Archive for 2008

Luke: “Why does everything taste like grape?”

So Luke has the croup, or whooping cough, or something.  He’s got medicine for croup (Orapred) which is notoriously bad tasting.  He actually started out with a generic version of the drug that tasted much worse (so they say), and Luke wouldn’t have any more after the first taste.  He was quite adamant, using his tongue and teeth to keep us from putting anything in and took more desperate measures when we held his mouth open. 

Apparently the pharmacy can add flavoring to bad tasting medicines, and grape was the recommended cover-up flavor.  Luke likes grapes, so we took it.  It didn’t help.

Today Luke even refused unadulterated strawberry ice cream, presumably for fear that we’d tampered with it to trick him into taking his medicine.

So I went down and got the genuine article Orapred, in chewable tablet form, still flavored grape, that’s supposed to taste better.  I stuck the tablet in the middle of a piece of Mounds candy bar.  He ate it.  Yay!

Tonight he refused the same technique.  I distracted him as much as I could, and eventually he took it and put it in his mouth.  I thought he’d eaten it.  But several minutes later when I moved him from his place on the couch, I found chocolate mixed into the cushions and his PJs. *sigh*  I’ll have to come up with something else to stick the medicine into for tomorrow morning.

I can just hear Luke thinking tomorrow: "Why does everything suddenly taste like grape??!"

A Look Back at 2008 – It was the best of times, it was the ….well, you know..

With the first birthday of our first child in March Luke showed us that cake can be eaten with your toes and that balloons are way more fun than any more expensive toy we may have gotten him.  We have learned that parenthood is a mix of both teaching and learning. Luke has been such a joy and surprises us daily with how smart he is.

Attending Nathan’s wedding in California reminded us that true love comes to those who are patient and if we treasure it, can last forever.

With the discovery of a misaligned tub in our bathroom, a 15-year-old leak, and 60 square feet of mold we learned the luxury of privacy and having our own bathroom. Hooray for nice neighbors and deodorant!We also learned that nice new tile can result from suffering without that privacy and bathroom for a month and a half. 

As we visited the wild bushvelt of South Africa, we learned how wonderful it is to revisit places and people. It is amazing to experience another culture and the beauties of another land, even if it takes more than 24 hours of traveling with a small child on your lap…thank you Benadryl!

We found out we were having another child and felt truly blessed to be parents again especially to a little girl who will no doubt teach us lessons her brother has not (due Feb 23rd).  She had better learn how to wrestle and play with cars really quickly!

When Cheryl finally got her citizenship we were reminded of what patriotism should mean and how many people (including the Mackrory family) sacrificed to come to this great land.

As we attended Andrew Mackrory’s graduation ceremony we were impressed with both his persistence and smarts as none of us had any clue what his thesis was about except that it had something to do with fire.

When we (Cheryl for the first time) voted this year and saw great change in our country, we were reminded that we answer to a higher power and that all things will work together for His purposes.

We put our condo on the market and after 6 months decided we’d given it our best shot.  We learned that the people in the house matter more than the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. We also realized how much stuff we have and how little we need it all, however, we will keep most of it….just in case…

When we attend Sean’s wedding and celebrate our own anniversary of 5 years we will look back and realize that we have learned so much about one another and ourselves. It has been full of the events of life and we have weathered them all by leaning on each other.

As we visited with our friends and family, slept in your beds, used your bathrooms, and strengthened our ties, we learned most of all how much we need and appreciate each one of you. Thank you so much for being there when we needed you and for the light you bring to our lives. As we finish up this year and celebrate the miraculous birth of our Savior, our prayer is that each of us will look back with fondness on the memories of this year and be reminded of the blessings that came from both the celebrations and the trials.

“Gay marriage ban” reprisals

The vandalism and reprisals in California and across the nation against those who have voted to sustain the traditional form of marriage is hateful. Yes, it’s those calling Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hateful who are the hating ones. The “Mormons”, who make up only 2% of Californians, didn’t define marriage in California. The majority of the people voted to sustain the definition of marriage that thousands of generations have taken for granted for millenia. In the name of ‘tolerance’, these rioteers are showing great intolerance to those who value traditional marriage. Will these rioteers please take a step back, a deep breath, and ask themselves if they are practicing what they preach?

First Presidency Urges Respect, Civility in Public Discourse

Luke’s favorite songs

Recently I discovered lala.com, which is a really cheap way of listening to any of six million songs. Luke has his own account where we keep his music. Here’s his favorite.

The many “loves” of Luke

Due to popular demand, we have created a slide show of Luke’s latest and greatest shots.  The little girl in the pictures is his best friend, Makenzie who is a month younger.  She is all girl and he is all boy, so it’s fun to watch them interact.  Mak makes sure he is fed, and that he’s got toys to play with (she’s the woman taking care of the needs of her man) and he gives her hugs and occasionally roars like a dinosaur in her face – okay, so he’s a boy – the energy’s gotta go somewhere!  They are very sweet together.

Aside from playing with Mak he also has some other hobbies.  Mostly they involve either a slide, a plunger, or something with buttons, lights, or wheels.  He loves books very much and has finally kicked the habit of eating them – hooray!

Luke: primary and his crib

Our luck with Luke in nursery ended very quickly.  Within a couple weeks he was crying when we left him and I’ve spent most of nursery time with him lately.  We hope that improves soon.

On the positive side, we recently exchanged his crib rail with a shorter rail that has an opening where he can crawl in and out without our help.  Although he seemed to love the change and crawled into his crib the first night, it was scary the first night as we weren’t sure whether he’d wake up in the middle of the night, forget about the change and end up flipping head first over the shorter railing.  He did great though, in part due to my running in as fast as I could that first night when I heard him crying to help him notice the shorter rail.  Since then he has been an angel.  He almost always goes to bed willingly at his bed-time anyway, but now he occasionally comes to us in our bedroom in the middle of the night if he needs attention — very often without crying at all. It’s so exciting to have a son in our home that is feeling so grown up!

NEVER give away your email password

Do you realize that your email password is probably your most sensitive piece of information?  With your email address and password, I could manage to log into almost every web site you have an account on.  Even if you use different passwords on all those other sites.  I just have to click "I forgot my password" on those other sites, read your email for the ‘reset password’ link, and I’ve stolen your identity.  Even credit card and bank web sites often have this "easy" password recovery feature.  In fact since I have access to your email I could very likely discover most of the web sites you have membership on by searching through your email archives and get them all in just a few minutes.  Have I got you thinking twice about giving away your email password to some site that wants to download your address book yet?

Never, never, never give someone or another web site your email password!  It’s just about the worst thing you can do.  Facebook, LinkedIn, and other otherwise "reputable" sites love to ask you for your email address and password so they can offer you the convenience of spamming all your friends by looking up their email addresses from your email address book.  All they ask for is your email address and password.  Don’t give it to them.  Whether they are reputable sites or not, any person working at that company, in a moment of compromised integrity, could steal your password even long after the fact and rip off everything you own. 

Do you still want to use Facebook, LinkedIn, or these other social networking sites and have them spam your friends?  Fine (I hope I’m not in your address book!).  Most of these sites also offer an option for you to manually export your address book to a .csv file which you can then upload to these social networking sites yourself without giving away your password.  That’s definitely a safer option.

It’s less convenient than just typing in your password, true.  There are upcoming technologies that will help solve that and make it safe and convenient for you to share your address book.  But for now, do it the ‘hard’ way and save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run.

So protect your own identity by not sharing your password.  Give away all your friends’ privacy without asking them by giving away their email addresses to a social networking site that they may not want to join anyway.  But that’s an etiquette issue at least, rather than a hard-core security issue.

Global Warming

Check out what the National Center for Policy Analysis has to say about one of our society’s latest fads:

Synopsis

While the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide (CO2), has increased more than 30 percent over the last 150 years, scientists still debate the extent to which human activity is the cause of global warming. NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth’s current warming trend is still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause.

Read the rest at the NCPA web site: Global Warming

What REALLY was Satan’s plan?

The traditional LDS Sunday School version of Satan’s proposed alteration to Heavenly Father’s plan (henceforth referred to as Satan’s plan for brevity) tends to be that Satan wanted to force us all to be good.  This interpretation is not based in canonical scripture, and I believe actually contradicts scripture.  There is an interpretation that (to me anyway) seems to bring everything into agreement — both scripture and personal experience.

First let us review the basis for our understanding of Satan’s plan.  This quotation is from Moses 4:1,3-4 (emphasis added)

And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;

And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.

Not only does "Satan wanted to force us all to be good" not appear anywhere in scripture, it actually contradicts the above passage.  Satan said "I will redeem all mankind."  But if Satan was going to force us to be good, there would be no one to redeem because no one would have sinned.

For him to redeem all mankind, all mankind would have to sin.  What is more, nothing would be required of us to be redeemed or else Satan could make no guarantee that every person would qualify.  This is a deviation from Heavenly Father’s plan, which required His children to individually accept the atonement of the Savior while we are here on this Earth.  It seems then that Satan wanted to allow everyone to do anything we wanted and still be saved.

But the Lord explained that Satan sought to destroy the agency of man.  Doesn’t that mean he will take away our choices by forcing us to be good?  Let me explain this with an analogy.  Suppose you and I walked into a hat shop of red and blue hats.  You were allowed to choose between a red and a blue hat, but regardless of your choice, you only got to walk out with a blue hat.  No matter how many times you went back into the shop and asked for your choice of a red hat, you only walked out with a blue one.  Did you really have a choice in this scenario?  Sort of.  Did you have agency?  No.  For agency to mean anything, you need freedom to choose and have those choices actually take effect.  Satan sought to destroy the agency of man by ensuring that no matter what we chose on Earth, we would end up ‘walking out’ with Eternal life.  Maybe, if the idea of doing anything you want and getting Eternal Life sounds a little more enticing than you first thought Satan’s plan was, you can begin to understand why one third part of the host of heaven thought so too. 

We are here on Earth because we understood the wisdom in Heavenly Father’s plan and accepted it.  We knew that some would choose evil, and for that we were sorry, but we knew that agency (our freedom to choose our own destiny) was too important to sacrifice.

One interesting fallout of this understanding of Satan’s scheme is that Satan’s scheme hasn’t changed.  Now that Satan is thrust out of heaven, he is lying to us by telling us that his own ideas are the correct ones.  We see Satan’s thoughts, for example, in some of the beliefs of Evangelical Christians, who believe they are saved regardless of what they choose to do… which was Satan’s platform in the pre-Earth life.  Frivolous lawsuits from plaintiffs who do not want to accept the consequences for their own stupid actions grow progressively more ridiculous — another sign that Satan is convincing people that they should not be held responsible for what they choose.

Please help curb false doctrine by teaching straight out of Church publications (the ones with the Church logo prominently printed on the cover).  Keep the doctrine pure.  You won’t hear me preaching my interpretation of Satan’s plan in Sunday School until I can find a church publication to back it up — but I won’t be teaching that Satan wanted to force us all to be good either.  Until I can find a publication directly addressing this, you can bet I’ll be teaching about Satan and the war in heaven directly out of the scriptures to avoid throwing in any "extra bits" I may have picked up while growing up.

Luke’s first day in nursery

Tuesday Luke turns 18 months, so today was Luke’s long awaited first day in the nursery at church.  We’ve learned that when we leave him with babysitters that rather than try to sneak out when he’s distracted, the best thing to do is actually wave goodbye to him until he finally waves back.  That’s his way of coming to accept our departure, and he always agrees, although sometimes it takes a minute or two.

But today in primary we did not have to do even that.  I dropped him off and he took a few steps, just wondered at the many other children and stared.  He never turned around at all to see his mom and dad leave.  And two hours later a very happy toddler was returned to us.  Luke is truly a darling.  We anticipate many more easy drop-offs at nursery in the future.