NEW BLOG!!!!

Hi friends just posted on our new blog at Wordpress.

Check it out www.thebarelafamily.com

NEW BLOG!!!!

We are switching over to Wordpress to meet our blogging needs. And we also have a new web address:

www.thebarelafamily.com

We will continue to blog here for the next few days, but will then switch completely over to our new blog.

Leave us a comment on our new site to let us know what you think!

Temporarily out of commission...

Due to entertaining family, making cookies, wrapping presents, delivery gifts to our friends and neighbors and other fun things we are taking a little break from our blog. Oh, and did I mention that our desktop computer crashed? Yep. So this is also another BIG reason blogging is on hold for the time being.

So friends until next time, which is undetermined but hopefully sooner than later.

Praying that this time of year holds JOY, Hope and wonder for you and your family.

You've Been Hit By...A Smooth Criminal

Classic...


Mase Dancing to Smooth Criminal from Brian Barela on Vimeo.

I Am Second...Check it Out

Brian here again...the school year has just wrapped and I'm going a little crazy blogging on my site and this one.

I just discovered I Am Second, a great evangelistic website that features compelling video testimonies of celebrities and regular people.



Take a look at Brian Welch's testimony, who formerly was the drummer for the band Korn--if you don't know about them that's a good thing.

Click here.

Brian's Guesting Blogging Day!

Yesterday Brian was a guest blogger on ChurchCrunch, a site that explores the intersection between the church and technology. It was really fun for him to write about a topic he enjoys on a website that he is excited about.

You can read his post by clicking here.

It's all about the gifts, right?

The other night as I was putting M to bed we were talking about how much fun we had that evening decorating our tree. Tree #2 that is because tree #1 which we had gotten the night before was infested with thousands of tiny little bugs. Of course we did not notice this until they were all over our floor where Brian and I had just been laying putting the tree stand on and where the girls had been crawling all over. This led to stripping off of the clothes and bleaching and vacuuming everything. Good times! Thankfully, the decorating of tree #2 was uneventful and nothing but enjoyable! I told M how fun it is that we get to do all these cool things to get ready for Jesus' birthday! Well apparently as parents we have forgotten to tell him that Christmas was Jesus' birthday or he did not remember because this was news to him which he was very excited about! Are we going to get Him a cake he asked? Great idea! And then he asked, "But Mom are we going to get Him gifts of golden?" We've been reading the Christmas story so M has heard about the three gifts the wise men bring. This simple question has stuck with me all week. What am I giving Jesus this Christmas season? Is it complacency, complaints and selfishness or humility, thankfulness and joy?