Taking the Scenic Route

Zane drew a car today.  He made the basic outline shape of a car (after watching daddy draw one for him) and then added wheels and tried to add a door.  Then he colored it all in and put ground under the wheels.  Then he sat on it while drawing something else, smearing it so I couldn’t get a picture of it.  oh well.  It was impressive to me!

I want to send a message to somebody who peeks in on this page every day….

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday Dear Mom,

Happy Birthday to you!  

YES!

I have somebody I can vote FOR,

not just “the person with the best chance of beating Bush”

Some of my favorite quotes from Kerry’s acceptance speech:

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.  I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws.  I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders.   And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can’t do better.

Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so.  Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn’t make it so. 

As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence.  I will immediately reform the intelligence system – so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics.  And as President, I will bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to

We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared. 

We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

We value an America that exports products, not jobs

I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation – not the Saudi royal family.

 I don’t want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.

Here is the full text of the acceptance speech

HE IS FINISHED!

I am now married to a college graduate!

(well, as soon as the paperwork goes through)

*doing a happy dance*

My mom emailed me wondering if the email she got about Teresa Heinz Kerry supporting militant groups was true.  I hopped over the snopes.com, the place to check out those emails that keep getting handed around the internet and other urban legends to see the truth.  I discovered that is was false.  Here is the letter and the snopes comment on the letter.

On another note, I need to reread the transcripts for Edwards speech.  It was interrupted several times by a whiny toddler, but what I saw I wasn’t terribly impressed with.  He certainly isn’t the orator Clinton is, but he is much less experienced too  (of course, if being a good orator determined it, we wouldn’t have a president who mispronounces “nuclear” either).  I need to reread it when I am not in an irritated mood though because that might have put a really negative filter on it.  I really hope I like Kerry better because I want to have somebody to vote FOR, not just “who ever can beat Bush”.

I did like Teresa Heinz Kerry more than I thought I would.  She seems to have a deeper understanding of social issues than I would have ever expected from somebody in her tax bracket.  I also loved the “shove it” comment..hee hee.  She has some spirit in her!  Much different than Cheney who just came off as an ass.

I am a little tired of hearing about his Vietnam service already.  It is a good selling point when contrasted with Bush’s cowardice, but I want to hear more about OTHER things too.  Clinton had some other things in his speech, so at least I know there is more.  I suspect they are pounding that issue because that is the issue most likely to sway swing voters instead of, say, environmental issues.

“In a speech the other day to the Amish, President Bush said that God speaks through him. That’s what he said. I don’t know, do you think God would mispronounce that many words?”   Jay Leno

A quote  from the Democratic National Conventions-

For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

-Barack Obama, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois

And Bill Clinton’s speech…all I can say is WOW.  I didn’t remember him being that good of an orator.  That speech was truly one of the best I have ever heard.  I  wasn’t even all that interested in watching the convention but happened to flip on the tv as he was coming to the podium and decided to see if it was interesting.  I was riveted.  I see now why they use the word charismatic to describe him.

Just wanted to update Zane’s progress on his vocabulary.  His words aren’t super clear, but we are starting to pick up a few more.

His list of words:

1. please
2. thank you
3. your welcome
4. yes
5. juice
6. cheese
7. numbers 1-20 (so, does this count as 20 words…lol)
8. alphabet (not really words, but sort of cool…he also writes it out at times)
9. cookie
10. no
11. our names, but never to us (asks where dadda is when he isn’t here and vise versa)
12. ball
13. flow-um  (flower)
14. you
15. ok
16. up-pa (up)
17. uh-oh
18. hab fum (have fun / come play with me)
19. down

there is more, but I can’t think of them right now…I will come back and edit as I think of things.

I adore Sir James Galway.  He is one of the few musicians I own multiple ablums of.  I am missing a few that I want so bad, namely two Christmas Albums and two of his newer greatest hits type albums.  I haven’t been able to purchase any of his music in years, but I wear out the ones I have.  The last few days I have found myself listening to an interesting combo of the Baroque album, Music with my friends (solos with piano only), and several Celtic albums.

As I was cruising through some blogs today, I ran accross MelissaTulip’s blog with silly nursing antics of a toddler. (and a great link explaining why you would want to nurse a toddler)  Since I just snapped a photo the other night of my little monkey boy nursing in his goofy way, I thought I would add it.  Unfortunalty, the ones of him playing peek-a-boo with Daddy didn’t come out well (our flash comes a few seconds after the click and he anticipates it) so I can’t post that cuteness, but here he is reaching through the neckhole to grab my nose.

So close!

Yesterday Zach finished up the last of his programming assingments for his undergraduate work.  Today he finished a take home test (due Thursday), so now all he has left is 2 tests on Thursday.  One will require a little review, the other he will be able to skim the book an hour or two before and still get an A….really, really easy tests in that class (Personal Finance Class…if only having money to budget was as easy as that class…)