Disneyworld 2010 By: Connor O'Hare

Hook, Line And Believer welcomes guest blogger, Connor O'Hare, age 9.

Well, the summer of 2010 has been pretty good so far. I got back from Disneyworld three weeks ago. It was only my third plane ride ever. We stayed at the Polynesian Resort. It was beautiful! Our room had two beds and had three sumo belts ordered into Disney Mickey ears. (They were really towels arranged on the bed.)

The first park we went to was the Magic Kingdom. We visited Stitch’s Great Escape and then we headed to our first mountain…SPACE MOUNTAIN! I loved it. They had video games at the 1,000,000,000 mile long line but it was worth the wait. It was very cool and at one point my heart skipped some beats. They had like planets above us and even the Death Star! Then we did the frightening Haunted Mansion ride…it was way too scary. My favorite part is when two paintings of guys with rifles facing opposite directions turned to face each other and shot the rifles at each other.

(Mom note-this morning we went back to MK and rode Thunder Mtn. RR and Splash Mtn.)
The next day, day two we went to Hollywood Studios. First we rode Star Tours. It was pretty cool. It was like you were in a spaceship circling the death star. After that we went and saw Muppet Vision 3D. THEY TRICK YOU BECAUSE IT’S REALLY 4D. But it was very funny. And then we saw Indiana Jones live! The best part was explosives…TNT! I loved the very first thing best which was the old rolling ten ton boulder. After the show, Casey and Dad went on the Aerosmith Rockin Rollercoaster. Me and Mom went to Toy Story Mania 3D. Oh, what’s that? Who won in Toy Story Mania? Moi! By the way, moi means me.) After that we went to the Great Movie Ride. It was pretty cool. It had animatronics to show the movies.

Day three we went to Epcot. We ate lunch first—Chinese, it was yummy! Then we went to Ellen’s Energy Adventure, but it’s not TRRRRUUUUEEEEEE! The entire universe wasn’t created by an explosion, it was created by God!!!! Next we went to the thrilling, the chilling, the amazingly cool Test Track! They tested the cars for ice and then in a totally heated room and the brakes and my favorite, speed…woohoo!!! That was super fun. After that we went to Soarin’. We saw another 1,000,000,000 mile long line, but they had big televisions on the wall so everyone could play games like ‘train ride’, ‘you’re a bird’, and stuff like that. But it was just another movie ride aaahhhhhhh! Then we went to Finding Nemo and got eaten by a clam! (Just kidding that’s what the ride cart was.) Then we stayed Nemo-style by eating at the Nemo Café. Then, Spaceship Earth, woohoo. It was telling you all these things that happened through time and one was about the Egyptians discovering paper. (They took our picture) At the end I looked funny in my review.

Thursday, day four is the day we went to Animal Kingdom. First we had to take the bus. That’s the only way to get to Animal Kingdom. The first thing we did was It’s Tough To Be A Bug—Scarrrrrryyyyyyyy!!! 4D, woohoo…couldn’t stand it! After that we went to dino-land to ride Dinosaur. Can you believe the fiercest dino you’ll never see is mutated (Mom note-evolved) into the chicken…Mom doesn’t buy it! It had so many dinos, I don’t want to talk about it! After that I took the challenge of Expedition Everest. It was a pretty long line but nothing I couldn’t handle. It had a huge drop going through mines and the mountain of Everest. At one point the rails broke and you go backwards! And when you’re going backwards, in the corner A GIANT YETTI POPS OUT AT YOU!!! And I was the only one who saw it too. Well that’s pretty much what we did at Disneyworld.

It Had To Be You - By: Janice Thompson

Each time my husband or I pass by this book by Janice Thompson we have to sing a couple lines of the catchy Frank Sinatra tune. My nine year old son has even caught on to the act when he hears the song. “Mom, Dad saw the book again!” I write this review with a heavy heart as this is the last in the Weddings by Bella series.

Bella Rossi, wedding planner and owner of Club-Wed, furiously plans the most important wedding in her young career for her precious Uncle Laz and Aunt Rosa. She is anxious to be done with the wedding because she knows the next wedding in line is her own. Family visits from Italy to attend Laz and Rosa’s wedding as well as an ex-mob boss and an overzealous swing band, making for an exciting pre-wedding blitz.

Major conflict for Bella happens when some other family members decide to plan their weddings very close to her own. Bella is stressed even more when she is ousted permanently from her lifelong bedroom for a construction project to house Laz and Rosa. The icing on the cake for Bella comes when she is forced to room with her sister who insists on talking into the night about her own wedding plans. Bella hits a figurative wall and is forced to slow down. During her down time, she is pampered by her loving family and she is able to re-connect with God which is always a good thing.

Thompson outdoes herself, humorously tying up loose ends in the book. She beautifully illustrates how we shouldn’t judge people by how they look and to not lash out at people when they severely get on your nerves…even if they are your sister.

If I had to say something bad about the book the only thing I could say would be the cover art. By the looks of things, the female cover model seems to have unfortunately wrenched her shoulders out of joint. The male model isn’t at all what I would picture to be a Texas cowboy and I would know. He isn’t even wearing cowboy boots. This is of course no fault of the author who wonderfully portrayed the Tex-Italian characters in the book. Kudos to you, Janice Thompson.

1985 The Year In Review

-O. J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner elected to the Football Hall of Fame.
-After 6-1/2 years, the television series The Dukes of Hazard goes off the air.
-Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader.
-Bhopal disaster: India files suit against Union Carbide for the disaster which killed an estimated 2,000 and injured another 200,000.
-New Coke, a marketing disaster is introduced. Three months later Coke re-introduces its original formula as Coca-Cola Classic.
-U.S. engineer Thomas Patrick Cavanaugh is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.
-Microsoft Corporation releases the first version of Windows, Windows 1.0.
-A Boeing 747 carrying Air India Flight 182 blew-up 31,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, South of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard.
-Route 66 ceases to be an official highway.
-8.1 Richter scale earthquake strikes Mexico City. More than 9,000 people are killed.
-A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.
-Pete Rose gets his 4,192nd career base hit, breaking Ty Cobb's record which stood for over 60 years.
-The Unabomber kills his first victim
-The Titanic is rediscovered
-The Super Mario Bros. video game is released by Nintendo.
-The "Achille Lauro" is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
-United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship -hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.
-Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip by Bill Watterson, was first published.
-American naturalist Dian Fossey is found murdered in Rwanda.
-Ford Taurus is First Produced
-Super Bowl XIX - 49ers 38, Dolphins 16
-Michael Jordan Wins Rookie of the Year

JUNE 22, 1985 – DAN AND ANNETTE O’HARE BECAME HUSBAND AND WIFE, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY DANO!

It’s The Only World We’ve Got

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." Genesis 1:26

A night ago I was privileged to eat at Pappadeaux Seafood. The meal started off with a steaming bowl of crawfish bisque. My hubby continued the crawfish theme, ordering the crawfish platter. Half his plate was covered with a load of fried crawfish and the other half crawfish etoufee. I feasted on one of their fried seafood platters. My plate overflowed with fried catfish, shrimp, stuffed crab and stuffed shrimp on a bed of homemade French fries. I used up four paper cups full of tartar sauce. The platter was supposed to have fried oysters too, but they have a tendency to make me break out in a rash so I opted for extra shrimp.

Between bites of the seafood feast my mind drifted to the British Petroleum owned oil well spewing crude oil, unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico. The same body of water where my family has fished, swam, played in the sand and hunted for shells for over forty years.

I’m sickened to think about all that oil ending up on Gulf Coast beaches. As a child growing up in Houston in the eighties, my family spent many a weekend on Galveston Island. One of my not so fond memories of those trips included watching where you stepped because of the pools of black tar that dotted the sand. Of course it was to no avail. The tar ended up on us anyway, staining our feet and subsequently the floorboard of our cars.

A list of oil spills on the internet revealed a spill in 1979 by the Mexican government owned oil company, Pemex. The spill added up to approximately three million barrels…I believe this was the cause for the tar on the Texas beaches for so many years. I remember staying at an upscale hotel on Galveston at that time and along with the usual shampoo and soap, guests were given oil-removing hand wipes for trips to the beach!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-oil companies. After all, it’s oil money that supports my family. I am however saddened that the oil has been flowing for more than forty days and no one can come up with a solution that will actually fix the problem. Worse still is the thought of the natural resource being literally washed out to sea. It’s the only world we’ve got people! And it sickens me to think that my youngest son’s coastal memories might now include watching out for globs of black goo in the sand just like when I was a kid.

Father God, You gave us the earth and the seas as a gift to use and care for. But right now we’re failing horribly. Lord forgive us for what we’ve done and help us to fix the damage we’ve caused to your glorious creation. Amen

Oh, and the Pappas family…they have already begun legal proceeding against BP for what this spill is going to do to their business.

Picture courtesy of Reuters.Com

Are You Listening? Aka: The Dummy, The Donkey and The Doggie

God uses a multitude of interesting ways to speak to us individually. I wrote a scene in a book where the main character has to be hit on the head with an iron skillet before God finally has her attention.

My Bible reading today brought me to one of my favorite stories. It’s found in the book of Numbers, chapter twenty-three. Israel is on their trek toward the Promised Land. Nations that refused their request to peaceably pass through were quickly defeated. Both the Amorites and the people of Bashan fell to the chosen of God. With Israel drawing near, Balak, king of the Moabites called on Balaam, knowing his reputation as a prophet.

Balaam saddled his donkey and went with the Moabites, disobeying God’s command to stay put. As a result, God sent His angel to block Balaam’s way. Balaam didn’t see the angel…but the donkey did. Three times the donkey veered away from the sword wielding angel and three times Balaam beat her for her disobedience. God saw fit to allow the donkey to speak to her master.

“What have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?”

“Because you have abused me, I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would kill you!”

“Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day”? Was I ever disposed to do this to you?”

“No.”

Then God opened Balaam’s eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord and he said to him. “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to stand against you because your way is perverse before Me. The donkey saw Me and turned aside from Me these three times. If she had not turned aside from Me, surely I would also have killed you by now and let her live.”

Wow! I wonder what it would be like if God allowed my dog Max to speak so he could tell me what God wanted me to do. In fact I have an issue I’m talking to God about right now. I desire His perfect will and it would be so easy if Max would turn to me after a good ear scratching and say “Mom.” That’s what he calls me. “God really thinks you should do…” But I guess that’s not going to happen any time soon.

So what’s a girl to do if God won’t make my Weimaraner speak? And I don’t mean barking. I suppose I’ll have to get down on my knees, do the speaking myself, then shut up so I won’t miss what God’s trying to tell me.

ANNOUNCEMENT

(Please feel free to share with your readers and/or writing group)

Writers, would you like to make money doing the thing you love most? If so, then this announcement should be of interest to you! Janice Hanna Thompson, author of over fifty novels and non-fiction books, would like to announce the debut of her writing course for freelancers titled “Becoming a Successful Freelance Writer,” available at www.freelancewritingcourses.com. The purpose of this course is to strategically train freelance writers so that they can earn top dollar with their writing. Students can purchase the entire course (Ten Lessons) for only $199, or students can choose to purchase individual lessons for only $24.95 each. Each lesson will include an audio file (mp3 for download), a corresponding audio script, a downloadable worksheet, a power point video, a bonus feature, and full access to the site’s forum, where Janice will meet with authors for group mentoring (at designated times). Currently, there are ten lessons available, but the site will continually grow. New, fresh material will always be added. If you’ve been looking for creative and exciting ways to earn money with your writing, your time has come! Please visit www.freelancewritingcourses.com and sign up for the newsletter, or write to Janice at booksbyjanice@aol.com for more information.

ENDORSEMENTS:
What writers are saying about Janice’s course:
“I've taken a number of classes since starting on this journey of writing, but Janice's course on freelance writing has been the most helpful. Full of tips, suggestions and her own writing experiences, Janice's course has something for everyone. If you are considering signing up for her writing lessons, I urge you to do so. You won't regret it!” – Edwina Cowgill, American Christian Fiction Writers member.

I've not only had the pleasure of taking online classes from Janice, but also attending seminars. I love the practical working knowledge she teaches because I was able to put much of it into practice immediately. From the classroom to real life in a snap, Janice Thompson gives the steps, the encouragement, and the simplicity to help any writer become self-sufficient. Would I tell you to take her courses? ABSOLUTELY! You will grow the ability to earn money with your writing! Every writer's teacher, Janice Thompson. -
Angie Breidenbach, Author of Creative Cooking for Colitis, ACFW PR Officer, Mrs. Montana International 2009

I participated in Janice’s online course in January of ’10. I found her to be very thorough and very concise in her explanations. She also took pains to offer lots of feedback and make it interactive. I know her classes will be great! – BK (Brenda) Jackson

My book-related website:www.janicethompson.com
My freelance writing course site: www.freelancewritingcourses.com
Explanation of course on YouTube site: My freelance writing course site: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-5IZSNaZFU
My facebook reader's page: www.facebook.com/pages/Janice-Hanna-Thompsons-Readers-Page/303537684650?ref=ts

My Home Is A Castle

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good. Psalm 100:4-5

During a trip to England, my husband and I planned to tour Windsor Castle. Imagine that! I was excited about the opportunity to see the splendid home of the royal family.

Outside the castle, we waited in line, the chill of damp, gray gloom seeping into our bones. Then we heard something. A jet? It passed right over us. We moved up slightly in line. Five minutes later, another jet. I turned to my husband and said, “You know, honey, we’re not the richest people in the world. Our house is a fraction of the size of this place, but I wouldn’t trade it.”

He laughed and asked me why not. “Because as beautiful as this place is, it’s still under the flight path of hundreds of roaring jets.”

We had a good laugh together. But then I realized that our home truly is our castle—a blessing most of us regularly take for granted.

Beatitude Check: Be thankful for the home God has given you. It may or may not be a castle, but God chose the home you live in just for you. Celebrate your hearth and home with a bouquet of flowers or a prayer of thanksgiving.


From: Babes with a Beatitude Devotions for Smart, Savvy Women of Faith
Published by: Howard Books, a division of Simon & Shuster, Inc. 2009
Written by: MY DEAR FRIENDS, Linda Kozar and Dannelle Woody, my favorite babes with beatitudes! www.babeswithabeatitude.com