It's Official...

Gabbie has had her first time being sick. We put her to bed last night at her normal time and then she woke us up at 11:45 crying. I walked into her room and she had thrown up all over her bed, floor, and animals. While I cleaned up, Kyle held her and tried to comfort her because she was super scared and had no idea what was going on. I had to run to the store to get some stuff for her at 12 then we tried to get her to sleep again. As she was dozing off, she threw up again and had to be completely stripped down to her diaper. She finally fell asleep cuddling in my arms with a blanket wrapped around her. Luckily she slept the rest of the night.

So for all those parents out there, what are some things that you do with/for your children when they are sick? (especially when they are still pretty young)

Cool Website

So if you are anything like me, you might get pretty tired of cooking the same thing month after month. I found this super cool website through my ward's blog. It is called Every Day Meals (www.everydaymeals.com). We usually plan out our dinner menu a week or two in advance and we were starting to get pretty tired of eating the same stuff every few weeks and I love to try new things when it comes to food.

This website is awesome. It actually plans out an entire month of meals for you. You can look at things day by day, week by week, or monthly. There is even a place where you can add in your own idea for food instead of what is already on there. Another super cool thing is that the website will generate a grocery list for you (which you can then uncheck the things that you already have at home). There are also a ton of recipes on the site.

We have experimented with the menu on the site for the last couple of weeks and have really liked all the things we made. So, if you want a little less hassle in making and knowing what to make (which is what I sometimes struggle with) then check it out.

One last Obama Post

So, as it has gotten closer and closer to the presidential election, it has seemed that Christy and I have had to repeatedly defend the reason why we are supporting Obama considering that we both were raised in fairly Republican families and we live in a very Republican state.

After itemizing my reasons on Facebook today (at the expense of all of my friends who were spammed because I didn't realize that a notification would be sent for every comment I made to my "status" (I apologize again for the spam) to all of my friends) and realizing that the election is only 3 weeks away, I decided that it might be a good idea to rewrite those reasons here on our blog so that people can better understand why we, two people whose votes for Obama will really not make much of a difference considering we live in Utah, would be such big supporters of him.

In posting this on here, I want it to be known to everyone that neither Christy or I have anything personal against John McCain, Sarah Palin (although she does annoy me on a regular basis), or the McCain Campaign. We have been troubled at times by our perception that he twists the truth or tells half-truths related to Obama's history, but we want it to be known that the only real reason why we do not support him is that we believe that we agree more with Obama than we do with McCain on the direction that our federal government needs to go in the next four years.

We are registered Unaffiliates.

(While I (Kyle) am the sole author of this blog post and take full credit for it's content, Christy has approved that I put it on here and has let me know that she is in agreement with all of the points that I am going to articulate here.)

We support Obama because we believe that trickle-down philosophies of government (the belief that if we support the upper classes and businesses of our country, and ensure that they remain wealthy, their wealth will "trickle-down" to even the lowest within the country and the whole will prosper) are faulty. We believe that prosperity and wealth abound when we "take care of the least among us".

We also support Obama because he believes that our government should have it's priorities centered in America before we should spend billions of dollars overseas fighting undefined wars.

We also support him in that he believes that true Democracy extends beyond our own government meaning that he understands that we need to participate in discourse ... Read Morewith other governments and come to a collective agreement on a course of action before we make decisions that will affect those who may not live on our soil (like, for instance, invading a country that we believe might house terrorists or nuclear weapons).

We also support him because his education policies center around: making sure that teachers are some of the ones who define the assessment of student success (rather than standardized tests), Creating and supporting ELL or ESL programs that try to bridge the language gap for immigrant students by appreciating their native languages and helping them to find common language ground (as opposed to having policies centered around English being the rule (American Native Language) and ELL programs designed to bring the students to the standard), restructuring the tenure idea based on teacher input before assigning merit pay, and budgeting additional federal funding for education.

We also support him because we believe that America's gun control laws need to be reformed. Like him, I believe that there is a big difference between a hunting rifle used in the Utah back-country and an assault rifle used in gangwars in Metro America.

While we disagree with Obama on the position of abortion (We believe that Roe V. Wade should be overturned as we believe that the woman had a choice at the time of intercourse, that there are other options for not having to care for a child (adoption, etc.), and we believe that a baby is a person from the time of their inception), we still support him because we have the belief that the only influence that the president will have on the issue of abortion is his appointment of judges. Because we believe that history has shown us that Supreme Court Judges are independent beings and they often rule different than the way the president who appointed them might have thought that they would, we don't believe that Obama would really have that much of an effect on this issue.

We also support him because he seems to place a priority on diversifying America's Energy usage.

We also support him because he believes in a tiered tax code (that those who make the most money will pay the most taxes and have the least amount of tax breaks, those who make the least will pay the least taxes and have the most tax breaks) and he has... Read More promised that there will be no tax hikes for anyone who makes less than $250,000.

We also support him because I believe that he has shown (through his previous relationships) that he is willing to participate in discourse with people who he doesn't completely agree with and tries to see where they are coming from. In cases of people with extreme ideals and philosophies he has shown that while he listens to them he makes decisions to keep his perspective even after seeing theirs.

Anyway, while I don't think that this is an exhaustive list of reasons why we support Obama, these are likely the biggest.