The internet

Today I'm thankful for the internet. There are many good things about it that I'm grateful for. For example: research and pictures for homework projects, looking for options of an item I want to buy, Overstock and Ebay (they speak for themselves), I have found the coolest stuff for weddings and things on websites, ideas and how-to's for home projects, dictionary.com, music, Amazon.com (it deserves to me named), instant messaging and email. The list could go on and on and on.... However today I am a little more grateful that I don't have to take my children shopping with me all of the time plus I get the joy of packages coming to my door. After just an hour or so in the car today with them I began to think I'm nuts about my plans of driving all over the west this month. With Christmas coming this is also a huge blessing. I probably did 3/4 of our Christmas shopping last year over the internet and I loved it. I could search for the best prices and I don't have to worry about hiding so much stuff. Everything comes covered up in a big brown box and it makes my life easier. So thank you for to those who created this wonderful tool for us. I'll leave comments about the computer itself for another day.
More tomorrow...

The election and other things

In the last few days of October I thought of the idea to write something I was thankful for every day of November....and I'm already behind. However I couldn't pass it by today. I'm very grateful to live in this wonderful country. The results yesterday with Obama winning the election and Democrats now having the majority of the house and the senate make me very worried about the future. With being a conservative Republican in a very liberal state I have seen some of the things that they think are important and how it can mess with the productivity of a unit of society. I am hopeful that they will accomplish good things but time will tell. But my thoughts turn to the blessing to live here in America. We have so many choices that others in the world don't have. We can decide how to raise and teach our children, how to worship in the religion of our choice, where to go and whom we can associate with. Every day we have choices that so many people in the world can't make. There is evil in the world and some live in fear daily. There are families who can not feed their children. There are many who grow up without parents. The things we have here are to numerous to count or list. My heart swells with gratitude to my Heavenly Father for giving us this great land to prosper in. I am grateful to know that we are promised this country will not fail. We will become a more and more peculiar people with our beliefs but we can not be punished for them. The perfect example of that fact is Prop 8. I am so thankful that proposition passed. The snowball effect it would have is scary to think about. As I made phone calls and talked to people about it I was thankful that I could make my voice heard. It was very scary for me. We heard more then once that putting a sign up in our yard made us a target for vandalism. I'm sincerely thankful those things didn't happen here in our little community. We have voice and we have a constitution the means it will never be silenced. Lastly I am grateful for the strength my sweet Emily has had in this process. In her history class she would be the only one who was siding with McCain and she never wavered. She debated the entire class on her own and the teacher told me how much she amazed him. She is so strong and brave and has more guts then I do. She stood her ground on Prop 8 also. I worry about my children growing up in this age of immorality and filth. But I take great comfort in the fact that she is strong and I believe the others will be also. Her willingness to follow the correct path amazes me and I know she was sent here now because she has the will to fight against evil.

I think if I can accomplish this idea of writing something I am grateful for every day I'll shed many more tears then normal. Since I rarely cry that's pretty easy to do I guess.

Hopefully there will be more tomorrow.

The Corn Maze

Friday we went on our annual corn maze adventure. We thought it would be packed with it being Halloween day but we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We actually did the longer one this year which was 2.9 miles...plus the distance when we got lost around checkpoint number five. James said at the end he's glad I have such a good sense of direction or we never would have gotten out of there. Although since I'm the navigator and got us lost in the first place what does that tell ya? The last half is always "I'm thirsty" and "How much longer?" But it was still alot of fun. The best part was the discovery of the tricycles. Dad only won the race due to his cheating a bit and the children thought it was great to see mom and dad try to ride them. How embarrassing...