A New Year

The holidays are over it is now a new year. We all know life is planned by god and things happen in his time. I think the holiday season is when he makes things known to us. We celebrate his sons birth on Christmas. It is the day our savior was brought to life in order to die for our sins. In this we rejoice. The old year ends and a new one begins. It is like your old life ending and a new life beginning. We hope and pray that the promise of a new year brings you a new life in Christ. God Bless, Chris, Jon, Elizabeth, Landon, and Josephine.

It is so clear

Sometimes god seems like he is far away or distant from you. Sometimes god seems so close to you that you can feel him. No matter how far or near god seems he is always with you. That happened to me the morning of December 26. You see my wife and I had our daughter, Josephine Noelle Cook, born at 3:25 a.m. the day after Christmas. Baby and mommy are healthy and happy. We consider Josephine as our Christmas present from god. That is why she has the middle name Noelle. Christine and I are in our forties and didn't plan on having children. We both have also been married before and didn't think we would do that again. As we know, it is not what we have planned for our lives, it is what god has planned for us. He has blessed us in so many ways and I want to thank him. It is a good thing that we have a patient god, just like a good father, because he needed a lot of patience with me. As I said before, sometimes god is so close to you that you can feel his breath. After Josephine was born and mommy and her were resting I went home. When I got into my car the song the first noel was playing on the radio. At that moment I knew Josephine Noelle Cook is part of his plan and what a blessing he gives us. I sat and cried and thanked my father god for the awesome Christmas present he has given our family. The gift of life.

After The Storm

The North East coast got hit by Blizzard "Albert" this weekend. It didn't start snowing until after dark. Our children anticipated the storm all day on Saturday. They had both fallen asleep before the snow started flying. It was very windy and stormy throughout the night. No matter how hard the wind whistled or the snow blew it did not wake them. It was as if they were being watched over. They looked like little angels in their beds. Imagine their amazement when they woke up and saw a foot of freshly fallen snow on the ground. They were very patient in waiting until the snowstorm stopped. We got out of the house in the early afternoon to go out and play. What a ball they had. We had a snowball fight and went sledding around the yard. The kids made snow angels. After we finished playing we came inside and had hot chocolate together as a family. It was as if all the waiting made things that much better.

The Ginger Bread House That Never Was

Well, another great weekend we spent time as a family trying to build a Gingerbread house. Oh Boy!!! It all started Friday night when we tried to put together a kit house. The kids helped getting the gingerbread walls and roof all ready while I worked on the frosting that was supposed to work like cement. You probably already guesed, when we put the house together it did not stay together. It was like a house built with no foundation. As soon as we took our hands off the walls they fell like a brick. So I decided we could keep them together with toothpicks. Toothpicks don't work when the gingerbread walls are like cinderblocks. Everytime I got the toothpick in a little bit it broke off. So we decided we would look up a gingerbread recipe and bake our own walls and roof. It smelled good when it came out of the oven but, when we went to pick up the gingerbread panels they fell apart. The kids did enjoy eating it with milk. When all was said and done the gingerbread house never got built, but as a family we had a lot of fun.

The Wisdom and Love of a Four Year Old

I think I may have learned something from my four year old son this weekend. My son, Landon, told me on Friday that he loved me more than God loves me. We play a game by telling each other how much we love one another. It usually starts with me telling him I love him to the moon and back and then he tells me he loves me all around the earth. He must have been thinking things through while he was at his mothers for the week, because of the bat he told me he loved me more than god loves me. All weekend I explained to him that no one can love more than god loves us. I thought he understood, until it was almost time for him and his sister to go back to their mother's. He told me Daddy, I still love you more than god does. Thinking about that I learned that maybe we should love each other like God loves us. Through the eyes of a four year old.

Happy Holiday's what happened to Merry Christmas

Thanksgiving is over let the holiday rush begin. I had another article accepted and published on Ezine Articles. During Thanksgiving dinner with my family I got to thinking how blessed I am and what the holidays are really about. I contemplated on how life was like the day after 9/11 and that is where the idea for this article came from. We really came together as a nation on that day, I am sure there wasn't a church with an empty seat on Sunday. This brings me to the holidays. One thing that bothers me is how we greet each other during the holidays. I understand most people don't know what you celebrate, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other kind of religion out there. I am a Christian, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of my savior, Jesus Christ. I hope you don't get offended when I say Merry Christmas. I won't get offended if you say Happy Chanuka or Happy Kwanza. I probably will invite you to church on Sunday with me though.

Merry Christmas and God Bless

Jon and Christine Cook

ThanksGiving

Today is Thanksgiving. Like many Americans I woke up very early to get the turkey in the oven. I started my day at 5:30. It was quiet this morning as, my wife, Christine got to sleep a little. I am so glad for this because she is eight and a half months pregnant. I was teasing hear that I thought she had the turkey in her belly. She teased me right back. I think it is important in a marraige to have humor with each other. Anyways, I digress. This Thanksgiving my four year old, landon and my six year old, Elizabeth are at their mothers. We are going to pick them up around 4:00 so that is when we will have our thanksgiving dinner as a family. It was 24 years ago today that I had my last dinner with my family in the house I grew up in. The day after Thanksgiving, twenty four years ago, we woke up to smoke in the house. The stove, from cooking turkey the day before, had short circuited and caused the house to burn down. Me, being a typical 17 year old, was devastated at what we had lost. My father was thankful that our family had made it out alive and we were well. It was a lesson that took me some time to learn. It is not our material things that, although nice to have, we should give thanks to god for. We should thank him for our health, freedom, family, to be able to love and be loved, and most importantly for having him. lord, on this day and every day let me thank you for all that you have given me and my family. Amen.