Tonight...

...we gathered as a family and sang songs of praise to our Savior. We gathered at Granny's house and sang the songs that she has sung every Sunday since she was a little girl.

"All to Jesus, I surrender..."

"I stand amazed, in the presence, of Jesus the Nazarene..."

"Come thou fount of every blessing..."

"I walk through the garden alone..."

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."

We sang and we cried. We cried a lot. We hugged and we kissed. We tried to pretend that it was a coincidence that we all showed up at Granny's house at the same time. We tried to pretend that none of us had heard the phrase "they just called hospice." We tried to just enjoy the time we had together. We tried to live in the moment. Fully alive.

Life is a gift. Embrace it. Every moment of it. It's all a gift.

UPDATE: On Tuesday, February 2nd, at 11:30am Melva Donaghy stepped from this life into the next. She will be missed but we have full assurance that she is in a better place and we look forward to that great celestial reunion.

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I read through "A million miles in a thousand years" in 2 days. A world record for me. COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. I'm a huge Donald Miller fan, but this one really blew me away. This book is so inspirational, I feel like I'm ready to take on the world.

This time of year lots of people make resolutions and devote themselves to making themselves better, or making the world better and this is the perfect book to read to give you the motivation to do it.

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the Greatest Stories of the Bible

I've been looking through the "NKJV Greatest Stories of the Bible" for the past few weeks. It's a compilation of the great stories of the Bible in storybook format. It's got all the great stories you remember from Sunday school in an easy to navigate format.
I kind of dig the storybook feel. In my home we like to read through the stories in the Bible with our boys before they go to bed. Having everything laid out in like that is really nice. However, I think the NKJV version is still a little old school as far as readability. I prefer the Message version for it's every-day English ease of use, but the organization of this version is really great.
It's a toss up, not sure which version to grab at story time...

Hawaiian Music

This weekend on the way to church the boys and I were listening to the radio and the DJ said the word "Ohana". Malachi asked "what does that mean?" Obadiah and I chimed in, "That's the Hawaiian word for family." To which Malachi replied, "Oh, Hawaiian!" Then started immediately singing, "Feliz Navidad!" with the biggest smile on his face! He was so excited that he knew a Hawaiian song!