Tag: children

Categories
life

New Christmas Tradition

Living in a wonderfully snowy and hilly location, Laura and I volunteered our house as Laura’s family began planning a sledding excursion for the day after Christmas. While we were still in the planning stages I suggested to Laura that this might be something we could do every year.

Everyone decided to take us up on the offer and so our house was overflowing for most of the day. We had a great time hosting a relatively large event for the first time since we moved. Based on the reactions of everyone who came it was an enjoyable experience for all. Our house was close enough to the sledding hills for the group to have the flexibility necessary for our children of various ages and the hills were perfectly suited to the different needs of our varied age groups. We had a great meal before hand and plenty of time to socialize and drink hot chocolate after the sledding. It was perfect. Laura and I have decided that we are definitely going to do this every year. Now that we have had the experience once we will probably expand our invitation in future years to include more family and friends to share in the fun.

Categories
life

Primary Songs by Mariah

Mariah sat down at the piano today and started playing and singing for Issac and me. The primary children’s songbook was opened to I Am a Child of God. Here is what Mariah sang to us:

I am a child of God and He has sent me toooo . . . go get the brass plates.

Isaac asked for her to sing the temple song so she turned to a page in the songbook with a picture of Jesus and started singing Isacc’s favorite “temple song.” Here were her lyrics:

I love to see the temple, I’m going there someday, to get the brass plates.

I wonder if anyone can guess what story has recently made an impression on Mariah.

Categories
life

Mariah Discovers Electricity

Tonight during the usual bedtime hubub I went running back to Mariah’s room when I heard her start to cry. There had been no telltale noise to indicate that something had happened, but this was not a whimper as if she just wants to get attention. When I arrived she was sitting on her bed crying but there was still no indication as to why. I asked what happened and she told me that she pushed the humidifier and got an ow. Since the humidifier was still perched four feet off the ground where it was supposed to be, I asked what she meant. She replied that Isaac had unplugged the humidifier and when she pushed it in she got an ow.

I explained to her that it was called a shock and that it was electricity that makes the humidifier run. I told her that if she needed to have it plugged in again that she should just call me.

It’s funny that in all the times she has played with plugs before she has never been shocked, I guess she just got her fingers in the wrong place in the dark when she tried tonight.

Categories
life

Life Without Children

In a word – boring!

I have had so much fun today watching the kids play in every possible combination. Issac playing with his cars, various combinations of kids playing a game where some or all of them are kittens. I could sit in a chair “reading” with hardly a second passing between watching one child or another run past in that exuberant way that only children can.

I’ve lost count of the number of times today that I have turned to Laura and said that I could not tolerate a life that did not include children. It would just be empty.

Categories
life

Home Again

You’d think that after three days in Disney World (after the conference sessions each day, of course) that I would be disappointed to come home knowing that the menu would be items like macaroni and cheese and then being greeted by the news that Mariah was feeling sick. While all of that was true (about the macaroni and Mariah) I am very excited to be back home with the kids, being able to watch Isaac as he runs into the bathroom to lift up the toilet seat for me when he hears me say something about the potty. As far as I know he had never done anything like that before Laura and I left for Florida.

As nice as it is to get away for a while, I can’t believe that anyone would choose to be carefree all the time if they have the option of watching kids grow and surprise you instead.

Categories
life

Who Is That?

Conference was very enjoyable for me. For the first time in years I was not exausted for any of the sessions and I really connected with most of the talks, rather than just a few of them. I did manage to miss most of the Saturday Afternoon session as we got locked out of our own house (that’s the first, and hopefully last, time I had to break into my new house).

After the last session we started watching a recording of the Saturday Afternoon session. With that video playing in the background I worked on getting dinner ready while Alyssa was watching. Right after Elder Holland’s talk ended Alyssa called out to me, “Who’s that?” I asked her if she was talking about the last speaker or the person currently speaking. She pointed to President Eyring, who was conducting that session. I told her it was President Eyring and she told me that she had recognized him from church. It was fun to see her make the connection.

Categories
life

Taking Posession

After a long weekend with no internet access I was not at all surprised at the long list of emails that I had to deal with. It was a very good weekend to be disconnected since I had plenty to do as we moved into our new house. After a good three day weekend we are pretty well established with most of the boxes unpacked (besides those that are sitting in the garage – which is mostly food storage) and the furniture arranged. I fixed a couple of doorknobs with dysfunctional locks but not before Savannah accidentally locked herself inside the upstairs bathroom (the lock was easy to lock, but unlocking it from inside the bathroom was too difficult for women and children). I also mounted a flag bracket so I can fly the flag here.

It’s been a very fun few days as we have been awed and surprised to watch all the birds and squirrels, to feel the mountain breezes, to see so many stars at night now that we are above the main part of the city, and to look out the window before a storm and realize that we are literally living in the clouds at times. After today I should have internet access again so I won’t have to wait out the weekend before sharing when fun new things happen in our new home.

Categories
culture politics

Funding Fire Departments

As we drove through heavy smoke that seemed to be blowing north from the fire in Draper last night, our girls started asking about firefighters and how we (as a society) support them. It got me thinking about firefighters as a service of government. Although they are every bit as legitimate and important a service as police, I rarely think about the Fire Department in relation to government.

Since my brain was chewing on the subject it apparently decided to throw me a what-if to consider. I wanted to share here to see what others thought.

Virtually every structure is insuread against fire – this means that insurance companies are highly interested in the work of firefighters. Would it make sense to privatize the fire department by having insurance companies be in charge of funding them? If so, what kinds of changes in service would you expect to see?

I’m not trying to suggest that our fire departments need to be privatized or that they should be. I just wanted to get some feedback on that random idea.

Categories
National politics State

A Step In The Right Direction

I was disappointed today when I heard news of a hearing in the Texas-FLDS fiasco where a mother was trying to get custody of her nine month old baby. What surprised me was the age of the child since my understanding was that mothers of children under 1 year had been allowed to stay with their children. Thankfully it was only a short time later that I stumbled upon the best news I have yet heard in this case – an appeals court overturned the ruling that put all those children in state custody. The news was:

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were ”legally and factually insufficient” under Texas law. . . . The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.

This was exciting news for two reasons – first, a bad ruling was overturned; second, this ruling indicates that children are not to be taken from their homes without a court hearing unless they are in immediate danger. That standard of immediate danger is perfectly reasonable and it’s good to see a court recognize that the legal standard was not met in this case of abduction. (Anyone who argues that this was not an abduction had better go look up the word because unlike the CPS argument of immediate danger this case perfectly matches the definition of abduction.)

Categories
politics State

Year-round School is a Given

The KSL esitorial board is supportive of a move toward year-round school. They manage to demonstrate a crucial mis-characterization of childhood education:

As Governor Huntsman put it in his recent State of the State address, “It is amazing to me that, in this age of innovation and education, we have students, buildings and teachers sitting idle for three months every year. . .”

This very statement assumes that children do not learn when they are outside the classroom. Anyone who has watched children knows that they are learning machines. There are a wide variety of lessons they are learning during their summer breaks that could not effectively be taught in a classroom setting.

The proponents of year-round school would also ignore the fact that there is a loss of academic effectiveness for every transition back to school from a break. With a traditional school year there is one major break and a large number of small breaks where students must navigate that transition. Year-round school has all the same minor breaks plus two extra major breaks to interrupt the academic progress of the students. All this is in addition to the standard complains about conflicting tracks within families and interruptions to the established patterns in family scheduling.

Many of the troubling aspects of year-round school can be mitigated, and there are some benefits (which are widely publicized), so the idea of year-round school is worth exploring but the decision cannot be safely made while we turn a blind eye to some false assumptions during the debate. These issues must be a part of the discussion if we are to come to a solution of any lasting benefit.