my OTH site. Best month ever…and worst in some ways.
This month we had the season finale which brought record numbers to the site. We hit a high of 54,000 page views in one day. Our average page views per day was 23,000. We had a total of 740,000 page views for the month. Since the finale aired and everything has calmed down, we’re back to averaging 15,000 a day. All numbers I’m not complaining about. It definitely should pick up once filming begins again June 18 and spoilers start rolling in.
The month was tough though as each Monday night after the show aired, we hit CPU quota limits and the site went down for hours at a time. We simply outgrew our shared hosting plan this month. Last Friday we had complaints about emails going out that made the host shut down our mail program which shut down the whole site. With the holiday weekend, no one was around to turn it back on. That led me to move to another type of shared plan server except it’s supposed to automatically grow as needed over at mosso.com. I’m still considering moving to a dedicated server but the costs are much higher than I ever planned to spend.
The move to the new server was not as smooth as I would have liked. Some of my plugins messed up and they had to move my database server. Also had some issues with other people in the cloud causing down time. It hasn’t been smooth sailing since then although it has leveled out the past few days.
Search engines have been nice to us this month, especially since the finale. We were actually number 2 for a time with the keyword “one tree hill”. We’ve gotten ranked for season 6 keywords since the finale and have been visited by a lot of SEO type sites.
The big stand out this month though were the new contacts we received directly from reps. It was great to be recognized as a standing OTH site and fun to give away free stuff to our readers. I get so many nice emails and comments thanking us for the site and great info. To be able to get a little pat on the back and also give back to the readers has been great.
As for numbers for the month…

BlogHer: $810
Adsense: $360
Kontera $40
Linkshare: $45
Amazon: $3 (a lot more has been earned from here b/c people are pre-ordering season 5 DVD set but I won’t see any of that until they ship)

For a total $1258. My hope was $1200 and am very happy to have met that.

The summer will probably prove to be a little slow since the season doesn’t start again until September 1 but I’m hoping between the spoilers, possible interviews, possible visits to Wilmington, we’ll have enough good stuff to keep ’em comin’.

Wii Fit?

May 30, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

So of course I want a Wii fit now…but look at this video of this guy doing it. Now THAT will be some good blog entertainment.

We got a Wii – the “W” post

May 30, 2008 by Amy 2 Comments

Well, welcome us to the Wii world. We got a Wii a little while ago. We should be worn out when we use it. Waiting for it to get wired. Will be back after we officially are Wii-ed.

David Cook with a British Accent

May 30, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

I’ll be a forever fan now…this is for you, Heather

Emma’s Preschool Graduation

May 29, 2008 by Amy 5 Comments

Walking in…if you notice they are all wearing their Daddy’s white dress shirts backwards. Enough to make me cry right there…

This is the part where I sort of lost it. I tried to hide the tears behind the camera but I just couldn’t seem to stop my eyes from filling up when they sang I am a Promise

I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital "P"
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learnin’ to hear God’s voice
And I am tryin’ to make the right choice
I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be.
I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountains
I can cross the wide sea
I’m a great big promise you see!

All I could think about was buying Oh the places you’ll Go before she was even born and reading it to her. Can you really blame me?

(Emma is the first on the left of the top row)

Then it got worse when they played handbells to I Love You, Lord, one of the songs I sing to the girls at night sometimes.

Then they sang What a Might God We Serve

Emma is a bit hesitant but tells everyone she learned to share this year at school.

She gets her diploma

All her shyness wears off when she gets in Daddy’s arms. She glows and is so excited afterwards

Let’s watch Mommy cry…see the eyes…but where in the world did the neck wrinkles/rolls come from??? Gah, I hate getting old.

Now, where’s that other napkin I need to use as a tissue??

My favorite picture of the day. Except for that neck thing.

Emma and her bestest friend. Can you tell they’ve gotten in trouble for talking in class before? I love they are holding hands.

Emma and her teacher. They seemed to have a wonderful connection. My thank you note put her in tears. I told her that was fine, I was in tears writing in.