Happy Lucky 7th Birthday!

Happy Birthday Dillon!  Your Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins all LOVE YOU!

Pinewood Derby winner!

Congrats on your first time out, First Place finish!  You are awesome!

(and so is your dad!)

....and sorry about the terrible cell phone photo, buddy.
Love you,
mom

It's not the end of the World! (or is it?)

Today....

My son Isaac turned twelve today.  He is one of the best kids around.

I will tell you a little story about his cake - yes this cake -  to give you an example.

 

He wanted a cake that he could decorate himself with his favorite candy.  

All boy, this one.  

So we picked up a cake at Costco, his favorite flavor.    

He didn’t want any cartoons or pictures on it 

and he didn't really want anything written on it, either, 

(but mom prevailed).

We got it home in one piece, 

but I set it down on our bench near the fridge 

while we moved things around to make space for it.  

What I didn’t realize is 

that I had set the edge of it on a binder 

so it was at a slight angle, 

and while we fussed with the fridge,

it s-l-o-w-l-y slid off the binder and upside down onto the floor.  

THANKfully the thick plastic wrap was still on it 

so I was able to pick it right up and flip it over.

However,

It was pretty odd-shaped and mushed, to say the least.

But instead of having a meltdown 

or refusing to have it at his party, 

Isaac just dealt with it.

He knew that it was too far to drive back and get another.  

(We live about 12 miles from town, 

and we have a Suburban.  Yeah.)

He knew that I didn’t have the time or 

the baking supplies to make him another. 

So he just cheerfully covered it with candy – 

I know - it looks kinda crazy. 

But crazy like the 12-year-old young man that he is becoming! 

Happy Birthday, Isaac!  I Love you!

Conservatism, Explained

Why My Liberal Neighbors Aren’t Speaking To Me Anymore

I recently asked my neighbors’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, are liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?’

She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’

Her parents beamed with pride.

’Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that! You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, (*or to the neighbor who hasn't had a job in a year; or to the student who is getting ready to go to college, etc etc) and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.‘

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ’ Why doesn’t the homeless guy (*OR the unemployed man, OR the Student) come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘

I said, ‘Welcome to Conservatism.’

Her parents still aren’t speaking to me

From the Independent Journal Review

*My additions, lest you think that I think that the homeless guy is just too lazy to get a job....I don't)

We have a Nominee!

Have all of my fellow Republicans been following the primaries like I have?

I doubt it.

The state of our country has been weighing heavily on my mind, and so I have immersed myself in political news every day.  It's driving my kids batty, I know.  But they don't really understand what I have seen these past few years, the radical changes and disregard for the Constitution.

Whatever your ideas and opinions about Mitt Romney may be, these photos will bring to life the real person that he is.    I am going to support him 100% (of course) and I hope that you all will, too.

Enjoy the photos!

Road Trip!

What men of ALL ages do when they go on the road together...without female supervision...

Tanner thought this was the perfect place to, well, you know.  

At least he was discreet ;-)

Then they visited the fish...

Isaac decided to stick his hand into the tank....

I am just glad they are all home in one piece!

A LOVELY STORY ABOUT HELEN KELLER

My Mom emailed this to me today....Thanks, Mom.  I needed THIS...

This is an excerpt from 

A Place of Knowing 

by Emma Lou Thayne

(Emma  Lou also wrote Hymn # 129, Where Can I Turn for Peace …)

Many years into my adulthood, when asked by a Jewish poet friend why I stay  in my Mormonism, I explained it with a story, the details recounted by my mother. It is my mother’s story transposed into an allegory about  My believing.    When I was a little girl, my father took me to hear Helen Keller in the Tabernacle. I must have been about eight or nine and I’d read about Helen Keller in school, and my mother had told   me her story.  I remember sitting in the balcony at the back    of that huge domed building that was supposed to have the best  acoustics in the world. Helen—everybody called her that—walked in from behind a curtain under the choir seats with her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Helen spoke at the pulpit—without a microphone—but we could  hear perfectly, her guttural, slow, heavily pronounced speech. She  spoke about her life and her beliefs. Her eyes were closed and when it   came time for questions from the audience, she put her fingers on her teacher’s lips and then repeated for us what the question had been.    She answered questions about being deaf and blind and learning to read   and to type and, of course, to talk. Hearing that voice making words  was like hearing words for the first time, as if language had only come into being—into my being at least—that moment.  Someone asked her, “Do you feel  colors?” I’ll never forget her answer, the exact sound of it—   “Sometimes. .. . I feel . . . blue.” Her voice went up slightly at the end, which meant she was smiling. The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  After quite a lot of questions, she said, “I  would . . .. like to ask. . . a favor of you.” Of course, the audience  was all alert. “Is your Mormon prophet here?” she asked. There was a flurry of getting up from the front row, and President Grant walked up the stairs to the stand. She reached out her hand and he took it.   All  I could think was, “Oh, I wish I were taking pictures of that.”  “I . . . would like . . . ,” she said, “to hear your organ . . . play . . . your famous song—about your pioneers.   I . . . would like . . . to remember hearing it here.” All the time she was speaking she was holding his hand he had given her to shake. I liked them together, very much.  I remember thinking, “I am only a little girl    (probably others know) but how in the world will she hear the organ?”    But she turned toward President Grant and he motioned to Alexander Schreiner, the Tabernacle organist who was sitting near the loft. At the same time, President Grant led her up a few steps to the back of the enormous organ—with its five manuals and eight thousand pipes. We were all spellbound. He placed her hand on the grained oak of the console, and she stood all alone facing us in her long, black velvet dress with her right arm extended, leaning slightly forward and touching the organ, with her head bowed.  Brother Schreiner played “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” each verse a different arrangement, the organ pealing and throbbing—the bass pedals like foghorns—as only he could make happen.  Helen Keller stood there—hearing through her hand and sobbing.  Probably a lot more than just me—probably lots of us in the audience were mouthing the words to ourselves— “Gird up your loins; fresh courage take. / Our God will never us forsake; / And    soon we’ll have this tale to tell— / All is well! / All is well!” I could see my great-grandparents, converts from England, Wales, France, and Denmark, in that circle of their covered wagons, singing over their fires in the cold nights crossing the plains. Three of them had babies die; my great-grandmother was buried in Wyoming. “And should we die before our journey’s through, / Happy day! / All is well! / We then are free from toil and sorrow, too; / With the just we shall dwell! / But if our lives are spared again / To see the Saints their rest obtain, / Oh, how we’ll make this chorus swell— / All is well! / All is well!”  So then—that tabernacle, that singing, my  ancestors welling in me, my father beside me, that magnificent woman, all combined with the organ and the man who played it and the man who  had led her to it—whatever passed between the organ and her passed on to me.  I believed. I believed it all—the seeing  without seeing, the hearing without hearing, the going by feel toward something holy, something that could make her cry, something that could move me, alter me, something as unexplainable as a vision or a mystic connection, something entering the pulse of a little girl, something that, no matter what, would never go away. What it had to do with Joseph Smith or his vision or his gospel I never would really  understand—all I know to this day is that I believe.

The Results...

...as you already know, that Romney WON Idaho!

My OWN county, on the other hand, not so much.

Things That I Loved about the Caucus:
-That a prayer was said before the process began.
-That the Pledge of Allegiance was also said, and everyone cheered afterwards.
-That of everyone we chatted with,
NO MATTER WHO THEY WERE VOTING FOR that night,
one thing was completely AGREED:
We all need to vote for the Nominee, whoever it is!

3 Regrets About the Caucus:

1. I regret that I couldn't convince more of my like-minded friends to come out and vote.
(I know, I know, Romney won anyway, after all, but I just want people to get IN THE HABIT of voting, in general)
2. I regret that I didn't eat a big dinner before going.  We were there for more than FIVE hours!

(Who ever thought it was necessary to vote, then eliminate the person with the least amounts of votes, then vote again, and again, and again, until you end up with the overall winner?   Why not just go with the top vote- getter in the first place?

I KNOW there must be a good reason - I really do want to know.
Will someone please explain?)

OH - I know I only stated two regrets, not three.
I couldn't think of the third one!
I am really glad that I participated :-)

Idaho Super Tuesday!

This Republican primary cycle, Idaho actually has a say in who the nominee will be.

I am going tomorrow afternoon to stand in line

( I assume there will be lines, since for the Washington state caucus
on Saturday it was standing room only)


to caucus (strange word and an unfamiliar way to vote)
for MY choice of nominee.

I am looking forward to - literally - having my voice heard.

I will report back!

Guess who I will be voting for....:-)