As soon as we got home and closed the garage door Isaac announced that: “I won the contest.” I asked him what contest he was talking about and he told me he won the contest with me about us going home.

Not to be outdone I decided to turn the tables on Isaac. (Yes, that’s dad, competing with his three year old in mind games.) I asked Isaac if the whole idea was to win the contest. He said that it was and so I asked if we could go back to church now that he had won the contest. He agreed. I quickly took the opportunity to put in my contacts (that I had forgotten before church) and then we went back to church before the chapel had even cleared from the meeting.

As we parked Isaac said that he wanted to go home and take a nap. I reminded him that he had already won the contest and had agreed to come back because of that so he went in and I took him to primary. I was feeling pretty proud of myself – I figured that I had won the contest after all – although I would not say such a thing to Isaac. Later I saw Laura in the hall between meetings and I explained how we had been able to come back to church so quickly because of Isaac winning the contest. After we got home from church Isaac announced to Laura that: “Dad won the contest.”

Apparently he recognized that he had been outmaneuvered even without me rubbing it in.

The only blemish being their 4-1 record in bowl games this year and the glitch that Colorado State appears to have played an easier non-conference schedule than UNLV, San Diego State, and New Mexico.

This year I have already heard some people who argue out of spite that the winner of the Alabama – Texas game should not be considered the National Champion. Personally I think that’s foolish. Whatever team wins that game will have gone undefeated having played against an undefeated team in their bowl game. What more could we ask of them? The same criteria will apply to the winner of the TCU – Boise State game and thus I argue that while the coaches are obligated to vote for the winner of Alabama-Texas the AP voters should create a split championship by voting for the winner of the TCU-Boise State game (unless Texas-Alabama is compelling while TCU-Boise State turns out to be a really sloppy game on both sides). In fact, Obama should follow his sportsman’s heart by inviting both teams to the White House and honoring them as is traditional for the National Champion. (If he really wants a playoff the President could invite them on the same day and watch them play a friendly scrimmage. )

I just had to get this out before the Fiesta Bowl began today so that I could be fair to both teams – especially considering I have a favorite in this contest. While I like both TCU and Boise State better than either Texas or Alabama I would definitely prefer to see TCU win.

In case you can’t tell, that shell of the egg opens and closes to reveal the picture.

Things she is thankful for: Mom and Dad, Alyssa, Mariah, Isaac, and Bell (not sure of the reference there)

I was tasked with helping her get the job done. We started off very slowly as Mariah and I worked through a philosophical difference. I was trying to convince her to put shirts in one basket and pants in another etc. She wanted to put one outfit in one basket and another outfit in another basket etc. The final compromise was that she could place things together as outfits, but each basket would not be limited to a single outfit (not enough baskets). By the way, an outfit consisted of shirt, pants, socks, a jacket, underwear, and pajamas. Eventually she got bored of assembling the whole set so outfits became shirt and pants (the way I would have defined them).

As we got closer to finished Mariah discovered what I had been trying to tell her before, that she did not have the same number of shirts as pants. She discovered it when she had three shirts left and five pairs of pants to match them with. I was not sure how this situation would play out but Mariah had a great solution – she went to the buckets and pulled out two of the shirts and added them to the remaining shirts so that she had 5 shirts and 5 pairs of pants to form 5 more outfits.

After we got finished I told Laura the story and she insisted that I had to record this adventure with out little fashionista.

I hope you like your lunch. I packed it.

From Lyssa

To Dad

She left the note on top of the lunch in the fridge for me to find. It was a fabulous gift from a child with an amazing heart.

So without further ado, here is the whole family:

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It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

. . .

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

More than a year ago – months before the votes started coming in for California’s Proposition 8 the LDS Church stated its official position that they were supportive of the basic rights of all people, including homosexuals, such as probate rights and housing rights. They stated that they were amenable in theory to the Common Ground Initiative but could not take a public position on bills that had not yet been drafted.

The position of the church never changed. Some people claim this is a PR move to blunt the backlash over their role in defeating Prop. 8, but the only thing that changed is that unlike the theoretical five bills of the common ground initiative, the Salt Lake City council actually drafted two bills. The church publicly supported the bills – in keeping with the position they had already taken.

Sadly some people still don’t get it and are suggesting that the church should take a further step by actually writing bill proposals for the state legislature to consider which would extend these same benefits statewide that were just passed within Salt Lake City. The fact is that the church will do just have they have done up to this point – they will not write legislation and they will take no position on theoretical bills that have not been written. When bills are written that are acceptable the church will support them. Bills they can’t quite support will get no comment. In the Utah Legislature they don’t even have to worry about addressing bills that are worthy of their opposition.

Enoch Miller

We had been expecting him for weeks since his two older siblings each came three weeks early – never again. My new motto is “be ready a month early and don’t plan on anything before the due date.” Enoch was not very late as he was due the last week of October, but he held on long enough to make it into November – boy month in our house since Dad, Isaac, and now Enoch all have November birthdays. Unfortunately siblings (under 14) can’t come to the hospital to visit so we can’t get a great little family picture like we had when Isaac was born. We’ll post the best we can get after Enoch gets home.