I Heart Faces: "All About Babies"

Letters of Intent: Dear cell phone company

I am participating in a different blog hop this week called 'Letters of Intent" where we get to express our joys, frustrations &  feelings from the week  in letter form to those to whom it may concern!  Hop on over to Foursons and check it out.






Dear cell-phone company:

You stink.  You are predatory, opportunistic, ravagers of our bank accounts.  Perhaps you think people like me are a bit out of touch but I really don't need half of the 400 minutes I am allowed each month on your cheapest contract plan but I couldn't stand the thought of spending the same amount of money for half as many minutes on your really ludicrous pay-as-you go plans...so here I am obligated to stick with your stupid service for two whole years or else pay your very unholy "early termination fee" which basically cancels out any savings we might have by eliminating the monthly bill!  Ah,  you think you're so clever feeding on the masses of people who want to enjoy the benefits of living in our technological culture but who really cannot afford your exorbitant prices.

You offer so-called "discounts" & "rebates" on phones (when you sign up for a two-year contract) but if a person like myself has her phone die from unnatural causes (like a swim in the porcelain pool) you insist that my phone (which was the cheapest model you had!) costs over $200 to replace.   Are you kidding me?  Am I the only person who sees through this game your playing?   Charging that kind of price for a crappy piece of electronic plastic that was probably made in some impoverished foreign country for a fraction of a penny per dollar is just plain extortion!

Maybe I could overlook some of these things if that was my only beef with you...after all we do live in a capitalistic society and I did agree to the contract and the ridiculous prices you insisted upon in spite of my reservations.  If I really wanted to protest I could have continued living my happy (yet not always convenient) cell phone-free life and not subjected myself to your fascistic control.  But you couldn't just leave it at that...you had to allow outside companies to take advantage of me without taking any responsibility for it.  It should be illegal for companies to trick me into being charged $10 a month for something that I didn't want and didn't agree to.  All I did was open and read a text I had received (which looked like gobbley-gook trash to me) and you have the audacity to take "their" side and say I "agreed to receive them" and therefore I am responsible for paying the $10 fee for it!?  Really?  I understand that it was not you (my o-so-benevolent cell phone company *heavy sarcasm*) that sent me these texts that I am now paying for but perhaps you could have warned me.  Perhaps the logical thing to do would be to block this type of text as the default on new accounts and if, for some reason,  I (your money source) want to utilize these services--then activate it at my request.

But I suspect that you don't mind so much-- because so many cell phone users will just pay whatever you (their cellphone gods) demand without so much as blinking an eye as long as they can text their friends from anywhere in the US and check the latest sports scores in real time on their iphones or Droids.   And that, of course,  means more profit for your evil wireless empire. And isn't that all you really care about, anyway?  I do believe so.

With extreme disdain,

Gina

Before & After: Mr. Quonset

Pixel Perfect Blog

Before:

After:

I used my Canon Rebel XT and edited with Paint Shop Pro.

Looking after orphans

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  

James 1:27

My bloggy friend, Tiffany from A Moment Cherished, and her family are in the beginning stages of adopting a child from Ethiopia.  Courtney from Storing Up Treasures has already adopted four children. (Two from Russia and two domestically.)  I have felt very pulled to support their cause and am here to enlist your help as well on their behalf.  Courtney & her husband (the Rockstar) are leading a campaign to raise funds for 26 families who are in the process of adopting.  Their goal is to raise 10K in 20 days.  Tomorrow is the last day and they are still a couple thousand dollars short!  If you can,  please donate as much or as little as you can to help them meet this goal!  Click on this 10K in 20 days to donate or the button below. Or if you'd rather, you can support Jim & Tiffany's adoption directly by going to her page and clicking on the Chip-In button on the sidebar.  (They also have a coffee fundraiser if you like coffee and a T-shirt fundraiser, as well.) 

I pray that you'll seriously take a minute to check out what these families are doing and pray about what you may be able to do to help.  One of the most tangible ways we can help orphans is by giving them a family and a loving future and you know that makes God smile!

I Heart Faces: "Barefoot week"

This week on I Heart Faces they are raising awareness for Soles 4 Souls,  an organization that gathers shoes and gives them to people around the world who do not have and need shoes.  This is a non-competitive week so we can show off more than one photo featuring feet/shoes.  I am a sucker for cute little feet and little shoes so I have a LOT of photos to choose from.  Here are a few of my favorite shoe/feet photo that I have taken over the past few years.  Please take the time to check out Soles 4 Souls' website.  Blessings, all!

Happy Barefoot Week, Everyone!

Don't forget to go to Soles 4 Souls.org

Just a quick little plug...

For those of you who don't know...my dad & mom both have blogs.  For the most part they tend to write about things of a spiritual nature.  I am proud of them and thought I'd pass on the links for those who are interested.    Very insightful posts!  Please check them out and say hello...tell them Gina sent ya.  ;)

My dad's:  The Watchman Chronicles

My mom's:  Moments with Meanma

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Eden Portraits: Five Years Old

Yesterday I took Eden's annual birthday portraits.  She wasn't in much of a cooperative mood but I got a few good ones in spite of her complaints...Click HERE to view full album.

Before & After: Garden help

Pixel Perfect Blog

SOOC (Before):

After:

Taken with Canon Rebel XT  & edited in Paint Shop Pro.

Eden...my "delight"

My little Eden is five today!  At 1:40pm, five years ago...I became a mom.  We had a little party with family & friends yesterday afternoon.  I made her a castle cake; served punch & she got a few presents.  Today she had a special daddy-daughter birthday lunch with Russ at Dairy Queen.  We have spent this afternoon in our basement watching Hannah Montana & Dora the Explorer amidst thunderstorm & tornado warnings.  It is amazing how quickly she went from my baby to my big girl.  I am so proud of her...I just love her sooo much!  Happy birthday, my darling,  I hope you enjoyed your day.

Random thoughts on Personality/Temperament Profiles

So lately (in my circles) there has been a lot of personality/temperament profiling going on.  I find it all extremely fascinating & useful.  A few weeks ago my parents went to a thing at their church and took two different tests which they then brought home and had my siblings & me take.  The first of which was the Four Temperaments test.  This week, Ramee over at Raising Redheads has been talking about a personality test she took at her church that categorizes into four personality types named for colors. I took this test, too, and can see how closely these personalities types parallel each other.  From my perspective Yellow=Sanguine; Blue=Melancholic; Red=Choleric; & Green=Phlegmatic.  This week Ramee has gone through what each of these types are like in gereral terms and I wanted to link you up in case any of you were interested in such things.  Just click on the colors to go to her blog post on that type.

I am a Blue-Green (and/or) a Melancholic-Phlegmatic. (When I took the 4 temperaments test, my scores were dead even...on the color test blue was my dominate).   My Mom is a Red/Choleric.  My Dad & Sister are both Green/Phlegmatic.   Russ is a little harder to pin down...he is a fairly well balanced person, apparently, because in nearly all the tests I've had him take, (Temperaments, Love languages, etc) his scores are usually pretty evenly distributed amongst the categories.  It fascinates me.  When he took Ramee's test the other night he came out as a Green-Blue but there was only a 2pt difference between the two with Yellow coming in third, only 14pts behind blue.  He's clearly not a Red, however.

I have also within the last year re-read Kevin Lehman's Birth Order Book.  In one of her posts Ramee said that Blue is the most common type with Green coming in at a close second and I wondered if this has something to do with birth order.   It would seem as if firstborns/onlys are more likely to be Reds & Blues; Middle born children would be made up of more Greens & Blues; Last borns with more Yellows & Greens.  Thus--a higher percentage of Blues & Greens.  That is totally based on my own speculations though. I have no evidence for it.

I think that becoming more aware of your temperament/personality/giftings is a great way to be able to appreciate the differences in people and to make allowances for each other.  We tend to view other people's behavior through the lens of our own personalities/temperaments but other people do not see the world just like we do and so what works for us isn't necessarily going to work for someone else;  what offends us may not offend someone else; what pleases us may not please someone else; what God leads us to do may not be what he leads someone else to do...Understanding this is a freeing thing.  God designed us all differently and for varying purposes and we need to learn to embrace this as we work side by side for His Kingdom.

What temperament/personality type are you?  First born? Middle? Last? Only?  I'd love to hear and get to know you better through this.

I Heart Faces: "Faces & Flowers"

 

It's been 4 years!

I just wanted to mark the occasion...four years ago today (May 17, 2006), Russ & I closed on our house!!  We now have four years of home ownership behind us and many more to come!

(That's Eden in the photos!  1 year old!)