Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. Here are a few things that I love about my Dad.

1. If you need someone to rope a calf for you, he is your guy...lasso and everything.
2. He has two nicknames for my Mom, beautiful and bug (I wonder which one she likes best)
3. He taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow. I even had my own little red bow. And he brought home cardboard boxes for us to shoot and took the tips off of the arrows so we didn't hurt each other. I only almost accidentally shot my sister once.
4. When we were little, on Sundays before we would get in the car to go to church he had to "hug all the pretty girls". It made me feel special.
   
5. He taught us the importance of earning money and created jobs for us to earn it. Shining his shoes was $0.05, sewing a button $1.00, car wash $5.00, mowing the lawn $20.00 (of course these prices haven't been adjusted for inflation).
   
6. When I broke my arm in 6th grade he bought me a new sleeping bag to make me feel better, and it worked.
7. He always has a German Chocolate cake mix on hand in case I ever come home to visit.
   
8. He loves genealogy and loves to find the best place to transfer all of his information - like when we are trapped in the car or making dinner.
9. He coined the phrase "pretty doesn't matter in the wilderness" while taking me shopping for hiking boots before my first backpacking trip. I wanted something with a little more pizazz than the typical brown boy boots. I still use the phrase frequently even though I still disagree a little.
   
10. He always makes sure we have enough pies at Thanksgiving.
    

He's a lover not a fighter

We spent the first three months or so telling the dogs "no, no, no, leave it, leave it, leave it". But now we are starting to let them explore the baby a little more under close supervision. I'm not sure which one likes to cuddle more.

The Heat is Out

We woke up Sunday morning to find our downstairs heater on the fritz. Luckily the upstairs one works just fine so our bedrooms stay nice and toasty. Luckily it's been sunny and 60+ degrees so we haven't frozen our bums off. But luckiest of all, we have fun hats too keep us warm.

As a side note, I totally love this highchair. It's Evenflow but I don't know what model because I bought it super cheap at a consignment sale. The seat raises and lowers and even reclines. It's really easy to wheel around too so even though little Squeak isn't eating solid food yet we can put him in his highchair and let him hang out with us wherever we are...eating dinner, cooking, working on the computer, etc.

Baby Love

My friend and college roommate, Sue, lives in Columbia. She happened to be in town today so she and her family came to church with us and then over to our house for lunch and to visit for a little bit. She has a seven week old baby girl who weighs about 9 lbs. I can't believe I ever had a baby that small but I did - even if it was just for a couple of weeks.

Our little guy is turning out to be quite the flirt already. Within minutes he held her hand, put his arm around her, and almost kissed her (but I didn't get that on film).

Moving On...

Last week Squeak learned to roll from his tummy to his back and then from his back to his tummy. He still needs a little encouragement but if he really puts his mind to it he can do it.

Sad

I'm a little sad today and it's not just because we won't be seeing Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL anymore. I'm sure it's no secret that I'm a Republican and a Conservative but more than that I am a capitalist. I can understand how people have different views about the war in Iraq, environmental issues, abortion, etc, but when it comes to economics, to me it's just about how the world works and how it doesn't. I took three economics courses in college and I loved them all. And what I learned is that if you truly want to increase the standard of living for a population, you want to decrease taxes (across the board not for some while raising it for others) and get rid of unnecessary government regulation that gets in the way of a free market (I do concede that some government regulation is necessary). This spurs competition and investment in new ideas and leads to an overall increase in production and wealth.

I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid that too many people took the bait of a "tax decrease for 95% of Americans" and assumed that meant that their life would get better. And in the short run it might. However, my concern is how businesses will react when their taxes are increased. Corporations have a *fiduciary* duty to maximize profits for their shareholders. So what do they do when taxes are raised?

1) Absorb it - profits decrease, dividends and share prices decrease and there go our 401(k)'s and IRA's. Especially bad for retirees or those soon to retire.

2) Decrease expenses such as payroll or investment in new technology. Neither of these bode well for increasing the standard of living. (Especially if jobs are actually cut and some will win the grand prize of the biggest tax decrease of all - the one that comes with having zero income).

3) Increase prices - meaning that all of that tax decrease will be spent in acquiring the same good and services that households do today.

Based on the fundamentals of macroeconomics that I have learned it seems that at best this tax decrease will be a wash for the middle class and could actually end up hurting them in the long run...probably just in time for a Republican to take office and get blamed for it.

On a separate note (and this is opinion) I don't think that corporations or people making over $250K should be punished for doing well. We already have a marginal tax system so those individuals are already paying higher taxes, I don't see the need to increase it any further. I also don't believe that those making more money necessarily have a higher standard of living. Based on number of children, what part of the country they live in, how long their commute is, how much in student loans they are paying back, etc, a person making $75K could actually have more disposable income than someone making $250K (just an example). And lastly, although I do wish that some of the more noble professions such as teachers, firemen and policemen were paid higher salaries, doesn't everyone have the choice of their profession? The approximate salaries of those professions are known and factored into the decision and probably weighed against the other benefits, such as more family time for teachers, pensions for police officers and so forth. So why should those who chose a profession that makes more money necessarily pay more than those who *chose* a lower paying profession?

I read a really good quote by Abraham Lincoln on the subject "Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." -- March 21, 1864 - Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association".

And I'll leave it at that. To all those Obama fans out there, I hope we can still be friends.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween for at least a week. Here is the condensed version.

Corn maze... apparantly not everyone loves a corn maze as much as me

Pumpkin carving...I did the bat and Brad did Jack from Nightmare before Christmas.

Halloween party at church...

Halloween Night... who knew a bat could be so cute?