To understand this post, you’ll need to listen to episode 116 of Social Media Serenity.

This is a test only for the Social Media Serenity Podcast. We are doing this live at gspn.tv/live

— Cliff Ravenscraft (@GSPN) December 15, 2011

I had been stuck in a lunch rut for, well since I started packing lunches.

Last Spring our family began to be more conscience of the food we put into our bodies. After watching the first couple of episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Season 1 my kids stated that they would never again eat a school lunch.

So we started the lunch packing the only way I know how; sandwich, snack, fruit. Now I would try to make sure there was a protein, dairy and fruit or vegetable, but it soon turned into the same old same old. PB&J, apple and granola bar was the most common because of the cost at the grocery.

Meagan is not a fan of peanut butter or jelly, but she would get PB&N (Peanut Butter Nutella). At first she loved it, saying it’s “Like a Reese cup sandwich, Mom”. But one day she announced “My lunch doesn’t have any PIZAZZ.”

That got me to thinking about a cool “new to me” way of doing lunches I had seen a while back. My friend April had tweeted a link to her blog The Fragrant Hand talking about her own sons lunches. In that post, she linked to Wendolonia.com and I was introduced to Bento boxes for the first time.

I fell in love with the idea immediately!! I would look at the pictures she posted over and over and wish I was packing such attractive, creative lunches for my kids.

I tried for a few months to budget some money to start this new idea for lunch packing. Soon after school was out for the summer and the idea was filed away for a later date. At the beginning of the new school year it was easy for me to fall back into what I knew best. It wasn’t until Meagan’s pizazz comment that I even gave bento style lunches another thought.

After much discussion with Cliff we decided that the initial cost for supplies would be an investment in our kids. Each of the kids picked out their own box and they are excited about this new way of packing lunch. And all the ideas we have as to what to pack in them.

So, one day I packed my first bento lunch. Since McKenna is in half day kindergarten she eats lunch at home and packs a small snack for the afternoon. So this is her snack with several option for her to choose.

I really feel we are on the right track. As Meagan was examining her box she said, “I feel healthier already, because of the size. I know only so much food will fit in here.”

We have been using the boxes for months now and aside from some peer pressure feedback, the kids love it, as do I. We are packing healthy meals that are colorful and creative. And I know I am teaching my kids something so young that it took me so long to learn. Food is fuel for your body, but that doesn’t’ mean it can’t be fun and attractive at the same time.

I just received permission, from Erica Sigurdsson, to share the following email with you. This email is one of many examples that I receive in my email inbox each day that reminds me of “Why We Do What We Do” here at gspn.tv.

Before you read the email, let me explain what led to this email. As many of you know, podcasting is our full-time career. During the end of 2007, Stephanie and I agreed that we were being called for me to leave my career in insurance to focus more time and energy on the content and community of gspn.tv. We felt led to create content that is entertaining, educational, encouraging, and inspirational.

At http://gspn.tv/plus, we give folks the opportunity to become a “gspn.tv Community Plus Member.” These are the folks who voluntarily contribute, financially, to support the efforts of creating the content that we create and the building the community that we are building.

Many folks, like Erica, contribute on a monthly basis. In the event that I am notified, by PayPal, that a monthly contribution subscription has been canceled, I send a pre-written message to the Plus Member to see if this was something that they had decided to do or if it was something that was done without their knowledge do to a change in banking information within their PayPal account.

I had sent this pre-written message to Erica, and the following is the email that she sent back to me.

Would you believe that we have received over 100 emails with nearly this same exact message? That folks are living DEBT FREE today as the result of Stephanie and I sharing our journey? I thank God each day for giving us the ability to do something that is having a positive impact in people’s lives.

Erica, Congratulations to you and your fiancé! I am so excited that you will be starting off your new life together without the chains of debt wrapped around your necks.

Live Loved! Live Free!

Very Important Announcements
Hey folks, I had to release this very special episode to provide a few very time sensitive announcements. Please take a few moments to have a listen to this brief episode to learn what I’ve got planned for my trip to the West Coast.

Here is some important information from the announcements that I made.

GSPN LA Meetup
Friday, November 4th at 7pm PST
RSVP at http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/lameetup

More details about the location of this event will be posted in the Facebook event once I have them. The meetup will almost certainly be close to the LA Convention Center where BlogWorld is being held.

GSPN – TWiT Meetup
Sunday, November 6th at 2:30pm PST
RSVP at http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/twitmeetup

If you are planning to attend this meetup, do be sure that you email Eva@twit.tv to make your reservation for the studio audience of This Week In Tech.

Want to attend BlogWorld LA?
If you want to attend BlogWorld LA, you can use my promo code RAVEN20 to save 20% off the cost of the conference.

Subscribe To The Podcast Answer Man Podcast:

I just received an email invitation to a press screening for this movie:

“The Way” is an inspirational story about family, friends, and the challenges of navigating a complicated world. Martin Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to France to collect the remains of his adult son (played by Emilio Estevez), who died while walking the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James.

Embarking on the historical pilgrimage to honor his son’s memory, Tom meets other pilgrims from around the world: a Dutchman (Yorick van Wageningen), a Canadian (Deborah Kara Unger) and an Irishman (James Nesbitt). Eventually, Tom discovers the difference between “the life we live and the life we choose.”

THE WAY, written and directed by Emilio Estevez, was filmed along the actual Camino de Santiago.

Coming to Select Theaters on October 7th, Nationwide October 21st.
Follow The Way on Facebook and Twitter for more!

I’ll be sure to share my thoughts on the movie on both Family From The Heart and Life, Love And The Movies.

The first episode of Authentic Life Radio has already been recorded. On September 15th, be sure to go over to http://AuthenticLifeRadio.com to find out how you can subscribe to Stephanie and Sarah’s new podcast!

Links mentioned in the video above:
- Family From The Heart interview with Tracy – http://gspn.tv/l0x
- The Lamp FREE MOVIE PREVIEW – http://gspn.tv/thelamp (Password = thelamp2011)
- Life Love & The Movies Podcast – http://LifeLoveAndTheMovies.com

My wife celebrated another birthday yesterday. However, I think it is amazing that she looks younger today than she did in September 2007. For those of you who think I might just be saying that because she’s my wife and I’m trying to earn bonus points, please look at the image below for proof of what I am saying is true!

The Before picture is her Drivers License from September of 2007 and the After picture is her Drivers License from last week, August 2011.

So in the past four years, my wife looks about ten years younger. If you think this is impressive, you should read the blog post she did a while back titled “My Favorite Things About Losing 72 Pounds.” (Link Here)

Hey Folks,

It has been so long since I have recorded and published a video blog update. Well, here’s one now:

Update: I think it is important to announce that, a few hours after I had recorded this video and before anyone had seen it, a “very generous” Plus Membership contribution was received in the mail.

This contribution put us back into the position where the contributions since making the decision to make all our content available for free is greater than when we were charging for it.

Stephanie and I are so blessed to be able to do what we do for a living and are so thankful for the support of the content and community of gspn.tv!

Thank you for “Joining The Community!”

When I look at where I am in my journey today and see all the steps that brought me to this place, it is impossible to miss the fact that I am not here by mere chance.

I would like to tell you that, because of what I have witnessed in my life, I am a man of devout faith who puts his complete trust in God. However, this is not fully true.

It amazes me that, after all I’ve seen and experienced these past few years, that I still feel an overwhelming need to control my future. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

You see, I pay myself once a month. As I am writing this, it is Wednesday, June 15th, 2011. On the first wednesday in July, I will calculate at all the income that my business has generated from June 1st to June 30th. I will sit down and pay all the bills related to running my business. It is my goal, that once the bills for the business are all paid, that I will have enough left over to pay myself a modest income as well as cover the expenses of the taxes that my business must match.

For the past two years, this goal has been met each and every month, without fail. However, in 2008, when I first launched into podcasting, as my full-time career, this was not the case.

What is amazing to me is that even during a year when we had so much financial trouble and hardship, our every need was met. There was always a way when there seemed to be no way. Doors opened, opportunities came along, and in the end, it all just worked out.

I remember the anxiety that I would feel when I would be sitting here, on the 15th of any given month and wonder to myself, how am I going to pay the bills? Somehow, by the end of that month, there was just enough to meet all the needs.

Today, after several years of experiencing God’s plan unfold before me, and I am blown away by just how much I still lack trust in His ability to provide for my every need.

You see, it’s the 15th of June and if my business didn’t earn another penny between now and the end of this month, I would have enough to meet my goal, on the 1st Wednesday in July, to pay all my business expenses and to pay myself my normal monthly paycheck. This is mostly do to the principles of not spending all that I earn and putting money aside for reinvesting in my business.

However, while I already know, with full certainty, that my paycheck for July is 100% covered, I have full confidence that I will generate enough income, over the next fifteen days, to cover my paycheck for my August due to my third Podcasting A to Z online training course that will begin on July 11th.

With the fact that my wife and I are debt-free, outside of our mortgage, and have a significant start on our “Emergency Fund” in our personal savings, I would think that I would praise God and not have any anxiety about the future.

Things really are unbelievably great right now. I’ve got plans to take my family on an “expenses paid” trip to Disney and then another weekend getaway in the Smokey Mountains that will cost us little to nothing. Certainly no more cost than if we were at home that weekend.

Three years ago, I would like think that I would have been satisfied to know that I am in a place where my business is today, financially. However, here I sit on the 15th of June, 2011 and I find myself tempted to be anxious about where the money for my September paycheck is going to come from.

I still find myself having anxiety about things like anticipated, upcoming, medical and dental costs for our family. While I have made amazing leaps forward in planning more and more margin in my life, I find myself still “wanting to” work, work, and work some more to earn income in advance of these potential future needs.

However, some things have happened in the last thirty six hours that have been a solid reminder to me that God wants me to stop worrying and to have more trust in Him. These past two days have been an amazing reminder to me that God has a plan for me. That I am where I am today because He designed this place for me in my journey. I’m feeling an overwhelming call upon my heart to take time and ENJOY my life, where I am today. To spend more time giving thanks!

In episode 500 of Pursuing A Balanced Life, I talked a bit about these sort of things. I hope, in a future episode of this podcast, to share what has taken place in these past two days. It’s nothing short of God’s guiding hand, consistently opening up new opportunities and connecting me with other people who seem to be a part of the next few steps of my journey to move me forward in His plan for my life.

It’s happened time and time again. I am going about my life and not seemingly doing anything special, but by simply following my heart and my passion, God continues to make all the pieces of the puzzle, known as my life, fit perfectly into place. While I know in my heart that having anxious thoughts are not a required part of the equation for my success, I still struggle with this in my mind.

It is my hope that I will remember this lesson and that for the rest of this day, this week, and this month, that I will be able to simply live and love more!

Psalm 121:1-2 (NIV) I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Update: Friday, June 10th, 2011
Hey folks, I was just notified that our Hunger Games Fan Podcast has just made it into the top ten of Literature Podcasts in iTunes. We have been so excited about the response from our community over this new podcast. It gives us great joy to know that we inspired hundreds of you to read this amazing story!

ORIGINAL POST: May 16th, 2011

This simply means that within the last several days, our podcast has had more activity than Oprah’s, in iTunes. By activity in iTunes, I mean written reviews, ratings from iTunes users (giving a 5 star rating really boosts the ranking), and simply having people actually click the Subscribe Button from within the iTunes Directory itself.

Why would I even care about our ranking for this new podcast? It’s because our Entertainment podcasts have always been what has provided the largest amount of exposure to the gspn.tv community and our overall network of content. Our LOST, Greys Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and Twilight Podcasts together have brought tens of thousands of new subscribers to gspn.tv over the years.

The Hunger Games podcast is on target to do the same. Getting featured in the “Literature” category is a big deal to a podcast devoted to one of hottest new series of books out there. This will change throughout the days, but right now, if someone were to go to the iTunes Store and then browse through the podcast categories looking for Podcasts in the Arts/Literature section, this is what they would see.

The fact that we are so prominently featured in the “New & Noteworthy” section, along with the initial activity of the gspn.tv community is why we have risen to where we are today. The goal, however, is to get iTunes to really take notice of our new show. So much so that they put us in the “Featured – What’s Hot” Section. The icon for our show won’t be as big. However, being on the the front page for this category of podcasts will be much longer lived than our feature in the “New & Noteworthy.”

So how does iTunes choose who get’s in to the featured What’s Hot section? It’s completely up to them! But I do know that you must have decent artwork and they must see that there is a great deal of general interest in your show.

With all that said, I ask if you have checked out the podcast and like it, please be sure that you are signed into your iTunes account and do one or all of the following three things.

1) Go to the iTunes Page (LINK HERE) and Subscribe to the podcast from iTunes.
2) Click on the number of starts for the rating you think we deserve.
3) Write a sentence or two review of the podcast or our network.

Here’s an image that shows where you would click to do the above three things:

If everyone reading this post were to do the above, we would easily rise to the top 10 podcasts in Literature and if we can hold a spot in the top 50 for a week or more, we could very well get featured by our friends at iTunes for this category.

I feel that it is important to stress that the reason for my desire to do this is to bring more people to an awareness of what we have going on here at gspn.tv. It’s time to invite more people to “Join The Community.!

Here’s a screen grab showing our current standing, as I am writing this post, just above Oprah! Thank you all so much!

Hey folks, I had an amazing time at BlogWorld NYC. Of course, one of my favorite things about the trip was hanging out with folks from the gspn.tv community! Here’s a video that shares some of the highlights of my trip with you.

If you are interested, here’s a video of my talk from BlogWorld

For those of you who are on the West Coast, I have great news! I am coming to LA! That’s right, I’ll be speaking at BlogWorld LA in November. I’ll post more details about a gspn.tv meetup in LA and also information on how to save money on Expo tickets in the very near future. Here’s a video interview I did with CEO & Co-Founder of BlogWorld, Rick Calvert.

In full disclosure, I want to let you know that I have received the products mentioned in this blog post as a gift my good friend, Chef Keith Snow from ThoughtFulHarvest.com.

I want to point out, however, that Keith has not sent these gifts to us so that we would blog about them or mention them in a podcast. You see, Keith is one of my podcast consulting/coaching clients and he originally sent our family a few sample of his premium pasta sauce as a thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty.

We enjoyed the sauces so much that we ended up talking about them on an episode of FamilyFromTheHeart. It’s funny, because after we did that, he sent us another batch of sauces as a way to thank us for the mention on our show, something he did not expect.

Well, recently, I had made mention of Chef Keith in an episode of Podcast Answer Man when interviewing my friends Barry & Lynne Morgan about what they had been able to accomplish through podcasting in such a short period fo time.

Just a few weeks after posting that episode, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a package that contained two jars of pasta sauce and two packages of organic spice blends. I can’t wait to try the spice blends. However, I already know we love the sauces! My favorite is the Sun Dried Tomato & Rosemary and Stephanie’s favorite is the Flame Roasted Red Pepper.

Here’s a photo of this “Thoughtful Gift!”

So why blog about this? First, this is such an easy way to publicly say thank you to Keith for the gift. It’s also a great way to let the gspn.tv community know that another member of our community is following his passion and doing an awesome job at making a living from doing so.

Chef Keith is doing some very cool stuff. If you are interested in learning more about Keith, here are some hand picked links that I’d like to share with you.

- Chef Keith’s YouTube Channel
- Chef Keith’s Audio Podcast
- Get your own jar of sauce!
- HarvestEating.com
- ThoughtfulHarvest.com
- Chef Keith on Twitter
- Chef Keith on Facebook

I often tweet about how many emails I receive on a daily basis. Many times, I’m told that I should delegate my email to someone else, to my assistant for instance. However, I could not imagine doing this. Communicating directly with my community and my clients is one of the things that makes me tick. It’s a part of who I am.

It’s actually all the email interactions that I had on a daily basis that made me want to leave my career in insurance to pursue podcasting full-time. But you might ask, what is it about these emails that is so darn important? The answer is simple! It’s the RELATIONSHIPS!

Now, in my 11 years as a property, casualty, life, and health insurance agent, I think I received one “thank you card” from a client who had thanked me for going above and beyond the call of duty, though I did so on a daily basis for those 11 years.

However, in my efforts as a podcaster, I get post cards, greeting cards, hand written letters, and emails on a consistant basis from people who remind me just how important the work that we do with gspn.tv is in the lives of others around the world.

I’ve been given permission to share the following email that just came in two days ago…

Episode 485 of Pursuing A Balanced Life was titled “The Year of Providence Begins!” This email above is a reminder that God is always looking out for us! After I publish this post, I plan to tell Stephanie that we are going out on a special date, just the two of us!

The Year of God’s Providence Continues…. Our lives are so richly blessed by the gspn.tv community! Thank you all so much!

Okay, so on my Podcast Answer Man Blog, I shared that I’m am going to be speaking at BlogWorld And New Media Expo the week of May 23rd. This event is quite simply the biggest networking opportunity that I’ve been faced within since launching my business and I’ve been faced with a large number of amazing networking opportunities.

With that said, I’ve decided that this is the perfect time to upgrade my business cards. You see, my business cards that I have today are still sporting a comic avatar from when I was fifty pounds heavier and sporting the old mustache.

I’ve since had a new comic avatar made, which I blogged about here, and so I spent some time creating a new business card that would incorporate this new look. Below is what I came up with.

As you can see, I’ve designed the card to be double sided. On the front, I prominently feature my consulting/coaching work that I do through PodcastAnswerMan.com. I’ve designed the back of the card to introduce folks to what gspn.tv is all about. I knew that some of you would want to try to read the wording from the back of the card, so I’ve embedded the image of the back of the card here.

I finished designing this business card at 2 o’clock this morning. I read through it many times, so I hope that you don’t find any awful typos that can’t simply be overlooked. You see, I need those business cards before I leave for my trip to NYC and I just ordered a box of 1,000 cards from OverNightPrints.com (Affiliate Link). They should be delivered this Wednesday.

So what do you think?

I have to give credit to my friend, And Traub, for alerting me to this video. I saw him post that this video would be “worth a few minutes of my day.” After watching the video about the announcement of “Twirlr,” I find the statement of it’s worth “debatable” but since I’ve already devoted a little time out of my day to watching this video, I figured I’d share it with you to see what your thoughts are….

Okay, I have just added a new place that I would like to visit one day. If I ever find myself near Hamburg Germany, I will certainly make some time to visit Miniatur Wunderland.

I just learned about this place from a recent post on Mashable.com. This puts the Duke Energy Annual Train Display in Cincinnati to shame.

Check out this video that explains what you would see at Miniatur Wunderland.

The airport mentioned at the end of this video has been completed. Here’s the video that shows this impressive model of the airport.

Hey folks, Stephanie and I have been working, behind the scenes, on a brand new podcast that we are about ready to launch. We have given this new project the code name #MeanEggRush.

I can tell you that this new podcast is a part of our plans to get back into the production of our entertainment based podcasting. Though, like the Twilight Saga Podcast, this podcast will not be devoted to television show, but will be another podcast devoted to a chapter by chapter review of a popular books series.

I say popular, but the funny thing is that I had never heard of the series prior to Stephanie telling me about it just over a week ago. After doing some investigation and getting over a bit of initial skepticism, I’m happy to announce that we have already started to read the first book of the series and have already recorded the first episode with a second episode to be recorded as early as today.

We both feel like this is going to be a show that a very large percentage of the community will enjoy. If you hate secrets and simply can’t wait until Saturday, May 7th, I have great news. We actually reveal what this secret project is in episode 047 of the Twilight Saga Podcast where we finally got around to recording our review of the final few chapters of Breaking Dawn. That podcast episode will be released on Monday, May 2nd at 5am Eastern Time.

We sincerely hope that the community will climb on board and enjoy this journey with us. Be on the look out for the new show to launch on our site on the 7th!

UPDATE: We released this episode a week early! Check out http://HungerGamesPodcast.com.

Folks, I’ve been wondering what I would write in this blog post and as the time comes to type the words, I am at a loss for what to write.

Amy Wright is an amazing woman. Stephanie and I were introduced to Amy through our Lost Podcast not too long after we entered the podcasting world. She was one of the earliest gspn.tv community members, even before we started to call it a community.

Since we’ve been podcasting, we have held several meetups where folks from all over the United States and even parts of Europe have traveled all the way to Northern Kentucky just to get to meet friends that they’ve made in the gspn.tv community face to face for the first time. What many people may not be aware of, is that these meetups got started due to the inspiration of Amy Wright from Chattanooga, Tennessee and another long time friend of the gspn.tv community, Kim Fenolio.

Amy wrote to me and said that she, and her friend Holly Fe de Leon would be willing to make the trip to Northern Kentucky if we were to put together some sort of meetup. Up to that point, I still was not aware of just how meaningful the community of gspn.tv was in people’s lives. However, that first meetup was all I needed to let me know that we had something more than just another podcast going on. We had friends from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee come to that very first meetup!

That afternoon, Saturday, March 17th, 2007, Stephanie and I had the opportunity to sit down to have lunch with Amy, Holly, and Holly’s husband, Gemree. Since this time, Amy has been a constant source of encouragement and support to our entire family and to the entire gspn.tv community.

Over the years, our post office box has received a pretty steady flow of greetings cards, from Amy, for the various seasons and occasionally those came with enclosed gifts as indicated by this email here:

Amy and I have exchanged countless emails over the years and she has always been among the first to write a word of encouragement when we would share any sort of difficult news in one of our podcasts.

When we decided to start the Plus Membership program after making podcasting our full-time career, Amy was among the first people to sign up to support the content and community of gspn.tv. Not only that, but Amy actually sponsored the Plus Membership of another community member for an entire year.

One of the things that I learned about Amy is that she has suffered from Ulcerative Colitis for the past 20 years. It is for this reason that Amy’s been on my prayer list more than any other gspn.tv community member.

Last month, Amy’s doctors suspected that she may have cancer on her ovaries and said they wouldn’t know more until they were able to perform surgery. The surgery was scheduled and all of Amy’s friends eagerly awaited word that the surgery was successful and that any cancer she might have would have been completely removed.

However, our hearts sank as we read a status update on her facebook profile, I believe posted by a family member, that read… “Out of surgery now. The cancer is much greater then they thought. Opened her up took what they had too. Chemo to follow but its incurable.”

Since then, Amy’s been surrounded by friends and family. Friends from the gspn.tv community have sent flowers, posted comments on her facebook profile and have prayed for her daily.

In this photo here, Amy’s friend Holly took the time not just to visit but also to paint her toe nails. I think this photo demonstrates true friendship at it’s core.

About a week and a half ago, I read Amy’s update that stated that she’s been moved to hospice and I had sent an email to her asking if there was anything I could do or say to communicate to the community. I didn’t know what to say and I told her that I hoped my email was not out of line. She wrote back and said… “You are not out of line in any way Cliff! I am still working on getting a full update out there to my twitter/fb and all other friends! I didn’t want you to think I was ignorning ur email! I will get something together by Monday morning!”

So I’ve been waiting for this update to come through so that I would know what to communicate to you, the gspn.tv community. The update came this evening, on Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 8:15pm. Here’s what Amy posted:

So, gspn.tv community, I come before each and every one of you and beg of you to please lift up our dear friend, Amy Wright, that she may continue to feel the presence of God and His arms around her as she awaits the time where she will enter into an eternal presence of the Living God. I also ask that you pray for all of Amy’s friends and family during this very difficult time as well.

If you are a friend of Amy’s on Facebook, you can leave her a comment on her profile by clicking here. If you are not connected with her there, you can send her your love by sending a message on Twitter using @QueenAmy83.

Amy, we love you so much! We all look forward to seeing you again in the biggest gspn.tv meetup ever!

Update: Friday, April 29th 12:16pm
This morning, I received word that Amy has gone home to be with The Lord. Amy will certainly live on in the hearts of all the lives that she has touched in so many wonderful ways. I know that so many of us look forward to the day when we will be reunited with her in Eternity In Christ.

Update, Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011:
Some have asked if there were any way to send a card or note to Amy’s family. I’ve followed up and I’m told that anything that is sent to Grace Baptist Church, sent to the attention of her parents, those cards and notes would get delivered to them. Here’s the address:

Attn: Kathy & Paul Wright
c/o Grace Baptist Church
7815 Shallowford Road
Chattanooga, Tn 37421

Below is a link to other gspn.tv community members who have blogged about how Amy had touched their lives. If you are a gspn.tv community member who has written a blog post about Amy, please email me at Cliff@Ravenscraft.org and I will also link to your blog post here:

- Blog Post From Anne-Sophie Reinhardt
- Blog Post From AlisonL
- Blog Post From AngelSteph
- Blog Post From Geoff Gentry
- Blog Post From Edith Baker

Hey folks, I just wanted to let everyone know that Mardel.com, our sponsor for Family From The Heart is having a major sale TODAY!

The sale is for 25% off all Bibles, books, software, and kids DVDs and is happening all day today, Saturday, April 23rd.

This sale has been a pretty big hit with the gspn.tv community in the past due to the fact that when you use our promo code “GSPN” in the shopping cart, you get an ADDITIONAL 10% off! To take advantage of this great sale, just head over to http://Mardel.com and be sure to add our promo code “GSPN” into that shopping cart!

Please do feel free to share our promo code with all your friends and family! It’s a great way for them to save some money on these types of purchases and to say thank you to Mardel.com for sponsoring Family From The Heart for three and a half years!

Happy Easter from the Ravenscraft Family!

Stephanie and I were given press screening tickets to preview Soul Surfer a few weeks back, before the movie was officially released. In spite of the fact that we had hears many wonderful things about this movie, we didn’t take that opportunity to see the movie due to a schedule conflict.

It wasn’t until I read a review posted by Wayne Joy on our gspn.tv community site that I wanted to go see this movie. The review that Wayne gave was so good that it made it seem worth the $50 it would cost to take our family of five to go to the theater to see this movie.

So was the movie worth it? Check out this video review that Stephanie and I did with the kids:

If you are interested in the technical aspects of the video that we created above, check out this post about the equipment used to make it.

Here are some movie trailers for Soul Surfer:

As my wife was walking out the door today, something had occurred to me. Today is April 11th. It was on this date, sixteen years ago, that I was first officially introduced to Stephanie as the result of her calling me to ask me if I would go to a school prom with her.

If you want to hear how I shared the story of how we met four years ago, you should listen to the podcast that was then called My Crazy Life episode 092 starting exactly. I recommend that you start at 13minutes and 30 seconds into the episode where this topic begins. I’ll paste an audio player below to allow you to listen to that episode from four years ago.

My Crazy Life Episode 092 – Start at 13:30

Now after that episode was released, Stephanie wanted to share “Her Side of The Story” about how we met. So we fired up the podcasting gear the very next day and recorded episode 093. I’ll paste a player for that episode here as well.

My Crazy Life Episode 093 – Stephanie’s Side of The Story!

The morning after I talked with Stephanie for the very first time, I decided to start a new journal. I’m not going to share all the super cheesy stuff. However, I am going to share some bits and pieces from my journal sixteen years ago.

7:34am Well, today I ma going to begin a new journal. I have not written in what seems like forever now. I have wanted to start back for some time now, but never had a true reason to begin again. What what is the reason now? Well, I guess you could say it is Stephanie Renee Snow…

…Well, I had totally made up my mind. Under any circumstances, the answer was NO! I was not going to take Stephanie to the prom. Well that was the plan until last night when I was on my way out to meet Kirt to play some pool. As I was walking out the door, the phone rang and it was Stephanie.

Our conversation was short but basically she just told me who she was and asked if I would go to the prom with her. And well… I told her some of the issues that I had thought about and that I really didn’t have to time to go into it at the time since I was late getting out the door, as it was, to go meet Kirt. I asked her to call me later and we would talk about it and I would give her a definite answer.

Well, as I left the house, my first though was anger. I was mad that Mandy and Kirt did not listen to me and still had Stephanie call me. But the more I thought about it, I was kind of impressed that Stephanie would have the courage to call me and ask. I think that is what changed my mind.

… I called Stephanie. We talked from 11:15pm to 12:30am. It was amazing. She felt the same way as I did about her dad knowing and the best part is that we have almost everything in common. I actually like her a lot. So who knows? We are going out this Friday night. And next Wednesday, we are going to go get my tux. And we have already made a lot of plans to go out in the future.

I feel there is no doubt that we are going to like each other. There was just too much that seemed to be pulling us together and after we got off the phone late last night. I KNEW that things are looking good!

Since then, I have been thinking about her constantly!

Well there you have it. My first “This Day In History” blog post! It’s fun to look back and see that the thing that caused me to fall in love with her at first is still one of her greatest strengths today.

It’s that courage and boldness to take action on the things she wants that has brought so many wonderful things into our lives. It was this quality in her that convinced me to be bold and courageous enough to quit my career in insurance and the pursue podcasting full-time. I have an AMAZING, COURAGEOUS, BOLD, and BEAUTIFUL WOMAN as my wife!

I thank God every day for bringing Stephanie into my life sixteen years ago!

One Last Thing From That Journal Post…
Here’s one more thing that I thought would be fun to post from that journal regarding our first phone conversation….

We have a lot in common. She is going to be a teacher as well. She wants to teach math though.

You see, when I met Stephanie, I was a History major in college and at the time, I thought that I was going to eventually become a History teacher. However, I had only chosen that major and path because nothing else seemed appealing to me at the time. I simply knew that I wanted to “teach” people. Today, I am very much a “teacher.” I am actually a very well paid teacher/consultant/coach.

However, what stands out to me most about this portion of my old journal is Stephanie’s early desire and dream of becoming a “teacher.” One could argue that Stephanie’s been teaching our children since Meagan was born. I would agree with that statement. However, when it comes to role of providing children with an “education” in the position of a “teacher,” it’s so amazing that sixteen years later, she will officially begin that role as we begin our family’s homeschooling journey this August with Matthew.

I don’t know where this journey will lead us. But one thing I’ve learned over the last sixteen years is that God has amazing plans for our lives and that we simply must trust in Him and enjoy the journey one day at a time.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am about my new Withings wifi enabled digital scale (Affiliate Link). As many of you know, I’ve been on a journey of pursuing a more balanced healthy lifestyle for the past year and a half. Since then, I’ve lost approximately 50 pounds. However, I still have quite a ways to go until I get to my goal weight.

The cold winter months made it difficult for me to enjoy my favorite “Intentional Physical Activity” which is walking outside. Now that Spring weather is here and the birds are singing once again, I’ve been hitting the pavement once again.

Until now, I’d been using an old analog scale where the needle bounces all over the place and the actually numbers on the scale are not clearly labeled. Instead, you just get a bunch of notches between numbers like the scale pictured here. This would make it hard to actually see exactly which line the needle was pointing to unless you inspected closer. As I would lean forward, the needle would move. I hated my old scale!

I had heard about the Withings wifi scale a long time ago from Leo Laporte. Leo has actually set up a special Twitter account that is automatically updated with his progress toward his goal every time he steps on the scale. That’s right, he steps on the scale and a Tweet goes out within seconds. You can also set this to post to Facebook as well. I don’t currently have plans to share my weigh ins with Twitter or Facebook, but you never know, I might!

I do, however, have my Withings wifi scale set automatically update my RunKeeper.com account so that my RunKeeper app on my iPhone is always up to date. This allows the application to provide me with more accurate calorie burn numbers when I’m out for my walking and jogging activities.

I also have the scale automatically update my LoseIt.com account. LoseIt.com is where I track all my goals related to physical fitness. This is where I do share my weigh in information with those I’ve added as friends on the LoseIt.com service. All I do is step on the scale, and within seconds, the scale sends my information to my Withings account on their servers and that account INSTANTLY updates both my RunKeeper.com and LoseIt.com accounts. The Withings account can actually sync this data most all of online physical fitness and calorie tracking sites out there.

I knew that I wanted a digital scale. I wanted a scale that would easily be set to “0″ without me trying to fumble around with a hand turned dial every morning. I wanted a scale that would show my weight down to the 10th of a pound.

Previously, if the needle on my old scale pointed to the middle of what “looked like” the “notches” that represented 224 and 225 pounds, I would simply track my weight for that day as 225. However, with my Withings scale, if I weighed in last week at 225.1 and I weigh in today at 224.6, then I can CELEBRATE that I had lost a HALF A POUND! On my analog scale, I would have been bummed to see that I had made no progress, still weighing in at 225 pounds.

The cool things is that the Withings wifi scale also tracks your BMI as well as your body’s fat mass and lean mass weight. Let me explain why I am so excited by this.

Yesterday, I walked/jogged a total of six miles and made excellent choices regarding the foods that I had and ended the day with a pretty decent calorie deficit. When I got on the scale this morning, I was hoping that I would see that I may have dropped as much as one or two tenths of a pound. However, I had gone from 222.2 pounds up to 222.3 pounds. I had gained a total of one tenth of a pound.

Though I so excited when I opened up my Withings iPhone Application (which is free by the way) to find that I had gone from 67.2 pounds of fat down to 65.5 pounds of fat. This means that I LOST 1.7 pounds of fat and my lean body mass increased by 1.8 pounds, netting an overall weight gain of one tenth of a pound. Do you see how having this additional information can be motivational?

I love my new scale. If you are interested in purchasing a Withings Wifi Enabled Scale, you can click on any of the highlighted links where the name of the scale is mentioned. These are affiliate links to the scale on Amazon and gspn.tv will earn a small commission from each person who uses any of these links to purchase.

Words can not begin to express how much fun our entire family had on Dan Miller’s No More Mondays Cruise. It took us three years to get to the place where we could afford to do something like this.

In hindsight, this trip was a major investment in, not only our business, but our family as well. Over the course of eleven days, this journey changed the dynamics of our family and provided life lessons that could only be experienced hands on, rather than being read about in a book.

The following footage is about 21 minutes in length. A majority of the photography and video footage was done by our three children who are ages 11, 9, and 5. Please keep this in mind when you encounter portions of the video that may not be as steady as you would like.

Please feel free to leave comments for the kids in the comments section below. They will be reading your posts as you leave them and may even respond.

Update: Here’s another video done Joel Boggess and his wife, Dr. Pei Kang from http://4pointscoaching.com.

I really enjoyed watching this short little video on YouTube.

If you listen closely, you can hear the captain say…

“Folks, the space shuttle is going off the right side of the aircraft right now. Those of you on the right side of the aircraft, you can see the space shuttle. People on the left side of the aircraft, you can probably see people on the right side of the aircraft looking at the space shuttle.”