Thing the Third: Vacation

And then, we went on vacation!  It was so great to have a long week away from work.  We had a nice quick flight to Phoenix to visit The Wife's recent med-school graduate brother and his family, and were soon joined by her sister and her kids, as well as her parents (who apparently had a very interesting drive across the desert from Missouri...  Oh, car troubles!).  We had fun catching up, and then the next morning piled into two cars (after a little more car trouble) and drove across to Anaheim to visit our favorite Happiest Place On Earth.  It seems like it had been forever since we were last there!  I mean, it had been about six months, so it was about time, ha ha.  It's such an interesting dynamic going just the two of us vs. going with a big group, especially a group with five little kids, but it was really fun.  We had three days at the parks, and were really glad to be just ahead of the insane summer crowds that would shortly arrive in droves when Cars Land and Buena Vista Street open (which has by now happened, leading to six-plus-hour waits for the new attractions...).

Highlights included finally seeing the really cool Soundsational Parade, most of us eating at the Blue Bayou (where we were forced to choose something different from our favorite Monte Cristo, since we were there for dinner rather than our usual lunch), spotting two podcasters live and in the midst of doing their thing (I didn't stop to talk to them, but I did wave and shout hello as I passed either on foot or on carousel horse), taking everyone to the Animation Academy and seeing everyone's drawings, peeking over the construction walls to Cars Land, seeing the newly-unveiled Carthay Circle Theatre in the new hub, taking Julie's parents to see Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and me riding the Mad Tea Party for the first time in probably five years, and not only living to tell the tale, but also not losing my lunch.  It was especially fun to take Julie's dad, who hadn't been there in several decades.  He seemed to love every bit of it, and he was a big fan of any and all rides we took him on.

I love Main Street in the morning.  Interestingly, I am completely blocking the castle.

Look who we ran into!  They're just like us!

*anxiousssss*

Noooo problem!

Why hello there, Merida.  You're out and about a little early, aren't you?

What a strange-looking mutilated corn dog.  It still tasted pretty good.

PPIEW.

I never see the Dapper Dans!  But we didn't stick around long.

They gave her a birthday treat at the Blue Bayou!  So festive.

This is me posing with a cannon and Marissa with her Lego "phone," with which she took a "picture" of me.

Aye, avast!

If you look closely, you can see the sleeeeeepy in my eyes.

She hides her sleeeeeepy a little better than I do.

She did the driving.

A different take on Julie's traditional picture in front of Boo's door.

Lesson learned:  If you're going to Disneyland during Grad Nites, at least be forewarned.  O, teenagers!

She loves that Dumbo.

We didn't really plan on making this look like one of our awkward Prom photos, but it kind of ended up looking that way anyway.  Maybe we're getting too used to taking pictures like that?

We were planning on just spending two of the three days our passes allowed, and maybe using the extra day another time somewhere down the line before they expire, but then we wanted one last chance to do a few more things on our last morning before we left town.  It turned out to be a good idea, since we were able to get a few last-minute souvenirs and treats that had eluded our grasp and schedule up until this point.

As a farewell to Disneyland on our last day, here's our Tower of Terror tribute to the ending of The Artist.

... But we couldn't leave before saying goodbye to Charles.

... and getting one of theeeese.

Farewell, Disneyland, until we meet again!  You look very crowded this morning!

The kids were just amazed to see our names on the ground in front of Disneyland.

Then we went to the beach!  We only had time to spend a couple hours of the morning there (after our few last hours at Disneyland, and before our eternally long drive back to AZ), but it was a nice day and a great visit, and the kids evidently didn't seem to mind that the water was freezing cold.

This girl loves the beach.

This boy does too, but he's being 2 kewl 4 skewl at the mo.

*brushes off shoulders*

There we were, just contentedly taking one of the self-taken-photos that we are so fond of, and at which we have become so skilt in past years, when...

... a fellow walked up and all but demanded we let him take a real picture of us.  Why not?

'Tis true.  Now people flying overhead know it too.

Look at William, just strutting on out to the water, ha ha.

Dad even took off his shoes and went wading!

8[]

As the mums gaze serenely on.

And here we have a specimen of the rare and elusive sea pony.

Then we drove back to Arizona and spent a couple of days hanging around and visiting and escaping the horrid Arizona heat by staying inside, and helping Tyler's family get ready to move in just a few days.  It was really fun to spend more time packing after we finally finished moving ourselves (...), but seriously, we were glad that we could be there to help.  We also were glad to be present for newborn Rose's blessing.

Julie went to the Hair By Marissa salon.

Such fashionable new trends!

 

It was ever so nice to see Puppy again.

Oh, Marci, at least pretend to be enjoying your ice cream!

That's better!

Oh Tyler, look how outnumbered you are...  You may just get your son one day!

Can you stand how cute these kids are??

I mean, LOOK at IVY!!!

"Drew, I love you and I always will."  *Drew melts*

Just because.

What was I saying about awkward Prom photos?

That's better.

There's even a toe pop!

(Notice how pinkish we are.  Thanks, California sun!)

Then there were a bunch more pictures, and this one image more or less sums up everything that was going on.

Family photo!  Including (almost) everyone!

It became a goal of Julie's to get William to give us a genuine smile.  Getting down to his level and tickling mercilessly seemed to do the trick.

Now for some true glamor shots.

Sisters do as sisters should.

Here she is!  Rose, or as Ivy calls her, 'Ose.

The upside of having to leave and come back home to work and life was knowing that almost everyone we were saying goodbye to would be driving through Utah within the week, which they did.  So we had another fun weekend with Julie's family, and we were able to show them our new place, and feed them delicious dinner and one of Julie's exquisite cakes.  We watched movies and hiked the Y and were introduced to the reboot of My Little Pony and went for walks and had a nice weekend, and our air mattress had its inaugural use for Marci and the kids.

This kid is a chess champion.  We played a few times, and the best I can say for myself is that one we made it to a complete stalemate, or maybe more accurately a draw.  Basically we both had our kings left, and that's it.

Sunday picnic in the park!

...

Da ladiez all luv a cake.  (And so do da guyz.)

A little bedtime story for Marissa.

You're so close, Wife!  There it is!

Y

*drama*

It was a great vacation, even if it did make me wish we had a vacation to recover from the busyness of it (which is almost always the case).  For some reason, and much to the disbelief of kith and kin, I just don't know if we'll be heading back to Disneyland for another year or two, as we just have a couple of also very exciting non-Disney trips on the horizon, so it was good to have a nice long visit there (and of course it's always so great to see Julie's family from out of town), and then when we DO make it back, we'll just be ever so glad to see it again.

.... aaand just like that, those are my three Things!  I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as we enjoyed experiencing them.

Thing the Second: Birthday

Just after we moved, we celebrated The Wife's birthday!  She very much enjoyed turning 23*.  Again, she wrote about this over at her blog too, which you can read here, but I wanted to document it a little at least too.

So Julie had a birthday!  And it was fun, despite all of my apparently natural inability to throw any kind of successful party.  After a completely and miserably failed attempt at getting a bunch of friends and family to join us for a viewing of The Avengers after we finished moving (Her similar plan was such an awesome post-birthday surprise for me, I thought it would be a fun bit of turnabout, and even though it was a couple weeks early for her actual birthday, think of how big a surprise it would have been!  Alas, 'twasn't meant to be), we thought we would end up just spending her actual birthday alone together, as it were.  This kind of defeat always requires a little bit of recovery time, but then after we had settled in and her actual birthday approached, we decided to risk another failure and throw a sort of birthday/housewarming event.  So we did!  And it turned out to be a success!  Although the pictures we ended up taking don't indicate such, there were quite a few people present, and we were so glad to have some company to introduce to our new place, and to have a bunch of people with whom to share Julie's latest confectionary masterpiece:

WHAT.

Hi, Halle!  Thanks for representing the guests present at this event.

Let the record show that I did offer to make her birthday cake for her, but as she has grown rather fond of (not to mention quite adept at) making cakes, she wanted to take the opportunity to try a recent discovery, the epic Chocolate Quake Cake.

As for the birthday girl and the actual day itself, I tried my hardest to lavish her with gifts and cash prizes throughout the day, but unfortunately, due in part to her birthday falling on a Sunday, and due in larger part to my own procrastination, but due in (maybe) largest part to Amazon's lackadaisical attitude toward shipping my items, her party was spread out over a few days and even a week.  It didn't help that she didn't have much clear idea what she wanted for her birthday this year, which I could understand.  Sometimes it's just hard to know what you want!  But I tried to be creative, and I even tried to string my present ideas together with some kind of theme like The Wife did for mine in March, and it ended up being, um, things that are rectangular.  Or something.  HA!  Works for me.  A few of them were these:

This is one I came up with on my own!  It was even available in pink.  I'm so glad she liked it, and now doing her Pilates will be much more comfy.

This is something she hinted at strongly a few weeks earlier, and then I think she kind of forgot about it.  Score another surprise for me!

So wonderful!  This came as a set with a voucher for a pre-ordered copy of the DVD as well, since for some hideous reason it doesn't come out until the end of June.  CDs are only slightly rectangular (in cases at least).

In the end, she seemed to have a nice birthday, and I vowed to plan a little more carefully for parties and presents and such in the future.  And then we also took a fun trip to cap off the birthday weekend/week, which is coming up here on the blog as the next Thing.  Happy birthday, Wife!


* or something

Thing the First: Moving

I have three things I've been meaning to blog about.  (There are actually a few more than that, but these are three more noteworthy recent events that have been on deck for a while.)  So, thing the first is moving.  We moved!  For those who haven't seen already, The Wife blogged yesterday about this as well, including a very amusing animated photo tour (seriously, go look at it, it's hilARious!), but I wanted to document the process a little too.

(Just now I wrote a couple of nice long paragraphs detailing our moving history for the last two years, when I realized I just blogged about that a few weeks ago.  Good thing I noticed, that would have been an embarrassing repeat.)

So yes, last you heard we were about to move.  And then we did!  And I learned a few things:

• Having assistance from friends and family makes a HUGE difference, even if you're only moving half a mile away.  The first night we were working, it was just me and The Wife boxing things up and loading up our lil' car and taking stuff over one carload at a time.  This was VERY slowgoing.  Once Julie's visiting teacher and my parents showed up, it was a completely different experience.  We were almost completely finished packing and moving within a couple of hours.  Thanks, Mom and Dad and Mary!  This has inspired me to be a good helper whenever possible when friends and family are moving.

• Having a family member with a truck is ALSO a huge help.  It spared us the trouble of relocating our couches by hand (again).  Thanks, Jonny!  This has inspired me to have a truck someday so that I can be a Godsend for someone in a similar fashion.

• Sometimes, no matter what precautions you take to prevent a lapse in service (especially since your livelihood depends on being connected to the technological world), there just might be some complications in transferring your internet or TV or electricity or gas service (and issues there were with all of those listed).  There were some serious headaches, but I only had to go to the library to work once or twice.  This has inspired me to take even more precautions in the future, and try not to be too bothered if even those added measures turn out not to make the transition perfectly smooth.

• Cleaning checks are rotten, and even if you spend hours getting your old apartment in far better condition than it was when you moved in, the inspectorlady may nonchalantly wander about and point out things that you spent considerable time cleaning and say it's not clean enough.  Then she'll come back to recheck it after you have another chance to fix it up some more, and probably charge you for the recheck (but she probably won't tell you there will be an extra charge until she takes it out of your deposit).  This has inspired me to be picky about cleaning checks like I was when I was a student, and also to be annoyed by that lady.

• There are a few differences between renting from a big company with lots of properties and from a family that owns just a few.  There are pros and cons to each, but for now we're looking forward to the latter situation.  This has inspired me to try to find out in the future if we were charged extra fees before it's been two years and it's pretty much too late to do anything about them.

• In Provo, moving half a mile away means not only a new ward, but also a new stake.  This has inspired me to, um, keep going to church?  Yes, that.

And those are some of the things I learned throughout the process this time.  And now I'm going to show some of my favorite amenities!  Like I said, The Wife already posted a great tour, so I won't post a lot of pictures, except of my favorite things about living here.

• THIS:

 

I heard someone say once that you should be careful what chores you pick up during the first few weeks of marriage, because then you'll basically be doing those chores for the rest of forevermore, and it seemed perfectly fair that I should handle dishwashing anyway, especially since Julie usually makes (delicious) dinner.  Nevertheless, after almost three years of washing dishes by hand, and discovering some weird and annoying dryness and sensitivity of my hands due to prolonged exposure to water or something, I was just getting kind of vexed with the process, so I was SO ready for this little baby.  I don't know how we ever functioned without it.  I love so much loading it up and turning it on and walking away.  May I never take it for granted.  My hands are already so much happier.

• THIS:

Our old place had coin-operated laundry, but that's annoying and can get expensive, so we mostly spent the last few years loading up our dirty clothing and taking them to Mom and Dad's house.  This was a pretty good arrangement for a while because 1) It gave us a good reason to visit Mom and Dad at least once a week, 2) It was free (less the travel expense, which balanced out, again because it doubled as a visit to the folks, but also because of...), 3) Mom and Dad usually made dinner for us, so we scored some foods out of the deal too.  Still, after a few years of this, planning for the commute and the subsequent wait started to wear on our schedule.  It seems like such a huge luxury to be able to just throw laundry in whenever and then go about your business right there at home.  And it's not in a hallway or bathroom, like so many of the other apartments we looked at!  It's in its own room, a fact with gives The Wife (and me) much glee.

• THIS:

Anyone who knows me well knows of my aversion to summer (or, more accurately, summer heat).  I just hate feeling sweaty and hot and unable to cool down.  Our old place had a very small and fairly ineffective wall unit in the living room.  It actually worked pretty well, as long as you were standing RIGHT in front of it.  Step away in the kitchen and it's basically a big oven, and don't even think about the bedroom or bathroom.  (We discovered during cleaning that a virtual wall of dust might have had something to do with its ineffectiveness, but...  oh well.  It might work better for the new kids who moved in there.)  A standing, rotating fan helped on summer nights, but mostly I felt nasty and sweaty every night.  Once I started working at home, I knew that something HAD to be done, I simply could not survive the long summer months sitting at that kitchen table all day.  This was one of the amenities that we turned down a lot of nice apartments for, and it was the right decision.  I love to hear that AC rumble as it turns on.  Luckily, it's also been a pretty mild summer (some days we don't even need to turn it on, it's been so nice), but still, there have been a few days that were pretty gross, and I don't have to deal with it!  XD  (Until I get in the car to go somewhere, then I still have plenty of opportunities to gripe, ha.)

• The second bedroom is also really nice.  At the moment it's the office, and it's great to be able to shut the door on work at the end of the workday and not be confronted by it and reminded by it at every turn, but in the future this room has the possibility of being multipurpose.

So there you go!  We love our new townhouse place (it has stairs!  We've never had stairs before!  That means no downstairs neighbors!).  We've already had a few visitors for a few nights, and it was great to have space to put them and not have to apologize for how hot they were going to get during the night.  So, friends and family, if you are coming to town and need a place to stay, hit us up!  We're glad to give you a tour and pull out the new air mattress.

Moving blows...

... but having moved is glorious.  Details to follow.  There's been just so much going on for the last couple of weeks that I haven't had a chance to document everything properly here on the blog, so for now, here's your teaser and first look at our new apartment.

We love our new place!

P.S.  Props to me and my Photoshop skills, exhibited above.  You didn't even notice, did you?  I guess that's the point.  But I wanted to make it known for my own purposes. :D

Mother's Day 5K Fun Run

There's been a lot going on, and I know I still haven't blogged about our awesome new place yet, but we had a great birthday weekend and we're about to head out on an exciting family vacation, so before I get to those funtivities I wanted to blog really quickly about a 5K that happened over the weekend.

So.  A 5K happened over the weekend.  It was a fundraiser for Jordan's basketball team, organized by Amber, and it was a pretty fun race.  After a minor panic about finding the park location, we found the right place (we apparently missed the memo that it was starting at 8:30, and not 8, leading us to be the first to arrive, even before the race organizers).  The turnout was decent, the course was varied and interesting, though I generally prefer a loop to a there-and-back route .  The good thing about a there-and-back course is that every time you start going uphill, you know on the way back it's going to be a nice downward slope.  Sure, there's a vice versa somewhere in there, but let's not draw too much attention to that, shall we?  We had a busy weekend ahead of us, but we were glad we could go support the team (go, team!) and start off our Saturday with a race.  It was actually pretty rough for me, I just had very little energy that morning for some reason, but we both did pretty well (I placed second at 20:44, 6:47/mile, after Jonny of course, who was about a minute faster, though I did keep him in my sights for most of the course, and Julie came really close to a new PR, which was awesome) and had a good time.  The weather was pretty nice, actually a little chilly, which I prefer to a really hot summer race.  The treats were some kind of deluxe (those pretzel bagel things were a great surprise!) and everyone even was awarded a water bottle!  Score.  Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures this time.  No score.  Just imagine us in sweaty running clothes and smiling like :D and there you go.  Alternatively, you can go back through and find another race post and look at those pictures.

Thanks, Amber and Jordan and everyone!  It was fun.

Exciting, Excellent News

I don't want to leave that rant at the top for very long at all, so I decided to follow it basically immediately with some awesome news that counteracts the unpleasantries of the previous one.

For quite some time now, over a year really, we've been in the market for a new apartment.  At the time we started looking around, we had lived here for a year, and our contract had run its course, so we were renting month-to-month.  We wanted to move somewhere a little bigger, but we also wanted to move somewhere we really liked, a place that had all the things we were looking for now that we're both working and feeling much more financially stable, somewhere we could live for a good few years and that would really feel more like home (preferably somewhere just a little farther from Student Town...  We've really liked this area and ward, but there's so much turnover due to the number of students and proximity to campus).  We looked and looked, and never really found anything, and then I was called to be the choir director and Julie was called to work in the nursery, and we did like our apartment a lot, and it was a good deal, and there wasn't nearly the sense of urgency that there was the last time we moved (from a place we couldn't even stand living for six months), so we thought we might as well just keep our eyes open and stay at our current place to save a little money until we found the exact right new place, which apparently I have mentioned here on the blog before.

Flash forward about a year.  I had by this time started actually working from home, commandeering the dining room table (while we have been relegated to eating dinner in the living room), so we thought it was time to start looking again for a place with another bedroom I could use as an office (and, in the future, as a place for a wee one to spend its nights, as it were).  We had done a little apartment hunting here and there throughout the year, taking a few months at a time off, but always checking the listings to see if Our Place ever appeared.  We looked at so many apartments that we started to recognize a handful of really common layouts and amenities, and we found quite a few places we were sure we would have been mostly satisfied with, but we never left a place saying YES.  We thought after a while we were being a little too picky, but then we thought, if we're going to make a move and make it last for several years (maybe our last place before finding a house?), and since our current contract allowed for it, we might as well wait until we can find the place we want!  Still, we adjusted some of our requirements and tried to be a little more flexible.

Then, just as it was starting to look more or less hopeless, and with the unpleasant prospect of another sweltering summer in this oven (especially with me baking in it all the livelong workday), Julie casually mentioned an ad she found on Craigslist.  I was hesitant when they didn't include any pictures (tip:  When you are trying to rent your apartment, POST PICTURES.  Seriously, they really make or break your ad so very much of the time), but I called and made an appointment to swing by anyway, just to take a look.  Through some unfortunate circumstances I actually missed meeting the tenants (because I was looking at another place) and couldn't find the right apartment (I had the number wrong), but I looked at the place from the outside, and was pretty much thinking that we had to see the inside as soon as humanly possible.  I wrote a few emails and made a few calls and after work we had a chance to swing by on our way up to Park City for the weekend.  We walked in, looked around, talked to the wife of the house and her adorable child, and walked out saying YES.  By the next day we had been contacted by the landlady and two days later we had signed a contract (we even scored a discount on rent for signing for two years).  Apparently we were the first to look at it, so they took the ad down right away.  This place has pretty much everything we were hoping for!  It's probably twice as big as where we live now, and IT HAS AC.  The amenities are delightful, but I'll save them for a later post.  For now, this is just breaking the great news.  I actually don't have a picture (like I said, they didn't post any...), but I yoinked this one from Google Maps.  It's the gray one, second one from the left:

I'm trying to convince myself that it's not actually smaller than the apartment surrounding it, it's just sort of sunken in so it looks a little smaller from this angle.

We're moving!  Next week!  XD  And now when family come to visit we will have a place for them to sleep and they won't die of sweating in the night!  And, of course, neither will we.  And I can have my work in a separate place and close the door on it after the workday is done!  We had hoped to move outside of Provo, but this place is just so right that it's worth the possibility that there are still a lot of students around (not that we dislike students, it's just that we both finished school years ago, and that kind of area seems so transitory and impermanent).  It's actually really close to where we live now, like half a mile, but it is a little further from the central radius of campus, and in a little more established neighborhood with seemingly less student-type apartments.  It seems like each time you cross one of these major Provo streets it makes a big difference.  We've basically go about a mile northwest each time we move.  I contacted our current landlord and let them know we're on our way out, as I know our contract requires notice of 30 days, and they told us we would be responsible for rent for May, unless we found someone to take over for that month.  I posted an ad online (with plenty of pictures!) and that very night we had a young engaged couple come look at it, and just a few days later THEY had applied and were approved.  This really has been a good place, and it's a great deal, so I felt bad telling the other interested parties that the place had been sold, but mostly I was just glad there was so much interest, it made my job a lot easier.  That weekend in Park City we could think and talk of little else but how excited we were.

Patience and persistence and perserverance and prayer.  Those are the four Ps that made this possible.  And I guess that's a fifth P.

So yes!  That's it!  Great news!  Details to follow!  Very shortly!

Bewildering, Bothersome News

So I don't actually write things like this on the blog very often anymore, for a few reasons, but things have sort of piled up in the last few weeks and I think it's worth getting out there, albeit semi-briefly.  Of course I'm not one to shy away from talking about heavy or socially relevant issues, but I have lately been trying to avoid stirring up the pot unnecessarily, stepping back from things that will negatively affect my self and future and family, and focusing instead on doing what I can in venues and ways that will actually make a difference.

Having said that...

First things first, this happened.  (I couldn't even find a balanced description of the event, which makes sense since the event itself was evidently hardly balanced.)  There are so many problems with this, I don't even know where to start, so I won't get too deep into it.  I will say that when I posted the link on Facebook, bemoaning the fact that my beloved BYU is not the place it once was (if it ever was??), and wondering when it became such an overt and blatant breeding ground for unchecked propaganda, I was even more disturbed with the response from my supposedly like-minded friends than I was with the actual event.  It was unbalanced and propagandistic and refused to acknowledge alternatives to simply accepting this as part of your identity.  I just don't understand how people can't realize what this means.  Of course it was a departmental event, but the part is the whole, and unfortunately this reflects very poorly on BYU and the Church, at least for people who still believe in and follow the word of God regarding this subject.  You know, the people who don't give standing ovations for the poor kids in the panel who said God made them a certain way and as soon as they leave the horrid confines of BYU they are certainly going to live out the lifestyle with which they so adamantly and blindly identify.

Second things second, by now many of the very few people who read this blog will have discovered this little piece.  (I'm purposely not embedding the actual video because I don't want the wretched thing to show up when I look through my blog.)  When this came to my attention, my eyes went wide and my jaw dropped.  Bear in mind that I have had issues with the entire It Gets Better campaign as it is (I find it extremely elitist and emotionally manipulative, and isn't really getting to the core issues at all, but is more a platform for widespread propaganda), and have seriously considered breaking ties with beloved and important institutions because of their participation in it, and then here this bomb drops from my own beloved BYU.  Again, so many things wrong with this.  I mean, from the sound of it, it DOESN'T get better!  What's the message of this video?  That if you feel something that you don't believe is right and true, or something that you have been taught all your life isn't right, you just deal with it until you're in a position in life that you can accept it and act on it?  THAT'S when it gets better?  When you can abandon or modify the word of God just so you can experience some backward notion of who you are?  And base your identity entirely on your behavior and self-labeling?  I also resent the implication that people who disagree are sheltered and naive and stupid and intolerant.  Oh yes, and bigoted (oh, how I have come to loathe that word... don't those who throw it out realize how easily and completely it's turned directly around?).  Where's the tolerance for the other point of view?  Honestly, if I had seen that video while I was a young and impressionable and thoroughly confused college student, it would have shaken my belief system's foundation to its very core.  This video probably would have driven me to self-destructive thoughts.  (How's that for having the opposite effect?)  I could go on and on about this, but I shall proceed.

Finally, briefly, in response to that video along came this.  When I first saw it, it was even a little more shocking than the previous one.  How sad, these people are being used for and/or participating in a propaganda film. How much more manipulative could it possibly be?  I mean, aside from all the idiotic things these poor people say, am I seriously supposed to think it's sweet that they are bearing testimony of false doctrine?  In the sacred and holy name of my Lord and Savior, no less?  Who lived and died so people could overcome any and all temptations through His all-encompassing Atonement?  Like they said in the video, I also hope the poor confused people who watch that video see themselves as who they really are, and don't identify themselves entirely as their behavior, ignoring the hopeless ideas preached therein.

Then, of course, there's the whole issue of the terroristic threat that was mailed via the United States Postal Service directly to my parents' front door and into my dad's very hands...  This from the side that demands tolerance and love.

So yes, all of this has been disheartening, but at the same time, conversations have arisen from these things that have caused people to finally pay attention and think and realize what's going on (and what has been going on for years, right under their noses, though much more quietly).  Some people were posting and praising those videos without even watching them!  (They just looked at it and thought it had a good message, so shared it without even thinking about it or doing the proper research.)  People have thanked me for standing up for the right thing, to which I reply with thanks, but also encouragement to stand up themselves.  Silent dissent is as good as assent, and they think their agenda is gaining greater ground than it really is, because most people just sit silently by and pretend it's not happening (this could be for many reasons, but none of them are very good, not even the fear and friends and family will disagree with your stance...  Whose approval are we more concerned about gaining here?).  Bear in mind that this blogpost is a mere snapshot of my many thoughts regarding these recent happenings, but it's something at least.  Regarding this issue, I think most of the time I think people really do have their heart in the right place, they simply aren't thinking things through.  I do love everyone, and of course I have friends and acquaintances and associates who have feelings of same-sex attraction (why do people always assume that if you take this stance then you obviously don't know any gay people?), and of course I have done my research (the opposite of which is another assumption people make when you take this position), that's not what this is about.  Love does not equal permissiveness, and love has never meant you just accept everything and let people do whatever they want.  I love my fellow man too much to keep quiet when God's plan is being so actively and systematically challenged.  There is a big picture here, and these little things are not baby steps, they're giant leaps.  The slope just keeps getting more and more slippery.