Taking a Stand Against Abortion

I can't believe how long its been since I wrote a blog post! I've had a hard time thinking of anything to write and even when I do think of something, it doesn't seem important enough to sit down and type out.

Until now.

So during our country's recent election, I was curious about the reasons people liked the Democratic Party/President Obama. I personally identify most with the Republican Party because of a few key platform items and I wanted to see their point of view.

I had a very nice friend that told me she liked Obama because of 3 top reasons:
1. Universal Health Insurance
2. Pro-Gay Marriage
3. Pro-Choice/Pro-Abortion

When thinking about these reasons I wanted to do a bit of soul searching to determine where I personally stand on each issue. and when discussing how I feel about abortion, I really felt the desire to share my feelings with you.

My argument AGAINST Pro-Choice/Pro-Abortion

I'd always thought that I agreed with the LDS Church's stand that in the case of rape, incest, or life-threatening problems to the mother, an abortion was an option. When talking to the Hubs about when I would abort a baby, I had an eye-opening experience. I've determined that I COULD NOT live with myself knowing that I'd killed a human baby. I know everyone is different, but this is personally how I see it:
Incest- I don't understand how babies are affected in cases of incest. The whole situation sickens me but if they are able to be born without problems, I would have the baby and give it up for adoption. But that is one I don't understand so I can't talk about it much.
Rape- this is the most horrific thing I can image happening to a woman. Not only going through a traumatic experience such as rape, but finding you have conceived a child from it is beyond my comprehension. However, I would never want to add to my emotional distress by aborting the baby. You would know forever that you had killed that child. I think I could get through the following 9 months and give it up for adoption easier than finding forgiveness for myself for stopping the baby's life.
Health Problems-this one is sketchy. If there was absolutely 0% chance of my baby surviving whatever was effecting me, I would abort it so that I could get healthy and have other children. However, if there was any chance that we would be okay, I'd go for it. I figure that if I passed away, it must be my time to go.

I'd also like to touch on the phrase "pro-choice". Lets look at the "choices" that these people have:
1. The choice to have sex. If you don't have sex, you won't get pregnant. Pretty simple. Unless you're a little lady about 2,000 years ago named Mary....
2. The choice to use protection. Everyone should use birth control if they don't want a baby and still want to have sex. Although I would never do it, I'd even be okay with people taking the morning after pill if their contraceptive had broken or something.

If anyone is still thinking that abortion is okay (maybe not for themselves but an okay choice for others) I urge you to watch these next few movies about early term abortion and a partial-delivery abortion. I was particularly disturbed by the last movie with the doctor explaining a partial birth abortion, so keep a tissue handy.


Just explains a developing fetus. Good to watch if you don't understand how quickly a baby develops.

This man demonstrates an early-term abortion procedure.

This last one was the most difficult for me to watch. Especially when he was showing how the baby would be moving and everything. For those of you that are mothers and fathers, you might find this extra disturbing. This is what people call a "partial-birth abortion" and is performed when a baby is in the 2nd or 3rd trimester.

Now I know that many people are going to disagree with me. There are many statistics that show that when abortion rates go up, crime rates go down and etc. Let me ask you this: when do we use killing babies as a "fix" for the crime in our area? I don't think that lowering crime rates is justification of killing. The ends really don't justify the means.

Also, babies aren't convenient! They aren't convenient for 17 year old unwed teenagers and they aren't convenient for 29 year old stay-at-home moms! Being pregnant is hard and having a baby that relies 100% on you is even harder. But loving someone is never convenient or easy and that is what make it so beautiful. What are we teaching our youth when they have such an easy way out of their choices? Society is not made better when no one is made responsible for their actions. Abortion will not help that young person become better. It might just show them that there is a sneaky, backwards way out of every messy situation.

So this is me....taking a stand.

I'M AGAINST ABORTION. ARE YOU?

New Table for Our New House

Tonight Ryan walked into the kitchen just as I was finishing up this little project:

I saw a picture of a vintage looking flag in Martha Stewart Living (the magazine) and I really loved it so I decided I could make a dupe version out of linen and some acrylic paint. I think it looks really good!

However, I had a little surprise for Ryan. When he came into the kitchen I asked, "Can we get a new kitchen table when we move into our new house and I can have this table as my craft table? Cuz I kind of turned it into a permanent craft table today...."

See??

 

Oops!

I actually got a little bit off of the table, but we have these little "wood ridges" in the surface and I can't seem to scrub it all out. We now have an American flag painted into our kitchen table:) Ha ha!

 This is how our house is coming. We are getting pretty close and I'm so EXCITED!!! I've picked up our flooring and cabinets so we just need to get the trim finished and quickly paint so we can get them all put in and installed. After that it will be carpeting and light fixtures and then we'll be MOVING IN!!! Yay!

Every time I drive through Vernal I see this sign and I think of the saying "You get what you pay for...."



I always have to wonder what kind of person wants to risk taking online scuba lessons....

And that's the last thing on my mind today:)

Cooking Extraveganza!

Yesterday I got my Betty Crocker on.

There is a girl in my ward that just had a baby and I was asked if I would bring her dinner last night. I said yes. I love to bring people dinner.

We also have a neighbor that just had surgery yesterday, so I offered to bring them dinner tonight. Again, I love to bring people dinner.

Lastly, I have a friend that is in the hospital because she just barely had her little baby. I haven't offered to bring them dinner (yet...) but I did want to stop by with a little dessert. I had a friend do this while I was in the hospital and her cookies were absolutely fabulous! I think they were the reason that I only lost 4 ounces after birthing an 8 lb 6 oz baby....

Anyways.....I also love to bring people treats so this is right up my alley.

Sadly, I don't do all these dinners and treats because it is service. I don't even do it because I like to help people or because I know how nice it is to have someone bring you food when you aren't able to cook yourself.

These reasons are much too noble.

It is because of very vain and selfish reasons. I'm really hoping that someday, somewhere, someone will tell me I'm a good cook.

That's it....that's the only reason I cook. Because I'm fishing for attention and compliments:) I'm hoping that in this case, the end justifies the means. It's the thought that counts, right?

That is what I tell myself.


So on to my cooking adventures!

So I'm thinking that with 2 dinners and a dessert to make, I should just do them all at the same time. I made a chicken pot pie casserole for the dinners (because the one for today could be frozen till it was time to cook) and then I got ambitious and decided to make these S'more cupcakes for the desserts. Oh....and these cookies. And because Ryan and I had already had this chicken casserole early in the week, I decided to make these chicken enchiladas.

I've got the dinners all put together and I'm working on these cupcakes like my life depends on it. They were a little intense. The recipe also makes enough for 24 cupcakes but I only have 1 pan that holds 12, so I'd do half the batch up to a certain point, then pull them all out of the pan and do the rest of the batch. It really made things go much slower than I anticipated....

Then, at 5:00 I put my casserole in the oven and wait for it to cook the necessary 30 minutes.

30 minutes later, my casserole is not done! The bisquick top is not even set up a little bit and at this point it should be golden brown and crusty. I'm panicking. Dinner is suppose to be at their house at 5:30 and my casserole isn't working. I fire up the oven temperate and put it back in for 5 minutes.

Nothing.

5 MORE minutes....

Slightly more than nothing, but just barely.

10 MORE minutes.....

Barely showing signs that it is being cooked within an inch of its miserable life.

At this point, I had nothing left. I had to go. So I take it out of the oven, drive it over the lady and with these words, "Ya'll should probably just call Pizza Hut....." I hand her the casserole.

I don't think she'll be telling me what a good cook I am.....

So today I'm a little nervous making this second casserole. Hopefully it turns out better than yesterday!

Anyway....
The good part of my day was when I did this:

Boo-ya! NAILED IT!!!
What you are seeing is an all-day muffin job consisting of a graham cracker bottom crust, cake, chocolate glaze and a whipped meringue top that has been broiled in the oven till it resembles a golden marshmallow.

Watch out Betty C.....there's a new sheriff in town.

The the cookies and enchiladas were pretty spectacular too:)

So I have a question for all of you. Would anyone like to have a recipe swap party with me every so often? Maybe once a month or once every 2 months? My idea is that we could all get together for lunch and bring one dish that we had made with enough recipe cards for everyone to take one. That way we could eat, hang out, try the recipes and have the recipe to take home with us. WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK?

Tales to Tell

I haven't posted pictures of anything in a long time. Stratton keeps me pretty busy so I don't have a lot of time to blog and so I've got a lot to show you guys:)

Most importantly....Stratton! He is now 7 months old and turning into a holy terror. He's been army crawling around since about 6 months so nothing is safe.

Hey Mom! Whatcha doing???

Is that a camera?! I wanna see! Can I taste it?

Mine? Mine? Mine? Let me just lick it...

He also has been working on doing a real crawl with his belly off the floor. He takes a step or two and then gets too excited/impatient, drops to his belly, and scoots across the floor.

Last night he pulled himself up to a standing position so I'm thinking he might just skip regular crawling and go right to walking.

We have already introduced a sippy cup because he was so interested in our water. He absolutely loves water in a sippy. We only had to show him once how to use it:)

Ryan let him try his orange soda.

He also crawls over things and, in this case, on top of things. He wanted something sitting on top of those storage boxes in the left of the picture, so he just crawled onto this hiking backpack to get it:)

A few last things about Stratton without the pictures:

• He went swimming for the first time on Saturday! He seemed to really love it. Except when Ryan tried dunking him. Then he seemed a bit put out by everything. We tried taking a camera but the batteries were dead....
• He is happy ALL THE TIME. It is pretty cool that he just seems really pleased with life.
• He has had all of his shots up unto this point so we don't have to do any more until he is 12 months! Woot!
• He has 2 teeth that have broken through and are coming up on the bottom. Ryan swears he can see the top ones coming in, but I'm hoping that's his imagination. If he gets a lot of teeth in I think our breastfeeding days will be over.
• He is obsessed with my hair. Mostly he just wants to pull it. There have been days that we've done battle because I won't let him pull all my hair out.
• He loves his Aunt Katie and his cousins Michael, Brandon, Roman and Karlee. Katie babysits him a lot so he is really comfortable with her. His cousins are also very entertaining so he loves that. He has other cousins, but the younger ones don't hold as much interest for him and he doesn't know the ones that live far away that well.
• He is, as usual, pretty big for his age. At his 6 month appointment the nurse told us he was 19 lbs and 25 inches. His weight sounded correct to me, but the height would have put him in the 25% percentile for his range and that didn't seem right. He didn't seem short and fat to me, so I went home and measured myself. The nurse had missed 3.5 inches! He is almost 29 inches long, so he is going to show a shocking growth spurt at his 9 month appointment:)
• He is terrible at sleeping. I know that this is because I've given him bad habits and I don't stick to a sleeping schedule. He use to be good, but then he got sick. He wanted to be nursed at night and I felt sorry for him, so I would. BAD IDEA! We have been trying to break him of this habit for the last couple nights and it is pretty rough. I think we are getting there though. Anyway...that is just at night. He isn't a very good sleeper during the day either. I try to watch for his "sleepy signs" and put him to bed before he is exhausted, but I don't think its working. He screams for a long time before he will take a nap and then if I am lucky I will get 45 min-1hour out of him. Usually less though. It's bad. I'm currently reading this book 'Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child' and it seems really good, but I wish someone had like a condensed version of it. The book looks like it's about 1200 pages and I'm just not sure I'm ever going to get through it.

I think that is everything happening with Stratton. Now on the the rest of the family!

Ryan and I went skiing for our 2 year anniversary. I'm a much better skier than snowboarder. It was my first time and I only fell down a couple times. However, one was pretty huge and hilarious. I'd decided to let Ryan take a difficult trail and I'd just make my way down the easy trail as usual. Well at one point there are 2 arrows on this easy trail. One says, "Easy" and the other says "Easier" pointing you down 2 different parts of the trail. I'd been going down the "Easier" way the entire day, but decided I was ready for the "Easy" trail (ha ha! I'm so bad-a!)

Things were going great until I got to the hill. For some reason, they had this double-black diamond hill in the middle of my easy trail! I'm snowplowing and going back and forth (I'm talented so I can do them both at the same time...ha ha!) and suddenly, I fall. Even though I was employing all my 'slowing down' skills, I still ate it pretty hard. Hard enough I lost one of my skis. Trudging back up the hill to the initial crash site, I locate my ski. I'm thinking to myself, "Just put it down on an angle to the hill, clip in, and get your butt out of the middle of the trail!"

Sounds easy, right?

Wrong.

It was like IMPOSSIBLE to get clipped in while standing in the snow on a hill! After trying for what seemed like 3/4 of my life, I gave up, picked up the ski and what was left of my dignity and half walked/skied to the side of the trail where I continued to try and put on my ski.

Not a pretty sight people.

But I sure did enjoy myself:)

Ryan and I got started on our house! This is just the footers for the foundation. At this point we actually have the entire foundation done, the electric box hooked up, dirt has been brough in to back-fill and the lumber arrived yesterday! Ryan and his guys will begin framing tomorrow and then things are just going to fly! I'm so excited!

Sorry about this sideways picture. I was too lazy to switch it and then re-upload it. This is the boys at jeep safari. Its a bit blurry, but those are both little faux-hawks in their hair with red hair dye down the middle. They looked pretty awesome:)

This is Ryan's jeep on an obstacle. This year I went out for the first 2 days with Stratton and then stayed home for the last day. Stratton really loved the rocking motion of the jeep on the obstacles. He definitely took better naps while we were out rock crawiling than he does at home!

And that is pretty much it! Thanks for reading my long catch-up post!

At Least I Tried

I've lost all of my baby weight and to celebrate I decided that I would take a little trip over the mountain and buy myself a new outfit in Provo. I had this master plan to get to the city pretty early, shop my way through the mall, grab desperately needed supplies from the hair stores, and then run up to see my neighbor and her newly born twin babies at the IHC in Murray.

It was such a good plan! I even had this little list of the specific clothing items I wanted for my new outfit. I really had high expectations in my head.

So we get to the mall and Stratton and I run into the food court and grab something to eat. He eats, I eat, we are all happy:)

We then start around the mall looking for these clothing items: mint green colored skinny jeans, white and navy blue striped shirt, colorful boyfriend cardigan, and a long necklace. Do you think I can find them? No. Very depressing. And everything that I look at seems to be a throwback to the ugliest part of the 80s. All the shirts were short, fat, and boxy. They even look terrible on the models and let me tell ya people....that is a HUGE red-flag. If a 103 lb model can't make that shirt look good, what chance do you think you have? Just sayin....

About one store into our mall expedition, Stratton starts to whine. Then he really starts to complain. By the time we are done with our first store, he is pretty much to full-on meltdown. This significantly shortens our shopping experience. I tell myself, "You haven't bought yourself anything so how about you skip on down to the MAC counter in Nordstrom's and by yourself that StudioFix pressed powder you've been missing for the past 1.5 years. It'll make your shopping trip worth it:)"

So I do. Except I don't. Nordstrom's is no longer in the Orem Mall. It pretty much crushed my little spirit.

But at least I tried:)

On to better things:
While there I ran to see my neighbors little babies! They are so tiny! She delivered them at 33 weeks so they will be in the NICU for quite awhile, but they are doing really well. They were fraternal twin girls. One weighed around 3 lbs 12 oz and the other was 4 lbs 1 oz. Can you believe that? Both of her little babies didn't even weigh as much as Stratton! Just seeing them so little and adorable made me want to cry. How amazing is it that we have the technology to save them when they are that young and small?! We are just so blessed:)

Definition of Insanity

 My car's dashboard is a magnet for junk. Everything gets thrown up there from mail to jewelry. This causes a problem when cornering. Everytime I speed around a little corner I'm trying to catch something. I then return it to it's proper spot on the dashboard and continue on with my journey. Ryan tells me that this is the definition of insanity. He says that I "keep doing the same thing, over and over, expecting different results."

I thought I was just being too lazy to clean my car.....

So I think about this 'definition' all the time. There is a girl at the gym that needs to hear these little words of wisdom.

I think she is paying $40 a month to read magazines. I don't know why I care, but it absolutely drives me crazy! She comes into the gym at about the same time that I do each morning. She fills up her water bottle, grabs a magazine and then heads for the awkward looking stair stepper thing. From there she BARELY moves on the stair stepper while DEVOURING her magazine. She also keeps her jaw completely slack so she looks pretty funny. I know I shouldn't make fun of people, but if you saw her as a cartoon drawing, you would also think it was hilarious.

only I think my drawing might have more life in her expression. This girl looks like the Scarlett Pimpernel when he sneaks the prince out of the tower....


Okay...that might be a little too far. She is somewhere inbetween. Seriously.

Enough making fun of her slack-jaw reading face. Back to my point.

Anyway....I've been going to the gym 5 times a week  for the past month. I feel like I've made noticeable changes with my body. I don't know how long this girl had been coming before I started, but she also has been in quite a bit, and I can't tell that she has changed in the least.

Wouldn't you get frustrated and stop coming? Or maybe try something new?

By golly, If I am going to go to the gym, I want RESULTS!

Last thing:
If anyone wants a good laugh in the morning, come on down to the gym. I'm determined to do a pull up and this morning you could have watched me hanging from the pull up bar while I DESPERATELY tried to get my puny weakling arms to pull me up.

I looked kind of like this but without the door frame. It was awesome:)

This is NOT a happy post (and it's political) but it gets better......

We just finished our taxes.

And now you know why this is not a happy post.

I'm not super savvy on all this taxing stuff so maybe someone can explain these things to me:
1-We are technically in the 15% tax bracket. How do they end up with 30% of our total income?
2-We made a lot less money this past year and we had a baby, so why are we getting a smaller return?
3-Ryan got a dividend (income) from his company that when entered into the tax software took a HUGE chunk out of our return. Then when entering in the money that we paid toward interest on our mortgage, this supposed "write-off" did not make us get anything more back.
4-They want you to declare any money that you have in off shore accounts. After items 1-3 happened I would NOT be declaring any money I had off shore. Now I'm looking into acquiring an off-shore bank account. Thank you Turbo Tax for the wonderful idea.
5-Ryan has an employee that is Native American. He doesn't have to pay anything in taxes, social security, FICA, etc., etc.. His Gross pay check is the exact same as his Net pay. He also files federal and state taxes. He just told Ryan on Monday that he will be getting back $7000 from a system that he doesn't even have to pay into.

I'M SO MAD RIGHT NOW!!

Between business taxes and personal taxes I'm starting to believe that the government really wants to see our family on unemployement.

Why can't everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) just pay the same percentage of their income and just forget about all these deductions, write-offs, and refunds?

It seems to be working for the Church just fine.....

Sorry about this awesome post. I know these money things are always a little awkward to read (at least for me) but I was just so mad that I needed to tell someone.

Whew. Deep breaths. On to more excited news!

I'm totally kicking butt in our little "get back into shape" competition being held between Ryan and myself. Three weeks ago my goals were this:
1-be able to run for 30 minutes without stopping
2-weigh 140 lbs.

I've now decided to add a few things:
3-compete in the "Diva Dash" in Boulder, Colorado with the fabulous ladies in my family!
4-run my way through a pair of running shoes
5-finish the Neola 4th of July 1/2 marathon
6-I also want to run a mile a lot faster than I do right now

When I first started running at the gym it was the most pitiful thing ever! I was BARELY able to jog for a full three minutes. I thought I might throw up at the end. Yesterday, I ran the full 30 minutes and finished it with a minute of sprinting before cooling down! I've never been a runner but I understand how it could get addicting.
I've also listed that we are doing the "Diva Dash" this summer. It is an obstacle course and the best time wins. I'm under no illusion that I will win, but I do want to be able to finish every obstacle so I'm working on getting actual muscles. Pull-ups baby!

And that is pretty much all that is going on with me. Stratton is still awesome. He is rolling over each direction now and is starting to rotate around. I'm thinking he will start to crawl soon! We are trying to start him on some rice cereal because he doesn't stay full very long on just milk. I'm hoping it will help him stay asleep a little bit longer at night. Lastly I think he is almost done with all his physical therapy. He is looking both directions now and seems to use both sides of his body equally well so hopefully we won't have to do it anymore! Yay!

And I'm feeling a bit cooled down from my political rant earlier. Ahhh....thank you internet.