By Nicole

Okay, I am just testing out my fanciness here.  It looks like I can email and text blog posts now!  Yeehaw!  Next time I am sitting in construction traffic or waiting around in an airport, I will blog!

On our way to our dentist and eye doctor appointments earlier this week, the kids and I got on the topic of school and sports.  Connor asked me if he could play football this year, and I said, "Not until 3rd grade, bud."  Well, this proceeded to break his heart, just like it does most of the time right around the different sports sign-up times.  And we had a long, drawn-out conversation where he cried and I apologized and tried to help him understand my point of view.  Every season, we seem to have the same conversation, and it gets longer and more dramatic the older he gets.  At the beginning of preschool, I set up a "rule" (like I think most parents do with their kids, especially their first-born kids). The rule is: No sports until 3rd grade, and then only one (or a max of two if Dad undermines me). The first-born rule I remember my mom had for me was about ear piercing.  She said not until I was 16.  Well, through many a tear-filled conversation and endless beg

So, for this round of Booksneeze, I requested a book by Nicole Johnson entitled, Fresh-Brewed Life: A Stirring Invitation to Wake Up Your Soul .  I had never heard of it before, and I didn't realize until later that it was an anniversary edition.  The reason I requested the book was because I am coffee lover... okay, addict, and the title kind of enticed me.  Having said that, I now have to admit that while some of her explanations of what coffee means to her and analogies between the process of making and enjoying coffee to our walk with God were great, others were quite a stretch.  Parts almost felt like the sappy, fluffy Christian women's literature that I love to hate. Okay, skeptical criticism aside...  I truly have been challenged by this book.  Nicole (I love her name, by the way!) has a way of getting to the heart of the matter, and she sometimes cuts deep (unlike the sappy, fluffy stuff).  The most endearing aspect of it all is that she gets real by sharing some of