Extreme Home Makeover Sunday 3/16

Extreme Home Makeover
Okay, so by now you know I am addicted to tv, and Sunday is my Extreme Home Makeover night and cry-fest! And last night was good!!
Met the Boettcher family, the dad is a Biker Pastor, and before you get all high and mighty, we have a "biker church" in our community, and I can tell you this, that church makes it a point to be involved in anything and everything community and to do things for others all the time!! If you don't believe me, you have got to check them out....http://www.thehop-e.com/


Now, the mom worked non-profit in the community and the daughter has a son with problems, they are all living in a run down trailer, and running a teen ministry out of the garage. Well, you know this will be good.


I have to say, I liked the house and all, but it really was a little bit of a sore thumb in the trailer park neighborhood they live in, I mean everything around them was a trailer, and here in the middle of all that is this house.




I think the best thing I noticed about the whole thing was the ministry. The dad kept saying that his whole goal in doing the show was to inspire someone, somewhere in the world to get involved, to do the same thing in their comminuty to build up the kids, because they are worth it, and they are the future.

You know, I have to go here.....everyone talks about kids, about how they are the future and that they are going to hell in a handbasket, that no one is doing anything for them or with them, that they don't have any common sense, they are doing drugs and killing each other and what ever else you have heard recently. The biggest problem with it.....NO ONE is doing anything about it! Everyone is complaining about the kids these days, but no one is stepping up to do anything. Everyone thinks it's someone else's job. The parents think the schools need to do more, the schools think the parents need to do more and nothing gets done. There are few community programs, but they are all fighting for limited money, and in the end it ends up falling on churches to do anything, because we all know if you want anything done in a community, and you want it done quickly and without alot of government red tape, ask a church.
I mean, take a look at New Orleans after Katrina....who were the first people in to help, churches, who is still there helping, churches. Hummm.....and people are constently saying we need a seperation of church and state, but when it comes down to it and there is a crisis, the same people that don't want church in their schools or gorvenment are the first in line at the church for aid.

So I'm off my soap box and moving on. I liked this episode and I hope, if nothing else, it made you think. Maybe it challenged you to do more in your community and maybe it challenged the way you think about people.

Extreme Home Makeover - Sunday 3/2

Okay, so another one of my quilty pleasures is sitting down on Sunday nights with the kids to watch Extreme Home Makeover and cry. Yep, they are always cause for a good cry and it gets me through the next week.

So Sunday night, we sat down and saw the story of a guy who started building his families dream home, a recreation of an old historic civil war house, and was called up with his National Guard Troop to Iraq and the house sat there, unfinished, rotting away. Sounds like so many things that have had to be put off for this silly occupation.

Okay, yes I am going to offend some of you, but I do not like, and have never liked this silly occupation. And no, I don't call it a war, because a war has a beginning and an end, this has no end, and in all reality probably never will have an end, we will always have a base and troops of some number there. This is an occupation and when you get through all the smoke and mirrors, it was all for the precious oil that we seem to not know how to live without.
Now, that being said, do no for one moment think that I don;t value and cherish our soliders, They never asked to do this, they are just doing the job they were told to do, whether they believed in it or not was never asked and they did what was required. Some never knowing the scarifices that would be asked of them for the sake of oil. I support our troops, I am greatful for all the do, I still do not believe that this particular assignment was proper, but they are still heros to me. I send care packages and food all the time to soliders that are somewhat, in some strange and twisted fashion related to our church, because that is how I get the addresses, and I pray for them daily, but I still don't agree with the whole thing. And that is the ultimate beauty in this country, is that I have the freedom not to agree with something.

Now, back to the house!! I loved that this time, they didn't build a hugh oversized house. They stayed, for the most part, in the footprint that the father had originally laid out, the original design of the historic house, with a small add on museum off to the side. It was wonderful! I cried for the family, for the austic son, for the father that would have to return to Iraq and for the mother that was left to raise two boys alone.

Everytime I watch this, I love the houses they build, but this one was afavorite of mine. Not too big, the kitchen, well I would love that, and the historic touches. I guess I love history too and that a house with charachter from the past means more to me than some cookie cutter house in a new subdivision with forty some house exactly the same all around it.

If you've never watched Extreme Home Makeover, grab a box of tissues and sit down and enjoy some feel-good tv for a brief period in time, watch people come together for the good of someone else, not for their own glory and enjoy! It will restore your faith in mankind, at least for an hour.