Anniversary!

Today is Matt's and my 16th anniversary! Happy anniversary, sweetie!

I can honestly say that marrying my husband was the best thing I've ever done. I'm a better person because I'm with him than I could have been without him. It hasn't been perfect, and there were a few rocky years, especially in the beginning, but I wouldn't change anything. Even the difficult stuff made us closer and stronger.

I hear other women complain about the men in their lives, and I certainly know that some men can't be trusted or depended upon. And some men leave human destruction in the wake of all they do...things that their daughters and sons will be paying for for generations. I see it, hear it, know that it's out there, but it's very far from my experience. There's nobody in the world I trust more or enjoy more than my husband.

I do a lot of premarital and marital counseling, and one thing I tell my couples is that marriage can be everything you're dreaming of right now. It can be that ideal of friendship, support and passion that we all go into it hoping for. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen on its own, but it can happen. And it gets better every year.

And, it's not even 1:00 and it's already been a great day. Life is so good.

I love you, sweetie.

Would You Rather...

The youth group at my church has a book that's full of "Would You Rather" questions. Some of them are kind of goofy, but some are pretty thought-provoking. So, here's today's question:

Would you rather be rich or famous?

This seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, what's fame for, if it's not to ensure wealth? What's the point of being a famous poor person?

So, obviously, I would rather be rich, if those were my choices. If I were rich, then I could quit my jobs and Matt and I could work on our books (which are terribly hard to complete when have to keep leaving the computer to go to work...) and then we could get famous that way.

But we don't particularly want to be famous, anyway. We mostly just want to be left alone. I don't really need to be rich, either--all I want is to have enough with some occasional extras: a night out, a vacation, a book or CD bought on the spur of the moment...

So, what do y'all think? Would you rather be rich or famous?

Is This a Joke?

When my sweetie woke me up this morning with the ominous words, "There have been some overnight developments," I had no idea. He said, "President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

I kind of snorted and said, "Yeah, right."

He said, "That was my first reaction, too. I read it on Yahoo, and I had to check the header to make sure I hadn't accidentally gone to The Onion."

I was still kind of sleepy, so I said, "It's not true. Someone has made a mistake or something."

He said, "No, it's true," and he turned on NPR. Steve Inskeeep was in the middle of saying, "...this prize will be controversial to many who do not feel his accomplishments have merited it..."

I was awake then. "For what?" I sorta shrieked. "What has he actually done?"

"Apparently," said my sweetie, "it's for bringing hope to the world and promising to work with other nations. They actually decided it just a couple of weeks after he took office."

"So he gets the Nobel Peace Prize for running for president?" I snapped (as though it were sweetie's fault--he gets to take a lot of my irritation with public figures). "He gets a Nobel Peace Prize for campaign promises?"

Sweetie nodded glumly. "I feel like I've fallen into Wonderland."

He's not the only one. This article, from the Times, says pretty much the same thing. The headline reads: Absurd Decision on Obama Makes a Mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ya think?



The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.




I can only hope that the president will be embarrassed by this. If he has any class, and integrity, he will decline this award and express his intention to earn it at a later date. I don't have any confidence that he will do that, though, especially after reading this from ABC News:



The president will travel to Oslo in December to accept the prize in person, the White House confirmed.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who woke the president to tell him the news, said Obama was "humbled."

White House press aides said they had heard from news reports weeks ago that the president was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize but they do not believe Obama himself knew of his nomination. The deadline for nominations is Feb. 1, meaning the president was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.



Has everything lost meaning? The Committee guy told Diane Sawyer today:



"President Obama has changed very dramatically international politics," Lundestad told "GMA's" Diane Sawyer today. "We feel he has emphasized multilateral diplomacy, he has addressed international institutions, dialogue negotiations. He has inspired the world with his vision of a world without nuclear arms. He has changed the U.S. policy dramatically. There's a whole list."



So, he's getting a Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush. Wow, I'm not George Bush, either, do I get one next?

More of our Vacation: Days 2 & 3

On the second day of our vacation (which was a month ago now!) we did two major things: the St. Louis Cathedral and the St. Louis Zoo. The cathedral is the reason that we went to St. Louis instead of some other place like Branson or something. Matt's book is sort of set in St. Louis, or at least a based-on-St. Louis location, so we had to go to the basilica (this is also why much of our vacation is tax-deductible). The most important part of that trip was seeing the mosaics in this cathedral. They are simply amazing.

This is the world's largest collection of mosaics, designed by 20 different artists, covering 83000 square feet, including about 41.5 million individual pieces (called tesserae), 7000 colors (I didn't know there WERE 7000 colors). It took 76 years to complete.

If you go to the link above, you can take a virtual tour of the cathedral and see many of the mosaics. Even the children were enthralled, and we actually had to go back another day to see things we didn't get the first time. I think you could spend months in there and not absorb all the detail.

Then we went to the St. Louis Zoo. The St. Louis Zoo is free, and you can have a completely wonderful time and not spend any money there. We, however, at at the cafe, and then we bought passes to the extra things that do cost some money. It was worth it--the passes got us into the Children's Zoo, the train, the carousel, the Sea Lion show, and the 3-D dinosaur exhibit. All of which we did, sometimes more than once (we were hot and tired enough at the end that we rode the train through a couple of times before we got off at our stop).

It was the only really hot day of our trip, but even then it wasn't really hot. Not the usual Missouri-in-August hot that it could have been. It was nice to see the Sea Lions, because they splash cool water on you. I think that was David's favorite part; all day he was, "Can we go see the Sea Lions? Can we go see the Sea Lions? When are we going to see the Sea Lions?" It was pretty cute. I think my favorite part was the carousel and the train--yay for sitting down!

The kids were extremely good and amazingly non-whiney that day. Actually, they were very good and non-whiney for most of the trip. It was nice.

The next day, Monday, we stayed at our condo. We sat through a time-share presentation so that we could get tickets for a free dinner at the Tiger Rescue place--not a problem, since we KNOW we have no money to buy a time-share. Matt and I tried to get some writing done, but then I had a migraine and Matt took the kids out to the town of Farmington, went to WalMart and wasted time so I could lie down. When they came back, I took them to the condo pool for a while. We didn't go anywhere; it was really relaxing and nice. We ate in the condo, and didn't spend much money at all.

9/11

It's hard even to know how to remember this day. We didn't do anything formal here, no community services or anything, but we did talk about it. The kids don't remember--David wasn't even born and the girls were 3 and 4. Matt and I read this earlier this evening, though, and I thought it was worth thinking about:

"... the only reason 'a box-cutter can bring down a tower' is because on September 11 our defenses against such a threat were exclusively the province of the state. If nineteen punks with box-cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they'd have been beaten to a pulp. The airline cabin, however, is the most advanced model of the modern social-democratic state, the sky-high version of the wildest dreams of big government; it's Massachusetts in cloud-cuckoo land. So on September 11 on those first three flights the cabin crews followed all those Federal Aviation Administration guidelines from the seventies.

By the time the fourth plane got into trouble, the passengers knew the government wasn't up there with them. And, within ninety minutes of the first flight hitting the tower, the heroes of Flight 93 had figured out what was going on and came up with a way to stop it...On the fourth plane, they didn't follow the seventies hijack rituals. On Flight 93, they used their cell phones, discovered that FAA regulations weren't going to save them, and then acted as free men, rising up against the terrorists and, at the cost of their own lives, preventing that flight from carrying on to its target in Washington. On a morning when big government failed, the only good news came from private individuals.

For thirty years, passengers surrendered more and more rights for the illusion of security, and, as a result, thousands died. On the fourth plane, Todd Beamer and others reclaimed those rights and demonstrated that they could exercise them more efficiently than government. The Cult of Regulation failed, but the great American virtues of self-reliance and innovation saved the lives of thousands: 'Let's roll!' as Mr. Beamer told his fellow passengers.


That's been my basic rule of thumb since September 11: anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror, but for the national character in a more general sense."

--Mark Steyn, America Alone



I hope it never happens again, but fear it will. The state, federal, and volunteer emergency management people assume it will; it's just a matter of time. God have mercy on us, and God bless the USA.

Thought for Sunday

One should never despair too soon.

--Frederick the Great

My Sweetie's Birthday!

My sweetie's birthday was on Thursday, the 3rd. Actually, it probably wasn't the world's best birthday--though he always says, "This was the best birthday ever!"

I made him breakfast Thursday morning (which most of you know I never do--he usually makes it for me, actually). Then before he had to go into work, we went for an early lunch at Taco Bell, brought our tacos home, and watched an episode of The Office on the computer (The Golden Ticket!).

Then he had to go to work...and Thursday is his longest day of the week. So, he left before noon and didn't get back until after 10 (long past his bedtime). But I let the kids stay up and wait for him, and we gave him his presents. He got some clothes, a book, and his big present--the new DVD/VCR...with a working remote!

So, for two days, he's been playing with the remote...fast-forwarding things and frame-by-framing things just for fun. He watched a bunch of episodes that we couldn't watch before when the old remote didn't work--it's been like having a whole new DVD collection.

Anyway, I coooked dinner last night (Friday, because he wasn't home Thursday). I made Philly Cheese Steak pizza--it was really yummy, if I do say so. I stole the recipe out of a magazine at the doctor's office when we went to see if AJ's hand was broken (it's not). Sabra made him a cake, and David took him to the Mt. Vernon football game.

I guess it wasn't so bad, for a grown-up birthday.

Anyway, Mom and Dad, I just want to thank you for raising him to be so great. He's the best; I love him so much.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie! I love you!