Summer Doom

It is one of my most dreaded times of the year. We have reached that horrible mark of the impending doom of summer. Today was the first day of 100 degrees. I know many Tucsonans love the summers here but they are just too hot for me. I love our mild winters but the summer heat just makes me want to die. I guess it's time to suck it up and deal though because summer is here!

Scary Faces

Ben Stein's Last Column

I know this is a lengthy article but EVERYONE should read it. Ben makes very good points and he is so spot on with what he says. I have never been a fan of all the Hollywood hype. I never understood why people cared so much about what went on in the lives of celebrities. I certainly never understood either how many stars are placed on pedestals by those "beneath" them. I find it sad that too often the people who really make a difference get overlooked. Who cares which celebrity is wearing what or what club they were in last night. I don't care who they vote for in politics and I certainly get angry when I feel like a person votes for someone just because a celebrity supports them. Anyway, you can probably tell that I don't care for all that. They are just people living their lives who happen to makes loads of money. Who cares? I don't! I just REALLY like what he has to say and I hope many others share his same views. (Hope you don't mind that I stole this from your blog Sharron. Just had to pass it on.)

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

Sweet Skills!

This post if for you Davey and Jenn. I know it's kind of mean to post something that was kind of an inside joke. I couldn't resist though. That was such a crack up sitting at the table with just you and Jenn. Ha Ha! Napoleon Dynamite is awesome!!! I have never met anyone who cuts banana bread as beautifully as my sister. I guess everyone is blessed with talents! :) Those are some MAD candle blowing skills! I love ya guys. You sure make life more entertaining.

Easter Dinner

We got to have Easter dinner at my brother's house this year. I love getting together with family and there just being tons of people around. I am so glad too that my bro and his family live in Tucson now. It is so awesome that we get to spend more time with them and be with them for the holidays. I have loved spending time with them and getting to know my nieces and nephews better. It was just a nice, relaxed Sunday and the food was great. I am so grateful to be surrounded by family. I really am blessed to have such a wonderful family. I know I am blessed to get along with all my family members and I am so grateful that as we have all grown older we have come to see how great each one of us is. I love my family and I thank my Heavenly Father for blessing me so much. As you can see, Kella was a HUGE fan of the punch her dad made. It was some good stuff.

Happy Birthday Garry!

I adore my cousin-in-law Garry. He is such an awesome guy and he sure brings me tons of laughs with his stories and reenactments (especially with that British accent). I hope the little celebration for him was a nice, pleasant surprise. I just wanted to wish him a happy birthday and tell him how glad I am that he is a part of this family.

YOU'RE AWESOME GARRY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Easter Sunday

I really have grown to love Easter more as I get older. When I was a kid it was all about finding that basket in the morning. I couldn't wait to dig into it and see all the candy I got. Don't get me wrong, I am still excited about Easter candy but it certainly isn't what is at the forefront of my mind anymore. I really am grateful that as I have grown older I have become so much more aware of the importance of the Savior in our lives. I know that I wouldn't be where I am or who I am today if it wasn't for His sacrifice and resurrection. I can't even imagine in the slightest what it must have been like to go through what He did. I am so thankful that I can be sealed to my family and know that I can be with them for eternity. I love watching my kids enjoy Easter. It is so much more exciting with them. I am so thankful to be a wife and mom. Jay, Zoey, and Noah are everything to me and I can't imagine my life without them. I am so grateful for the experience of this life and all I have to gain from it. Without the Savior none of it would be possible.I hate trying to catch a good family picture. It's so hard to get everyone looking good. Oh well, it's better than nothing.

Grandma's Traditional Egg Hunt

The kids so look forward to the egg hunt every Easter. My mom started doing it a few years ago and I always think it is so fun. Even though I don't get to find my own eggs it is so much fun to help the little ones and just watch the action. I think this is the first year that Davie and Kella have been here for it. I am so glad they live here now and get to do all the fun stuff with us. It was so awesome that Kylie and Alexis got to fly in for Easter weekend. They can remember the egg hunts and it was a highly anticipated event while they were here. There would have been serious disappointment for them if it didn't happen.

I would like to point out that I am the hero of the egg hunt. I actually had to go on a hunt of my own to find plastic eggs. It's not a good idea to wait until Saturday afternoon before Easter to go buy the eggs. I went to Walmart, Target, the Dollar Tree, and finally Michaels before I found ANY. I totally lucked out at Michaels because they had just in the last couple hours had someone return some. I was so happy I found plastic eggs and for cheap. I don't know what we would have done. So, just for the record, I SAVED THE DAY!!!

It was a great hunt. The kids each had their own color of eggs to hunt for. So everyone got assigned their color and then knew they had 16 eggs to find. Grandma hid some of them a little too well because they actually didn't get found until after church. Good job Grandma! The kids all had such a blast and it was so fun to be around and watch them and help out.

Sunday Morning Craft

We didn't get Easter baskets for the kids so we had to come up with something for them to collect eggs in. I came up with the idea for them to decorate paper lunch sacks. I pulled out a bunch of craft stuff. They had a blast decorating with markers, crayons, tons of stickers, and decorative hole punches. I am glad I thought of it because they really had a good time. It also kept them busy while Grandma finished hiding the Easter eggs. All the kids bags turned out really cute. Such a creative bunch!

More On the Mountain

Inside Zoey's head....."I don't know that this is such a good idea".....

One of my favorites. Those are some silly faces.

Muggle Quidditch

If you are a Harry Potter fan you HAVE to watch this. It is silly but also the most awesome thing ever! I can't believe this is actually a sport at some colleges. How great!

To Mt. Lemmon We Went

The picture of the sky I must have took when I tripped on a rock and fell. Ha Ha! It was hilarious. I was laughing too hard to get up!How exciting for Grandma and Grandpa to have so many of their grandkids with them!!!