Tina The Storyteller

I remember reading The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart when I was in high school for a social studies class. I loved it. We watched Camelot the musical afterwards and I remember singing "May May lusty May" for quite some time afterwards. I think the two of them created an intrigue for Merlin within me. So when I ran across this title Merlin's Blade on Booksneeze, I had to see what it was about. This is a telling for the story of Merlin and Arthur with a twist I haven't seen before, Merlin is a Christian and he does the will of God. The story starts out with Merlin in his late teens, practically an adult, but he's not independent of his family, because he has lost the majority of his vision do to a vicious wolf attack several years earlier. The story is based around the druids coming to Merlin's village in order to worship a stone that was long ago discovered at the bottom of a nearby lake, the same lake that Merlin's mother drowned in when he was a youn...

If you were to look around at our home, as long as you didn't look at the mess of boxes downstairs, you would think that we're really into Christmas. We have a ginormous tree decked with ornaments, a couple different nativities, greenery and lights all around. It looks pretty festive around here. But the truth is we don't really do a big Christmas celebration. On Christmas Day, we wake up, maybe open some gifts and then hurry off to church for a time of fellowship. We come home, maybe watch a movie and generally pass out. Christmas always sneaks up on me. And it's not that kind of sneak up of "oh, I'm not prepared, go away and come back later!". It's more of a "when did you get here?" kind of sneak. This year, with our daughter being older, I've been enjoying our celebration of Advent so much more. Advent is that time of waiting before Christmas Day, it begins on the first day of December (sometimes earlier) and it includes the four Sunda...