Life as I know it

1. you pay no attention to the dinosaurs that have been living on your bathroom sink for weeks
2. you routinely find yourself hugging a child while she sits on the toilet
3. you are able to navigate a minefield of toys in the middle of the night in the dark without killing yourself
4. you have to have regular discussions on why one should not “steamroll” one’s baby sister
5. you usually can’t leave your house after 8pm, but that doesn’t bother you because you are too tired to do anything anyway
6. you become convinced that toys multiply when you aren’t watching or that some evil faction of Santa’s elves is sneaking toys into your house while you sleep
7. you start to actually like The Wiggles

I’ve been put in charge of keeping our church’s website up to date.  A redesign of the site will probably be happening soon, and I’m trying to put as much of the sermons on the site as possible.

Thankfully, it looks like I’m not the only one questioning the increasing love affair some folks have with Second Life.

everyone seems to be healthly again.  We had a couple of weeks recently where there always seemed to be someone vomiting, feeling like they were going to vomit, or being watched by others for signs of impending vomitness.  During that time Nancy and I went a long stretch of sleeping in separate beds (or couches).  Some because of sick child watch, but mostly because  of the Violet Ella All Night Screaming Show (folks were lining up to pay their money…to get out).

Lovely.  Oh well, everyone’s on the mend now and sleeping pretty well - including Mom and Dad.

Violet enjoys a cupcake.

In the tech world, there’s a lot of talk about the real world bleeding over to the virtual world.  Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook provide a means of modeling your social relationships on the web.  Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow you to take on a digital personality for a completely new existence within that world.  Businesses have even begun setting up shop in the Second Life world.  Many people are so caught up in the virtual worlds that they bristle at the idea of making a distinction between “real” and “virtual” (read the comments for this article).

Most people seem to be celebrating this without questioning it.  Here’s a quote from another article on World of Warcraft (WoW) [emphasis mine]:

WoW of Warcraft has 7.5 millions members. That is large enough to support other companies. That is already happening for in game services such as player leveling and gold farming, but what about other more Web 2.0-ish type services? It seems that social networks are the first one. As I learned on Mashable Rupture is just the highest profile YASN. There is also Warcraft Social Network, Guild Cafe, and MMO Guild Sites. What will come next for WoW ? Jobs? Craigslist? Will these be separate companies or will Blizzard try to tap into this market themselves? I can picture PVP battles when someone realizes that they overpaid for a microwave on wowBay.

PVP means Player Versus Player for those of you wondering.  People using their digital personalities to settle a grudge by fighting (and possibly killing) each other.  Huh?  This is supposed to be a good thing?

Not many people seem to be concerned that the virtual world is bleeding over to the real world.  It’s not just a one way street.  You can’t expect the real world to impact the virtual world without the virtual impacting the real.  What happens when a person begins to get used to the process of settling disputes in the virtual world with violence?  Is it such a stretch to think that as we blur the line between real and virtual with regard to business and relationships that morality will be affected too?

Side Note: You’ll notice that many of my links to articles in this post point to the same site.  You may be tempted to think that that site is run by people on the fringe of society, but those people are some of the smartest and most respected folks in the tech world.  Many are alpha geeks.  I linked to their articles because I read them and respect them.

We’ve been having an adult class on Sunday nights this fall called Controversial Issues in the Church. It’s mainly about New Perspectives on Paul and Federal Vision. We’ve been learning about the New Perspectives first and will get to Federal Vision later. I hadn’t heard of the stuff before the class. It’s pretty wild stuff - you tweak a few doctrines and ideas here and there, and you get a whole new religion. I shouldn’t be surprised by it, but I guess I am a little.

Baby Sophia came to visit us. Oh yeah, her parents came too. We had a great time with them. Wade and his parents were going to come too, but their hectic schedule prevented them from coming.

Sleep deprivation lays a heavy toll on Geoff

Sophia gets bunny ears

Amelie and I have been sick recently, so I haven’t sat down to blog in awhile. A couple of weeks ago, I had my interview with the session to determine if I was qualified to be a deacon. This meant sitting before the elders to answer questions on the doctrines of the church. I must not have been a HUGE heretic because they determined that I am acceptable. Now I have to wait for the congregational meeting to see if I will be selected as a deacon. When I was first asked to consider this, I was surprised and was a little unsure, but now I’m definitely looking forward to serving the church as a deacon.

We’ve been going through the Catechism for Young Children with Amelie.  She’s got up through question 14 down pretty well.  At the same time, she (and we) have been memorizing scripture through song - thanks to the Seeds of Courage CD (a lovely gift from the Comandas) and a Ten Commandments song from this summer’s VBS program at church.  Actually the scripture memorization was pretty much by accident, but it is definitely happening.  Amelie loves the music so much.

I’m such a dope though because I didn’t realize how helpful these activities would be immediately.  I viewed them mostly things that would be helpful when she got older.  But they’ve been immensely beneficial right now.

For example, Amelie has a Noah’s Ark night light that one of my Aunt’s gave to her.  This morning, as I dressed the girls for church, Amelie began telling telling me about the the night light (because we must talk all the time).  She pointed to Noah saying “That’s God” and to Noah’s wife saying “and that’s His wife” (blasephemy alert!).  I asked her a couple of times who the people were just to see if she had made a quick mistake and she gave the same response.  As I told her that it was Noah, I drew on the Catechism (Q. What is God?  A. God is a spirit, and he has no body as we do.  AND Q. Can you see God?  A. No, but He can always see me.)  This helped convince her that it was indeed Noah and not God pictured on the night light.

As we read Bible stories, we frequently draw upon the Ten Commandments song to point out some of the things going on in the story.  Last night, we read a little about Gideon being told to get rid of his town’s Baal altar.  The mention of the word “idol” brought about “Don’t bow down to idols; that’s not smart.” (the 2nd commandment as paraphrased in the song).

It’s amazing to me and hopefully it’s making these activities more helpful to Amelie as well.