He is Risen

To one and all, rejoice, for our Savior is risen!  Happy Easter!  I hope you enjoy the following video.  I posted it for the song, mainly, as there isn’t really a “video”.  Keith Green was/is one of the pillars of Christian music.  I say “was” because he was killed in a plane crash in 1982, yet his music still vastly impacts people today.

You might be familiar with the song that’s simply called “Easter Song”, but if you haven’t heard Keith sing it, you haven’t heard it.  No one else captures the joy of the Resurrection quite like Keith Green.  So I hope you enjoy your holiday and enjoy the music.  Mr. Green was only 28 years old when he was taken up to Heaven.  But he was a genius on the piano and crammed more into his short life than you or I could ever dream.  I can’t wait to meet him one day. 

Happy Easter and praise the Lord!

~~Becka

As you may or may not know, the familia and I went to go see my favorite Christian singer last night, Chris Tomlin.  (No, we didn’t take the baby, we got a sitter, but we did take the other four children.)

I bought the tickets the moment I got the pre-sale email back in December, so we were able to get really good seats.  In fact, they were better than I thought they’d be.  We were in the sixth row back, however technically, we were in the second row, because the first four rows were folding chairs (they created more seating next to the stage .

The concert was held at Rolling Hills Community Church in Tualatin, OR.  It’s a pretty big church.  If the Christian singers don’t go to the Rose Garden Arena, they pretty much go to Rolling Hills around here.

Israel Houghton and New Breed opened for Chris.  You might think, que?  Who’s that?  But Israel has written lots of songs we all sing in church every week – Here I Am to Worship, Lord You are Good, Friend of God…  He was really good, sang some songs off his new album which is released on March 24th.

After a brief intermission, Chris Tomlin took the stage and I was able to snap a few pics from my iPhone.  Of course, my iPhone doesn’t take the best pics in the world, but take my word for it – that’s Chris up there.  LOL  Here’s a pic I took of one of the giant monitor screens.  It’s sad that I was just a few rows away but the best pics of him were from the monitor.    If you’re a Chris Tomlin afficionado, you should be able to tell by the lyrics what song we were singing.

Here’s a pic of him on stage:

He was singing his big hit How Great is Our God here, same song as the other pic, but he went to the piano and sang it for us in Spanish and Russian while giving us stories about how the different countries worshipped.  In Brazil, they were dancing in the aisles a la The Blues Brothers.  LOL  In Russia, they were pretty stoic.    It was a funny story.  Guess you had to be there.

I was so jealous of the guy two rows in front of us, because he was able to get a full body shot of Chris.    I was tempted to hand him my phone.  LOL  Take pictures for me!  Hahah

This is the best I could get – but at least you can tell how close we were in this one.

Chris sang most of his songs from his new album, Hello Love, but he did a few favorites.  Everyone wanted him to sing Indescribable, and I think he was planning on doing that one for the encore.  BUT, he didn’t do an encore.  **sniffle**

I know, people.  I KNOW.  No encore?  That’s like…  not leaving a tip for your server.  The crowd was into it.  The crowd wanted it.  Chris left stage and the lights stayed dim for about a minute before the house lights came on.  You could hear the crowd give a collective, “Oh!” in a bummer way.  It was weird.  DH noticed it was straight-up 10pm when they turned the lights on.  They’d made mention of Day Light Savings and how a lot of the people in the audience had to go to church the next morning, so maybe that had something to do with not having the concert continue.  Or maybe they were just tired.

But that was very disappointing. 

I’ve only been to one other concert where they didn’t do an encore, and that was Blink 182, and that was only because they gave a temper tantrum because the crowd wasn’t singing their songs.  LOL  They left the stage with some profanities.  Great way to lose some fans, there.  While Chris didn’t leave the stage cursing the crowd, it still stung a bit.

WE ALL WANTED TO HEAR INDESCRIBABLE!!!  Darn it, Chris, if I ever meet you, I’m gonna hug you – then smack you.  LOL

The kids had a great time, however, even though they got a bit bored towards the end.  They couldn’t see over the crowd well, so they were stuck watching the monitors.  I had a great time as well and I think I made eye contact!  Woohoo!  Heheh

Anyhow, just wanted to share my experiences.  If you go to Chris Tomlin on this tour, be sure to shout out not to jip you on the encore. 

~~Becka

As you may or may not notice, I have a new website!  I felt I’d outgrown my old website, since I’d had the design for two years, so I decided to upgrade with the help of my hubby.    I liked this template that we bought online, along with the rotating photos on my front page.

Obviously, this new blog/website is under construction, and considering the fact I have a new baby in the house, I’m sure it will be under construction for a little while to come.  Obviously, if you have questions regarding any of my books, you can email me at rebeccagoings@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to get back to you with any and all information.

My blog at beckasbabble.blogspot.com will be “closed” from now on in favor of my new, shiny WordPress site.   Besides, I like the fact this new blog is connected to my website instead of being some disconnected entity.  Now readers of my blog can remember the fact I’m also a romance writer! 

News on me, I’m doing well.  My daughter Sophie is one month old and a little angel.  She’s waking up only once during the night, and hopefully will be sleeping through the night soon.  As of right now, she gets a good four solid hours of sleep before waking up to be fed, then going back to sleep for another four hours.  She doesn’t have an intense desire to suck, which has made my life easier, because she never wants a pacifier. YAY!  Hate those things anyhow.  She’s 9lbs. 4oz. now, according to her most recent doctor’s visit on Thursday.  Beefy compared to the 7lbs. 7oz. she was on the 3rd!  But she’s supplimented with formula.  I do both breastfeeding and formula, mainly because I don’t produce enough milk to sustain a baby.  It’s been that way for all of my children.  But since breastfeeding is controlling my bloodsugars, I’ll continue for as long as I can!

I’m doing well on my weight loss, and in fact, lost a total of 32 pounds since I’ve had my baby.  Obviously, that wasn’t fat weight.  Mostly baby & fluids.  In fact, I’m 18 pounds lighter now than I was when I first got pregnant.  Exciting that my “skinny fat pants” are now loose on me.    DH and I have started exercising together and are looking into buying either a Bowflex machine or a treadmill.  I think I’d use the treadmill more, he thinks he’d use the Bowflex more.  Heh, maybe one day we can have both.

I haven’t been writing lately, but that’s mainly because my life has been so hectic lately.  Not only do I have five kids to feed (lol), I have chores and school time to do as well.  By the time DH comes home from work, all I want to do is collapse in front of the TV.  I’m sure most of my fatigue stems from the fact I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since baby was born.  However, I’m not complaining too loudly, though, because I distinctly remember praying for sleepless nights in exchange for no pain.  Lemme tell ya, that last pregnancy month was HARD.  Baby was wedged in my pelvis something fierce. UGH.  But now, she’s a happy lil’ angel face.

Been reading the TWILIGHT series while breastfeeding, since I have nothing else to do while sitting there with baby.  I’ll be posting my thoughts on the entire series once I read it all.  I’m in the third book, ECLIPSE, right now, and I have NOT seen the movie, although now I want to.  I’ll keep you updated on that front with one of my impromptu book review.

Anyhow, I thought I’d pop in and let you know what’s been going on with me.  I have another book releasing in February from Cobblestone Press entitled WHAT I WANT, coming February 27th.  It’s a short “Wicked” story, but I had a lot of fun writing it.  After that, there won’t be anything new for a little while, as I’ve taken somewhat of a sabbatical from writing these past few months.  But I think I’ve been entitled, from DH being laid off, to being in pregnant pain, to having baby, to taking care of baby, to being freaked out due to my DH’s little trip to the hospital – GAH! It’s been a roller coaster.  So I have no idea when I’ll get to writing again, but I haven’t forgotten about my public!

Until next time,

~~Becka

I’m getting excited about Christmas, finally! We’ve got all our gift shopping done, everything is wrapped, now we’re just waiting for DH’s mom to get here. She was scheduled to fly in on Sunday, but due to the horrible record-breaking snow we’ve gotten lately, our airport has pretty much been shut down. So her flight was canceled. She was told there was another available flight out of Palm Springs, so they got their tickets transferred, drove the hour out there, only to find THAT flight had been canceled as well. So, they decided to drive, because they were NOT missing Christmas with the grandkids.

We’ve gotten about a foot and a half of snow so far, with more promised to come on Christmas Eve. Aside from the headache of poor Grandma trying her hardest to get to fricken’ Portland, the snow hasn’t been too bad for us to deal with. Thankfully, we live a few blocks from our grocery store, so if we do have to go out, it’s not that far. Chains are required everywhere around here, and if you don’t have all-wheel drive or studded snow tires, you’ll get ticketed if you don’t have chains.

You see, this is the heaviest snowfall we’ve gotten in 40 years, so Portland, OR is NOT as prepared as other places around the country might be. We have to truck in our snowplows, borrowing them from here or there. In fact, our local Target’s parking lot was plowed by two backhoes because they had nothing else!

Another friend of ours had been stranded in Sacramento after going to a funeral, and as luck or Divine Providence would have it, my DH’s mom just so happened to be going through Sacramento on her impromptu drive up. She was able to swing through and pick her up and they’re going to be here later today. Thankfully, due to the CF that is their vacation traveling, DH’s mom was able to get a few more days off of work so she doesn’t have to turn right back around and go home after getting here. Hopefully, they’ll still be in town for Sophie’s birth!

We shall see…

~~Becka

DH and I decided to go out to the Dollar Tree tonight to buy new ornaments for our Christmas tree.  Yes, we’re on a budget since DH lost his job, so we can’t (or shouldn’t) buy the uber-expensive nice Christmas ornaments.  Believe it or not, Dollar Tree had some decent stuff.  In fact, I’ll probably go back when it’s time to fill up on stocking stuffers.

I heard about Operation Christmas Child back in July, but decided to put off blogging about it until closer to… Christmas. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s apparently a big organization, bent on giving children in need gifts for Christmas from total strangers in a shoebox. Here’s the link to the webpage:

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/

It’s a Christian organization, in case you haven’t put 2+2 together, but you don’t have to have anything Christian in the shoebox or BE a Christian to donate. Here’s the link to how to pack the shoebox:

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/Pack_A_Shoe_Box/

Basically, you find a standard size shoebox OR one of those shoebox sized Rubbermaid containers. You don’t wrap the gifts inside, but you can wrap the box and the lid separately, so don’t wrap it as a single gift. They have to open the boxes to inspect what’s inside to make sure people aren’t giving knives and shards of glass, etc.

You determine if your box will be for a boy or a girl, and you print out their nifty boy/girl card on their site along with a $7 donation (to cover the cost of shipping and such) and put this inside your box as well. You also determine the age group of your child, so toddler, child, or teen.

Then, you go to any store you like and buy small items that would make a child happy. Here’s a list of their gift ideas.

GIFT IDEAS

TOYS
small cars, balls, dolls, stuffed animals, kazoos, harmonicas, yo-yos, jump ropes, small Etch A Sketch®, toys that light up or make noise (with extra batteries), Slinky®, etc.

SCHOOL SUPPLIES
pens, pencils and sharpener, crayons or markers, stamps and ink pad sets, writing pads or paper, solar calculators, coloring and picture books, etc.

HYGIENE ITEMS
toothbrush, toothpaste, mild bar soap (in a plastic bag), comb, washcloth, etc.

OTHER
Hard candy and lollipops (please double bag all candy), mints, gum, T-shirts, socks, ball caps; sunglasses, hair clips, toy jewelry, watches, flashlights (with extra batteries)

A PERSONAL NOTE
In a separate envelope, you may enclose a note to the child and a photo of yourself or your family. (If you include your name and address, the child may write back.)

DO NOT INCLUDE:
Used or damaged items; war-related items such as toy guns, knives or military figures; chocolate or food; out-of-date candy; liquids or lotions; medications or vitamins; breakable items such as snowglobes or glass containers; aerosol can.

~*~*~

If you want to send a shoebox, you need to do it fairly quickly, as the drop off times are this month. Here’s the info:

Place a rubber band around each closed shoe box and drop off at the Collection Center nearest you during our collection week November 17 – 24.

For locations and hours of collection visit our Drop-Off Locations page where you can find the nearest place to take your shoe box by entering your ZIP Code or you can call 1-800-353-5949.

~*~*~

I just love this idea, it’s cheap, and if you go on You Tube and look up Operation Christmas Child, you’ll find so many inspiring videos of kids who literally light up upon opening their box full of awesome “wonders” to them. I’ve become a sap since I’ve had my own children, and watching TV shows and commercials with children in need, sad, or injured, makes me tear up and ball like a baby myself. So I think I’m going to do this, which means I need to get out and shop NOW, but how awesome for some little kid somewhere in the world who can have a Christmas morning because of you. Make the world a better place, one child at a time!

~~Becka