Eenny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

How do you choose???

Me and My Guy





































Aahhh...I'm boy trapped!








Look at my handsome boys!!






















Completely Us!

25 Words: What Would You Say?

Today this story was shared with us during a church lesson:

In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, an airman, was shot down over North Vietnam. For two years his family had no idea whether he was dead or alive. His captors in Hanoi eventually allowed him to write home but limited his message to less than 25 words.

I was asked to consider the 25 words I would write. Here they are.

My wish:

Family: Love, Support and Be Kind to one another.
Strive for: college, mission, temple marriage.
Be: hopeful, full of integrity & laughter, positive.

It's really hard to condense all of those important things into 25 words. But, I loved this assignment. Thanks to our teacher for encouraging me to be reflective on the things I have to be grateful for over this Thanksgiving holiday. There is so much that I have been blessed with: most importantly, the four other people that I share the intimate side of my life with. I know I am not the perfect wife or mother, but I love them deeply and try to improve little by little.

To all of you fellow bloggers out there, I would love to hear what you would say.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

For Fun

One day I received this email from my sister: INSTALLING A HUSBAND

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 20 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as:

• Romance 9.5 and
• Personal Attention 6.5,

and then installed undesirable programs such as

• College Footballl 6.0, NFL 24-7
• LandscapingPro 4.0·
• Major League Baseball 3.0 and
• Golf Clubs 4.1.
  

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs at all, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate.


DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind,

• Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
• Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
  

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.

Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program . These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend:

• Cooking 3.0 and
• Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck Babe!
Tech Support

I thought this was funny and forwarded the email onto Steve, who I was IMing at the time. His very next response was: not laughing.

A few minutes later, this email shows up in my inbox (it was written by Steve):

Dear Tech Support,

I too ran into a similar issue but when I upgraded from Girlfriend Beta to Wife version 1.0. I was excited for it's new features: Cooking, Companionship and Love and are very pleased with this feature set. However, I was not aware that the upgrade would completely wipe out Intimacy 2.1 sp2 and Male Interests 1.0. Wife 1.0 has completely modified the system registry, continually controlling all interfaces.

It also seems that Wife 1.0 is much more of a resource hog than Girlfriend ever was. It has required me to expand memory and system resources to support it's usage. I have also noticed that Wife 1.0 is larger than Girlfriend. The demands of this new version require continual upgrades and much more time and maintenance.

I was not aware when installing Wife 1.0 that it would require so much security protections and come bundled with so many extras. I am still attempting to uninstall Phone Bill 2.1, Mother-in-Law, Photo Gallery, Scrapbook 1 Billion, That Time of the Month 1.2 and it's add-on: Uncontrollable Emotions that were included in this version.

Any suggestions would surely help?

Signed,

Shocked yet Happy

Dear Shocked yet Happy,

Thank you for contacting Tech Support. Due to overwhelming volume of contacts regarding Wife 1.0 and excessive issues we are experience internally from this upgrade, we are unable to respond immediately to your inquiry. We will research your issue and attempt to provide a solution as soon as our engineers figure out how to resolve your Wife 1.0 issues.

Sincerely,

Tech Support

What a clever husband I have who can make me laugh. Thanks Steve for brining the fun into my life. (Not going to get cheesey here.) I love you!

Making My Vote Count

Either way you looked at it, it was going to be a historic event; no matter which party you went to.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 marks the first day that our country has ever had a black President elect. I was caught up in the moment and felt a swell of pride for America. This just proves that America has realized what I have always known and been taught since I was a child: that we are all created equal.

But, as a famous man once said, he should be judged on the content of his character and not the color of his skin. We will see what the next four years holds for our country. You know, change in the wrong direction just takes you further from your goals. I will humbly apologize if I am wrong. Not holding my breath.

To NOTE: the hard question that I wanted asked during the debates: What would you do to restore the trust of the American people and the name of the United States abroad?

Just so you know, I didn't vote for the other guy either.

A few days before the election, a friend sent me an email about the struggle that women in the 1920s went through so that I could cast my vote. I didn't realize all that had happened to them.

And, it really got me to thinking.

My thinking made me realize that I really wanted my vote to count. I didn't want to vote for the "lesser of two evils". So, I exercised my civic duty, and...I wrote in the name of the guy I really wanted. I felt victorious. Even knowing it wouldn't come to pass.

The Birthday Girl

It's making a terrible rattling sound, it's probably a skeleton dancing around.

That was the line from Tyler's school "Spooky Program" on Thursday night.
We carved pumpkins on Wednesday night.
Helped out at Ethan's school party on Friday.

It all led up to this: HALLOWEEN

Little Red Riding Hood. I was so happy with Laney's costume. Aunt Kathy helped me to make it one day at Grandma's house.

Laney liked Trick or Treating, but she LOVED the candy. She wanted to eat it immediately between houses. Who can blame her? We took her around to the houses on the South side of our street. Then she came home to help Dad hand out the candy.

Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Tyler and Ethan had a blast with Trick or Treating. They were seriously serious about it. They both wanted to take pillowcases with them. They would run between houses and across the streets. It was so rewarding as I heard their cute little boy voices say "Thank you" when candy was placed in their bags. Even when the cold rain came there were no complaints. They just wanted to keep trudging along. (Disclaimer: Due to the cold rain, I did get the car when they wanted to start visiting friends on the other side of the neighborhood.) Tyler and Ethan came home with a monstrous amount of candy! Halloween success.

The Nice Witch. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture. I dressed up as a nice witch with striped tights and everything. For me, it was so much fun to see the boys having fun as they ran from house to house. They worked together as a team deciding which houses to skip and showing each other some of the amazing or scary decorations at the different houses. I really can't believe the amount of candy they come home with!! In my mind, it doesn't fit the ratio to the number of houses we visited. In my mind, it should last months, but I know it won't.

We're Not Robots!

So, I was listening to the radio the other day; the news story being talked about was overweight people. Supposedly, a research study performed at a college institution (don't remember where) says that some people may have a gene that makes us (yes I am lumping myself in this group) not able to taste food as deeply as the person next to us. As a result of this, people with this gene eat more so that they can get the flavor.

Oh come on!! Yet another way to brush off our responsibility, in this case so that being overweight (could add any myriad of behaviors that are now being labeled as an addiction) isn't our fault. Why are people so blind to this fact, that they are abdicating responsibility? We are not robots merely doing mechanical, routine tasks on command. We have a choice here. Is it an easy one? No, not always. I struggle to put that brownie down everyday. But guess what, it is my choice. I have been educated and I have to knowledge to make a healthy choice. Do I always follow it? No, but I am trying to overcome that "natural man." We all have our own individual issues with our own "natural man" to overcome.

I loathe the fact that people are being given a "way out." The problem won't change as long as it happens "to them" instead of "because" of them.

Again, we're not robots. Are you pretending to be a robot somewhere in your life?