We have chosen some paint colors for some of the rooms. If you go to the sherman williams website they have this awesome setup to see what paint colors will look like and such.

This is going to be the theme for Mark's room, with an Electric green for the paint color.

For the master bedroom we are going to for a dynamic blue, basically a very bright, medium blue. It will look great with the quilt my sister made for our bed that is blue and orange.

The Living room is going to be Aquarium, a blueish-green, it will contrast wonderfully with our black couches and the fireplace.

Ethan is shooting for a Festival green for the dining room, I am not sure if I really want that bright of a green in there, it is seriously like a green crayola crayon.

We went to Lowe's and found a great deal on a laminate floor for the dining room, 30 yr warrenty and is a good color for $1.18 a square foot. It is almost a blonde wood color but slightly darker.

A couple of before and afters

Here are a couple of before and afters to show what is being done with the house. The after pictures may actually look worse, but its still a work in progress.

Dining Room before.

We have torn out the ceiling, the carpet and the wall between the dining room and kitchen.

After.

Before.

This room is going to be the nursery, we have since torn out the base board heating system and the chimney.

After.

Because of this hole in the wall, I am getting a closet. There isn't a closet in the master bedroom.

Kitchen before.

We have torn out the wall, and the ceiling.

After.

By the way we do have the drawers and door for the cupboard. We are going to put in an island in later.

Fireplace and Living room before.

Again the carpet, the ceiling have been taken out. We have new really pretty black granite tile for in front of the fire place. We are using propane heater for our heat source so we got the fake logs to go right into it. We had to tear out the inner bricks to make room for them.

The fake logs.

After.

The tile isn't clean with all the dust all around, but you get the basic idea of what it is going to look like.

In the talk, Our Immediate Responsibility (October 25, 1966), Ezra Taft Benson spoke of our responsibilities as Latter-day Saints, as Priesthood Holders, as Christians, as Americans...

The following is the portion played on the Glenn Beck program:

I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Kruschev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor.

But, according to President Eisenhower, Kruschev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture — and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why.

As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom he arrogantly declared in substance:

You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands!

While that is a powerful excerpt, the entire talk is full of powerful and valuable information, guidance and wisdom. I will quote some more excerpts below, I hope you will take the time to listen to or read the entire talk.

"The communist threat from without may be serious, but it is the enemy within, warns President McKay, that is most menacing."

“Next to being one in worshiping God,” says President McKay, “there is nothing in this world upon which this church should be more united than in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States!.”

"We cannot compromise good and evil in an attempt to have peace and unity in the Church, any more than the Lord could have compromised with Satan in order to avoid the War in Heaven."

"Let me quote a few excerpts from that inspired statement and ye who have been misled into believing that you can somehow righteously avoid standing up for freedom – heed his counsel: “In order that there may be no misunderstanding by bishops, stake presidents, and others regarding members of the Church participating in nonchurch meetings to study and become informed on the Constitution of the United States, Communism, etc...Church members are at perfect liberty to act according to their own conscience in matters of safeguarding our way of life. They are, of course, encouraged to honor the highest standards of the gospel and to work to preserve their own freedoms...The position of this church on the subject of Communism has never changed. We consider it the greatest satanical threat to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God’s work among men that exists on the face of the earth."

"According to Norman Vincent Peal, “Their was a time when the American people roared like lions for liberty; now they bleat like sheep for security.” “But,” some say, “Shouldn’t we have confidence in our government officials – don’t we owe them allegiance?” To which we respond in the words of President Clark, “God provided that in this land of liberty, our political allegiance shall run not to individuals, that is, to government officials… the only allegiant we owe as citizens or denizens of the United States, runs to our inspired Constitution which God Himself set up.”

"Now Satan is anxious to neutralize the inspired counsel of the Prophet...he will argue, “There is no need to get involved in the fight for freedom – all you need to do is live the gospel.” Of course this is a contradiction, because we cannot fully live the gospel and not be involved in the fight for freedom."

"There has been no more fight in us than there is in a bunch of sheep, and we have been much like sheep. Freedom was never brought to a people on a silver platter, nor maintained with whisk brooms and lavender sprays."

"We have been warned again and again and again. The Lords spokesman has consistently raised his voice of warning about the loss of our freedom. Now he that has ears, let him hear, and ye who praise the Lord, learn to also follow His spokesman. ...as for me and my house, we will strive to walk with the Prophet. And the Prophet has said that: “No greater immediate responsibility rests upon the members of the church, upon all citizens of this republic and of neighboring republics than to protect the freedom vouchsafe by the Constitution of the United States.”"

An Invitation

I want to invite you to browse the website today. I encourage you to read every article and every quote on the website, as daunting a task as that might seem. Now and again I re-read many of the articles and quotes I have put up on the website. It's inspiring to me to read the words of the prophets and other leaders and their stand for freedom. If you don't read everything, I would at least recommend the quotes by the prophets along with article by W. Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson. As I have read and studied these things from an LDS perspective I find myself coming to the same conclusions and learning many of the same things as those who study non-lds philosophers such as Adam Smith, Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, and others.

Communism Today

Communism was the big enemy to freedom in the time of Ezra Taft Benson and David O. McKay, both who were vocal in opposing it. President Benson often mentioned that socialism is the twin to communism, that there is not much difference between the two.

Many believe the communists were "defeated". Today, rather than openly trying to get Americans to accept communism they now have craftily and slowly duped many into accepting socialism.

What is Left? What is Right?

Within both major parties there are many politicians and government officials that have also supported and voted for socialism. As much as some want to believe the republicans are the good guys and the democrats as the bad - that is not the reality. I invite you to read W. Cleon Skousen's article titled: What is Left? What is Right? - http://www.latterdayconservative.com/w.-cleon-skousen/what-is-left-what-is-right.html - If you read and understand this you will also understand my way of thinking regarding political paradigms. I do not see it as left vs right, republican vs democrat or liberal vs. conservative... my paradigm is different... I see Freedom being in the balance. On one side of the spectrum there is 100% anarchy, on the other is 100% tyranny, the Constitution provides the proper balance between the two, of having just enough laws to keep us free. Unfortunately today we are far from the balance provided by the Constitution and have been creeping slowly towards socialism and tyranny.

Quoting from W. Cleon Skousen's What is Left? What is Right?:

"The U.S. Constitution, therefore, was designed to establish the American eagle right in the center of the political spectrum. With cautious precision, the founding fathers hammered out the framework of the Constitution during the sultry summer months of 1787. It was to be a government of the people with enough power to preserve order and security, but not enough central authority to abuse the people."

"The American Eagle developed into a two-winged creature...Recent American history will demonstrate that Wing #1 tends to solve its problems by rushing to the left, trying to seize control of the people, and then using legislative authority to force them to "do what is good for them." On the other hand, Wing #2 tends to become indifferent to changing times and the need for adjustment and therefore runs the risk of degenerating toward the right and losing the confidence of the people because of the chaos created by unsolved problems."

"It often comes as a great shock to some people to hear that the Nazi-Fascist dictatorships are Marxist movements and occupy a position on the political spectrum right next to International Communism."

The house is coming along

For the last couple of weeks we have been working on getting the house livable. Its still going to take a while longer. But we have managed to get a lot accomplished. One of the first things to be done was getting heat and tearing out the rest of the living room ceiling.

The living room ceiling was only partly there to begin with due to the tub that the previous owners had installed and I am guessing they just didn't get to finish, or didn't care. It wasn't a neat hole or something that could have easily have been patched, so out it went. There was a ton of wood and plaster all over the place and all the dust! The dust is absolutely horrible, you breath it in no matter what you. I tried wearing the dust mask, bandana, my shirt, nothing was working. We also tore out the ugly, faded, used to be a blue-green carpet that now is a bland gray, in both the living room and dining room.

Someone had mentioned about maybe tearing out the wall between the dining room and kitchen, to open the place up, and I got to thinking about it and suggested it to Ethan. His only concern was whether or not the wall was a weightbearing wall. I had to go to work on that particular Sat. and came home to it already mostly devoured. Alan informed me that the wall had been attacking him, therefore he felt the need to give it a Karate kick to teach it a lesson. As you can tell the wall was not a weight bearing wall. Once it was removed, the place looks a thousand times better and has a lot more natural light.

Because the wall had come out, Ethan and Dad said to pull out the ceiling in both D.R. and Kitchen. Reason being that it was a plaster ceiling and it was just going to keep falling down in temperature changes as it had already been doing. So out went those ceilings. Ethan and Jody have been busy setting up the propane tanks for our heating system and getting the water lines in. A lot of the plumbing lines had burst two year before because the place hadn't been winterized in time.

We are anxiously waiting to get the electric turned on so we can start staying later, but since the place has been vacant for more than a year, the electric company requires an inspection. We are still waiting to the gentleman to come out and do it. Once that takes place, the water will be on again. That means so many different things for me. Number one, a functioning toilet. The Eberle's live very close to us and have been generously offering the use of their bathroom for us.

We bought a used stove to replace the dilapatated oven that currently sit there, and will be getting a new fridge. Ethan and I have been working on a new design for the Kitchen and I am sooo excited. We do have pictures, but I can't post right now. We are making progress!

It was decided that the laundry room would be best upstairs in the small room next to the bathroom. I came up with this brilliant idea for linen closet. Ethan is going to install a dual sided opening cabinets in the wall between both rooms. I can fold towels and stuff and just put them in the cupboard above the washing machine and dryer, and they can just pull them out in the bathroom. We are also going to have a shelf made just for the dirty clothes to be put in, and I can open the cabinet on my side and just pull it all out to do laundry. I mention this to my Mother-in-law and she loved the idea.

As for the next messy job, the old chimney is being torn out. There are three chimneys on the house. One for the fire place, one for the old oil heater system which had some leaks in it and caused some water damage, and the third one for over the leaking one. The Damaged one is coming out to let us have some more room in the kitchen.

I know there is a lot of work, but I can't wait to see it done. It is all mine to play with.

Everything I remember about this morning

I found a journal questions list and figure that it will help me get better at journal writing.

This morning I woke up before 8:30 , Mark and Ethan weren't awake yet, so I thought I would take advantage and take a hot bath by myself. Mark joins me for most of them. When I got out, Ethan was still out of it and I walked into Mark's room and he was in his " I am trying to figure out if I want to be awake or need more sleep" crawl across his crib. He heard me walk in and promptly sat up. I took him up and fed him his breakfast. While he was eating his banana, I got on the computer, checked email, blog, facebook, and read my favorite comics (FBorFW, Baby Blues, Zits, and Questionable Content). Alan needed waking up now as well as Ethan. We were all going to Ness's to watch her kids before I had to go to work. Ethan and I were giving Alan a ride and not to waste gas, we stayed with there and helped. Caleb and Mark were both being cranky-pants and in need of naps. Mark will not, under any circumstances fall asleep in my arms. I have him trained to fall asleep in his crib without needing to be cuddled with me. That plan has kind of backfired against me. Now at church, unless someone else is holding him, he won't nap. Anyways, after those two finally went to sleep, we had some pizza and then went to work. That was my morning.

The best book I ever read. . .

This is my absolute favorite book. Its is not a common one, and was give to my family by a family member.

Sixteen-year-old Kevin (Muskrat) Winslow spends a summer as a farm hand on the McIntyre properties in Southern Alberta after smashing up his dad’s car. Reluctant to settle into the job, he expresses his feelings of exile in letters and light-hearted newspapers to his friend Mitch in Calgary. Slowly, the eccentric farm hands and characters from this rural community grow on him. When his satirical caricatures and hyperbolic expressions of humourous daily events leak out to the McIntyre’s employees, "The McIntyre Liar’s" expanded readership encourages him publish more issues.

I can't find a copy of this, if someone knows where I can get one, let me know. I have checked Amazon a couple of times for it, but they never seem to have it when I look.

Halloween Squid

I got to be a Squid for Halloween. I went with Alan and my cousin trick or treating. It wasn't as much fun as I had hoped.

Hooray! The stupid thing is finally over.

Have I ever mention how much I hate Elections? I hate them. I hated rushing to my phone, only to get put on hold for my political opinion. I mean seriously, you called me! I hated all the hang ups, and and surveys. I hated all the soliciting whether by postal mail or email. I hated seeing all the freaking ads on t.v. The night before election, there were at least three in every set of ads. And of course none of them were, I am good guy, you should vote for me. All of them were, they're evil! I hated being told that I am stupid, didn't know anything, and a horrible person because I didn't like that particular canidate. I hated all the twisting of words to slander, the overexagerations, and just plain old bashing of the fellow opponent. I am glad the stupid things is over.

I don't care who you voted for, but there is one thing for certain, there should never be both a Democratic president, and a Democratic Senate at the same time, same goes for Republican, don't think for one second I exclude them. And for anyone who thinks elsewise, just wait. The Democrats have not done one thing they have promised to do since they got the Senate, and now there isn't even someone to say hey, you are being too extreme? There needs to be a balance. And as for this change, there will be one, but not what you hope for.

Tag anyone who is a mom.

About your labor:
1.When was your due date?
Dec. 24th

2.What day did you go into labor?
Dec. 23th
3.What day was your baby born?
Dec. 23
4.Where were you when your water broke? In bed, I remember thinking I had finally done it, I had seriously peed my pants.

5.At what time did your water break? About 1 am

6.Did you lose your mucous plug? I assume so, I really don't remember.

7.On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most painful), how bad were your contractions?After I hit 4 cm, the contractions were flatlining the top of the screen for the whole time. I say they were very painful. Who knows, maybe I was just a wuss.

8.What did you do during early labor to take your mind off of the pain? Reading, watching T.V., the jacuzzi.

9.At what time did you go to the hospital?About 2:30 am

10.Did someone drive you, or did you take an ambulance to the hospital? Ethan drove me.

11.What was the name of your hospital?BMH

12.What were the best and worst parts about your labor? The relief that it was finally happening, and the pain of it finally happening.

About your Delivery:

1.Was your delivery room separate from your recovery room?Yes

2.Did you receive any pain medication? Yes

4.What other pain management techniques did you use?I tried the narcotics, that failed miserably, then after about 1 1/2 hours on those, I went for the epidural

5.How many nurses/ doctors were in your room?1-2 nurses, then the midwife.

6.Did you have a vaginal delivery or a C-section?Vaginal

7.If you had a vaginal delivery, after you were dilated to 10, how long were you pushing for? About 45 minutes to an hour.

8.Did your baby come out face up or face down? Face down

9.Were there any complications? At one point before the epidural, he rolled on to his umbilical cord and it stop the heartbeat, the nurses came running in and moved me all over the place, oxygen mask and all. All the while I was so out of it because of the narcotics, I didn't have a clue what was going on. It very easily could have become a c- section.

10.Who cut the umbilical cord? Ethan

11.Was your baby given to you right away or was he taken away to be cleaned?Given to me right away.

12.Did your baby come out crying? No, but he was fine.

13.Did you cry when your baby was born? I was crying beforehand, the epidural had worn off by then.

14.What were the best and worst parts about your delivery?Seeing the results, and epidural wearing off during the actually delivery.

15.Did anything surprise you about the delivery?You never really can prepare for the pain the first time.

16.How long were you in labor/delivery for? My water broke about 1 am, and he was born 3:30pm

About your Newborn:

1.Did you have a boy or a girl?Boy

2.What is your baby's name? Mark Andrew

3.How much did he/she weight? 7 lb 14 oz.

5.Do you know your baby's Apgar score? 8/9

7.Who does he/she look like? Good combination of us.

9.What is the cutest thing about your baby? His dimple when he smiles.

10.Is your baby fussy? Very rarely.

11.Do you plan to formula feed or breastfeed?I breastfed until about a month ago.

12.If breastfeeding, how long do you plan to breastfeed? He lasted until 9 months.

13.How is breastfeeding going so far? It was miserable by the end for mom. I would try to feed him, two seconds later, there is something else far more interesting for him to look at. So either he would try to take me with him, or he just left. If I tried to make him eat more, he would bite. There were 7 teeth, it was painful, so we stopped. And he didn't seem to care.

14.If using formula, what brand are you using? Parents choice Lactose-free.

15.When do you plan to introduce solid food to your baby? A couple of months ago.

16.What is the longest amount of time that your baby has slept so far? Like 13 hours?

17.How much time does your baby go between feedings?He can go 3-4 hours without a problem.

18.What was your baby's discharged weight? I think it was 7lb. 6 oz?

About your Recovery:

1.How long did you stay in the hospital? Two days

2.What pain medications are you on? I took something the first night, after that I didn't get anything else really.

3.At the hospital, did your newborn stay in your room or did she stay in the nursery? He was in my room during the day, but in the nursery at night, I wanted to get as much sleep as I could before going home.

4.How did the staff treat you? They were fine, the only thing I wished had happened, was they didn't inform me of the 5 am blood testing. Some random girl shows up by my bed and started taking my blood and I didn't have a clue as to why.

5.Best part about your recovery? No more being kicked internally.

6.Worst part about your recovery? Actually having a reason to wear those ginormous pads.

7.Who came to visit you after your delivery? Too many to list.

9.Did you get any sleep while in the hospital? During the nights, not during the day.

10.Was the hospital busy while you were there? Not especially.

11.How was the hospital food? Decent.

12.When were you discharged? Christmas Day.

13.Did you take anything from the hospital? They said I could take the diapers and stuff.

14.Are you experiencing any baby blues or postpartum depression? On and off, here and there. Nothing to worry about.

15.How is your relationship with your husband/boyfriend now that you two have a baby? Far more fulfilling.

16.Overall, was your hospital stay a pleasant one? Yeah.

17.How many days has it been since you have given birth now? A little over 10 months.

18.How is your newborn doing? He is a crawling pro, stairclimber, furniture walker and starting to walk.

19.Are you fully recovered? Yep.

21.Have you lost any more weight since?I lost about 20 lbs.

22.What was your pre-pregnancy boob size? Same as what it is now.

24.Now that you are home, how are you spending your days?Mainly being a stay at home mom, but I do work about 8 -12 hours a week at the movie theater.

25.Will you be going back to work?I quit my full-time job.

26.What is the most exciting thing to happen to you now that you have a baby at home? We just bought a house! Our first home.