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“A Ray of Hope and Sunshine”
Photograph by Peter Johnson

Isaac practicing the song “Climbing”

Fun with dry ice

Fireman Isaac

Celebrate America program at school

Wow. I have not been taking time lately to write down the events happening in our home. My children might not remember this last couple of months of their life and may need therapy in the future because their mom did not record this part of our family history.

Isaac – Reading. Reading. Reading! Isaac has had fun calling Grandma Gardner and reading his school books to her over the phone. He will be starting basketball in December and is excited because I let him buy a tank top just for practice.

Here is a knock-knock joke he told me this morning:

Isaac: Knock Knock
Mom: Who’s there
Isaac: frog
Mom: frog who?
Isaac: green frog – ha ha ha ha mom – did you expect me to say that?
Mom: No, Isaac, you got me pretty good

Sydney – She has been taking tennis lessons for a couple of months now and actually enjoys it. Being the least experienced in the class has not deterred her and she is doing well and making progress though she is not necessarily a natural at it. I’ll have to take my camera to the next tennis lesson.

Sydney has been reading the Harry Potter books and is now on number three. She can’t put them down and has been recording several of the spells that the students learn about at Hogwarts. سباق الحصان I’ll have to join her and start reading them myself.

Liz – I’ve mostly kept myself out of trouble. Well, mostly. I’ve had fun cleaning out a couple of closets and the garage via a yard sale; I almost feel like a new woman. Most of my time the last month or so has been spent researching home schooling (yes, we are starting this next Friday) and looking over various books and curricula (and keeping up on politics and sending letters to my elected representatives about a gazillion issues). Being a homeschool mom is going to be interesting to say the least. Just so you know, I have had enough negative comments about this and do not want to hear any more so keep em’ to yourself 🙂 This is truly about giving our kids a better education than what is being provided in public school and I do not think we need to worry about the whole socialization issue that most people bring up – to me that is a non-issue because my kids are involved with other children and adults outside of school. I will share later about the classical method of education that I will be using to teach my children – I am very excited about it. Adventures in Homeschool to be continued…

Peter – He has been busy starting a class required for all majors in the Air Force. I think the acronym for the course if AFPC but I might be wrong; I can’t keep track of all of them… He just took the first test out of seven the other day and scored a 90%. He will be promoting to major in the next couple of months.

We have enjoyed having Peter home for a few weeks since he has not had any trips for a while. Peter had fun with the kids by putting dry ice in some kool-aid and is getting ready to help Sydney built some sort of electro-magnet motor to do a conductivity science project.

To see pictures from my trip to Washington DC click here.

Wow. Can I just say that I am a bit freaked out by current trends in government spending, government intrusion and the current/former self-avowed COMMUNISTS who are advising our President (and all he would ever do in debates when asked about HIS youthful Marxist ideals was chuckle a bit and avoid answering)?

• Government Bailouts of financial institutions and businesses followed by government seizure and takeover (Does the former USSR come to mind?)
• STIMULUS $$$
• Cash for Clunkers
• Cash for Appliances
• Socialized Health Care
• Cap and Trade
• Spending, spending, spending, spending, spending… Money that we DON’T have!!!
• The new “Diversity” guy for the FCC – Does the First Amendment come to mind? Anyone?
• Ordinary citizens being labeled as “racist,” “gun-toting terrorists,” “GOP puppets. ”
• President Obama has now declared we should have a civilian defence agency to protect us inside our USA borders that he says should be as highly trained and funded as our military. The KGB? Besides, don’t we already have civilian defence – like our police force, etc?

I guess I should order my own copy of the Communist Manifesto so I can be better appraised as to what our future looks like. Sorry kids if your future kind of sucks.

Here are some of my solutions to the previous problems:

• Freeze government spending
• Complete Tax reform – complete wipe out of the current system replacing it with the FairTax (go to FairTax.org for info)
• Clearly the current president is NOT supporting our ideals and freedoms and has abusively spent our money. He should be impeached. I mean, it’s not really fair that Madoff should be jailed for his Ponzi scheme and the president should get away scott free.
• Make all elected politicians read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence EVERY DAY. (And study the words of the founding fathers who wrote these documents (at least once a year – more often if necessary).
• Get out of the United Nations
• Promote personal responsibility (really, I think this would be the hardest to do)

Sorry folks, but I am not running for President in 2012…

And I’m sorry if this all seems really out of character for me but I just had to put it down on paper so to speak. I am no republican (sorry dad) but I am clearly a capitalist and conservative. And in all fairness I was almost equally opposed to the Bush administration – not protecting our borders, increasing federal government, federal government directing local education, and increasing our federal debt into the trillions of dollars.

Just an aside – our total deficit is somewhere around 11 trillion dollars right now. Add to that social security and medicare benefits and it all totals to something like $120 trillion. We are talking about numbers that the human mind cannot not even conceive!

1 million seconds = 11 1/2 days
1 billion seconds = 32 years
1 trillion seconds = 31,700 YEARS!!!

Our federal government is grabbing power that they DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO HAVE!!! When our founding fathers created the constitution they had in mind a republic that would be governed at the state level about 95% of the time during peace.

That’s all. Well, I might be back with another tantrum later…

Sydney: Mom, do you ever get that feeling that you don’t want to do something even though you have to do it?

Mom: (stunned silence followed by a sigh of resignation and a consortium of thoughts revolving in my mind…) Yes, Sydney, I do get that feeling sometimes. (Daily – hourly sometimes – and admittedly, mostly involving the rearing of children).