Up!

Last Friday Steve and I got a birds-eye view of Orange County. 

We rode the giant balloon at the Orange County Great Park.  Those of you who live in Orange County will remember the heated debate that went on for years following the closure of the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro.  Plans to develop this site into an airport were thwarted and this area encompassing over 200 acres is being developed as a multi-use park. 

On Friday, the Media Alliance of Orange County hosted an event at the park to promote awareness of this site.  The Media Alliance is an organization that was formed to promote media business in Orange County.

At this time, a small portion of the park has been developed, with plans to expand the park more each year.  While the park is under expansion, the undeveloped areas are available to use as sites for filming, photography or hosting special events.  Thanks, Brian for the great tour of the park and the amazing spaces surrounding it!

There are several runways that are still operational.  They are used on an ongoing basis for car testing and to film car commercials.  They have also been transformed into multi-lane highways for filming movie scenes.  There are abandoned airplane hangars and other outbuildings throughout the grounds that have been used in movies such as The Transformers and Eagle Eye and in the television series 24.

For large corporate events, there is a large venue that was developed for the Cirque du Soleil Kazoo show.  For smaller events, the Hangar 244 is a great option.  If you are interested in filming or hosting an event at the Great Park, visit eltorofield.com.

For families, the Great Park has plenty to offer.  I don't know about you, but I am always looking for something that is cheap or free to do with the family.  Balloon rides are free, as are all of the events listed below.  Parking is $10 per car. 

Look at the variety of events they are offering in October alone!

-Saturday, October 9 @ 7:00 - Load up the car and bring the whole family for a movie on the lawn, The Karate Kid.  Bring your lawn chairs and some blankets and settle in to watch this fun family movie on the big screen. (free parking for this event)

-Saturday, October 23 there will be a Great Park Pumpkin Harvest and Food Drive with plenty of activities for the whole family, including a pumpkin patch (every child takes home a free pumpkin!), arts activities, carnival games, a hay maze, horse drawn wagons and more.

 - Saturdays at 10:00 through November 6, The Orange County Great Park is presenting a series of gardening education workshops in sustainable home gardening led by the University of California Master Gardeners. (free parking for these events)

I have provided just a snapshot of what the the Orange County Great Park has to offer. 

It's definitely one of Orange County's best-kept secrets.  Check it out!

100 and Counting

I have been a member of the blogosphere for almost four months now and in those four months I have posted just over 100 times.  I have discovered that blogging is far more rewarding and way more work than I ever imagined it would be.  There have been several times I have felt like throwing in the towel, but I am compelled to continue.

I adore writing and I love hearing from you.  It is so gratifying to complete a post and hit that "PUBLISH POST" button, but I'm so very human.  When you send me your little messages or leave comments telling me that I made you laugh or cry or think about something in a different way, it makes my day!

Knowing how much effort it takes to maintain a blog, I thought I would share with you some of the blogs that I enjoy.  I have chosen just a few and they cover a variety of topics.  Check them out.

Last Christmas my son Sam and I stood in the middle of Barnes & Noble laughing out loud.  If you have ever heard me laugh, you know, I do not giggle quietly and we caused quite a disruption in the store.  The source of our hilarity was a book called "Cake Wrecks."  Sam bought this weird and quirky book for his sister Ashley as a Christmas gift.

Imagine my delight when I discovered Cake Wrecks has a blog!  I can sit in the privacy of my home and cackle, snort and guffaw to my heart's content.

The cakes range from the horribly misspelled

to the outright bizarre.  There's no better way to celebrate an oil spill than with cake!

But, be warned before you sit down to look at this site with your kids.  Some of the cakes are beyond weird and range into adult content.  People put strange things on cakes!

Another one of my favorite blogs is Design Sponge.

I can get lost in here for a looong time.  It is an interior design blog and it is filled with beautiful images and inspiring ideas for your home.  My favorite section is their before & after section.  This is where they highlight vintage finds and show how they have been transformed from something ordinary into something lovely and extraordinary.

I have to limit myself when I'm in this site or I would be lost in here forever and never get any of my own blogging or housework done.  This is a truly inspiring site.

It was hard for me to choose my favorites but here are two that particularly inspired me.

I love this first before & after - victoria's chandelier,  because I have this exact chandelier out in my garage.

I have been debating what to do with it for a while, whether or not I should paint it or send it to the Goodwill.

This has given me the motivation to get out the spray paint and transform that brassy chandelier into something bold and beautiful.  All I have to do now is decide on a color!

My second pick from Design Sponge is chairs.  I am looking to reupholster my own kitchen chairs to I am drawn to chair transformations and I love the lines of these lovely chairs.

Heather's chairs were sweet before but they are stunning now.  I love the way she painted just the back of the chair and left the wood peeking through the stenciled leaves.

There are so many great ideas, big and small, included in Design Sponge, plus recipes, products and more.  But don't say I didn't warn you.  It is highly addictive.

Another favorite of mine right now is wedding blogs, for obvious reasons.  As we are planning Ashley and Daniel's big day, it is fun to browse through the various wedding sites.

Green Wedding Shoes is specifically geared toward the Southern California bride.  It is filled with tips, ideas, vendors and more.

Ruffled is a visual delight, filled with inspiration for decor, flowers and every aspect of a wedding.

Style Me Pretty is loaded with more visual eye candy.  Whether or not you are a bride, or know a bride or plan on being a bride, you should check out this site.  I dare you to visit here for just five minutes and leave.  Every picture is more stunning than the one before.

The last blog I want to mention is written by my friend Josh.  It is called Finding Me.  Just a month ago he started this blog, chronicling his weight loss journey.  It is a candid and honest account of his struggle and at his first weigh-in he had already lost 26.4 pounds!  Way to go Josh!

I hope you enjoy my picks.  I would love to hear from you.  What are your favorite blogs?  I'm always looking for more ways to avoid housework!

Thanks for being with me over the past 100 posts, sharing the laughter and the tears.  Here's to another 100!

A Broken Toe in the Body of Christ

Ow!  I have busted my toe.  Again.

I have a habit of breaking toes.  I seriously can't count how many toes I've broken, but I figure by now I've made it through all ten digits and I'm working my way through them again.  And that other spot on my foot, that would be where a shard of glass punctured my foot.

Don't ask.

I don't know why I have this particular predilection for toe-breaking.  Other people seem to make it through life without ever breaking a single toe.  My feet aren't that enormous, pretty average for someone my height.

I think there are two things that are at the core of the issue.  The first one is the fact that I rarely wear shoes.  The temperate weather here in Orange County makes it tempting to wander around in sandals and at home, I tend to kick them off and walk around in bare feet.  The more I read about my health, especially for people who suffer from chronic pain, the more I realize I have to put shoes back on my feet.  The problem is, I've been out of the shoe habit for so many years, it's really hard to get back into it.

The second issue, and I'm sure the real reason why I keep busting my toes, is that I'm a klutz.  There's really no other reasonable explanation.  Instead of walking around furniture I am constantly testing my super-human abilities to walk through solid objects, but physics keep getting in the way.

Newton's first law of physics states that "Every object (my foot) persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces (a chair) impressed on it."  This and the other laws of physics were discovered in 1687.  I'm pretty sure they were working before Newton, and are firmly set in the universe, yet I have been trying to defy them ever since!

So what does my toe-breaking have to do with the body of Christ?  Paul actually spoke about this very thing in his first letter to the church in Corinth.  Well, he didn't talk about my broken toe or Orange County or Newton and his laws of physics or the fact that I'm a klutz, but he did talk about the body and, well... just read it.

A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it. 

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. 

What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. 

You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair? 

The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. 

You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything.
1 Corinthians 12:14-27 (The Message)

I have to admit, when I read the part about choosing between good digestion and full-bodied hair, I hesitated.  I didn't leap to good digestion.  I like my hair.  I've always had good hair.  I admit it.  I'm vain.  But then, I remembered what it was like when I was really sick and I was consuming vast quantities of pain medications every day.  I will spare you the details, but let me tell you this,  I did not care a whit about my hair, but I was begging the doctor to do something about my gut.

All of this brings me back to my toe.  So little and insignificant, after all, it's my baby toe.  But, it is a gripping toe and an important little toe.  When it is broken I feel it every time I stand up, every time I walk or move.  It is really making it's presence known.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the broken toe in the body of Christ, or maybe the spleen or tibia.  I never feel like I'm the hand or the head or the heart.  Just some minor part that you don't think about until it's broken or hurting.  But, like Paul said, "it is only because of what you are a part of".  Somehow, the Creator makes all these disparate parts work when we submit our parts to him.  And when a part is hurting, broken and wounded, the rest of the body should feel it and tend to it.

I have to accept my part as the body of Christ and not look at it as insignificant.  Every part is important.  I also need to tend to the other parts when I see that they are hurting or wounded.  "If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt and in the healing."

The next time you look at your little toe, remember, you weren't meant to do this on your own.  We are all connected, one part as important as the other.

And I promise, no more pictures of my feet!