If you aren't mad, then you aren't paying attention!

Wake up America... the America you know and love is being washed down the drain in the name of money and politics and your rights are being blatantly taken away! It's not even being done secretly. It's being done out in the open right before your eyes and YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!!!!

I can't believe there isn't rioting in the streets today.
Today our government took an unthinkable step and nobody seems to be outraged.
So what if you think, "They're too rich and crooked anyway, they deserve it". So what if you have class envy. So what if you think it's justified and their success is undeservable.
It's just not right!
Our government should not be in the business of taking over businesses and firing employees. In America a business should be allowed to not only succeed, but also to FAIL!
If these experienced business people can't keep a business afloat, how does America think that our government officials who have absolutely NO EXPERIENCE running businesses will succeed? THEY CAN'T!

This, as far as I am concerned, is a hostile take over of our banking, economy, and business systems. Our government was not created to do this! This is why our country was created, to get away from that, and it worked for several hundred years. Our system isn't broken. We don't need bailouts. Companies and banks failing is a natural checks and balances of our economic system. But too many of you are scared and afraid to ride the roller coaster during the down times. What fun is a roller coaster if it only goes up and up?

My husband just emailed me an article written by a woman named Kate Knuth. She went to the same school my son goes to now. She's our local representative and our neighborhood is counting on her to save them from the destruction of MnDOT. She recently wrote an article about how bad our state deficit is looking and how the only way she sees out is higher taxes. She claims that if we do cuts it's going to first affect our old and young in the way of nursing homes and education cuts.... why is it that every time we talk about cuts, the threat is to our vulnerable? Why can't we make cuts on bike paths, and parks and football and baseball stadiums. Why can't we cut back on bailing out airlines and zoos and other non-essentials? She's not fooling me, and I hope that there aren't too many stupid people who buy her load of ... well, you know what it is. Who does she think she's fooling?
I don't even consider us middle income, my husband (before being laid off) was our only source of income (my photography made beans). Our income is under $70 grand a year, yet we pay over 30% in taxes. After taxes and IRA we were living on half of what he made. So you tell me... how far will you let your government tax you before you stand up and say, "Enough is enough!!!" How much are you willing to give to the never ending appetite of our government spenders? 35%? 40%? 45%? 50%? Are you willing to take a pay cut? That's exactly what it is when your government taxes you more. Are you willing to pick up more hours to pay that extra tax? That's what you will have to do to maintain your life style.

Do you not see that you are a slave to your government?
I thought slavery was outlawed. Apparently it's not, if it's in the form of working for a government master that takes everything you have, including your ability to have a business and either succeed or fail at your business.

Seen from my window...

Yesterday while I was getting ready to leave for my photoshoot and noticed Joshua sitting at the edge of our yard, feet out in the road, and next to him was Duky (Dookie), his best friend for the last year. I thought about grabbing my camera but then the usual thoughts that deter me crept into my head, "something is in my way" (the screen), "My camera is packed and ready to go", "They'll be done by the time I get it", etc. And as I finally resolved to leave the camera in the bag and just take in the scene Duky, sweet little Duky, put his arm around my son and gave him some pats on the back.
To which made my alarms go off. I thought that Josh would have been sitting there comforting Duky. My sweet, little happy, not a care in the world Josh. But instead the roles were reversed. So after they both got up and dusted themselves off and went back to play I called Josh into the house to ask him about what just happend.
He told me that he had just been sitting alone, wanting some alone time and Duky sat down by him. Duky asked him if he was ok, and he told him, "yeah". Then Duky patted him on his back and told him, "I'm always here for you". After Josh told me these words he got a puzzled look on his face, shrugged his shoulders and said, "whatever that means", and ran out the door to play.
I'm so happy he has such a good little friend. I heart Duky.

Finished!

I finished the 6 skirts for my girls tonight :) They look super cute. I'll have to take pictures later. I have enough cloth for two brown skirts, but I ran out of waistband. I was also thinking of making pillows for them out of it instead, for their bedroom or hanging around. I might use a coupon and get a couple of pillow forms instead. I'd found a great pattern from a friend who just made some, they turned out super cute :)

Joel went to the job fair on Monday, but there were only a few employers there. He filled out applications at a few of them, mainly the IRS. He's applied with them before, and he also found another job within them to apply for again. So he's put in 3 applications with them so far, lol. Guess he really wants to work for them.

Ta-Da!

It took less than 1 and 1/2 hours!
This is called Oliver + s Lazy Days Skirt (link).
This one is actually Jaeden's but she was sleeping when I finished it, and so I let the "night owl" model it for pictures... isn't that cute!? It's a little long for Joy, but it will fit Jaeden just fine.
I can't wait to finish the rest... and the best thing, it only took 1/2 of a yard to make! I have enough material left to make Joy a blue one of her own :) And will have enough of the pink to make one for Jaeden too. I think I have to take Joy's shirts back and get her smaller ones, though.
Now to find two cute little girls that might like the other two brown ones that I can get out of my swatch :)

A Project Undertaking

Ok, so I'm trying to be brave and take on new things, expand my skills, etc. I wasn't expecting this project, and actually thought I was done sewing for a few years, except in much needed cases like hemming pants or fixing a torn seam. So I had put away my machine up at our storage unit just a day before coming across this pattern. I just HAVE to make my girls these! They look so easy and I love easy. Also because I've been trying to find them modest Easter dresses since January with no luck, I think that sewing them something has become my only option for this year. So with the pattern in mind, I headed out to the stores to buy what I needed.

I bought for Jaeden a blue material with two contrasting blue and yellow circles on it, blue ribbon trim, and later at WalMart I found a blue shirt to match!


For Joy I bought a pink material with white flowers, and pink and brown striped ribbon to match, and later at WalMart I found her a brown shirt to match.



Then for both girls I found a brown material with blue, green, pink and cream flowers on it, and the same blue ribbon to trim the blue skirt will trim the brown skirts. I also bought them more blue and brown shirts to go with.



So now both girls have one brown and one blue shirt and then two skirts to interchange.



Wish me luck!!!

Come What May.... and Love it!

First Time... Wasn't So Painful

Yesterday was our stake's Humanitarian Day. Wards put together projects to help out people in need. Most of the projects involved sewing and stuff I didn't have a talent for, but one ward had enough people sign up to bring the Memorial Blood Mobile. This bus was much smaller than the one they brought to the Anoka Stake Center when I was in charge of the drive, but it looks like they had a good sign up. I was first for the day as well.
The girl who was drawing blood first asked me what arm I wanted them to use, I told her, "The good one". I told her whatever one she thought was best. So she first had me sit on one chair and tested my left arm. I told her, "You only get one shot, so make it good." To which got a couple of people agreeing with me saying that's all they got too, and chuckling from the blood drawing people. Then she asked me my blood type, and when I told her it was O- the other blood drawing people told her she better not mess up, they needed it. She decided to try my other arm. So I moved chairs. She decided to stick with my right arm. She told me I have good veins, they are just deep, good to know I guess, if it ever came up. It wasn't so bad getting hooked up, similar to getting an IV when you go in to have a baby at the hospital. They gave me a pipe to hold and squeeze, which got me teased by the guy who donated in the chair across from me. "Is that real comforting?".
He and his wife came into the room to fill out questionnaires before boarding the bus and I KNEW right away they were from Utah by their accent. It was so fun to hear. Gina hasn't gotten the accent down right, so she can't give me my fill of it when I want to hear it. He was very talkative to everyone. His wife was done in 8 minutes 37 seconds, so he told his nurse they had to beat that time, making it a race. When she was checking his veins he asked her, "how do you like that one?" She said, "It's O.K." "O.K.!? That's an earthworm!" He exclaimed. Funny.

It came up in the conversations with the nurse lady that he and his wife had recently moved here from Utah, so he could go to school for an Hospital Administration degree at the U. I said, "I was wondering how long you'd been here! I can tell you are from Utah. I grew up in Sandy." And they said, "Sandy is where we are from!"

Small world :)

Monday Joel is going to some sort of job fair by the IRS, for government and military positions for accountants and financing. They said to bring about 25 resumes. Wish him luck!

Who Knew?

And if you did, why didn't you tell me?

I just learned last night that it is now common to only put one space after a . at the end of a sentence.

I learned to type 22 years ago on a typewriter, well, because computers were just barely making their way into homes, and we didn't have the Internet then. When I learned to type, I had to get into the habit of putting two spaces after a period, to begin the next sentence.
However, since I have been voted to be the new secretary for our neighborhood association, one of my new duties is to put together the neighborhood newsletter. The President of the association is apparently very into grammar, punctuation, page layouts and desktop publishing.

So after reading my latest article I have been preparing for the newsletter, she informed me that I overly use the word "neighborhood" and rewrote the paragraph for me, exchanging the word "neighborhood" for "park". In my article I used the word "neighborhood" three times. She has used the word "park" four times in her rewrite. I don't get it... but ok.

And then she informed me that it is no longer necessary to use two spaces after a period, and apparently this is something that bugs her to look at because she wanted me to change it in all of my articles.

"Also, I notice that you are leaving 2 spaces between sentences. That was an old practice back in the era of the typewriter with monospaced type, but for modern use on the computer with the advent of proportional fonts, and page layout, there should always only be 1 space after periods, before you start a new sentence. Sorry, but my years of experience doing page layout has made me rather picky and sensitive about certain issues. If you already have several things typed up, I would suggest doing a search & replace, changing all instances of 2 spaces to 1 space. It's quick and easy."

So, I apologize to any readers of my blogs if my double spacing after a period bugs you. If you don't like it, either ignore it, or find another blog to read because this chickie finds it hard to stop the spazmatic thumping of my thumb on the space bar after each period. Period.

P.S. I made "spazmatic" up, but it should be a real word. Chickie too. True story.

P.S.S. Anyone know if the spacing between paragraphs has changed?

P.S.S. OH MY GOSH! I guess Blogger already knew I had a spazzy thumb and completely went through my post and fixed my double spacing.... isn't that a form of censorship???? What if I WANT my double spaces? What if I DID THEM ON PURPOSE? I find it very offensive that they would fix it, without my permission or knowledge. rude.

Too Soon

Some of my long term readers, and my family know that one of my children is adopted. Two years ago her birth parents had another baby girl that they hid the pregnancy from us, then adopted the baby out to another family. This has been a very painful thing for me to deal with. I felt like my daughter deserved to have her sister be a part of her family. I felt like we should have had "dibs" on the baby, or at least have been asked. Instead it was decided FOR us that we couldn't afford more children and therefore the decision was made to adopt out the baby to someone else. At least this is the ridiculous reason given to us when we asked.
In the meantime I have tried really hard to forgive my sister-in-law. To me, this has been a horrible betrayal and still brings me enormous amounts of pain when I think about it. But I have not frozen her out, and have done what I can to keep a sense of normalcy in our relationship.
The adoptive family has kept in touch with my s-i-l. I've known this. I've also expected that someday they would initiate contact with us. I thought I had a few years before that would happen. However, last night we went to my in-laws for dinner, and as we left my s-i-l asked for my email. The other family had asked for it, wanting to exchange pictures and whatever with us.
I'm not ready for this. I still haven't finished dealing with the pain of rejection. I've stuffed it in a desk drawer for another day.
I don't feel the need to talk to these people. I don't feel the need to know what's going on with, or compare the girls with each other.
My daughter knows she has a sister, that her birth-mother chose not to let us adopt. She doesn't ask questions about her, like she asks about her adoption. I don't think that there is any benefit to us keeping in contact with these people. I know that the birth-mom is, and just assumed that she could be the one to keep track of them. But my husband doesn't agree. He thinks it should be our (read:my) job to do that because we are her parents (read: I am her mom).
I am really fighting this because it's too painful to think of talking to people that have a child I feel should have been ours. I don't want to do it. My husband thinks I should. I told him to do it, he said fine... but then I worry that if I let him take over it, he will go too far, and take us to places I don't want to go... like play dates, or visiting.
I've shed a lot of tears over this in the last 24 hours. My eyes are burning. My heart is aching. And I am feeling like I am being pushed into a corner I don't want to be in, therefore creating a "fight or flight" sensation in me.

Pictures to come later...

Jake's hogging my computer so I can't put any pictures up yet, but wanted to write about our trip to the State Capitol. Jacob and I started in the morning by picking up another scout who is working on his Citizenship in the Community badge. We went to a local church to meet up with a bus that took us and another neighborhood down to the Capitol. On the bus there was just Jake, me and our friend and then another family from our neighborhood. The other neighborhood had about 30-45 senior citizens. I heard that they have had three rent raises in the last year.
This is my report I gave the President of our Association:

On Friday March 6 there was a rally at the State Capitol for resident’s rights, that was sponsored by All Parks Alliance for Change.
We began the day by being picked up at the North Heights Lutheran Church parking lot by a bus and a van for overflow. The bus then picked up residents from another manufactured home park . The bus was nearly full when we reached the Capitol.
The first meeting was in an upstairs room where we received instruction on how to speak to legislators. Spokespeople from different groups were selected and taken to another area for more formal training. In the first group we also were taught a few rally chants, “Move roads, not homes!” and similar messages.
The second part of our day was a rally in the Rotunda. Here we heard from different leaders in communities who’d been chosen as our spokespeople and Kate Knuth as well. There were a lot of chants yelled and speakers to get the residents fired up to share their messages. At this point I estimated maybe 150 people from two different buses and several neighborhoods, both north and south of the Twin Cities, had showed up for this event, which is a great number considering it was a workday for most people. I heard conversations about people making sacrifices to make it to this meeting, such as taking the day off of work, despite their boss’ wishes.
After the short rally and speakers we divided into our groups and walked over to the office building to search for the different representatives and officials that we’d been assigned to share our messages with and asked them for their support on the issues.
The three topics addressed with them were:
1. The One for One Replacement Plan.
2. Alternative Dispute Resolution
3. Relocation Trust Fund
Then we met up for a meeting at Kate Knuth’s office. We were a little early, but she came soon and graciously invited us into her office where we were able to talk a bit with her about the issues we’d come to the Capitol to speak about. We all had a chance to introduce ourselves to her, and she also took this time to make us aware of a bill she was authoring for the cleanup of TCAAP and asked our opinion on the matter, which was very nice of her to do. We all appreciated the information and common respect she showed us in the matter.
We ended the day with a pizza lunch in the basement cafeteria provided by APAC, which was also much appreciated! We then took the bus provided by APAC back to our communities.

Change of Plans

Today I wanted to blog about these commercials for your gold, but then when I was about to start typing I heard my husband's computer playing a video and a little old lady's voice. I asked him what he was watching and he send me this link click here.
Oh my gosh, is she not the cutest little lady you ever did see?
These videos are treasures!
We've just started using some things from our food storage. I've bought a lot of the church's standard food storage stuff, but we haven't had much use for it before, and I haven't been very good about rotating it.
I went to a friend's house yesterday and had two cans of wheat ground up. This morning I made wheat pancakes:
2 C. Whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 C. milk
2 T. vegetable oil

Let it sit for a few minutes before you make pancakes. I dropped them 2T. at a time, to make small pancakes.
Most of my kids loved them! (The syrup could have helped with that.) I was really surprised and thought they'd give me a fight. Thank heaven's for small blessings :)
Anyway, so food storage, and also the Great Depression have been on our minds a lot lately, of course especially in light of the current economy problems and watching the Dow drop every day is not very encouraging.
So Clara's videos are really interesting to me, and I can't help but want to hug her and her grandson for making these videos, to not only share beautiful Clara with us, but also to share her memories and the knowledge she has from those times. She has some endearing and funny stories to share. I hope you enjoy her as much as I do.

Please, don't anything break down!

Ok, so we finally got our taxes back and are trying to get our selves situated for how ever long we can. Joel's unemployment deposits have started coming in. They deposit it directly to our checking account, which is nice. We were able to put down a years rent on our lot, and also pay a years rent for our storage locker (one of the perks of living in a mobile home is no storage space for all that food storage and such) and are looking at paying a year on our home and car insurance. I feel much better knowing the important things are taken care of and we'll figure out the rest as it comes. I just pray that nothing breaks down or needs repairs in the meantime!
Don't breathe too hard.

Since Joel was laid off I am on my third round with colds. It's crazy! I don't usually get so sick, but almost every week I've come down with another round of sore throat, stuffy nose, aches and pains. I guess stress really can affect the body and the immune system.

I have too much to get done to let it keep me down for long. Too bad the Dow doesn't feel the same way, hahaha. Ouch, it hurts when I laugh, or look at the Wall Street ticker.

Interesting tid-bit. I booked a wedding last week, for May. They had booked my friend photographer Dominique, but when they had to change their plans, she couldn't cover their wedding on their new date, so she referred them to me. Turns out the groom is cousins with a good friend from our old ward, and most likely nephew to her dad, who is in our new ward. Small world!

I am really looking forward to their wedding, it is in an awesomely colorful venue. The Loring Pasta Bar is where it's at. Amazing colors, and scenery, architecture and decor. It's a dream come true for me :) I'm going to have so much fun!