Sometimes you get something worth while forwared to your inbox.

My Uncle Ed is my moms oldest brother and he has embraced technology better then anybody I know of his age (he's 68) and he send me all kinds of stuff. Some of it isn't worth the electricty used to send it sometimes he comes across some pretty neat stuff. This is what I got today in my daily email from my Uncle and it does suprise me a little but it did make me a little weepy.

It's just a small white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription.
It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas --oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it.
The overspending, the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma --
the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties, and so forth.
I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way. Our son Kevin,
who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended.

Shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church.
These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together,
presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.
As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear,
a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford.

Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat,
he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat.

Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, 'I wish just one of them could have won,' he said.
'They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.' Mike loved kids -- all kids -- and he
knew them, having coached little league football, baseball, and lacrosse.

That's when the idea for his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of
wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree,
the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing that year and in succeeding years.
For each Christmas, I followed the tradition --one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game,
another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.
The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning, and our children,
ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toy s gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure.
The story doesn't end there. You see, we lost Mike last year due to cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief
that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning it was joined by three more.
Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad.
The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation,
watching as their fathers take down the envelope. Mike's spirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.

May we all remember Christ, who is the reason for the season, and the true Christmas spirit this year and always.



God Bless! -- pass this along to those friends and loved ones who you know are the givers who understand the true meaning Christmas.

What TV used to be!

Rember this? Make sure you watch at 4:30 it gets good.

Man I luv Christmas lights!!!! CRANK UP YOUR SPEAKERS

A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

In the 110 minutes of the attack on Pearl Harbor, our forces suffered 2,403 killed in action, 1,178 wounded in action, 640 that were never accounted for; plus, 188 planes lost, 158 damaged, and every battleship of the Pacific Fleet, eight, crippled or sunk plus other ships. There are not many memorials in this country that I would have trouble visiting but there are a couple of exceptions, one of those being the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl harbor. Even though I am only 40 yrs old I have a friend that had an older brother die on the Arizona. Maybe it's sort of a tribute to the fallen men on the ship but it still "bleeds" bunker oil from it's full oil bunkers if you ever visit you will see a small oil slick on the surface of the water moving slowly away from the ship. There are also former sailors from that ship that have their ashes scattered at the site as a final tribute to thier fallen brothers so that they may be buried with thier shipmates.
So today we remember and salute the US soldiers and sailors that gave there lives on that Sunday morning so many years ago.

Just some random Christmas Lights!!

Man talk about a very odd week!

Have you ever felt that your walking right with God and you think you feel his closeness then all of a sudden....BAM! Well in the past week I have learned that a very dear friend was diagnosed with cancer and that a loved one my still be hurting themself.
The friend with cancer has embrassed the Lord with all her might and it's in inspirational festival of tears to read her triumphs and defeats. The second just pounded me straight into the ground to the point I couldn't sleep on Sunday night I wandered the house trying to find the Holy Spirit I tried praying through by going into all the downstairs room asking God to bless our times in those rooms. I cried out asking God to show me how to lead when I prefer to be in the background. I can't understand the desperation a person must feel to get to the point of injuring themselves. I just pray that they will forget what others think and just cry out to Jesus to come right along side them. I'm praying that this person is on the verge of a huge blessing from Christ and this is the reason that they have been attacked with Satans lies. The devil is the father of lies and he will wiggle his way into your life any way he can.

+

Story of the real Thanksgiving as told by El Rushbo

I doesn't matter if you agree with him but his story is accurate and true wether you believe it or not thats totally up to you.

RUSH: Time now, ladies and gentlemen, for The Real Story of Thanksgiving, as written by I -- by me -- in my second book, See, I Told You So. It's page 70 in the hardcover version. "On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work."

Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed. They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed themselves. The Indians came out, showed 'em how to pop popcorn, fed 'em turkey, saved 'em basically -- and then white European settlers after that basically wiped out the Indian population. It's a horrible example. Not only is that not true, here is the part that's been omitted from what is still today taught as the traditional Thanksgiving story in many schools. "The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store,' when they got here, 'and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

"They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. ... [William] Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. ... Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,' and it had failed" miserably because when every put things in the common store, some people didn't have to put things in for there to be, people that didn't produce anything were taking things out, and it caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford had to change it.

"What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering," that happens today and will happen "in the future. 'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote.

"'For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without [being paid] that was thought injustice.' ... The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?"

Here's what Bradford wrote, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. "'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?" or an Obamaite, if I can update it. "Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? ... Anyway, the pilgrims found "In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. ... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'"

Very few people have heard this story or have had it taught to them -- and the "thanks" was to God for showing them the way. In later parts of the chapter, I quote John Adams and George Washington on their reminisces and their thoughts on the first Thanksgiving and the notion it was thanks to God. It was an entirely different story than is being taught in the schools. It's been muddied down, watered down all these years -- and now it's been hijacked by the multicultural community -- to the point that the story of Thanksgiving is the Pilgrims were a bunch of incompetents and were saved only by the goodness of the Indians, who then were wiped out. And that's what kids are being taught today -- 'cause, of course, you can't mention the Bible in school, and that's fundamental to the real story of Thanksgiving.