Tag: Laura

Categories
life

Nine Years and Counting

Nine years ago today I was privileged to make covenants with the greatest woman I have ever known. I spent a lot of time today thinking back to our wedding day (hint: that was back when Mother Nature still remembered that it’s not supposed to snow in May) and all that has happened in the years since then. We have been blessed with five kids and I get to contrast my nine years of marriage with the ten months and counting that a friend of ours is enduring of divorce proceedings. While we were at stake conference today being spiritually edified I saw the weight of care showing on this friend’s face and thought how blessed I was to have a wonderful wife to share the weight of raising children to the Lord so that they will be prepared for the challenges they will face when they go out into the world.

Categories
life

Halloween Tradition

Three years ago I would have told you that Halloween was the dumbest/worst holiday on the calendar. Two years ago I did say that it was tolerable. Last year if I had written about it I would have said that it was a really fun to go chat with our neighbors while the kids got more sugar than we would wish them to have. This year we started what we hope will become a tradition (and hopefully we’ll get it refined so that it works very smoothly for everyone) – we gave out hot chocolate as our Halloween treat. For the sake of helping us to remember the details – and because everybody surely wants to know the details of what we want to do for Halloween each year – I am writing how we made this work this year.

Laura made homemade hot chocolate in the late afternoon and we put it in a crock pot on “warm” sitting on a table just inside the front door. We placed an abundance of small paper cups there and then we went out for out round of trick-or-treating. I’m not sure we got it right this year, but the intent is for us to go early enough in the evening that we can catch the bulk of our neighbors home as we circle our block once – I imagine that over the years the kids will expand their range but for now once around that block in about an hour lets us see and talk to a bunch of people and is about enough for their attention. The hope is that this gets us home in time so that few if any local witches, ghouls, and goblins have come to our door before we return. Then we can see them (again in many cases) as they enjoy our warm offering as the evening gets colder. I can seriously envision having our children going out with friends and ending the evening with a hot chocolate party at our house.

Categories
life

Personal Challenges

We had a neighborhood party last Saturday and as we were driving home we got talking with the kids about one of our neighbors and his son who is autistic. As we explained some basics about autism we did so in the context of the fact that everybody has different challenges in life, that the challenges we face may change at different periods of our lives, and that autism is one of those challenges that some people have to deal with.

This got the kids talking about their individual challenges and then they started asking Laura and I what our challenges were right now. When they asked me what my life challenge was right now I told them that my challenge right now is that my life is not always perfect, that sometimes things do not go as smoothly as I might wish.

As I thought about it, that’s a pretty good challenge to have (and I’m sure it can’t last forever). Everything in my life is going pretty well right now. It’s not that I’m in total control and the world bends to my will, but when things do not go as planned there are no devastating consequences. I do not get distraught when something I want remains out of reach because nothing that I need has been denied me, and nothing that I want right now is time sensitive so I can afford to wait when necessary.

Categories
life

Crazy Eights

My first blog meme – I’m not sure how I missed that Laura had tagged me with this 10 days ago.

RULES

  1. Post rules on your Blog
  2. Answer the six “8” items
  3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 FAVORITE TV SHOWS

What’s TV? I’ll dig way down deep to see if I can even remember 8 shows.

  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation
  2. Monk
  3. Little House on the Prairie
  4. Highlander
  5. JAG
  6. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
  7. Sesame Street
  8. Duck Tales

8 THINGS I DID IN THE LAST 24 HOURS

  1. Work
  2. Watch the parade for the Utes
  3. Geocaching with the family
  4. Set up a visit with the optometrist
  5. purchasing the supplies to put tile in the bathroom
  6. Eat at a restaurant with the kids
  7. Blog
  8. Talk to my two of my brothers on the phone

8 THINGS I LOOK FORWARD TO

  1. Paying my house off
  2. Buying a new car
  3. Having our new camera delivered (Amazon is usually so fast . . .)
  4. Blogging
  5. Replying to comments
  6. Road trip in June with the guys
  7. The weekend
  8. Scripture Study every day

8 FAVORITE RESTAURANTS

I’m shamelessly borrowing many from Laura’s list 😉

  1. Olive Garden
  2. Carrabba’s
  3. Los Hermanos
  4. Bajio’s
  5. Quark’s Bar in the Las Vegas Hilton
  6. Chili’s
  7. Mimi’s Cafe
  8. Kate’s Kitchen in Logan

8 THINGS ON MY WISH LIST

  1. More time with my closest friends
  2. A chance to influence the political process on some level
  3. More honesty in society
  4. To get my dining room table secured so the kids can’t break the top off of the base
  5. To not have my team move to West Valley next month
  6. More time to watch the deer in my back yard
  7. Two new senators for Utah by 2013
  8. A constitutionally limited government (actually limited, not limited lip-service)

8 PEOPLE TO TAG

  1. Carl
  2. Jared
  3. Jason
  4. Hyrum
  5. J.P.
  6. Marie
  7. Adele
  8. Bill
Categories
culture National politics

Establish Criteria, Not Quotas

My wife was politically low-key when I first met her. I have enjoyed the fact that she has started to become more interested in political issues and principles of good government. This morning at breakfast, without any warning, she asked me about my thoughts on the issue of immigration. The conversation that followed led to some interesting insights (and must have been incomprehensible to our children).

First, as I have stated before, we need to make an informed decision on where we stand on the issue of immigration. Knee-jerk reactions (whether it’s “close the border” or “grant some legal status”) don’t fix the fundamental problem that we have created immigration laws that we are unwilling or unable to enforce.

One of the things that came out of the conversation was the idea that quotas are an arbitrary, and hence therefore poor, method for determining who can legally enter the country. In fact, quotas are a bad way to make any public policy. No matter where you set the numbers they are essentially arbitrary. There is no reason why person X+1 has greater potential to burden the nation than person X.

If we think that we should not have completely open borders then we should set criteria for who is allowed to come and then allow all people who meet the criteria to enter. Prior to 1924 when we started using quotas the criteria were essentially that we allowed anyone without major criminal backgrounds or communicable diseases to enter the country. I think those are good criteria to keep and there is no reason that we cannot develop other criteria to keep immigration at sustainable levels and make sure that we are getting the people that we want. For example, if we are looking for people to do menial jobs for us then we should allow people in who have arranged to take those jobs. If we only want people who will work to become citizens then we set criteria that they must achieve citizenship within a set amount of time or be deported.

I’m not saying what criteria we should use – I think that’s a national debate that we need to undertake – but I am saying that the land of the free should not be free only to the first 10000 people in line each year.

Categories
National politics

Hillary Clinton: Babysitter in Chief

Here is another gem from Laura. She came in to my office this afternoon and told me that she had just seen a bit of a speech by Senator Clinton. She thought it very important that I be aware that Hillary Clinton had just told her audience that they wanted a President who would solve their problems, take care of their families and watch out for their children. (I don’t claim that to be verbatim.)

Of course my first thought is that I would prefer a president who would enforce the laws of the land, defend the Constitution, and tell the truth to the American people. I don’t need someone to keep pushing the lies that there are painless, if complex, solutions to the problems we have been busy creating for ourselves.

Upon reflection I realized that maybe Senator Clinton is really making a good offer – free babysitting of my kids. I’ll bet she’s a lot more dependable than many a teenage babysitter. Of course by the time I finished writing this I realized that she never said she would babysit for free – or even for cheap.

Categories
life technology

Strengthening Families, One Cell Phone at a Time

Laura made an interesting observation today. She suggested that cell phones might actually make for stronger extended families with nearly ubiquitous features such as free nights and weekends and free long distance as well as not quite universal features like free calls within the network or plans such as T-Mobile’s MyFaves. Of course that would depend on whether people use those features to connect with family members, but the potential is certainly there. I know I have talked with my not-local family members much more since getting my cell phone with many of those family-friendly features.

Categories
life

Every Day Should Be Mother’s Day

I don’t really care about Mother’s Day as an excuse to celebrate. I think of all the comments I heard today about fathers and/or children making breakfast-in-bed for Mom and then I find myself standing at the sink doing the dishes thinking, “this would look like something I do on Mother’s Day as a treat for Laura.” The thing that bugs me is, it’s not. I’m doing the dishes on Mother’s Day because they need to be done, just like I do the dishes on a rather regular basis because it’s a courteous thing to do. I watch the kids on Mother’s Day so that Laura can have some time alone just like I do on other days because it’s nice for her to be relieved of the endless strain of taking care of the kids every second of the day.

So I begin to wonder why we have Mother’s Day, is it just a cheap excuse to fail to honor and appreciate mothers on the other 364 days they are working for us? I would be surprised if there was a mother anywhere who would honestly prefer to sleep in and have breakfast in bed twice a year to pamper her (Mother’s Day and her birthday) rather than have someone step in and help with the dishes, the kids, the laundry, and the cooking multiple times a week just because that’s what it means to be partners in family life.

The best purpose that Mother’s Day should serve is to have an outward celebration of motherhood that our children can recognize while they are too young to notice that Dad is always finding ways to help relieve the burden that Mom carries every day.

Categories
culture life

Personality Context

Let me first start out by defining my own introversion. This will allow other introverts to see what ways they are similar to me and what ways they are different. This will also help others to have a picture of the introvert doing the writing.

First of all, being an introvert does not mean that I am socially backwards, short on friends, or envious of all the extroverts I know. Second, I claim to be an introvert based on my own habits and observations, but also based on more objective measures including personality tests such as Myers-Briggs.

I am such a complete introvert that I thought my wife was an extrovert. She informed me that she is also an introvert (based on her own observations and Myers-Briggs). To top that off though, she had no illusions that I was an extrovert.

As an introvert, I seek to stay out of the noise and confusion that is so prevalent in the world. I prefer smaller interactions which are not based on formalism or social convention. I seek autonomy.

Categories
life

Victory

It was very fun to hear from Laura that she has decided to try blogging as a way to record/share her thoughts. I set up her blog yesterday and she got right to work. After all my talk about blogging it’s only fair that I should publicly welcome her to the blogosphere. I have no doubt that she’ll have some fun things to say and find some good friends who enjoy sharing with her.

Here’s her feed for those who are interested in reading what she posts.