Well today was my last day at laser mania. I am once again (temporarily) in among the ranks of the unemployed...until Monday when I start back at Convergys. So for a few days I say good bye to the working world. It was rather unceremonious, and my boss even had me go home early. So with a hug from his wife and a handshake from him, I was on my way out the door. Now I have to pay for laser tag....who knew.
Another little good bye...I said to my car.
We are now a one car family. It will work for now. But Bellatrix was a good car. We needed the money more than we needed the car so away she went. She has a good home now....with a nice family on a farm. Oh wait. It was a mechanic. So he will know her needs, and make his kids take good care of her.
Gager update. Last night I had a going away party with Kendra's kids. I had some chocolate, and I told them they had to buy it with a kiss. Gage came and gave me a kiss and Adam said "EEEEEEEEEWWW!" Gage was not pleased. He shouted at the top of his lungs "IT"S NOT GROSS! IT'S LOVE!" We all had a good giggle about that. Anyway, gotta get ready for the big move!
Little Goodbyes.....
A good point...
My Dad sent me this article on Prop 8...thought you California types might enjoy it.
I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.
Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.
But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.
Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.
In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.
These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."
Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002 -- just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so -- a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that "family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."
All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.
For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society's most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn't?
Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!
For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California's Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage's customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that "two" is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.
The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?
Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution -- marriage -- that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.
Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing -- the gift, the birthright -- that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.
David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."
19 October 2008
Wa are not homeless....
Yay! At the beginning of the week when went to Provo looking for an apartment, and we found an idealistic one. 1100 square feet, two bedrooms one bath huge kitchen, washer/dryer hookups and tons and tons of storage. On top of all that goodness, it's about a mile from my work. We have been praying VERY hard that we would get this place. At approximately 8:30 this morning, we got a call from OUR NEW LANDLORD!!!! We got the apartment! I'm so excited :)
Also, it needs to be known (Per my mom) that she ended up with the high score on the DDR, and that the video I shot was her first time doing it. She got pretty good with a score of 21000!
17 October 2008
Dance Dance Revolution.....
I had a DDR mat that was getting rid of and Mom snatched it up, and here are the results....
Much hilarity ensued....
12 October 2008
Torn
I'm lamenting tonight. Just be forewarned. Adam and I are leaving Southern Utah. We have been told that it's time for a new adventure. So we move to the frozen north. I was so excited to move here, and miss winter (well mostly), and now I feel like Laman. "Fine, I'll do it, but I won't do it willingly." I should be grateful, that's how I felt when I went on a mission....I didn't want to go, but I loved it so much. Maybe something truly wonderful will happen who knows. But, I hate leaving my family. I feel like I miss so much. Every time I turn around my nieces and nephews are pulling some new trick, and getting older. I don't even get to stay for Halloween :(. But I will go and do. On the plus side, I have some incredible friends up in Provo, and I miss them like crazy...so I'm excited to see them again! There are lots of new adventrues to be had, and I will get a white Christmas.
Looking on the bright side of life, I have an amazing husband. I've been having kind of a rough time with some things and my Adam was very aware of this (sorry honey) and he spent the night placing little postit notes all over the house for me to find, saying things like "Christy is the smartest ever" or "Christy is breatakingly beautiful." Thinking of that all day made me smile, and things seemed to go a little bit better. Thank you Adam. You are wonderful.
A third thought. I am so grateful for the military service men and women. There is a lot of ugly in the world, and we live in a dangerous time. These wonderful men and women are out there spending their lives to protect our right to protest what they are doing. So...troops, I salute you and thank you. I will do what I can to support you!
And now....RANDOM PICTURE TIME!!! Since I missed so much in photos, I'm going to just post a couple each time, and tell everyone about them. soo....
This is my nephew Gager, at our Grandpa's 81st birthday (happy birthday Grandpa!) Our Aunt Colleene had her Chihuahua there and all the kids loved it! (a little too much prolly) But I got this really cute picture of him :)
11 October 2008
Aint no cure for the summer time blues.
Just more pictures.
We spent the 4th and the 24th with the Gales, and went out to the farmers market. Our niece Sky wanted to get her face panted, but got nervous and had her arm painted.
She's all about fashion so of course the cool glasses came out. 
Mom Gale dosen't like the sun, she burns and had to wear a hat. She looked SO cute :)!
I will have to do more later. Internet troubles!
04 October 2008
I got a golden ticket....
or a red ticket, or a green ticket or any color ticket. It doesn't matter...as long as there is a huge pile of them. Working where I work, I get a lot of chances to watch little kids. Kids get SOOOOOO excited when they have a big pile of tickets to spend. The more the merrier! They now have arcade games that gives you a tickets, they give you a receipt with the number of tickets you have. No way no how. There is no better feeling than having a WHOLE bunch of tickets in your hands...you won something AWESOME! Then you trade it in for a trinket or some little piece of candy or something. There was a kid, while I was working today, who won about 250 tickets. Now you can get like a whopee coushin or something like that with that many tickets, so your starting to get into the good stuff, but it's not totally there, but he was so excited that he had this HUGE handful of tickets that he had his friend take a picture. It's awesome.
Now moving on, the reason I have been neglecting my blog is I've been spending some time scanning my Dad's pictures to digital format, so I can clean them up and create a slide show of them. As an example:
This picture is one of 422 that I have the privlage of cleaning up and fixing. I'm really excited about that. It's a unique opportunity to view these pictures and have my dad sitting here as I correct them and give me the history behind them. It's really cool. So that's been keeping me busy.
ALSO we spent this last weekend up in Heber with the Gale family. It was our N
ephew Gavin's 1st birthday! Happy Birthday buddy! It was loads of fun. He got his own birthday cake and had a grand old time with it....more painting his body with the blue frosting than eating it though. He was rather suspicious of the whole process. But he eventually got the hang of it. He got a ball and hardly wanted to play with anything else. He had such a good time, as indicated by the mess on his cute little face.
Now, I have pictures that I have had on my camera most of the summer that I am going to go back and post and recap on the last little while.
Right after we got here 
Mom and Dad did a bbq for a family home evening and we had a blast. There was water everywhere. And in August, that's a good thing :)
. I think I'm going to have to post more on a different blog....so more in a minute!
