What's For Dinner?

We had a delightful dinner last night with three of our couples-friends.  The kids were all gone to church groups so we all had a couple of free hours.  So everyone headed over to our pad and I served a couple courses of food for dinner.  First, as an appetizer I made satay beef, spinach dip and ginger shrimp.  We followed that up with an Asian salad with honey vinaigrette dressing.  The main courses was seared ahi tuna with oriental noodles and garlic beans.  Then for dessert after it all we had tahetian vanilla gelato with a little dough-bite, raspberries and butterscotch sauce.  As an added bonus, we used the fancy schmancy plates and wine glasses that we got for our wedding over a decade ago and have been used only a handful of times. 

As good as the dinner was, the company was even better and the night as a whole was a success.  That leaves only two things left to do (half of my scrapbooking and the splits).  We are almost done!

The Root of the Words

Over the year I have chosen 40 different verses from the bible for varying reasons that I wanted to analyze the differences in their translations.  As it turns out, I compared about 18-22 different versions of the bible and there are some remarkable differences.  Come on people!  I get that "stop" and "halt" and "cease" are all synonyms, but once I looked though all of the verses I found that less than 20% were essentially the same translation.  I made a note of each of these differences and figured out which was the most common translation, it's original language of authorship, who wrote it, who the audience was and when it was written.  For a lot of the verses, people just plain don't know those answers. 

From here, going forward, I would like to take this a step further and look into other places that these words are used to get the best translation of each word and review the bible codes to see if there is any hidden words in each verse.  It's all very interesting and enough to make and break faith for many folks.

I just keep telling myself that God has ways to achieve his goals so if he wanted the bible to say something then my opinion is that it is probably in there.  The fine line then is what it is that God really said and what is man's translation of God's word.  Therein lies the point of faith.

Things don't require faith if you can prove them.

Bedtime

Well I finished my e-book!  I wrote, designed and published it on Snapfish. It's a children's book about a young girl named Lizzy who is getting ready for bed.  Unfortunately Snapfish doesn't allow me to show it to you via internet.  I had to print the book.  Ask me someday when you're visiting if you want to see the hard copy.  I did the best I could to get the story into smilebox too but they asked me the ransom one of the kids in exchange to pay for it.  So after much deliberation...I guess I shall post the images here and you can scroll through them at your leisure:

 

2 down, 7 to go!

We spent last weekend out on Lake Havasu with a great group of fun folks.  Just being out there in our 85' pontoon boat was awesome, but then we made a stop one day to have a Jello/Food/Paint/etc fight on one of the shores and WOW - What a GREAT HIGHLIGHT TO A FUN TRIP! 

Here's a shot of our houseboat...

If you're wondering to yourself "What is that on the roof?" It's a hot tub and a barbeque area and several lounge chairs, and they were all awesome.  Oh yeah, and there was a slide from the top story which was super fun!  With four bedrooms and two baths, two lower decks, big screen TV, surround sound stereo, a full kitchen and living/dining rooms I almost considered just launching one on our lake and moving out of our house.

As for the food fight...Well, it was super fun too.  Here's the before (notice our war paint) and the after (OI! It was IN.MY.NOSE.).  Of course, we couldn't convince everyone to participate, but it was still super fun, more ammo for the rest of us!

A Few Days Alone

Hubby and I recently got to spend a few days alone, riding a motorcycle along the Kern River and stopping when we wanted to fish or were done for the night.  There was no schedule, no responsibilities, no worries...just relaxing time with my sweetheart.  I love getting chances like this to reconnect with him and shut the world out from time to time.  He's a pretty neat guy when I have a few moments to stop and pay attention to each him.  It's just so easy sometimes to let life get in the way and I need reminders of how great we are together.

Fun in Vegas with the Girls

The week before Independence day some girlfriends and I headed out to Vegas for a quick break.  We were only out there a couple days but we made the most of it.  We went to see the BlueMan Group, had sushi, played craps, rode the HUGE ferris wheel, relaxed in the lazy river, played vegas peoplewatching bingo, and best of all....

WE WENT ZIP-LINING!!! 

We rode the line above Freemont street in downtown Vegas where you ride above the crowds and below the lightshow.  We almost didn't get to ride because there was a huge thunder and lightning storm that was just making it's way to the strip.  Lucky for us though, they re-opened just long enough for us to get in a ride.  It was so very very very fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

1 Trip, 3 checked list items

On our trip to the east coast this summer we were able to fit in THREE of the items from the list.  First, we went kayaking one morning in Mystic Seaport.  Girls rode together and boys rode together.  My little man was able to even catch a couple fish in the river that morning! - CHECK #1!

Also, the first night we were there my dad ordered up a lobster hoagie and then on our way south along the coast, we stopped for lunch and I had a lobster roll.  It was delicious.  - CHECK #2!

 

 I decided to also try a novelty item to accompany it - Birch beer.  It was alright, but I couldn't finish half of it.  It was TOO bubbly.  The kids enjoyed finishing it off for me though.

 And last but not least, Check #3 was the four of us posing for a picture, standing in the Atlantic ocean.  It wasn't such a big deal, but I can say I've been there.  I may be biased, but I like the Pacific better.  It was a beautiful day near Groton, Connecticut so we appreciated a stop along on our trip.