Challenges

I have not done well in completing reading challenges this year. Even the ones that I'm hosting I have not done well on. For the Medical Mystery Madness challenge, I have only read 2 out of the 5 at this point, with 2 months left to go. On the Chick Lit Challenge, I have read 5 out of the 10, with 3 months left to go. I don't think I even got 1 book read for the Themed Challenge. I dropped out of the What's In a Name Challenge, though I did get 1 book read for that. I completed 3 books for the Christian Readers Challenge, with 6 that were on my original list. I wanted to sign up for the Non-Fiction Five, but I was doing so poorly on challenges that I didn't even bother with it this time. My reading seems to have gone down this year which is probably why I haven't done well with challenges.

The question is, as we near the end of 2009 and all the challenges start gearing up for 2010, should I try to join any? And along those lines, is there any interest in having the Chick Lit Challenge again in 2010? What about the Medical Mystery Madness challenge? I have put polls in the sidebar to see if there is enough interest for running these again. If I do host these challenges, I plan to have them be year-long challenges.

Overcoming the 7 Obstacles to Spiritual Growth by Dwight Carlson

Overcoming the 7 Obstacles to Spiritual Growth: The Journey to a Closer Walk with God by Dwight Carlson


My rating: 5 of 5 stars





As we journey on our Christian walk, we travel through different stages of growth. The author takes us through the obstacles we face as we go through these various stages. He then outlines the stages of growth.

The obstacles we face:
1. The Dutiful Christian: trying to please God through our performance; focusing more on what we do for God than God Himself
2. The Corporate Christian: focus on programs and what other Christians think
3. The Expert Christian: doctrinal correctness is of paramount importance; try to straighten people out who see things differently
4. The Grace-Abuser Christian: negatively react against rules; minimize sin in the world and other Christians
5. The Resistant Christian: disappointment with God; unwillingness to give God total control
6. The Emotional Christian: feelings tend to dominate; react to a rational approach to Christianity
7. The Runt Christian: never intentionally pursued a relationship with Christ; plagued with doubts about salvation

The stages of growth:
Stage 1: Getting the Right Start - Starting the journey with Christ
Stage 2: Knowing and Doing - Learning God's truths and doing them
Stage 3: The Authentic Heart - Being what you profess
Stage 4: Experiencing God - Developing an intimate relationship with God
Stage 5: The Crises of Faith - Successfully navigating life's difficulties
Stage 6: The Exchanged Life - Cultivating a deep trust and rest in Christ
Stage 7: The Life of Adoration - Realizing and responding to God's profound love

This was a great book and encouraging as well as challenging. Growing in my walk with God is not something that can be narrowed down to a few steps to follow or rules to obey. It is a living, breathing relationship. The stages are not necessarily done in order and we often fall or move ahead at various times in our lives. Continuing to grow is the goal.

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella


My rating: 4 of 5 stars






This was another great read by Sophie Kinsella. Lexi slips and hits her head after clubbing with her friends one night and wakes up in the hospital to find that 3 years have gone by and she's now married and rich. She can't remember the last 3 years of her life. How did she get from where she was to where she is now? And who is she now?
I really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down as Lexi tries to get her life back together.

The Hobby Fund has been depleted

Bookcloseouts had a sale. And I fell. Hard.

Here's the booty:
You Can Experience an Authentic Life by James Emery White
Ecclesiastes: Everything Has Its Time (Bible Study) by Nelson
High Definition Life by Luis Palau
Landmines in the Path of the Believer by Charles Stanley
Living Beyond the Daily Grind by Charles Swindoll
Mid-Course Correction by Gordon MacDonald
Restoring Joy (3 books in 1: Ordering Your Private World, Renewing Your Spiritual Passion, & Rebuilding Your Broken World) by Gordon MacDonald
Searching for Heaven on Earth by David Jeremiah
This Isn't the Life I Signed Up For by Donna Partow
Transparent: Getting Honest about Who We Are and Who We Want to Be by Sara Zacharias Davis
The Truth War by John MacArthur
What Have You Got to Lose? by Stephen Arterburn
Healing Is a Choice by Stephen Arterburn
Being Christian by Stephen Arterburn

Offworld by Robin Parrish

Offworld by Robin Parrish


My rating: 5 of 5 stars





This was a fantastic read! Though technically it would be classified as sci-fi, it was more mystery/suspense than science fiction. I really enjoyed it. Another one of those - what would I do if I found myself in a similar situation?

Monopoly Collection

I think I've mentioned before that Jono and I collect different versions of Monopoly. Here is a sampling of the ones we've collected over the years.

1. Astronomy edition
2. .com edition
3. NHL Original Six edition
4. Cat-opoly
5. Garfield edition
6. Wild Animal-opoly
7. Peanuts edition
8. America edition
9. US Army edition
10. French edition
11. Redskins edition
12. Vikings edition
13. 1999 NFL edition
14. Star Trek (Original) edition
15. Star Trek Next Generation edition
16. Star Wars classic trilogy edition
17. Star Wars Episode I edition
18. NY Mets edition
19. Coca Cola edition
20. Detroit in a Box
21. Harley Davidson edition
22. Lord of the Rings trilogy edition
23. Surfing edition
24. Here and Now edition
25. Bookopoly
26. Looney Tunes edition
27. ESPN edition
28. Lighthouse-o-poly
29. Chronicles of Narnia edition
30. Planet Earth edition
31. Original
32. Here & Now World edition
33. 1935 Replica edition

We also have the Make-Your-Own version. And our latest acquisition:

Random Ramblings

We started watching House, M.D. from the beginning via Netflix so that we could see the episodes in order and get the progression of the show and the characters. We had seen most of the episodes in re-runs but not in order. Season 5 came out on DVD so we were able to re-watch those episodes in preparation for Season 6 that starts next week.

Our wii is providing many hours of entertainment. I already knew that I stink at sports, but the wii is just confirming that I'm really not good in athletics. My ping-pong skills are slowly improving thanks to some tips from Jono. With the wii bowling, I'm finding that my arm gets sore quickly so I tried bowling with my left arm to give my right arm a break so I could still play ping-pong. And I managed to get 4 spares and 2 strikes playing with my left arm! Twice! I was quite amazed at that! Though wii bowling is much easier than regular bowling.

Fantasy Football has begun and I don't think I'm off to a very good start. It's looking quite likely that I will lose in my NFL league and it's still up in the air in my Facebook league due to Monday night games. I'm currently ahead in my church league, but my opponent (who happens to be Jono this week) still has players playing Monday night so the score could drastically change.

I'm not really sure what I should do regarding this blog at this point. It's not like I have much to talk about. I am getting some reading done, but I'm finding that I really am not good at reviewing books. I'm also skimming some sections in books so that I get the gist of the plot, but don't read every word in the book. I did that with Exposure by Brandilyn Collins. Great book by the way. Quite suspenseful and I LOVED the twist near the end! Highly recommended for mystery/suspense lovers.
This blog started as a book blog but I also use it to talk about my life, cats, scrapbooking etc. There's only so much that I feel comfortable putting in this public of a forum. After all, I have no idea who all may read this. I don't want to share too much of my personal life. A lot of my time is taken up with my job as I work full-time. But I don't want to talk too much about my job, especially with the news stories that I see about people posting on Twitter and Facebook and then losing their job as a result!

In closing, here's another cat scrapbook page that I did:

Scrapbook Madness

A couple weekends ago, I went to our local scrapbook store for an overnight crop. The scrapbook crop was from 4 pm to 6 am. I only made it until 2 am, but still that was a good 10 hours of scrapping! I finished an 8x8 album of 16 pages that I made for my parents as well as 23 pages of 12x12 pages. It was awesome! Here's a few that I did:

Jono's 40th birthday party:


Also the Monopoly 09 Game Night:




Cat Pages:




To see more pages, as well as the pages that I got done this past weekend at my church's crop, go to my Flickr page.

Recently

Well, I haven't gotten much reading done lately because we got this:


Need I say more?