Stefani needs...

I got this idea from my cousin Darrell's blog.  He always has interesting and often humorous posts. Here's the concept.  Go to your search engine (Google, or whatever)... type in your name and then type in "needs", (ie; Stefani needs)  then search. .  It is quite funny.  Here are my top 6.

Stefani needs to take a load off

Stefani needs to keep her tummy covered (how appropriate is that?:-D)

Stefani needs a lesson

Stefani needs to lose the excess baggage

Stefani needs our prayers

and my personal favorite

Stefani needs a better fitting bra.

So, last night while I was waiting for the dogs to do their business I decided to punch in Brad's name and see what he needed.  And now I know...

Brad needs to get real with himself

Brad needs protection from his own security

Brad needs to take responsibility for what happened

Brad needs a pair of wrestling shoes

Brad needs a nap

Brad needs a therapist

... the dogs still weren't done, so I kept going

Brad needs a Ducati

Brad needs a new story line

Brad needs a fighter nickname

Funny!  

Feel free to post here what you find out that YOU need.  I would love to see what they are.

Can of Sticks

Several months ago during a Young Women Presidency Meeting something was said that prompted a conversation about praying for the girls in our classes.  I think it was discussed to write each girl's name down and then each week draw a different name and then pray for that girl throughout the week.  I thought this was a fabulous idea. I decided to adapt this idea to our family. 

I had been looking for a way to pray more effectively for our family members.  With 30+ members on each side of the family, our prayers became very vague regarding them. Something like, "And bless our family members where ever they might be."  or "Please help our family with their individual needs."  Good,  but it could be so much better.  Of course if a specific need was brought to our attention we would definitely include that in our prayers; but how many times was there a need that we didn't hear about, or how many times was there a private need that no one but the individual and the Lord knew about. 

I went out that very day and bought some Popsicle sticks and wrote all of our family member's names on them.  Now each night when we say family prayers, the person praying picks 2 names out of the can and we pray specifically for those people in all our prayers until then next night when 2 more names are drawn.  Sometimes we don't know what we might be praying for and we still say a generic prayer like, "We ask thee for special blessings for ____." But, we are still mentioning these people by name, and we know that the Lord knows whose name needs to be drawn out on any given night.  We have had the spirit confirm to us that specific people were drawn for specific purposes.  In fact the first week we did it the same person was drawn 3 times, and that was even after Brady's through mixing job.  We knew that this particular person needed extra prayers that week.

A side benefit from this practice is that the kids are figuring out who some of their older cousins are.  Since they are on the young side in the Meyer family, they don't always remember who their older cousins are.  They especially had trouble remembering who all Uncle Randy and Aunt Val Shipley's kids were.  It was funny, for a while we seemed to be choosing a lot of those names.  And inevitably, Kelsi would always ask, "Who's that?" Now we all know who they are, but the joke is, when we pick a Shipley name, "We have to ask, "Who's that?"

Also, don't read any dark or hidden meanings into the "green can" we use to house the sticks. When I was buying the Popsicle sticks at the dollar store, I was looking for a container to put them in. This green tea can was the perfect size and it was a cute, bright color.  End of deep, hidden meaning.

Perfect Day!

We rode from Sand City to Lover's Point in Monterey on our bikes.  It was so fun and the weather was perfect!  The whole family went and everyone had a good time. We decided that it was about an 8-10 mile round trip.  At the end we ate sandwiches, cuties, fruit snacks, string cheese and granola bars. Man, I'm tempted to go again tomorrow. Anyone wanna join us?

The only bad part about the day was, when we got back to the 

truck NO ONE would walk down to the beach with me.  We were right there!  100 yards to the beautiful ocean. What a bunch of bums.  So I did what any beach lover would do.  

I walked down by myself.  I sat on a log and watched the waves and the sand pipers.  I met a little girl (who came and sat on the log next to me).  She asked who I was (Stefani) and I asked her who she was (Lily, like the flower).  She looked like she was about 2.  She told me about her graham cracker that she was eating and how part of it fell and she was going to leave it in the sand for the birds.  She then spotted the contrails of a jet going overhead.  From our perspective it looked like the jet was going straight up.  Here's how the conversation went,

Lily: Hey! Look!  A rocket going straight up to the moon.

Stefani: Wow!  That is really great!  Do you think they'll see the stars?

Lily: It's not night time.

Stefani: Do you think rockets can still go to the stars during the day?

Lily: ya, I guess.

This is a silly conversation, but I was reminded how fun and simple it is to be a kid.  My first impulse was to correct her and tell her it was just an airplane.  Then I realized how great it is that the mind of a child would believe such things so easily.  That rockets just go up in random spots and at random times, in the middle of the day, and without fanfare.  She knew nothing of all the training and schooling that goes into building, launching, and flying a rocket, she knew nothing of Cape Canaveral on the other side of the country (she's probably never even hear of Florida), she knew nothing about perspective and how that plane was really just flying horizontally.  She was just excited to see a rocket going to the moon.  And come to think of it, so was I.  This is something I'm going to work on in 2009. Having the excitement, enthusiasm and faith of a little child.