The grocery checkout aisle: A lesson for the blind

In the checkout aisle you'll almost certainly see magazine covers doing one of two, if not both, things:

First, expounding to women the virtues of, and ways to achieve, being sexually appealing to men (e.g. how to lose weight, how to seduce men, how to have sex, etc.)

Second, relating the sad tale of famous, sexually appealing women who are going through divorce.

So, these women followed the steps, they became the "perfect" woman, they got the "perfect" man, and then their lives fell apart. This is about as clear as the evidence can get that women who do their best to become sexually appealing to men will, in the end, not have a happy home life. And the evidence is right in the checkout aisle!

Women, if you want to be happy with a man, don't try to satisfy his animal desires! Because you won't get a man, you'll get an animal!

Birthday Report

Well, it's official, I'm another year older... Blast! I was just getting good at remembering how old I was. It was... it was... anyway, it was easier!

Today was spent mostly doing chores. I prepared a round of fruit smoothies for breakfast, baked three batches of rolls, and prepared a large batch of granola for breakfast tomorrow. I also ran by campus to do some more paperwork, and had someone come out to look at the garbage disposal.

But the kids had fun! Here are a couple of pictures of Michael and Carolyn enjoying Minecraft on the XBox.

William was busy voluntarily cleaning his room to bump up his allowance this week a bit. :-) And later he had a blast going to cub scouts for the first time in forever. :-)

And we finished off the day with a large batch of baked chocolate pudding cake... with a lot of candles... I'm pretty sure there were too many candles. The chocolate pudding cake is really good though! :-D

Daddy Daughter Dance

Yesterday my little princess and I went to our first daddy-daughter dance. We had a blast! Carly was especially excited! The evening started off with some light refreshments for everyone, some tiaras for the girls (a wonderful sister there put up Carly's hair and put on her tiara), and some ice-breaking activities for the couples. :-) Carly was especially fond of the watermelon and cupcakes. Though she was eager to get to the dancing. After the treats we marched around the building in pairs playing follow the leader, which was a lot of fun! The next activity was a great little game where everyone except one person sat in a circle. The person walked up to one person in the circle and asked "Who do you love?" The person asked would then respond by saying something like "red-heads", and then everyone identified would have to stand up and change seats. It was a lot of fun! Carly was really excited whenever she had the chance to jump up and run around screaming trying to find a seat! :-) A lot of the little girls there were really eager to be asked "Who do you love?", though they would often freeze up when asked. :-) So I took it upon myself to make valuable suggestions like: "How about anyone with male-pattern baldness?" (I was thinking of my dad, several uncles and friends, and our old pet dog, Rufus.)

After that very enjoyable activity the dance itself got kicked off. I had more fun at this dance than I've ever had at any other dance...ever! A large part of that had to do with the fact that, although there were quite a few cute girls there, none of them were my age, and my date really enjoyed my company! :-) Also, it was probably the first dance where I had heard every single song before the dance! (Of course, most of the songs were from disney princess movies. You should have heard all the little girls when they played the song from Frozen!) Carly and I danced to every song, in a variety of combinations of a basic two-step, a box step, and some swing. And she loved being spun around! Towards the end I was sweating so much from so much energetic dancing that I had to take my glasses off! And Carly simply loved it! She was screaming and squealing with delight the whole time! And what really made me feel good was that she was having so much fun dancing with me! In fact, when most of the girls started dancing in circles and bunny hopping around and whatnot while their dads cheered them on, Carly kept wanting to just dance with me. :-) Towards the end I was starting to get pretty winded and even offered to take her to get some ice cream if she wanted (hint, hint, leave early), and her reply each time was something to the effect of: "Yeah, that would be great! Let's do that when the dance is over!" :-)

Nevertheless, I was still sad when the dance ended. Because we had had such a great time. And, the cherry on top was when they game me a little gift basket for being the newest dad in the Ward. :-) Then we went and got some ice cream. And the entire time Carly was talking about how much fun she had had, and how much she loved dancing (this was her first dance), and how much fun the church is, and how she wanted to go to every daddy-daughter dance!

Yes, last night my prayers were filled with gratitude for the wonderful church-members who had organized, planned, prepared, and carried out my daughter's first dance! :-)

Life Overflowing with Blessings

It isn't possible for me to write out in detail all of the ways that the Lord has blessed me recently. There are just too many! I doubt that I can even remember them all. But I will do my best to make a list here to show my gratitude for all that He has given me.

An ideal job, close to my kids.
The friends that I needed to help me pull through the divorce.
The company of the Spirit.
Three beautiful, healthy kids.
Many worldly possessions, including my wonderful car and comfortable bed.
The Gospel.
Safety and security. This is particular gift has been poured out upon me so frequently recently that it could stand alone. For example, while driving the truck with all my possessions and towing my car, I was completely safe during the nine-hour drive this past Thursday. Many times during that drive I felt the prompting to merge into a different lane, and when I did so I afterwards realized that doing so had made my trip safer and/or easier by helping me avoid some difficulty. I was also prompted twice to pull over for gas when I would not normally have done so, and both times it turned out to be providential, because not doing so would have almost certainly caused me to run out of gas.
A wonderful home to rent, and a very friendly and helpful realtor to work with.
The help that I have needed during this move. Both from other people, and in the form of the energy and desire needed to get everything done, and done well, and done on time.
My family.
Inspiration. This has come in many different ways, several of which I have already listed. But perhaps the most notable was when I was planning out the dates for my trip up here. I picked Thursday for the drive and Friday for the house hunt, and I made the reservations with U-haul and with Marriott through Tuesday. Not for any particular reason other than that I felt that those were the right dates. As it turns out, Thursday was a very good day for driving, Friday I was able to schedule three house viewings, one of which is ideal, and I wasn't able to do the paperwork until Monday, which means that I would have been in a bit of a pickle if I had only slotted the hotel and truck through Saturday, as I was inclined to do.

The Lord is Great! Blessed be the name of the Lord!