I Am Thankful For My Family

Thank you God for my wonderful family. While my upbringing was in no way perfect, I know of so many other people who were raised in far less ideal situations than myself. I am thankful for parents who always believed in me and encouraged me to be the best that I could be. I am thankful for my siblings who have to be the funniest people I know and who I love to spend time with. I am thankful that I have a great brother-in-law who takes care of my sister and nephew. Speaking of which, I am so very thankful for my nephew Aikman! I am thankful that when I married my amazing wife, I was blessed to extend my wonderful family too.

I Am Thankful For My Church

Today I am thankful to have a good local church to attend. It pains me to say this, but good churches seem to be few and far between these days. My pastor is an excellent teacher/preacher and I am thankful that he is faithful to the Word of God. I am thankful that my pastor is educated and knowledgable about the things of the Lord. I am thankful for the good friends Jenny and I have met at church.

Here is my church's website - Covenant Presbyterian Church

I Am Thankful For My Wife

I am very thankful for my wife. She treats me so very well. I love her more and more each day. She is a hard worker. She makes sacrifices for me. She serves me. She loves the Lord. She is so smart. She treats my family well. She is beautiful. I love you Jenny.

I Am Thankful

Since it is now November and Thanksgiving is right around the corner, I am going to try to post something each day that I am thankful for.

To start off, the thing I am by far most thankful for in my life has to be my faith in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 1:3-8 might best sum up my feelings.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us[a] for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight.

According the above passage alone, here are six things I am thankful God has done for me.

1) He chose me
2) Through justification, He made me holy and blameless
3) He adopted me and made me His son
4) I am redeemed from the curse of sin and death through the blood of Christ Jesus
5) My sins have been forgiven
6) He lavishes upon me “riches of grace”

If I stopped right here and didn't have anything else to list for the remainder of the month, this would be more than sufficient. However, this is not the case and God has given me so many more blessings. If you'd like, check back over the next few weeks and I will tell you what those blessings entail.

Jenny's Early Christmas Present - Meet Austin Silva!

I love my wife for so many reasons, but one of the big things that helped me to realize I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her was that we have so many similar values/beliefs on the big issues in life. For example, it was important to me that my wife think similarly to me in matters of faith, family, and our future goals/plans. Now this is not saying that we think alike on every issue. For example, one area we have always greatly differed is that Jenny has always been an animal lover and I am just not a pet person. Jenny’s family back home has 3 outside dogs and 4 little Shi Tzu’s that live inside, so needless to say Jenny is used to having a pup around. Ever since we got married, I have known Jenny has wanted to get a dog, but my excuse has always been that our house is too small. Jenny said she understood and bless her heart, she didn’t really bring it up anymore about us getting a dog. Then about 2 weeks ago somehow the subject came up about her dogs back home and she told me that she really missed them and couldn’t wait until we got a bigger house so we might be able to get a dog. I could tell she really, really wanted to have a dog around and she was really suppressing the urge to beg me to get one. So I decided to do what any loving husband would do… I decided right then and there that I was going to surprise Jenny with a puppy for Christmas this year.
So the search began...I knew that I had 4 big criteria for whatever dog we would get. 1) it had to be small since it would be staying inside. We do have a backyard, but Jenny wants an indoor friend. 2) no shedding everywhere! I am not about to have dog fur all over the house, including our new couch. 3) good temperament. I don’t want a dog that is gonna bark 20 hours out of the day and be a little brat 4) he has to be cute! What’s the point of having a dog if he’s not gonna be adorable?
Based on these 4 criteria I set out on my search. I began by looking at the adoption centers around town. A few cute guys, but I needed to learn more about the different breeds of dogs and the process of acquiring one. Thankfully, I have a coworker who might be someone who loves dogs more than Jenny. This lady was actual a member of the Abilene Kennel Club and used to show dogs in competitions! She also takes in dogs when people don’t want them anymore so she has years of experience with lots of different dogs. And it’s a good thing I talked to her because I found out I really should ask Jenny what kind of dog she wanted and let her pick it out rather than getting her some strange dog. So I decided to ruin my own surprise and tell Jenny about the puppy.
Well, needless to say, she was beyond excited! I told her my 4 criteria and based upon that, Jenny decided our first dog together would be a yorkie! We then looked in the local papers and found several people selling yorkie puppies. The next two weeks we called around and even visited two different couples to see their puppies. I also did all my homework in reading up on what we wanted in a yorkie. We decided that if we were going to pay good money for a dog, we wanted to be sure it was healthy, from good bloodlines, and AKC registered. Of course, it still had to be affordable as many of the puppies that met all that criteria cost over $1000!
Jenny was growing a bit impatient, but I knew if we kept looking we would be rewarded with our perfect new addition. Finally we found a breeder online from the AKC website. She had been breeding for 10 years, she guaranteed the health of the dog, it was AKC registered and just an all around good dog from a good home. And best of all, even though she was selling other dogs from the same litter for $1000 and up, our guy was less than half that price. It sounded too good to be true, but the breeder told me it was simply because they were having a hard time getting rid of him since he was the biggest of the litter and everyone wants tiny teacup puppies. Well we didn’t want the tiny teacup one anyway, so I guess his girth was our gain! The funny thing is, even though he is supposedly the “big one”, he still only weighs about 3 pounds now and will probably never be more than 6. Ha ha.
The other blessing that allowed us to get this guy was that when Jenny's grandma found out that I had finally caved in to getting a dog, she offered to pay for half of it as an early Christmas gift to Jenny and I! So everything seemed like a go, the only problem was the seller lived in Fayetteville,TX which is a little over a 5 hour drive. We would basically have to spend the whole day driving to and from to get him. I called the breeder on Thursday and thankfully she told me she would be in Austin on Sunday because she sells food at a Farmers Market. Austin is just under 4 hours from here, so that made it much better. I had to work Sunday, but Jenny was off, so she graciously volunteered to go pick up our little guy. Jenny left early and got there about noon. After a few stops for potty breaks and a meal break they finally arrived home about 5:30.
So as of Sunday, Jenny and I are officially dog-owners! Meet Austin Silva. He is 11 weeks old and too precious!

Happy Halloween 2009!

Here are some pics from our Halloween party this year. Enjoy! (click to enlarge)

I went as everyone's favorite crazy, North Korean dictator, Kim Jong

Jenny was Gilly from Saturday Night Live. I've you've never seen Gilly, go YouTube her now.

The Anderson family had an awesome Monsters Inc. group costume, complete with baby Aikman as Mike Wasowski.

Pete and Phil might have had the most natural costume, going as the old WWF tag-team, The Bushwackers.

Finally, Nance was Flo, the Progressive girl from the commericals.

Later on that evening things got a little crazy and Aikman got a tattoo.

What's This Year's Costume?

The Silva/Anderson family really enjoys Halloween. One of our most favorite things about the holiday would have to be dressing up in the perfect costume. We have a little tradition that every year we each select a costume, but you can't tell anyone else what you are going to be. Everyone has to wait until Halloween night and then we all surprise each other with our fun disguises! So what am I going to be this year? Well you are just going to have to wait...I will post my Halloween costume, along with the rest of my families, hopefully on Sunday. Until then, here are some ideas to keep you guessing what we might be!

Pumpkin Patch

Here are some picures from a visit we made a few weeks back to the local Pumpkin Patch. Sorry for my delay in posting these pics. Hopefully in the next few days, I will have lots of good Halloween posts for you to enjoy! (Click any of the pics to enlarge)

This is one of my all time favorite pics of Aikman. I love the silly face he is making!

He looks cute in this one too shrugging his shoulders up.

My wife is so beautiful!

Scary Movie Characters That Don't Scare

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year. I know many people will argue that Christians should not have anything to do with Halloween, but I will argue that having "Fall Fest" or "Harvest Celebrations" are essentially the same things, I just don't try to fake it. With that being said, I do believe that some elements of Halloween can be taken too far (satanism, the occult) but for myself and my family, we merely have fun dressing up in harmless costumes, eating lots of candy, and watching silly, scary movies. Oh, and how could I forget going to the fun haunted houses!
Another thing about this time of year is that many of the channels have Halloween specials on TV, including scariest movie moments countdowns, etc. Honestly I have never been a huge fan of the horror genre. In my opinion, most horror films of today are poorly made. Instead of trying to build tension and/or suspense or make us think about our own fears, these films simply substitue lots of gore and try to gross people out. But I digress... the true point of this post is to inform movie makers of a key element in making scary movies. Here it is:

Filmmakers: In order for a character to be scary, I can't be able to easily defend myself from them!

For example, here is a list of characters that simply do not scare me due to the simple fact that I can beat all these up handily.

• children
• dolls
• leprechauns
• girls
• small animals
• the elderly
• any creature under 4 foot tall

What movie characters do/did you find truly terrifying? Check back later and I might do a list of movies that I truly found to be scary and you might be surprised which films I have on my list.