More Important Than A Royal Birth

The top story of the day is "Kate Middleton In Hospital Having Royal Baby". Even as I write this, the mob of reporters (some who have flown in from all over the world) are stationed in front of the hospital awaiting the arrival of the third heir in line for the British throne. People are placing bets on the gender, the name, time of arrival, and the length and weight of the little Prince or Princess of Cambridge.

As a mother of nine, I realize as much as anyone does the importance of the birth of a new baby. I can see how the next heir to the British throne would be important to the Brits, but we broke ties over 200 years ago, so maybe our top stories for today should start with one of these headlines:

• Detroit Declares Bankruptcy after 60 Years of Financial Irresponsibility (18 billion dollars in the red)




• Top Government Leaders Undermine Court Ruling by Injecting Racism into the Zimmerman/Martin Verdict




• Gas Prices Soar Nationwide- Up $.12 in One Week




• Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Employer Mandate Delayed-Employees Will Still Be Held Captive




• Unfair and Unjust Furloughs for Our Military Heroes




• Congress Needs to Stop Wasteful Spending (and live on a budget like the rest of us have to)




• The Tea Party Demands Answers Involving the IRS Scandal




• All Americans Should Demand Answers to the NSA Scandal




• Family Members of the Murdered Victims in Benghazi Want Washington Held Responsible




• Underemployment/Unemployment—Highest it's Been Since 2003

Okay, in case you are really curious (and living under a rock), Here is the announcement:

The Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son

Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well.

Date Night With The Farmer

One of the most important aspects in a good marriage is communication. When two people are coming from different backgrounds, different lifestyles, and different traditions, it takes a lot of communication and hard work to come together as one flesh.

 

Ideally, some matters are discussed and settled before marriage: where to live, go to work, go to school, go to church, spend holidays, maybe the number of children that you will have or not have. Then life happens. Reality starts to set in and all the difficulties that go along with it. Plans change, goals are reset, and dreams die and come back alive in other forms. Sometimes couples start drifting away from where they started until they get to a point that they don’t even know the person that’s sitting across the breakfast table from them.

 

Most husbands and wives live in separate worlds. The Farmer and I certainly do. He has always gone off to a world that I hear about often and see occasionally. He works 40 minutes away from home and after a 40-hour week of hard, physical labor, he comes home to work on the farm, or fix a vehicle, or fix some other physical or mental difficulty that occasionally raises its ugly head.

 

Although there was a time when I would pack the kids up and go off to a job, fortunately, I stay at home and keep the home fires burning (sometimes at a ferocious roar). My world is filled with home school, child rearing, and housekeeping. Occasionally I am the farmhand or the riding boss.

 

Like most couples, there are very few and precious moments that we get to spend together, so years ago The Farmer and I set aside a sacred day and time apart for just the two of us. It is at this time that we come together and reclaim the time that is so needed in order to maintain a oneness between us. His world and mine come together. Sometimes it causes a tornado, but more often it brings unity. We adjust our goals, or reset our family’s GPS, or simply recover our sanity.

 

Saturday night is our official date night. We hold it as a sacred time. Most activities get pushed aside for this evening. And if something happens and we can’t make a Saturday date night, we do it on Friday or Sunday night. We haven’t always had this, but we realized early that it was a much needed ritual to keep us on the same track. Having a large family often makes it difficult to find babysitters, so we didn’t go out often in the early years, but as soon as our kids were able to stay at home by themselves, we made date night a priority.

 

So what is a date night with The Farmer like? Well, I’m glad you asked. Last Saturday when we went out, we recorded a moment by moment timeline of our date.  In case you haven’t been paying attention to my blog, we are a farming family who have raised nine kids on one income  (well almost, three of them are still teens). So our date nights are usually pretty cheap. We do have the occasional anniversary or birthday celebration, but most of the time we are very frugal. It has always been our decision to go frugal and often, as opposed to splurging and not being able to go out every week.

 

We usually eat in the truck, so our first stop is McD’s to get a 32 oz. soda for $1.00

If we do go into a restaurant, we drink water because soda is crazy expensive in restaurants!

 

 

 On this particular Saturday, we decided to eat at Jack's house

I did blow my diet, but was rewarded with a coupon for a free taco on my next visit. :)

  

 Often we go up town to eat. We love to sit and watch traffic pass.

We often discuss the history of the town, or imagine how it was back then.

 Of course we have to drive past the MFA and...

The cannon in the town's square "Cool Hand Luke"

Then we drive around looking at other people's fields...

Other people's farms...

And other people's cows.

Of course, coming home is truly our favorite part of the date.

Now that it's nice outside, we are able to spend the rest of the evening together on the front porch.

                

Today Is My Birthday!

Today is my 53^rd birthday!

Really!? Really!?

How could that be possible? How could five decades pass and me not even realize? How could I have gone through childhood, adulthood, parenthood, grandparenthood! And not notice that time was passing so quickly?

 

 

Fifty-three years…hmm.

 

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that I was a fat little roly-poly waddling down the sidewalk? Fortunately, this memory was recorded for me on a movie reel (Anyone remember those?).

 

And hasn't it been just a short time ago that we were going on family camping trips? It's not been so long ago, in my recollection, that our cousins would come to visit and we would play hide and seek in the dark (another game my children think they created).

 

I’m sure it was just a few summers back that we had family and friends over to swim, played tag in the cemetery, enjoyed spending summer vacations with grandparents and cousins, or rode our Shetland ponies (although I can’t remember if they were ours or Grandpa George’s).

 

Oh…some of the memories flood back as I write this, and for those who read this and shared some of the experiences, you will recall things like: Alley Springs, walking to the movies, the bowling alley, steal-the-flag, our old red dog, Butch, and hasn’t everyone had a dog named Blackie? There were carnival rides, basketball games, drive-in movies, cheerleader tryouts (didn’t make it), snowball fights, and long trips to Winona. Rock collections, bug collections, catching lightening bugs in the summer. Oh! and tying strings around the legs of a June bug and hanging on to it while it flew around.

As a teen I remember getting a curling iron and trying to curl wet hair. Does anyone remember Psst! I think that's what it was. You sprayed it on your hair if you didn't have time to wash it. It was like powder on your hair (eek!) Long hair, ponytails, and bell-bottoms.

 

And wasn’t it just yesterday that the Farmer and I were married, and experiencing the trials and triumphs that come with a new family? Well, the reality of having children grown and married and having children of their own brings me back to the possibility that maybe more time has passed than I have realized.

Although the calendar records that I have had approximately 19,345 days on the earth, I still can't believe it, because they have passed by all too quickly.

And looking at the clock I see that even more time has passed, so I’m going to end this walk down memory lane before another birthday passes me by completely.

 

Fifty Years In One Night

Now that the dust has settled a little on the past election,


I thought I would just say this one thing. America has definitely changed. We have changed from a nation of "makers" to a nation of "takers". We've gained a sense of entitlement, in which we believe that everyone should have everything, without working for it. We've swallowed the lie that it is the government's responsibility to provide for us. Our nation was designed to grow by the strengths of individuals, by the individual's right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The government's job is to protect us from foreign threats – it really was not instituted to oversee or administer in the realm of business, education, or healthcare – see Constitution.


 

Fifty years ago,


Americans could go to their local grocery store, clothing store, and hardware store, which were owned by local people who hired local residents. Every family had one dad and one mom and the kids belonged to both of them. Killing someone was illegal—in and out of the womb. Obscenity was illegal, dope was illegal, and both were shunned from public display. Americans went to school and then maybe to college, if they could afford it. You got a job, and then a better job, and if you couldn't get a job, you started a business and gave others a job.

 

But what about the next 50 years?


I'm afraid that we have swallowed the lie produced by the government. The lie that tells us that Uncle Sam will take care of us from the cradle to the grave. The government began to take care of us, and now we expect it. Most Americans (as proven in the last election) expect the government to pay for education, support everyone who loses their job, and subsidize families that aren't making as much money as they think they need. Unfortunately, the government does not make their own money. Either they have to get it from taxes, which we all end up paying, or they borrow it from a foreign country, which our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will end up paying for.

 

A Voice from the Past


The prediction of Alexis de Tocqueville (a French historian from the 1800's) seems to have come true: "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

 

That handout you're getting from Uncle Sam comes with a price that will be too high to pay back.

Election 2012

Election 2012

 

Super Bowl for Political Junkies

What an exciting time in America’s history! We are about to vote for our next President of the United States of America! This is like the Super Bowl for political junkies like me. Does that describe you? As political junkies, we planned our whole summer around the Primaries, which led up to the opportunity to cast our vote for our Presidential candidate. Then came the back and forth between President Obama and Governor Romney. Daily we watched the political news, fast-forwarding through the day-to-day events just to catch a sound bite or an intelligent assessment given by some expert of the man we chose for our party’s nomination.

 

My husband and I planned “date” nights around the four final debates, and I recorded them so I could watch them a second (and sometimes a third) time. [This is where you insert “she is crazy!”] But I like to make up my own mind. I don’t want to be told that President Obama said this or that Governor Romney seemed this way or that way.

 

A Country Divided

Now there is only seven days left—seven days!—until we elect our next President. As expected tensions are high on both sides, political commercials are flooding our TV programs, junk mail is filling up our mailboxes, and unfortunately, most of our country is divided into two very intolerant groups of people.

 

I’ve been on social media and face-to-face with people who are adamant about not getting along with someone else because of their political association. And it’s on both sides. Republicans and Democrats are disrespectful, condescending, intolerant, and even vicious at times because someone will not be voting for their approved candidate.

 

Historical Facts

One of the things that have always made America strong is our freedom of speech. If you get up and say that the sky is yellow, you will be wrong, but you have the right to say it—and I have the right to disagree with you. But morally, I don’t have the right to hate you because you are a believer of “the yellow sky”.

 

I do however have a right to voice my opinion and try to convince others to be a “blue skyer” instead of a “yellow skyer”. Not by hating them, but by using the facts…facts that I have studied out and learned about, and am a witness to. There is another way to prove my point also, by history. Historically the sky has been blue. Sometimes pink when the sun is setting, sometimes gray when a storm blows in, and sometimes green when a tornado is about to pass, but historically, when the sky is clear it has always been blue.

 

The candidates and their respective minions continually spout off things that they are equipped to do for our country. Back and forth…going to raise taxes on the rich, going to decrease taxes on the poor, going to provide healthcare, going to fix Medicare, going to decrease the budget, going to balance the books..blah..blah..blah..yadda..yadda..yadda.

 

We can’t really believe everything they say, because a lot of it is hypothetical. And we need to realize that they are not running for “King” of the United States, so they will have to play nice with others (the Congress) in order to get anything done.

 

Now that we’ve heard all of the debates, all of the talking points, all of the commercials, and all of the spin, let’s look at the history of the candidates. As I’m writing this I have two editorials on either side of me, respectfully positioned: on my left a Democrat backed paper that we received from the union and on my right a Republican backed paper we received from our church. And although they both claim to be unbiased (they’re just reporting the truth…right…) I’m only going to use the points that each side believes is positive for their candidate.

 

Historically, President Obama has been a lawyer, a Senator, and a President.

• As of July, he is averaging +0.84% annual job growth in his term


• He passed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)


• He passed the Making Home Affordable program


• He has doubled investments in Pell Grants


• His stimulus package includes $100 billion for education


• In May 2012, he said his belief is that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry


• He is pro-choice

 

Historically, Governor Romney has been a missionary, a businessman, and a Governor.

• He led Bain & Company out of financial crisis


• He organized and led the 2002 Olympics to financial success


• He reformed the state’s health care program when he was governor of Massachusetts


• He presided over the elimination of a projected $1.2-1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and the closure of corporate tax loopholes


• In 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment


• He is pro-life

The United States of America

So…chose your president. And whichever man wins, we as Americans, should “unite” behind him. Don’t be a sore loser and take your ball and go home. We don’t have to support his policies, and if he doesn’t keep his promises, the next time we get the opportunity we’ll vote him out. Together we are The United States of America…oh sure we have different parties and different opinions, and different ways of doing things, but that’s what makes us unique. We need to discuss, debate, and argue our beliefs, but at the end, we need to unite. …Don’t allow race, religion, or some commercial to decide your vote, dig out the history of these men and make up your own mind. And play nice…

 

A Voice from the Past

Just to finish, I was reading a small article about the past Presidents and I found an endearing quote from John Adams. In 1800, President Adams, from the unfinished rooms of the nation’s Capitol City, wrote his wife, “Before I end my letter, I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May not but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”

 

 

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents