Adore

For an introduction to Five Minute Friday, click here.

This week's one-word prompt is: Adore

Ready?

GO.

The things that came to mind when I read this prompt were:

"Oh Come Let Us Adore Him"

How much I adore my little girl

How the word adore has come to have a bit of a trite meaning, as in "Adorable!" but I prefer the connotation found in "adoration" that is a bit more reverent.  Adoration, to me, implies respect as well.  Like, I might look up to someone with adoration and admiration.

Also, I had someone ask me today if we had taken Christmas pictures of our baby.  Well, not really.  I guess that must be a thing, but it was so difficult to get any non-blurry pictures at her 6 month photo shoot, and we really like those pictures, so we'll just keep trying to get some mileage out of those.  You can look forward to her 1 year mark in February when I guess we're supposed to feed her copious amounts of cake and get stunningly cute photos at the same time.  

Caroline can now wave, recognizes "hi" and "bye," and mumbles "all done" after I say it (it's happened at least 3 times, so I think it's legit).  She is VERY close to walking - maybe after Christmas we'll finally have one of those baby-taking-first-steps videos.  I kind of think I'll be too excited to hold still to videotape anything, but we'll see if I can't find a third party in the room to capture the moment.

Prepare

For an introduction to Five Minute Friday, click here.

This week's one-word prompt is: Prepare

Ready?

GO.

This week I studied Luke 1.  In verses 46-55, Mary praises God.  This section of scripture is generally known as the Magnificat, or Song of Mary.  Obviously, this song of praise comes before Christ is born in Luke 2.

I like the idea of songs of praise preparing us for something.  I like the Primary song "I Wonder When He Comes Again," will heaven's angels sing?  I like singing Christmas songs to prepare us to celebrate Christ's birth.

So with that, I am off to play my clarinet as part of a community band - it's our annual Christmas concert at a local rest home!  I have to admit, the absolutely best piece we are playing this year is "The Grinch."  Next time you hear "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" on the radio, listen for the clarinet part.  Awesome.

Dear

Ooops, sorry, this was last Friday's.  Never made it from "draft" to "publish."  

For an introduction to Five Minute Friday, click here.

This week's one-word prompt is: Dear

Ready?

GO.

I needed some help getting started today, so I searched for "dear" in my e-mail inbox.  Which of course is an incredible fount of knowledge.  

The search results made me laugh - they were almost entirely from my bank, the airlines, our health insurance company etc etc.  Customer service representatives.  "Dear Ms. Ritchie."

Because "Dear" is the polite, albeit formal, way to start off an e-mail.  Which  most of us don't do anymore.

Politeness and manners are really important to me.  My parents were great in that they gave us the option to respond "Yes" or "Yes Sir/Ma'am," but "Yeah" was off the table.  I thought it was a pain growing up but now I appreciate the fact that saying "Please," "Thank you," "Excuse me," "I'm sorry," come out of my mouth often before I realize.

I want being polite to become second nature to Caroline as well.  We're (as in Mike and I) are working on saying please and thank you to her if she hands us something, or puts something back in the dishwasher instead of throwing it on the floor.  You'd be amazed, but at 9 months, I'm pretty sure she already gets it.  Can't say it, and I'm sure she often thinks "Yeah, I know what you're trying to get me to but I'd rather not."  Still, the few times she's handed something to me and clapped make me clap too :)