Thanksgiving was truly wonderful this year! Although John loves huge, chaotic family gatherings, I prefer a more intimate and relaxing atmosphere, (not that either are better than the other, it’s just personal preference). We decided last year that we would alternate Thanksgiving holidays between his parents and mine, and it was my family’s turn this year. Some of the activities included:

Kitchen Nazi Mom’s amazing cooking
Lots of walks
Lots of laughter
Lots of coffee
Photo shoot
Decorating the Christmas tree (my annual job – I’ve been the lone Christmas tree decorator since middle school)
Football
and Plenty of entertainment from Charlie

Oh…and horseback riding on Gordon Street (LaGrangians understand the randomness of this. It’s a residential street in the middle of town.)

John and I went to dinner and a movie to celebrate 13 years together. Isn’t that amazing??? Our first date was on Thanksgiving Day, and we had to eat at Burger King because it was the only restaurant open. Then we went and saw The Preacher’s Wife. This year we saw New Moon. I’m DEFINITELY on Team Jacob now. )

I am so excited about this…my future sister-in-law, Andrea (aka Froo), asked me to help coordinate the wedding. How special is that?! I am all over it. Tyler and Froo are getting married at Camp Calvin, a Presbyterian camp for kids where they met and have been counselors (Ty) and Head of the Horse Barn (Froo) for several years. I’m sure there is a much more appropriate title than Head of the Horse Barn, but I am brain dead.

We stayed at LaFayette Garden Inn one night (I wish it were still the Ramadama) and it just happened to be the same place that Auburn’s football team was staying. John thoroughly enjoyed fantasizing about all the ways he could sabotage their sleep before the big Alabama/Auburn game, although he didn’t end up doing anything. I offered more than once to go buy shoe polish and toilet paper to decorate their buses, but he wouldn’t let me. It would have been so fun.

So that was our holiday. Good stuff. And there’s lots more good stuff to come!

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Something I am very thankful for is my great friend, Brooke Parmer – and also her amazing talents (one of which is photography)! We had another awesome photo session with her on Thanksgiving Day. A few of them are posted here.

You can also view more of her work by clicking her links on our friends list, or by clicking here for her website and blog.

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Charlie and I have been swapping illnesses since before Halloween, but hopefully as of TODAY we’re finally on the mend.

Because of my lack of energy and coughing fits, our house is a Code Red/Level 5 Disaster Area. I’m cleaning like a fiend and trying to catch up on laundry, but the laundry is kicking my butt! There are only three of us living in this house. We wear one outfit per day and maybe wear the same pajamas for a couple of nights. But anyone that could see the massive amount of dirty laundry could easily be convinced that the Duggans stayed here for a week. That’s with me doing a few loads here and there while sick!

I have some theories on how this has happened. Not all of them can be proven, but since when have I needed proof for my conspiracy theories? Here is my list:

(I won’t name specific names to keep from finger-pointing.)

1. We must all use a different towel every day. Maybe two each.
2. Someone thinks that dishtowels are only used once, like paper towels.
3. People are breaking into our house, borrowing our clothes, and then breaking back in to throw the used clothing into the laundry room.
4. Someone is throwing clean clothes into the laundry room to make me suffer.
5. Our parallel universe selves are jumping over into our world and leaving their dirty clothes for me to clean, and then coming back later to collect. I really should check our closets/drawers for duplicate articles of clothing.
6. It is a voodoo curse.

One day my children will do all the laundry and I will pay them handsomely for it. Clearly it will be worth it so that I keep my sanity. Plus, I’ll have more time to guard our house against clothes-borrowing home invaders and parallel selves.

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I’ve been sick for over 2 weeks now and I’ve HAD. IT. It went from a cold to bronchitis, and I’m really ready to stop coughing up my lungs.

But I have some good things from today!

1. I got to sleep in, and when I got up at 10 a.m., I came downstairs to a CLEAN HOUSE. Charlie cleans so well!

2. John and Charlie went to a living history exhibit with some friends, and I got to curl up on the couch with some chinese food and catch up on Days of Our Lives, The Vampire Diaries and Fringe.

3. Charlie caught a ball for the first time! Not only that, within a few minutes, he was catching it from across the room.

4. My boys are watching the Bama game together…Charlie walked up to John and asked him to “nuggle together.”

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I’ve had a miserable day until a few minutes ago. Charlie and I were having an epic battle a difference of opinions, when all of a sudden one of our favorite songs came on. We both immediately stopped pitching a fit disagreeing and ran into the living room to dance together. Now we’re happy and laughing and watching Blues Clues.

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The Objectivist Roundup is up over at Noodlefood. Go check it out! My post on attacking capitalism is included. Also makes sure to read Greg Perkin’s post on Objectivist v/s Libertarian Thinking for the best explanation I’ve read in a while on why Objectivists keep their distance from libertarians.

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Charlie is entering into a new phase of toddlerhood that is a lot more challenging. He’s been SO easy to work with for so long that I’ve gotten spoiled! So it’s miraculous timing that Dr. Jane Nelson will be hosting an online chat this month AND will be in Atlanta next month for an evening lecture and an all-day workshop!

If you haven’t heard me mention her before, she is one of the foremost experts on Positive Discipline and has written several books on the subject. Oh, and has an online community. Or Ning? I’m not sure what the right lingo is there.

I will be attending all three. As John said, “As long as it’s under $1,000, you are absolutely going!” This coming from someone who tells me “No” to getting mani/pedi’s or other nonessentials. But I digress.

I cannot be more excited!!! Dr. Jane Nelson is one of my heroes and I hope very much to get to meet her in person. Woohoo!

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From CNN:

During remarks to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce legal summit in Washington, (Jeb) Bush had tough words for the president in response to an audience question.

“I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism.”

Governor – you act like this is a surprise? Any who paid attention to his campaign should know Obama considers capitalism the enemy. The larger issue is that you, your brother and virtually the whole of the Republican establishment attack capitalism daily by your actions. Everyone knows that Democrats, and Obama in particular, are enemies of capitalism. Your side, however, has managed to con the entire nation into believing that Conservatives are its defenders. That’s the insidiousness of the Right – their Capitalist stance is, in reality, only a slower slope downward to true socialism. Despite your pro-capitalist lip service, the record shows that you are anything but. Two of the more egregious examples of this during the last administration was the passage of both Medicare Part D and TARP. Both passed with overwhelming Republican support, and both significantly undercut the free market. The country thinks we have a party interested in defending capitalism. If only that were the case. Sadly, America has no such party. A true defense of Capitalism starts with the idea that, just as there is a wall of separation between Church and State, there should be a similiar wall between State and Economics. Capitalism requires NO government involvement in the markets. Not limited, not “less than the Democrats” but NONE.

ARI has a great site that launched earlier this year called Principles of a Free Society. Here they detail exactly what is required for a free society to function, and they explain just why government intervention into the economy must be rejected, outright. The essence of a free society is individual rights. Under a free society, an individual must remain in total control of his life, liberty and property. The moment the government steps into the economic life of its country, they violate those rights. As they point out on the website (quoting Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness):

There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

Once you open the door to government intervention in one area of the economy, you open the door for every well connected pull-peddler in the nation to get the same intervention where they feel it’s necessary. Eventually you’ll have government setting interest rates for the entire economy, government insuring bank deposits, government confiscating 12.4% of every individual’s income under the guise of a retirement fund, government controlling the car companies, government telling companies how much they can pay their employees, government rationing of the healthcare system, government telling you how you must operate the computer networks you’ve spent a fortune building, government telling you which apps you must accept in your online App Store, which software you must include with your operating system, which ingredients you may put in the food that you sell, and where you can smoke on your own property. Eventually you have current day America.

The Pandora’s Box of socialism is opened at the first crack, not once the box has had its lid removed and all its walls demolished.

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