"O little town of Bethlehem"

I just watched the Christmas Devotional and was reminded of how much I love Christmas and Christmas time.  I particularly love Christmas music.  I've been listening to it as much as possible since Thanksgiving.  (Yes, my family is one of those families that does not allow you to listen to Christmas music til after Thanksgiving.  Since living on my own I'm a little more flexible with that rule, but I still do not go into complete Christmas mode until after that holiday has passed.)  I think one of the things I love about the Christmas hymns and church songs is their focus on Christ and centering on what Christmas is really about.  I feel like I am always in a more joyful, holiday spirit after listening to some good Sunday Christmas music.

"charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick - erase it..."

This week a miraculous event occurred.  My younger brother had a little boy on Tuesday, Rickey Lynn Krusell.  He was born 7 weeks early and came out weighing 4 lbs 10 oz.  He has been in the NICU since then, but the media's abilities at sharing information and the blessings it can bring into our lives really stood out to me.  Rickey has been in an incubator ever since he was born, as such he only allowed limited visitors.  My dad is still out in PA for work so he obviously has not been able to see his newest grandson in person yet.  He has, however, been able to Skype with him.  My brother placed his phone on top of the incubator and was able to Skype with my dad so that my dad could see Rickey.  It is also great that we can be updated about Rickey's condition and be sent pictures of him easily from my brother. 

"Hurry home, hurry home, won't you please hurry home to my heart"

This post is about what I think is safe for me to say is one of my all time favorite chick flicks, Return to Me.  I have yet to get sick of watching it and every time I do I pick up on new little things in the movie (and this movie has been since 2000, and I've watched it a lot, so that's saying something).  The main girl, Grace, undergoes a heart transplant and receives the heart of a women who was happily married to Bob (the women dies in a car accident).  Later Grace and Bob begin dating, not knowing the she has Bob's dead wife's heart.  When she discovers who she received the transplant from, she has a hard time coping with it and is not quite sure what to do in the face of this trial.  While talking with her Grandpa, he gives her some lovely wisdom.  He says something a long the lines of the fact that sometimes the Lord gives the toughest trials to those he knows has the strongest character, so you can take that as a compliment.  I just loved that perspective of his about trials and wanted to share it. 

Deep Impact

Yesterday I watched the movie Deep Impact.  I had never seen it before nor heard anything about it, but it was on Netflix and it didn't look all that horrible.  It has some pretty big named people in it too, like Morgan Freeman and Elijah Wood, plus other actors/actresses that you see and you know you've seen them in other things but they aren't quite big enough for you to remember their name.  So after reading the plot synopsis, I just assumed the title derived from the fact that a comet was going to hit the earth and then, obviously, it would be a deep impact.  But while I was watching it, I realized how good of a job the movie did portraying all the emotions and events that would go on in the nation if an event like that were to happen.  I even started telling my husband "man, this movie does a good job showing how much of an impact...." and that's when it hit me how well the title of the movie even embodied that aspect of the movie.  Those sneaky title makers.

"Da-na-na-na-da-na-naa...." (aka the jeapardy time-running-out song)

Last night I watched the movie Quiz Show.  (Don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either) It's a semi-oldschool movie (early 90's) about a game show on TV called Twenty One. (Interesting side note-one of the main guys in it is Lord Voldemort.) It's a really intriguing movie that has a lot to do with ethics; ethics in the media, ethics in life and things like that.  The basic plot line is that this game show, in which contestants are supposedly asked questions that have never before been seen and had been previously sealed in a vault, is rigged.  It was fun to watch and to think about how tough it would be to be in some of those situations and what you would do.  It is also based on real events so it makes it even more interesting.

"the primary colors are one, two three..."

Today was the Primary program at my ward, which is usually one of my favorite sacrament meetings.  I love watching all the kids up there singing the choruses (and mumbling through the verses while the kids 10+ sing the actual words) to every song and having them recite their little segments into the microphone.  Today though was a little bit different for my ward as far as Primary programs go though because while we do have a Primary presidency, we no longer have any children in primary.  So instead of kids to entertain us we had the presidency speak (which don't get me wrong was not bad, just a very different kind of Primary program).  One of the things they talked about was, obviously, the importance of Primary.  I had never really thought about Primary as something that had that huge of an impact in my life, but then I started to think about all the Primary songs, and how much I still could sing all of them, and how often I sang them when I was younger at times when they helped me make decisions or something.  I do believe that Primary songs do serve a very real and special purpose in a child's life that can help them not just in childhood but later on as well, as it did with me.

"hand you another drink, drink it if you can"

Right now I am taking a CPR and First Aid class.  The classroom is FILLED with promotional advertisements (and I don't think promotional is the exact word I'm looking for) for healthy living; namely not smoking, or drinking, or using tobacco, etc.  Most of them I've seen all throughout my high school and junior high experience in every health class I had.  Yet, a couple of them I had not seen before.  One that stood out to me was a poster that had a picture of quite a few billboards one after another along the side of the road, all advertising for some type of alcoholic drink.  In the upper corner it said "How many times has your child been offered a drink today?".  I guess it stood out to me because I would have never thought about an ad for beer as someone "offering" me a drink, but that is essentially what they are doing.  I think that poster made a good point at helping us realize what are kids are exposed to not just at school and by peers but by advertisers as well.