Monday, October 8, 2007

Ethan in Kindergarten



Ethan started kindergarten last month at The Covenant School. He goes 2 days a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:15am til 2:45. He loves school and says he wishes he could go every day. The day before school started we got to see his classroom and meet his new teacher, Mrs Mountjoy.(see pic)

The first day of school was so exciting. There was a special chapel service where all the parents and siblings got to attend. And then after chapel, off we went to his room to meet his new classmates, a grand total of 7! His days are filled with Bible, Language Arts, Math, Tales, French, History, Geography, Poetry, Art, Music, Nature and crafts. About once a month they go on a special field trip. This month he'll get to go to the Dallas Arboretum and mom gets to go too as a carpool driver.

Ethan has also joined the school kindergarten soccer team (see pic)! They've won one game already! Go Knights!!

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Lovely Little Lina

 


Ann shot a couple pictures of Lina today, so were putting them up for all the lina fans. Personally, I could look at them all day long.

Here you go, Just click on the pic to go to the album...

Sept/Oct


~ Adoring Daddy
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Buried in the Books!

Well, Another semester has started and it promises to be busy for us all. OK, maybe not Lina, I think she has plans to crawl and to chew on things she is not supposed to, but that is about it. I've got lots of books that need reading and stuff that needs learning and a student group to run and lots of other fun stuff to do. Ann is going to be quite busy with Ethan's schedule (more to follow on that) and keeping us all on track. Pray that things go well for us this semester and that we stay close to each other and to our savior, who is the reason we are here.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Ethan's First BMX Ride



Ok, This is the very first time Ethan set foot on a BMX track, or a dirt track of any kind. I think I had his seat too low, but he did pretty darn great. It was like 100 degrees outside and I was about to fall over, but it was worth it. He had such a great time and all the way home asked when he would get to go back. So when you see him competing in the BMX races at the Olympics, (yes, it becomes an Olympic sport next year) you can say, Hey, I remember when Ethan first started...

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Lina eats "solid" food for the first time ever!



Click on the video and wait a couple minutes for it to download and then it should start playing.

Well, tonight Lina had her first meal of "real" food. We were not sure what she was going to do, seeing as how she had just turned four months old. So Ann mixed up some hot cereal and tried it out. Wow, talk about a natural, she took to it like she had been eating for awhile. She was attacking the spoon. There are a couple of funny scenes where she dribbles the stuff out of her mouth and down her chin, Ethan got a big kick out of it, thats for sure.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Ethan Turns Five!


Ethan had his big 5th birthday party last Saturday June 2nd. It was a couple days early, but doing it on the weekend was nice. It was a complete success. Everyone that was invited was able to come, including siblings and parents, mostly families from our building. So as you can imagine we had quite a crowd. Good thing we don’t do this EVERY year. It was a pirate themed party and the kids got to wear pirate hats, eye patches and play with swords. There was a “tattoo” table and a spyglass table where they got to decorate the spyglasses made out of paper towel tubes with stickers. After that we all ate pizza, salad, pop, chocolate cake and ice cream. The cake was a Pirate with a picture of Ethan’s face on it! Then Ethan got to open his presents. He got hot wheels, pool toys, legos…etc. It was great. And to finish off the party the kids got to run out into the courtyard and search for their hidden treasure chests filled with chocolate gold coins and other goodies. Lina liked looking at the balloons. What a party. Check out the recent pictures to see some of the action!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

On Historical Theology and Grace

To clearly see the benefits of historical theology on cotemporary praxis, we need not hearken back to the reformers. We should, mind you, but it is not always necessary to do so. Our culture is so far removed from even our American forefathers that we can learn much by studying the early American proto-evangelicals (that’s going to cause some grief :>). The Puritans have much to inform us regarding the spiritual disciplines. And men like Jonathan Edwards should be listened to regarding among other things soteriology and ecclesiology.

Take, for an example if you will, the famous sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God.” You can read it here http://www.ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/sinners.html I love this sermon for two reasons. First, it flies smack in the face of our Starbucks drive through, customer focused western churchiosity (yea, I made that word up.) Secondly, because its true. It seems like the problem is that we have little tolerance for tension in theological constructs, we are ill equipped mentally to deal with them here in the west. Yet, most of the great theological structures of our faith are held together by some tension between its supporting components. There is the hypostatic-union of Christ, fully God and fully man. There is divine sovereignty and human responsibility; there is the very nature of the Trinity, One, yet three in relationship with each other. Many of the heresies regarding these topics come about because the progenitors of them fail to maintain the proper tension between the components that is indicated by specific revelation.

This brings us to the tension in Edward’s famous sermon. It seems to me that the tension between Justice and Grace is a crucial one that we are failing to provide in our Churches today. Test yourself, read this sermon and see if you are offended by it. I was. But then I paused for a minute and gave my elders their due, and read it again, looking for a biblical reason for offence. There was none. My offence was purely cultural. I was offended by someone being so insensitive as to tell people that without Christ, they are under a sentence of condemnation to hell, and that God’s justice, in fact, “calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins.” Why, that is not what our sensitive-seekers want to hear. They want to hear about their friend Jesus who loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life. The problem with no offending them is this. Without a proper understanding of the Justice of God, which responds to Sin with wrath, the sinner is left wondering what is so great about the Grace of God, if in fact, they are better people that some of the really bad sinners they know about. The thing that Jonathan Edwards did, was to paint a vivid picture of the unsaved, suspended over the pit of hell, with no requirement of God that keeps them from dropping to eternal punishment at any second. Insensitive and brutally honest and completely true. Said suspended person is truly in need of a savior. We dishonor Christ when we leave people not understanding S-A-V-I-O-R because they do not apperceive needing to be saved from anything. If you love the lost, then talk about sin. Talk about the wrath of a Holy God. Offend People. Unconform from our culture. Then share the message of Grace that is only ever properly understood in its context.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Spring Break 07


Family
Originally uploaded by markallenhowell.
Yea! Spring Break is here. No classes, no work for a week, Just fun, sun, poopie diapers and tons of homework to get done before classes start back up. Ann and Catalina are doing fine, we ran outside yesterday and took this picture when I realized that I did not have any "family" pictures with the four of us. Ann's sister Susan has been here this week helping us out while we get adjusted to the little one. For current pics, you can check the links on the right colume, which I will try to keep somewhat updated. I'll still have to figure out something for video clips, in my spare time. :>

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

New Site

Ok, So I've decided that I need a new format for my site, so today I'm upgrading everything. I have some posts I want to write, and there is alot of layout work to be done. Hopefully we will get things sorted out in the next few days. If there is something that you would like to see, make a comment and I'll see if I can get to it.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

New Daughter!!

I am blessed to introduce to you our new daughter, Catalina Elizabeth Howell. Born 02/25/07 at 9:34am. We had a great delivery, very thankfull to all those who were praying for us. Baylor was wonderful. Ann went into labor last night at 8:30pm and we went to Baylor (1 block away) at 12:30 when her water broke. After several hours of increasing contractions, she was given an epidural and just progressed through the evening till everything was ready this morning. Her Dr. was the guy on call, which was nice, and she only ended up pushing for like 10 minutes. It was nice that we were getting to the last stage right as our SS class was meeting and would be praying for us. We felt prayed for and thank God for the "textbook" delivery. All the nurses and doctors were quite supprised after seeing Ann, who had been recently told she was not big enough to be pregnant, that Lina weighed a heatlthy 8 lbs 10 oz. and was 21 inches long. The baby nurses were calling her "chunky" :> Anway, I'm not sure if any of this makes any sense because we havent slept much, but I've gotta run back to the hospital to hopefully video the first bath. Here is a link to a couple pictures, and of course there wll be more to follow.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/16052718@N00/7wQd0g

Love, Mark, Ann, Ethan and Catalina Howell