Its Football time!!

Go Dawgs!! First up for the Dawgs is Jackson State from Ms. This will be the first game for new head coach Dan Mullen and the spread offense. Be sure you wear Maroon for the first game and let's Go BullDawgs!!!

Thomas Nelson - Rick and Bubba's guide to the almost nearly perfect marriage

As usual, Rick and Bubba have added much humor to their current subject, marriage. They share many stories from their married lives. Stories such as having a date night and trying to get a hotel room in the town they live in only to have everyone recognize them from the show. Or attending a Presidential speech with the wives and not hearing much of the speech due to focusing on their wives. Or when Rick rented a van to take the family on vacation and Sherri ran it into a wall at the grocery store, thus giving him the best vacation ever because he could hold the leverage of the van over her head. Lest you think the guys can't be serious, they can. They also talk about how marriage needs respect, communication, and unconditional love to last and that the only true guide for a perfect marriage is the Bible. They also discuss ignoring those who try to hurt your marriage by talking bad about your spouse, don't join in with them and start gossiping or your marriage may end up torn apart. As Rick says towards the end "Surviving each challenge that life brings and getting through it together", that's what marriage is all about.
In typical Rick and Bubba fashion, they can't end on a serious note and thus have included, the Book of blame. A teaser - If you hit a pothole in the road, it's your husbands fault. He should have warned you about it...on the cell phone...from his office. Want to know more? You'll just have to read the book yourself!
Book info

Thomas Nelson - The I believe bunny

The I believe bunny is written by Tish Rabe and illustrated by Frank Endersby. This book is very well written and is a picture book that young 'readers' will enjoy. The illustrations are all in color. The story is about a bunny who in helping other animals, learns a lesson about prayer and faith in God's love. He finds that nothing you try is impossible with the help of God, even for little bunnies. The opening page of the book quotes the verse: I can do everything through Him who gives me strength. Phil. 4:13
Thomas Nelson book info

It happened in Italy - Thomas Nelson books

All I can say about the book It happened in Italy by Elizabeth Bettina is WoW! I'm a WWII buff and this is one of those stories that no one has ever heard of until recently. Jewish concentration (detainment) camps in Italy during WWII and they have been described as a picnic in comparison to German camps.
The books starts off with Jimmy Gentry looking a photos of the camps. He is one of the American soldiers that liberated Dachau. "The first thing I notice about these people is that they're not wearing rags of striped clothes; the clothes these people are wearing are nice, like clothes the men wore back home in Franklin at the time. They're well dressed - jackets, ties. Not what I saw in Dachau, no ma'am. These people are fleshy, not like the walking dead I saw in Dachau. They look well-kept. Nothing like the ones I saw in Germany - with those eyes - people with haunting eyes." And thus starts the story of camps in Italy and the Italians who helped the Jews.
In Italy, most Italians believed Amare gli altri come te stesso - love thy neighbor as thyself. Most Italians hindered the Nazis in Italy and helped the Jews because they saw them as humans just like themselves. Appoxamately 75-80% of the Jewish population in Europe died but compare that to 75-80% of Jews living in Italy, survived the war.
This book documents the stories of 12 survivors but thru it, many more stories have surfaced (see www.elizabethbettina.com). Few people outside the remote areas of Italy where the camps were located, knew such camps existed. In these camps, the Jews were able to worship, have visits from family members who were in other places, wear their own clothes and not have to wear the star of David. The main requirements placed on them was to check in each day at the police station, not leave the village, they couldn't own land, couldn't officially work their profession (ie: doctor). An attempt was made to reunite families living in seperate camps - something unheard of in any German camp!
In 1943, Italy broke rank with Germany and joined the Allies and that is when the true problems for Jews in Italy began. The Jews in German occupied Northern and Central Italy were rounded up and deported to German camps - 1259 in Rome alone. However, the numbers could have been greater but the police who were given the orders to round them up, often ignored those orders, in turn warning the Jews to leave the area to avoid capture.
The stories of the survivors all have a theme in common: if it weren't for the Italians, I wouldn't be alive today! They expressed their gratitude for Italians constantly and many of them were able to return to Italy with Elizabeth to visit the places they once lived. Several were even able to meet with the Pope!
In the book, there are numerous photos of the survivors as they were then and as they are now as well as copies of some of their documentation that has survived the years. There is plenty more I could say but eventually, I would spoil the book for you so I will conclude.
Thomas Nelson book info

Book Review – 100 Bible stories 100 Bible songs

This is my first book review for Thomas Nelson Books. I chose to review the kids book – 100 Bible stories 100 Bible songs. It is created by Stephen Elkins and illustrated by Tim O'Connor. The book is hard-cover but has a soft cover feel like a lot of kids books have. The book includes 2 cds that contain 100 songs and each song goes with a story in the book. The book is brightly colored and will catch the attention of any child. Each story (or Bible summary) is short and is good for short attention spans. Under the title of each story, is the title of the song that goes along with it so that you could listen to the song along with reading the story. It also gives the scripture reference that the story is from so that you can easily find it and read the whole story from the Bible. The book and songs are separated into Old and New Testament making it easy to pick which one you want to read/listen with your child.

The stories in the book are very simplistic and good for toddler age. I do, however, think they are too simplistic and tend to not complete a story/illustration fully. An example of this is in the story of Saul. The story goes on to say that "Jesus is the Son of God. People who believe this are called Christians." It says in James 2:19 – "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder." (NIV) Obviously, demons aren't Christians, so I think the simplistic nature of the book doesn't fully allow complete definitions/thoughts/ideas to be taught to a child. I think this is where the story's scripture references (and parental knowledge of the Bible) will come in handy in "Training up a child in the way that he should go."

If you want your child to learn about the 10 commandments, don't look to this book. It tells briefly how the commandments came about but it doesn't list the commandments at all. Again, the scripture reference comes in handy.

I didn't run across glaring inaccuracies in the book EXCEPT Moses. In the story about the promised land, it says that Moses went up to Mount Nebo and was happy as the Israelites entered the promised land. However, this is NOT biblically accurate. The scripture reference for this story is Deuteronomy 34 and in this chapter, it says Moses went up to Mount Nebo and died and God buried him there. In verse 8 it says, "The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days until the time of weeping and mourning was over." (NIV) If you continue reading into Joshua 1 verses 1 and 2 it says, "After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son on Nun, Moses' aide: Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them" (NIV)

I have just 1 more thing to point out. Don't expect that this book will mesh exactly with how you interpret scripture. Different denominations of churches interpret things in different ways. An example of this is baptism. Two statements made in the book are: "Baptism shows the world that we love Jesus" and "When I am baptized, God will be pleased". I won't get into a theological discussion on this except to say, I don't agree with those statements but no book will be able to cater to all beliefs.

Overall, this is a good introduction to the Bible for kids but don't let it be the only source for teaching your child about God. Make use of the scripture references listed and read the whole passage to your child.

Book info at Thomas Nelson

Thomas Nelson

Book Reviewer

So I signed up yesterday to be a book reviewer for Thomas Nelson. I think this will be fun! So watch my blog for reviews of various books. Up first is a children's book 100 Bible stories, 100 Bible songs.

Computer frustrations

I've been trying all night to get Ubuntu Linux to work on my older PC. It has installed but it turns out, my bios is a year to old for it to work. So, I've never spent a couple of hours trying to download an update for the bios and I'm getting frustrated. My burner won't recognize any cd I put in it to burn a disk with the bios update. ARGH!!!

We are the champions of the world....

Well, maybe not the world but we are the champions of the SEC in men's basketball! GO DAWGS GO!!!

Can you believe it?? Snow in Ms!!

It didn't last long but it was enough to enjoy it!

Great outdoors

The weather today was absolutely wonderful and I had a great urge to spend it outdoors. I went out to the Refuge and wandered around for about an hour or so and took more pictures to add to my collection of pics from out there. Here's Bluff Lake as the sun is starting to go down.

YES!!!!

Go Steelers!!!! Good game Cards!!!

Bowl

Goooo Steelers! I'm glad to see that they are in the Super Bowl again but can't believe the matchup with the Cardinals! That will be a game to see!

Merry Christmas!!

Jesus is the Reason

Big Moon

Took a few pics of the moon tonite and its being used as part of a slide show accompanying an online article. You can always tell which pics are mine as I like having the date show. Here's the link: Moon

New things

We have a new coach here at MSU - Dan Mullen, offensive coordinator at Florida Gators has been named the 32nd coach of MSU. I'm still upset that Croom was forced out but I think Mullen will be good for us - time will only tell.
Bama is no longer #1 in the nation - they lost to the Fla Gators in the SEC championship so the Gators are playing in the national championship and Bama in the Sugar bowl.

Sadness

First off, we lost...oh wait, that's right...we got creamed by old miss 45-0 this year! I think the Dawgs ate too much food on Thanksgiving and just couldn't play. Sadly, Brandon McRae was injured and had to have surgery due to a broken tibia.
Secondly, we lost our coach. I can't believe that Croom threw in the towel so soon, we just had our first season off probation last year as well as his first real group of his players. Yeah, we've had a rough season but coaches can only do so much, its the players that miss plays or catches not the coaches. I hope they find a coach that's as good as he is about keeping things clean and encouraging more educational values and such. Go DAWGS!!!
What happened to LSU?? They got beat by Arkansas, the team we beat the previous week?? What's up with that??
Oh, how about ROLL TIDE! Bama remains #1 in the nation and undefeated! Next up for them is the SEC championship against Fla.

Hallelujah!!

We finally beat Arkansas!! GO DAWGS!!! They've beat us the last 9 years in a row but the streak ended yesterday with the end result 31-28. Arkansas threatened to send it into overtime - with less then a minute to go, they scored a TD and then kicked an on-side kick and actually recovered it. They moved the ball down to within field goal range and with 4 seconds left on the clock, kicked and MISSED and field goal. It would have sent the game into OT but thankfully, they missed. It was pretty cold outside yesterday and as they set up for the field goal, I thought back to another Arkansas game that went into OT and it was sleeting out at that point. Thankfully it wasn't cold enough to sleet but it felt like it! I was impressed that our fans actually stayed for the whole game but never have I seen a stadium clear out after a game so fast as I saw yesterday! I think everyone made a beeline for heaters to thaw out - sad thing was, it was just 49 degrees out but the wind and the evening sky made it feel soooo much colder. Next up...that other team 93 miles north of us that shall remain nameless but who we hope to beat every single year - GO DAWGS GO beat them rebels!!
What happened to LSU?? Those same rebels we face this week beat LSU 38-13 and this after LSU made a great comeback against Troy last week. I think the eye of the Tiger has closed for the year!
Will Alabama remain #1 after this coming week's game? Auburn has beat them the last 6 years but they aren't playing so well this year. Will they be able to pull an upset and knock off the #1 team in the nation? Time will tell soon...

Roll Tide

Well, we lost to Bama 32-7 but we played them a much better game than most people thought we would. What I'm disappointed with is...what happened to our receivers? How do you have 10 dropped passes in a game and most of them were right on the money?? We should have had more first downs and possibly a higher score but noooooo, our receivers had to keep dropping the ball!!! Well, the players wanted to play a #1 Alabama on national tv and they got their wish but they also lost miserably to them - Roll Tide! You're looking good for the SEC! Congrats Vandy on being bowl eligible for the first time in 26 years!! How about that LSU game?? WoW! Down 31-3 in the 3rd and came back to win 40-31 - Go Tigers!

Disappointment

I'm so very very unhappy with my Dawgs right now - I don't understand how we could show so much improvement last season and go to a bowl game and this season just bomb. I get tired of the coaches saying how well we executed this that and the other - just admit that the team played poorly and fix it! This weekend we have a bye week but next week we have to roll into Bryant Stadium and face the current #1 team in the nation, Alabama. We have beaten them the past 2 years and it would be nice to do so again but I just can't see how we can do so with the way we've played this year. Granted, most of our games were either close or improvements (score wise) over last season but still.... I will continue to cheer on my Dawgs - I don't give up on them, even when I'm frustrated. GO DAWGS!!