How 'Bout Them {non} Apples?

After church last Sunday night Les noticed something wrong with his iPhone.  It seemed to be swelling and coming apart.  We don't upgrade our phones very often and our current phones for well over three years old.  His was an iPhone 5, mine was a 4.  I checked our online AT&T account to see what our upgrade options were and was hit with sticker shock!

Our mission on Monday began at the Apple store.  The problem with Les' phone was the battery was swelling.  The best they could do was to replace Les' phone with another iPhone 5 for $80.  I would keep my old one. Upgrading both of our phones would be about $60 a month for two years (roughly $1400) in addition to our current bill of $90 a month.

Stop number two was the Verizon store.  They could switch us over to an identical plan for $75 a month.  They had Motorola phones that we could get for another $10 a month per phone for two years ($240).  The switch was looking pretty compelling.

Stop number three was Best Buy.  A friend had recommended we shop there.  We were greeted at the door and said we needed help with mobile phones.  We waited and waited...  There were other customers in the area and an employee finally came and helped them.  When he was finished with them he didn't even acknowledge us, but walked away.  Bye bye, Best Buy!

Stop number four was Costco.  They also had the $75 a month Verizon plan but they had a promo going and we were able to get two Samsung Galaxy J3 phones for FREE!!  There was no reason for us not to switch.

We are super happy with the decision and are already enjoying the Android experience.  We're really not anti Apple, but they did not give us a compelling reason to stick with them.  The phones came with 16GB of internal storage but Les was able to get SD cards with an additional 128 GB and install them on our phones himself.  Our biggest challenge is getting our music from iTunes to Google Play.  How about them {non} apples?!

What kind of mobile phone do you carry?  Any great Android apps I might be missing?

Book Review: Happy Wives Club

The first book I read in 2017 was Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage. The description was longer than most and I knew I wanted to find out more...

Fawn Weaver was a happily married woman running a successful business—and then something happened. Maybe it was divorce rate reports on the evening news, The Real Housewives of Orange County, or any daytime talk show where husbands and wives dramatically reveal their betrayals. Everywhere she looked, Fawn saw negative portrayals of marriage dominating the airwaves and dooming everyone to failure.

Looking at Keith, the love of her life, she knew that wasn’t true. She was determined to find and connect with women just like her—happy and optimistic about marriage, deeply in love with her spouse, and committed to building a strong marriage that stands the test of time.

On a whim, she started the blog HappyWivesClub.com and sent the link to 5 friends. What started as a casual invitation to five women exploded into an international online club with over 1,000,000 members in more than 110 countries. Happy Wives Club is Fawn’s journey across the world to meet new friends and discover what makes their marriages great. Join her on this exciting, exotic trip across six continents and through more than eighteen cities. Walk the streets of Mauritius, the historic ruins in Italy, and the vistas of New Zealand and Australia. Go from Cape Town to London, Manila to Buenos Aires, Winnipeg to Zagreb.

Along the way, you will meet everyday women whose marriage secrets span cultures. You will hear their stories, witness their love, and be inspired by the proof that happy, healthy marriages do exist—and yours can be one of them!

It turns out great marriages are all around us—when we look for them. Go on a trip with Fawn and learn the best marriage secrets the world has to offer.

I cannot say enough good about this book!  There were funny stories, serious stories, and inspirational stories, but over and over there were stories of happy wives and happy husbands.

I'm pretty sure I read some from each chapter to Les.  "This is us!"  "Oh, listen to this..."  Did I need this book to confirm that I have a happy marriage?  Of course not!  But it was wonderful to read about happy marriages around the world.

I loved Fawn's descriptions of the countries she visited.  She lives in Southern California and started her journey driving to San Diego, a drive I have done many times.  Her day in Rome was especially interesting since it was one of the few places on her journey that Les and I have visited.

You can read the first few chapters online here.  Chapter Four "When Windows Become Walls" deals with the dangers of friendships with the opposite sex in marriage.  Walls and windows are important.  A happy marriage doesn't happen without working at protecting it.

At the end of the book Fawn lists Twelve Secrets of a Great Marriage.  I won't give it all away here, but first on the list:  Respect.  Each item is important to a happy marriage, but "No Plan B" is critical.

I highly recommend this book!  If you are a happy wife you will enjoy reading how other happy wives have found that happiness.  If you are struggling to be a happy wife, I think you will find help.  If you are hoping to someday be a wife, this book is filled with tips for your someday happily ever after!

I am glad to be part of the Happy Wives Club!

2017: Where Will You Focus?

I've seen a lot of posts about resolutions, goals, and words for 2017.  I don't know if I have ever chosen a word for the year and stuck with it the entire year, but the word that has been bouncing around in my brain for the past few days is Focus:

1. the center of interest or activity.
2. the state or quality of having or producing clear visual definition.

Focus is a tricky concept.  We are all busy and it is easy to lose focus on what matters when we try to focus on too many things.  There are things in life that we need to do, but they can't be the center of our interest.  I can't ignore the piles of laundry or expect my house to clean itself, but it can't be the most important aspect of my life.

Les taught an awesome Sunday school lesson about Jonah to kick off 2017.  The book of Jonah is short and most of the lessons we hear are from chapter two - Jonah's time in the belly of the great fish.  I have always found chapter four to be extremely interesting.  The city of Nineveh had a 120,000 soul revival and Jonah was very angry.  I have never understood what was wrong with him!  He was not only angry, but he sat and pouted.  "It is better for me to die than to live."  

The conclusion of the book sums it all up, "Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:  And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"

Jonah had a greater love for a gourd that provided shade than he did for a city that was perishing.  Les finished the class with this question, "Do we care more about materialism or personal comfort than we do about the thousands of lost souls around us?"

In all our resolutions, goals, plans, and desires for 2017, may be never lose focus of the thousands of lost souls around us.