Bible Study Adventures

For the past two weeks our family has been getting up a half hour earlier than we typically do in order to start our day with a family devotional.  It has been truly wonderful.

During our time this morning a truly magical moment occurred when we read a passage from Isaiah.  In chapter 9, verse 6 Isaiah tells of the coming of Jesus:

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulder.
And he will be called,
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

After reading the verse together I asked the kids to tell me who this verse is talking about.  Brooklyn promptly said, "Jesus!"  Meanwhile, Parker has his "thinking face" on and after a moment he says, "Mario. It's about Mario."  After giving him a quizzical look, he clarified by saying, "The verse said Princess Peach."  I immediately burst out laughing.  To my knowledge, this is the first time "Prince of Peace" has been confused with the iconic video game damsel, Princess Peach.  If you don't know, Princess Peach is who Mario is always trying to rescue from Bowser in the Super Mario video games.

A little while later Amber was looking up a lyric video of Handel's Messiah (to show the kids how the verse in Isaiah had been made into a well-known song), and she accidentally showed a different song that wasn't quite what we were looking for.  In a moment of brief silence, Parker said, "Awkward."  Needless to say, Parker was on fire this morning and much laughter came as a result.

God is blessing our commitment to study His Word as a family daily and all credit is due to Him for the improvements we've seen in our family relationships as a result.

Brooklyn and Parker have really done a terrific job with school so far this year.  Much of the credit for this can be attributed to Amber who has come up with some amazing ideas to keep the kids focused throughout the day.  I think the good start to the school year can also be directly attributed to our family Bible study time.

I hope this post brings you some joy!

God bless,

Vaughn

Proudest Day

My proudest day as a father!  I am so blessed to have been able to baptize my daughter, Brooklyn.  Here's video of the event.  You may have to crank up the sound a bit to hear it!

Lyric Video

Amber and I love this band.  They're so good.  Don't just stop listening with this one song.  Be sure and check their other stuff too: www.wearegoradio.com.

Rover Runover

Here's another glimpse of our time at the JPL open house last weekend. Brooklyn had a great time being "tickled" by this rover. Enjoy!

Daddy and Daughter

Just a quick photo of Brooklyn and me. Enjoy!

JPL Open House

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had a huge open house this weekend.  Amber, Brooklyn and I were able to attend and enjoy the festivities for a few hours yesterday (Parker is up in Portland visiting family).

They had many awesome attractions, but one of my favorites was the opportunity to have our picture taken on Mars with a rover!  The experience was really cool.  We walked into this large room with a huge green screen and NASA nerds everywhere.  We felt like stars on the set of Big Bang Theory, haha!  They had us stand in a small space (about 3' x 3') and do our best Martian impression.  As you can see in the picture below we failed miserably.  We are obviously tourists.

If you're wondering why the picture looks weird, it's because they took the shot in 3-D!  You probably don't have a pair of 3-D glasses handy, so next time you buy cereal make sure it has free 3-D glasses in it as the prize. =)

Get your 3-D glasses out!!

New glasses!

Brooklyn picked out her first pair of glasses today. She has difficulty seeing things that are far away from her (nearsighted?). Here is a picture of her in all her adorable glory.