Jovie’s Room

Monday, April 5, 2010

I’ve promised (for months now) to post pictures of the baby’s room. The rocker is actually my grandfather’s (Dad’s dad) so it has a lot of sentimental value. And, yes, those are real birch trees. I finally feel like most everything is in it’s place, sans baby of course.

Enjoy the pictures! Click to enlarge the photos…

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3 comments

By Lauren in Baby, Design, Faith, Life, New Place, News

Adding to the previous post…

Friday, March 6, 2009

Saw this in the Wall Street Journal today…

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Once again, let me state that I’m not trying to be anti-Obama or anything; I’m just completely freaked out by the direction the government is taking us right now.

Let your voices be heard people.

1 comment 

By Eric in News, Politics

Enough is enough.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” - Edward R. Murrow

American Flag

Let me preface this by saying that throughout most of my adult life, I’ve only had what I would consider a passing interest in politics. I always find the elections interesting and will follow geopolitical topics and foreign policy from time to time, but I’ve rarely paid much attention to the partisan bickering and inevitable flip-flopping that goes on in Washington.

All of this has changed for me recently, as we’ve elected a new leader and have entered into a monumental economic crisis. As I’m beginning to dig a little deeper beyond the glossed over governmental PR department that the media has become these days, I’m uncovering a lot of things that make me frightened for the future of our nation.

As I’ve blogged about in the past, it’s safe to say that I am no fan of the strategy our leaders are pursuing to “fix” the current economic meltdown. It seems like it’s only been a few months since our leaders pulled a “chicken little” on our citizens to scare a reluctant House and Congress to pass an absolutely ridiculous 700 Billion dollar bailout bill. Our leaders chose to plunge our nation deeply into debt to put a band aid on many businesses that were already largely terminal to begin with. Now, several months later, we’re realizing a good chunk of this money has been squandered or is unaccounted for after our leaders blindly made one of the worst financial decisions in our nation’s history. As many predicted, the bailout package had no effect on the economy and the stock market continues to free fall (only now our nation is even more up to it’s eyeballs in debt).

Only a matter of days ago, our leaders passed another monumental “stimulus” package with an even larger price tag, but for some the sticker shock didn’t appear too bad this time around (after all, what’s another 787 Billion dollars when we can just create this money out of thin air, right?). Once again, the package was passed in a matter of days, with a large majority of our leaders claiming they didn’t even read it! This package is absolutely loaded to the gills with pet projects and wasteful spending that is even more appalling given the pretense with which it was sold to the American public.

If the financial implications weren’t startling enough, many of our leaders have sneaked in foundational laws for dramatic changes in the way our country will work in the future. Using fear as a catalyst, they’re somehow passing huge chunks of enormous legislation under our noses; our internal alert signals should start ringing like crazy any time a politician tries to pass urgent legislation with fear as their primary motivational tool.

I think the average citizen (yours truly included until recently) just doesn’t realize the cost of the decisions we’re making right now. Since we don’t understand economics, we just assume that the Fed can keep printing more money out of no where and it will all just balance out in the future somehow. Since we aren’t too interested in how other governments work, we don’t understand why it might be a bad idea to go in on another “new deal” with a bunch of other nations and their economies (most other economies are tanking even harder than we are).

Most of all, I believe a large majority of us have completely lost touch with what makes America great. Instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we’re buying into “fairness” for everyone and government programs to take care of us. We’re beginning to see the possibility of success and wealth that have made our country so strong (and so inspiring to millions of immigrants) being replaced with a sense of entitlement where home ownership and a regular pay check is a right, not something fought for and earned.

It seems like we’re becoming more content with leaving the wonderful foundations our country is built on behind us; because our generation is scared and has lost the grit in it’s gut, we’d rather be passive and give away more control to the government (giving away more and more of our rights in the process). We’re being told that higher taxes are a duty we should take pride in. We’re being told that the government knows better how to spend our money, manage our health and provide for the needy than we do. Heck, we’re even being told that our free speech shouldn’t be quite so free, and we probably shouldn’t be trusted to defend ourselves and our families.

We’re being told that the government is the answer instead of the ingenuity and determination of the American people.

The thing is, I’m not buying it, and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you feel the same way. You feel helpless when you see us going into utterly insane levels of debt to circumvent capitalism and bailout broken business practices. You feel sick as you watch your retirement account waste away more every time the government tries to get involved to fix things. You feel angry when you see our leaders try to take over more parts of our lives when you see how messed up current government-run social programs are (Medicare and Social Security anyone? I for one can’t wait to visit the waiting room that’s run by the same people that control the DMV and Post Office!).

If you feel the same as I do, I urge you to join with me in taking a stand for the America you believe in. These ridiculous and continuing (here comes another one!) spending packages and moves towards socialism have got to stop. Write your congressmen and representatives - make your voice heard when you disagree. Instead of being passive and keeping in line with fashionable opinions, speak up with your peers about your opinions on the health of our nation and the direction we’re heading. I truly feel that many of us, on both sides of the political fence, feel the same way.

Somehow we’ve developed the crazy concept that elected officials somehow know best, and how dare we criticize their decisions?! Free speech and the ability to inspire change is what makes this country great! There’s a reason we have elections so frequently - sometimes you have to fire the idiots and elect better people to do the job (don’t forget, they work for US!).

As I wind down this post, by now I’m sure you think that I believe government to be some sort of evil entity; I assure you this is not the case. You may also think I’m writing this to air my political grievances with President Obama, given my expressed skepticism in the past. This is not purely the case, as it takes more than one person in power (including passive, overly trusting citizens) to make some terrible decisions. For the record, I’m not convinced McCain would be doing much better right now given his support of the first bailout; we need to look beyond this two-party political system to get some fresh blood and ideas in office.

I do believe it is important that we remind ourselves every so often that our nation was created to escape the rule and excessive control of a government that presumed to know better than it’s people. We must never forget the rare and unique gifts of freedom and liberty, and the price our forefathers paid to hand them down to us. I hope we can give our children the same inheritance.

6 comments

By Eric in Life, News, Politics

Fang

Thursday, September 11, 2008

- Fang Murrell -

April, 2007 - September 10, 2008


Fang liked to sleep with his head in the rocks.

1 comment 

By Lauren in Life, News

Today’s the Day!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Well, we had our final walk-through yesterday and it looks like everything in our new place is finally fixed and ready to go. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be closing late this afternoon and putting up blinds early this evening!

Us in the UHaul

If I have any sort of extra time over the next week, I’m going to put together some sort of photo gallery section on the blog where we’ll post pictures of the new place along with our progress as we paint, change out light fixtures and get furniture moved into place (which we’ll probably do room to room). In the mean time, if there’s anything you guys want to see, post a comment and let us know and we’ll try to grab a photo for you.

By the way, does anyone have any experience installing track lighting? We’ve got a large fluorescent light fixture in the kitchen that we’re looking to replace with either normal track lighting or the pendant kind. I’ve put up ceiling fans and other light fixtures before, but track lighting freaks me out for some reason, so I’m wondering how hard that’s going to be.

Also, since we’re going to be without internet over the next few days, we would like to congratulate Robert and Ruth Ann Hutchison on the birth of Lydia Leigh Hutchison; that’s one cute baby.

3 comments

By Eric in New Place, News

Hai

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Oh HaiThanks to those of you who are taking time to read our blog so far. It seems like a lot of big changes are happening right now in our lives (and our friends as well), so what better way to stay connected and keep in touch than to start up a joint blog! I hope to share our experiences moving into our new house on here. As well as getting your opinions on different decorating ideas we might have. As most of you know, while we both continue to have our full time jobs we also co-run our freelance business - so it gets crazy busy…which is why I think this will be a good outlet for me to post design ideas and maybe have some occasional free goodies for you to download.

Our house walk through went great today. They still have quite a bit of work to do, but I felt good about it all once we left. The contractor guy was super nice and looked A LOT like Steve Irwin which for some reason made me feel much more comfortable about the whole process. He didn’t wrangle any crocodiles, but did show us a few mosquito hatchlings in our garage.

1 comment 

By Lauren in News

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