"Didn't they invent Christmas tree lots so people wouldn't have to drive way out in the country and waste a whole Saturday?" I'm sure I messed that quote up-Doug will let me know!

Ahhh, the Christmas Season. Thanksgiving was wonderful. We had 18 people for dinner 8 of them were under 11 and two of them were over 80. It was really nice. The food was good and things didn't get out of control. I cooked two turkeys and sent lots of leftovers home. I watched the parade, football was on and we watched _Christmas Vacation_ after pie. It was a great day, my favorite Thanksgiving in the last 5 years for sure!

Friday we went to Central Nevada to cut our Christmas tree. Amazingly enough we got a rather tall skinny tree-hard to find, they usually get very WIDE. The kids were good in the car. Loredana peed in the woods-that's hard for girls. Jim and Nicole came-always fun to see them. Nancy made Buckeyes-if you don't know about them YOU ARE MISSING OUT, but more for me! We listened to Christmas music on the way home and talked. I've said before how I love a good road trip so I can talk someone's ear off.

Today we decorated the tree. We have all these "funky" home made ornaments. Today I was realizing how much I love that! Nobody would buy our tree from a store, but you can read the story of our lives on that tree. I have an ornament with my name in glitter that my Kindergarten teacher made for me. Some year (in the 80's) I decided that I would always put that one on first and I always do. Doug and I both have ornaments we made at craft nights growing up and in school. Doug has an gingerbread ornament he painted in Kindergarten, it has YARN for a hanger, how sweet is that?We have a "our first year" ornament, "Parents to be ornamant", a few Baby's First Christmas ornaments and too many to count that Emma and Loredana have painted NOT in the lines. We have a Disneyland ornament (we've been going in December for about 4 years now). We have lots of ornaments that were given as gifts. We have 4 or five of the classic glass ornament balls that we bought at Target for our very first tree the year before we got married-we got married in January-those things are UGLY and I love them. Someday they'll all be broken and gone. I love our tree. I think I'll go look at it. Happy Holidays!

The Next Holiday Is..........?

There are Christmas commercials, Christmas music in stores, Christmas sales and Christmas merchandise EVERYWHERE! I am NOT against Christmas, not by a long shot. I watched _Miracle on 34th STreet_ in August, people- I LOVE Christmas.

Poor little Thanksgiving. What a "boring" holiday it is to us Americans. There isn't much in Thanksgiving for anyone to gain so we ignore it, push it to the side or simply suffer through it to get to Christmas. Thanksgiving- a day to give Thanks to our creator for all our blessings; a day to reflect on our glorious, comfortable lives-yep, not that exciting for kids. I think it should be. I think we have really screwed up a great holiday. It makes me sad and yet.......


I know there are Christmas commercials because I see them when I am fast forwarding on the DVR, while I work on Christmas gifts. I know there is Christmas music, sales and merchandise in the stores because I have already started my shopping. I guess I am just an American who doesn't fully "believe" in the value of Thanksgiving either. Hmmmm......Maybe I should rename by blog "Do as I say, not as I do."

Blog Nazi

I am a self proclaimed blog Nazi. I usually check blogs EVERY day right after I check my email. It's sort of a hobby-a relational hobby, a check up with friends each at our own convenience. I know, I know-it's not real relationship-agreed, but it is my hobby. Because I am so passionate about this hobby, I start to annoy people when they haven't blogged for, what I consider to be a "really long time". I consider a week "a long time". I usually won't bug you if it's been a week. However, after two weeks you might start getting harrassed. Some people can escape my system if they are notorious for going LONG stretches without posting-KP, you know who you are. Besides I don't really like being a nag. And if 12 years of marriage has taught me anything it's that nagging is usually an ineffective tool.

That said, I had two motivations for posting tonight. The first one was that it has been exactly one week since my last post-lead by example. And , second, I was reminded tonight that my good friend Adam has a blog. As a blog Nazi, one of my responsibilities is to remind people that this is a SERIOUS hobby. Don't start a blog and then not use it. Get your opinion out there. August 18 is not good enough my friend. You have now been "blog tagged". Please post a blog soon (36-48 hours) and then "tag" someone else who hasn't posted for "a really long time".

That's right, this whole thing was just Blog Nazi recruitment-a commercial. I had to do something, they have disrupted blog spam effectively. Happy blogging!

Belief and Cost

The other night Doug said to me, "You know what a fundatmental flaw to modern Christianity is?" (Doug tries to avoid these type of conversations, so I was interested.) "We are told that we choose to believe in Jesus Christ." He went on to say that you can't CHOOSE what you believe. Through various experiences, conversations, and soul searching you realize that you already or have come to believe this or that. You can profess to believe whatever you want, but whether or not you actually believe it is something else altogether.

I thought about this for the next day or so. I began to wonder how do you know what you actually believe? Like I said, you can profess anything-that is EASY. I started to realize that beliefs have costs (usually NOT monetary). Some costs are small and some a large. How much you actually believe something can dictate how much you are willing to pay for it. For instance, I believe that our country should not be so reliant on foreign oil. I DO believe that, but I drive a car everyday. Our kids go to a preschool that is 30 miles away and Doug works downtown. The cost of taking the bus, taking my kids out of a great preschool, or buying a diesal car and filtering old cooking oil is more than I am willing to pay at this point. That can give you an idea of HOW strongly I believe what I profess about the oil situation.

My final conclusion about this (at this point in my thought process) is that I think you don't ACTUALLY know how much you believe something until it costs you BIG-sometimes MORE than you are willing to pay, but you pay it anyway. Remember the account of the Christian girl at Columbine who had a gun pointed at her face and the Trenchcoat guy asked her if she still believed in God. Knowing it was going to cost her her life she professed what she actually believed-you could tell from her actions.

So, what do you believe? What if your friends don't? What if ALL your friends don't? What if you are sad inside about it? What if you have to move? What if you have to get a different job? What if you have to buy a smaller house? What if you have to eat Ramen for months at a time? What if you have to stand up alone? What do you believe? What are you willing to pay? What if you don't know what it costs until you get to the "checkout line".?

If You Were Wondering How to Solve all the World's Problems....


You have just come to the right place! I'm kidding of course, but I have been thinking of some things that seem logical to me, but are "problems" in the world.

1) Did you know that diesal engines can be run on used and refined cooking oil? Did you also know that restaurants have to pay a fee to have their used cooking oil disposed of?

MY SOLUTION: McDonald's should open vegetable oil "gas" stations! They could refine the oil themselves and sell it for a profit! I know what you're thinking- Cheryl Citizen for President-she's a genius! Seriously, why aren't we all driving diesal cars? Why is our society so reliant on oil from other countries? McDonalds has deliveries trucks too-most likely diesal. they could be fueling their own fleet for FREE!

2) This is actually a lot less serious of a problem, but it's been in the news lately. Movie theaters and production companies are losing money BIG TIME on theater releases. Doug and i used to see EVERY movie in the theater. Now we have 3 kids, but we are not soley responsible for their drop in sales-Kenny and Kelly have 3 kids too!
They blame it on quick DVD release, black market-illegal sales etc.. Guess what my solution is? They should just start making decent movies that people want to see. Again, I'm a genius-I know.
Last night Doug and I went to see Elizabethtown. It was actually a decent movie and I really enjoyed it overall. We went to regular price (not matinee) and we splurged and EACH bought a soda. That is roughly a $30 investment. That's a lot of money for 2 and a half hours of entertainment-we didn't even pay a babysitter! If Lost had been on last night, we would NOT have gone to the movies, we would have stayed home and watched that for FREE. Why? Because it's GOOD! 24, GOOD. Survivor, GOOD. Desperate Housewives, GOOD. Corpse Bride-eh. Elizabethtown-pretty good. But when was the last time you or anyone else you know said, 'You have just GOT to see that in the theater!"?
Make some decent movies. I don't want to pay $30 to see any of the movies we saw previews for last night. One of them Doug said, we should put that on our Blockbuster Online Queque. I can watch good TV on my DVR and pause it if I need to go to the bathroom, I have TONS of leftover Halloween candy I can eat for FREE. If you want me to spend $30, you will have to make something I actually want to see.