It's time to decorate again! No really, I'm not joking.

Some people may find this odd but we have always traditionally started decorating for Christmas right after Holloween. For all of you out there who think this is too early all I can say is too bad so sad. :) It literally does take me most of the month of November to put most of it up. The lights and stuff anyway. Kira will take care of the little decorations while I have responsibility for the lights on the house, the trees, and the Christmas village. Kira has accepted my whole manic obsession when it comes to this so she has just learned to let me handle it. She appreciates the way it looks when it is done though. Here is our first major accomplishment. The tree in hunters room. Savannah's is not up yet and I moved the furniture around the front room to make room for our big tree. Our big tree usually takes me a good 10-12 hours. I also put up the lights on Kira's grandparent house so it is going to be a busy three weeks.I find the Elmo tree topper to be a perfect touch to the Sesame Street Ornaments Kira spent weeks upon weeks cross stitching.

Another miracle

Everytime I see one of these ultrasounds I am astounded at the whole miracle that is occuring. Look at this beautiful little boy. 17 weeks, about 5 inches long and yet he is prescious beyond words to us and he is not even here. Thank you to my wonderful wife for going through the difficult part of having a baby so we can add to our little family. You are amazing honey, I love you!

Halloween

I have been very negligent with my blog lately. School has been pretty intense. So I am going to attempt to quickly catch up. Here is Halloween.

The pumpkin carving went great.

Here is our sweet little honey jar.

Savannah was a pretty fairy.

When he is not leading the Autobots he is also known as Hunter.

The kids had a great time. We went around our neighborhood and collected way too much candy with some of our friends from the ward. I thoroughly enjoyed helping the kids eat their ... um I mean distribute/ration their candy. :)

Post election thoughts

So I have been gathering my thoughts for a few days about the results of the election. I have heard a lot of reactions from co-workers and friends. Most of them seem to be talking about how disastrous the results are, how our country is doomed, etc. etc.. I am grateful for a different perspective that I heard from Glenn Beck this week on the radio. I am a big Glenn Beck fan and I heard this conversation on his show so I looked up the transcript.

So I think that I have come to the determination that I am an American and I believe in the constitution. Barrack Obama is going to be our next President, I did not vote for him but for the sake of our country I hope he succeeds. I hope he is able to help our economy. I hope he is able to help in foreign policy. I want him to be successful, I do not want to be a person that sits there hopeing he will fail so I can feel justified in my disagreements with him. I can accept him as my President and I will support him in any way I can as long as I am not compromising my principles and beliefs.

So with that I am done talking politics. I have some great stuff to catch up on in regard to the kids. We have ultra sound pictures, its going to be a boy! :)

Visiting Hunter's School for "Spider's Tea"

So Hunter's class had a little show and tell type get together on Thursday that I was able to go to. (Have I ever mentioned my employer is awesome when it comes to letting me go to stuff like this?) I think what was the neatest about the experience was how excited Hunter was to see me there. Not in an ego boosting I am such a great dad sort of way but in a he realized he was important enough for me to come sort of way. I think that as a parent it is easy to forget how important it is to our kids in regard to stuff like this. And with all of the deadlines hovering over my head back at the office I was able to do something much more important. He is such a neat boy and is growing up so quickly I just want to soak in every minute of it.

I held my nose and voted for McCain today (well technically it was yesterday)

So I just finished a paper for school and I look at the clock and tell myself I should go to bed. That would be the rational thing to do but since it has been an irrational day anyway why not add one more thing to the list and stay up a little later.

As the title suggests I went and voted today. With a truly grateful heart for being a citizen of this great country I exercised my right and voted for who I thought was best. Or not as bad as the other guy I guess could describe the decision as well. McCain was probably my third choice of possible candidates but since my first two picks fell out in the primaries what is a conservative to do right?

I have not gone political on this blog intentionally because that wasn't the purpose of this blog anyway. I have tossed around the idea of starting a politic type opinion blog but I barely have time as it is I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. I would like to however briefly describe some of my reasoning for voting the way I did. What I am about to say is simply my opinions on a few issues and I in no way claim any profound insights or expert status on any of these issues. This is simply how I see it and feel about it.

The Economy - I am not an economist, I'll say that first off. I have an MBA so I am not a complete dunce when it comes to the economy and I can typically think about economic issues for myself without having to rely on CNN's analysis. With that said McCain won hands down simply for his stance on taxes. What was wrong with Obama's tax the wealthiest 5% and distribute that to the poor plan you might ask? Here is my take on it. The most basic macro economics class at the college level will explain why taxes during a recession regardless of who you are taxing is a bad idea. That is just simple economic theory, during a recession or economic downturn (however you want to describe the mess our current economy is in) government should cut taxes and increase spending running a deficit to stimulate the economy. Any type of taxes regardless of the income level you are taxing takes money out of the system restricting cash flows and slowing down the recovery. The negative effects of Obama's plan would not stop there however. When most people hear that income levels below $250 K are safe from more taxes they think that's just great because it doesn't affect them right? According to information provided that means that only 5% of Americans are facing tax increases. What most people don't think through however is that the 5% being talked about provides the majority of jobs in the U.S. Now we are back to basic economics again only this time we are at a micro level instead of macro. If an employer is now facing less income due to an increase in taxes the employer will be forced to start cutting expenses in order to make ends meet. This typically means cutting jobs. I heard an ad for Obama yesterday that stated he was going to cut taxes for the middle class, create jobs and stop companies from sending jobs over seas. He might be able to cut some middle class taxes but his economic plan will reduce actual jobs and send more jobs overseas. That's my take anyway.

Socialism- This has been referred to in this campaign mostly as wealth redistribution. Despite the nice sounding phrase to me it sounds eerily similar to socialism. I am not aware of any country who has ever successfully implemented socialistic policies and had good results. I am not sure why Obama thinks it would be successful here. One of the great things to me about America is the opportunity given to everyone to be successful through hard work. As soon as the government begins to go to those who are successful and say your making too much money we're giving it to someone else this great aspect of our culture will be lost. If you want to stimulate the economy you do not take away the incentive to be successful from the key group who stimulates the economy, also known as the 5% Obama is going to increase taxes on. I want to be in that wealthiest 5% some day and I don't want to get there to find out I was better off not even trying. Enough said on that one.

Judges - Whether you are left or right this one should concern everyone. With the next President possibly having the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court Justices one liberal judge or one conservative judge could turn the court strongly in either direction. With the right to life and right to own a gun on top of my list this one is a very concerning issue for me. Obama's record is horrible on those two issues.

So these were the key issues, next on the list would have been foreign policy and then I would have really gone into some more of my opinions on the economy but it really is late and I need to go to bed.

So for all of you out there, Democrat or Republican, whether you agree with me or not make sure you go out and vote!

Unexpected Blessing

So I have been really working on the backyard for the last month or so. It has finally been cooling off a bunch and the weather has been nice. So since I finished the garden the next project was the play area and grass. I pretty much had everything for the grass and I was just planning on putting down seed since that would be $15 instead of $80. So my plan had been to work on the sprinkler system and put the bricks in place (slowly mind you, I was not in a rush on this one) until Tuesday when Kira called me around 5 pm at work. There was free sod available! A nearby shopping center was replacing their landscaping and their cut up sod was free for the taking. All I had to do was roll it and load it. So I left work and loaded up the pickup and made it home by 7 pm.
So now since I had a very small window to plant this stuff before it died I had to work double time. I laid out the the bricks and began trenching. Kira's brother was lucky enough to stop by and he helped me trench until about 10 pm that night when we finally stopped.Wednesday night I qiuckly finished up the sprinklers, laid the pipe, sprayed down the dirt with water and started laying down the grass. At an exhausting 12:05 am I put the last bit of glue on the pipe into the main line and went to bed. The next morning I excitedly went out to test the sprinklers only to find out I had connected to the wrong valve. (very very sad :() So I fixed that and had to wait for it to cure again. Thursday morning I tested and everything was perfect. Three days from start to finish. Much sooner that I had planned on but hey, it was free. :) And to top it off since I already had an open trench I ran a line to Kira's herb garden and put that in as well. She has wanted one since we moved into the house. So I think I am going to put the rest of the rock that I have left down and take a little break for a while. Class has started again and I need to change my focus for a few weeks.