Pray for the Sullivans

Through the Houston grapevine the Sullivan's incredible story has been brought to our attention. A new mom of a 2 week old baby passed away this last week. In reading their blog, I've learned what a legacy this woman has left behind. She touched (and continues to touch) a lot of lives and her faith in Christ was amazing! Please keep this family in your prayers.
To read more about their story: http://bandssullivan.blogspot.com/

Hmmm...

Have you ever felt like you were just running around in circles, at full speed...and of course...going nowhere? Good grief, if I had a tail, I would be literally chasing it. I'm back in school, and let me tell you....it is nuts! The actual school part, no problem. The garbage surrounding it, insane! I am in day two of this quarter and here I am having to return statistics book #3 because the professor keeps changing the version. This means mailing it back to amazon and having to pay shipping fees! Along with these 3 books, have been 3 solution manuals...which also have to be shipped back. Have I mentioned that I took a very in depth statistics class already, but the school won't accept it because it had the word "engineering" in front of it! So, my first assignment...Excel 101. It goes like this. Put "=" in cell A1 followed by 3 + 3. Hit enter. Magic. Oh boy. In the mean time, I have to bug all these poor people to write long recommendations for me twice! Why, because the school can't figure out how to make their departments talk to each other. I hate asking people to write recommendations...and having them write two separate ones is so painful. So running around and around and around, going nowhere fast. The good news...Viva Las Vegas next week! Whew....I need to win the jackpot.

The Fall Menu

Today is the first day of fall...and I LOVE fall time. Here are the top ten reasons...(in no particular order)!

1) The leaves. I love seeing the trees go from greens to reds, yellows, and oranges. Our neighborhood is spectacular during this time of year because all the trees turn this bright red. I also love watching the leaves fall from the trees. Oooo...so beautiful!

2) A little....only a little... chill in the air. Things are starting to cool off again...but not too much. The sun is still out, there is no snow, but there a slight crispness in the air. In the morning, I love to step out onto our deck and just breathe in the crisp fall air.

3) Sweaters....I LOVE sweaters! This is the time when I can start pulling out all my big comfortable sweaters!

4) Pumpkin Patches...there is nothing better than going to a pumpkin patch and picking out a pumpkin.

5) Apple cider....hot or cold. Fresh apple cider bought directly from an apple orchard of course. YUMMMY!

6) Cute and spoooooky Halloween decorations are going up! This is always a fun event at our house. Craig has been adding to our Halloween scene every year. Last year, we got a lot of great comments from the kids....but this year we have to bring it up a notch. I'm not sure what he has in mind just yet...but I do know he has been talking a lot about a fog machine!

7) Decisions on what to be for Halloween...not just for kids! We have a pretty competitive costume contest/party to prepare for....and we really have to get creative!

8) Holidays are just around the corner! Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas....all in the span of just three months! That means we get to spend lots of time with friends and family! Oooo...yes....I love making all our holiday travel plans!

9) Popcorn balls! Every year, Craig and I make popcorn balls....every year they get a little more edible. It is always fun to see how they turn out and we usually get a lot of laughs in the kitchen.

10) Last but not least...Fall smells....leaves, pumpkins, spices, candles, berries, wood stoves, apples...

Free Giveaway

To jump start KT Designs (blog designs) I am going to give a free blog design to a lucky winner! The blog design will include:

- Custom Header
- Custom Sides
- Blog Widening

I will be having a drawing on Oct. 5, 2009. To enter, all you have to do is blog about the drawing and leave a comment on the KT Design Blog (http://ktblogdesignsblog.blogspot.com/)! You get a double entry if you include my giveaway button on your blog! Good Luck!

<a border="0" href="http://ktblogdesignsblog.blogspot.com//" target="_blank"><img src="http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt113/neumank/9_09Giveaway.jpg" /></a>

Wow!

I just finished an AMAZING book! I highly, highly recommend it. It is a fairly new book, you may have heard of it: The Shack by William Paul Young. Just so I don't give anything away...here is what the back of the books says:
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Mack's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgement he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever.
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Awesome book!

A small Confession...

Okay...so we're not morning people. Neither Craig or I care to get up much before 10 am on weekends. This is normally not a problem, since we don't have kids, and we have trained our dogs to be non-morning creatures as well. Well in the summer, it becomes a problem, because...we'll our church goes down to one service in the mornings...and it is the early service! So my confession begins...so we've slept in for a good majority of this summer's Sundays and we'll...(we've missed church... A LOT). Being in a small town...people notice when you show up and when you don't...people...including the Pastor. So yes indeed...some guilt is felt as we sleep in on Sundays, but not enough to get us up bright and early the following Sunday. It isn't the guilt that motivates us to "eventually" get up and go to church. After several weeks of no church, things just start seeming more hectic, less manageable, more restless. Why? I pray, I try to actively seek a daily relationship with the Lord, and most (certainly not all) days I feel I have succeeded...so why is church such a necessity? It sounds weird...but I have often wondered this? Organized religion...why? After some pondering (yes...I like to ponder), I have some thoughts. I think learning the word and hearing sermons is like food for our souls. Church is there to replenish us weekly. Come Sunday night...you may not even remember what in the world that morning's sermon was about, but regardless, you know it was received. It is like eating a meal...and a few days later, you can't recall for the life of you what you ate...but it doesn't matter, your body was replenished. Hearing the word....it is the same thing. Do I think God looks down at us as terrible Christians if we don't go to church? Absolutely not. No way! However, God created the church, because He knows we need that spiritual replenishment...that replenishment that is so difficult to get on your own...impossible...no, hard...absolutely!. I am ALWAYS quite amazed how much clearer the cloudy becomes after attending church (even when it is terribly boring). Things just feel calmer...more manageable...more..."oh, yeah, I can handle this." God is wise, he knows more than me (I have to remind myself of this daily). The truth, we can not walk through this life on our own, we were not designed to do so. We must walk with Him, and part of us being successful in doing so...is indeed (for most of us), going to church, and yes...getting up early on Sundays. So....if life starts feeling out of control, and you've prayed, and you've prayed...think...when is the last time I went to church? It might...just might be worth getting up for on Sunday mornings.

The Dunk Tank

At our church street fair, Craig was the guy in the dunk tank, complete with a swim cap, goggles, and of course... a snorkel. The kids loved him. Most of the time, after three shots with no luck, the kids would run up and hit the button...and in the cold water Craig would go (but this was well justified since Craig was quite the heckler). They thought it was so funny...as did I. I tried to play it fair and dunk him, but after missing three times, I was assisted by a friend...who pushed the button. Poor craig...but a very good sport! :)

Taking Chance

We just finished watching a really good movie. The movie is called "Taking Chance." I think it was a made for HBO movie so you'll have to rent it through netflix...or in the mail blockbuster (which is what we did). It is an excellent movie. It has Kevin Bacon in it and it is about a fallen marine and the journey getting him home. It is a true story. A must see!

Czar of the Day

So I'm already frusturated with the Czar of the day. When it comes into looking into each Czar, things get really hard to verify. With that said, I have no interest in misleading my readers, I only want to present facts. When looking into today's czar, I found it easy to verify the job of the czar, but any personal aspects of the czar, completely unreliable. With that said, I'm going to share with you what I found today, and leave it at that. I hope everyone understands that these unelected officials do have extrodinary power, and we as US citizens have a responsibility to understand that, and care who they are and what they can do.
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A new Czar was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday this week, so I thought I'd begin with the newest Czar.

Name: Cass Sunstein

Czar Job: Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)...(aka Regulatory Czar). Note: The OIRA has been around since 1980.

Job Description: Oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistacal policy (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/OIRA_QsandAs/).

"Under Executive Order, OIRA reviews hundreds of significant proposed and final rules from all federal agencies before they are published in the Federal Register. As a resulet of OIRA's review, many draft rules are changed before publication, withdrawn before a review is completed, or returned to the agencies because, in OIRA's opinion, certain aspects of the rule need to be reconsidered. Despite its importance, OIRA's regulatory review function generally is not well documented or well understood." (Directly from a Report issued by the Government Accounting Office found at: (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03929.pdf )

One part of the above report has a table it in, that lists some of rules that OIRA has had a direct impact on (meaning they added parts to the rule, deleted parts of the rule, or just simply editoral changes to the rule.) Here is a list of some of these rules the OIRA had an impact on.

- National Primary Drinking Water Regulation
- Aging Airplane Safety
- Identification and Listing of Hazardous Waste
- Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
- Fees for FAA Services for Certain Flights
- Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting
- Export Requirments for Unapproved New Drug Products
- Food Additive Notification System

In summary: From what I have gathered, it appears that the OIRA takes proposed rules from other government agencies (EPA, FAA, FCC, FMEA etc) and edits them prior to final publication. Their editing can be anything from completely removing the rule, to minor editoral changes.

Info about the Administrator of OIRA (Regulatory Czar):
Education: Graduated in 1978 from Harvard Law School magna cum laude.
Past Jobs: He has been a professor of law at such universities such as Harvard. He has been an author of several books and works on various projects involving the relationship between law and human behavior.

What in the world...Czars?

I don't know about everyone else, but in the news lately I hear A LOT of "Czar this" and "Czar that." If you are saying..."uh...I don't really care." Think again, these are people that have DIRECT impact on your DAILY lives, and "we the people" need to care.

We need to know who they are, what they do, and how they get into their positions. I've done some research, and I'm going to share with you what I have found. Before I even get started I do have some disclaimers:

1) No, I am neither a republican, or a democrat. I think both are extremely corrupt and I refuse to associate with either. I consider myself an independent who STRONGLY believes in small Government and BIG "we the people." I am conservative in some areas and liberal in others. With that said, I'm keeping this information as non-republican and non-democrat is possible.
2) Figuring out if a source is reliable or not is dang near impossible, so I'm pulling from a variety of sources. I'm doing my best.
3) Their official title is not Czar, each has their own "official title" so there are arguments all over on who is considered a Czar, and who is not. This is a symptom of "big government" and one of the reasons I don't like it. Confuse the people, until they can't keep up.

Here are the very basics:
1) Have we had Czars before?: Yes, in fact Bush had 40 some. Obama, depending on where you look...30 to 40 Czars.

2) How do they get their positions? This is completely unclear and I can't find a straight answer. I do know that the President appoints them. It is unclear from there. From what I have gathered, the Senate confirms some...not all. This is where I am extremely frustrated. It is not clear, how these people get into our government? Some are vetted (background check), some are not? All I know, there are a lot of "czars" and the fact that the president has the power to appoint this many people, who may or may not be vetted, may or may not be confirmed is quite concerning to me, regardless of who the president is! Where is "we the people" in all of this?

3) So...who are these said Czars, and what do they do. To answer that question, I'm going to do "The Czar of the Day." Every day, I'll write a little about one Czar and what they do. My goal is to inform people on how these appointed (maybe confirmed, maybe vetted) officials effect policies molding our daily lives.

A small town in a small world

So in the last month or so, I've had a lot of "wow...it's a small world" happenings. Here they are:

1. After working 2 months with my micro lab partner, somehow we got on the subject of skiing, then Montana, which is when we both found out that yes indeed, we both have the same hometown Missoula, MT, and yes indeed, we went to the same high school (she is two years younger than me, and moved there the year I graduated). Crazy!

2. We were at a friend's party and as we were putting our side dish on the table with all of the other side dishes, I looked up and there was our brand new neighbor standing on the other side of the table. It was crazy because I had just met him...oh maybe a week prior (they just moved in right next door). It turns out that his wife (Molly) and our friend (whose party it was) are really good friends!

3. Since the party we have befriended our new neighbors which is awesome! So far...movie night, and an impromtu dinner! :) We joke that we need some tin cans and some string to make a phone between our houses. Hehe. In any event, we were talking and I found out that Molly's aunt is the Nurse Practitioner that I job shadowed for a couple of months! Insane!

Well....that is all of the "it's a small world" for now. It is always so cool to figure out how everyone is connected to everyone some how some way. Crazy.

KT Designs

I love designing blogs! It has become my hobby. When I have some extra time, or I need to do something I love for awhile, I come to the computer and design away. We'll my last creation led into a business...KT Designs. I designed an entire website using blogger. Crazy...who knew you could do such a thing! In any event, I'm bringing my love for blog design to all you bloggers out there! So spread the word, KT Designs has opened (as of today!!). Check the KT Blog Design blog every now and again as well...I will be doing giveaways and other random promotions!~
click here to check it out!

Evan Almighty

Have you seen this movie? I highly recommend it. Not only is it funny, it has some good little quotes throughout. One part of the movie, "God" was talking to Evan's wife explaining Evan's "crazy" behavior. He said, "If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If they pray for courage, does God give them courage, or does he give them the opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for their family to be closer (which Evan did) you think God zaps them with warm, fuzzy feelings? Or does he give them opportunities to love each other?"

This was very interesting to me...it got me thinking of all the times I have prayed for courage, or strength, or patience..oh yes...lots of patience. Then I think about what happened after I prayed for such things. Most of the time, I found myself in situations in which I have absolutely NEEDED courage, or strength, or patience. Hmmm...and some how, some way, I found it. The beautiful thing about God is that he doesn't just go around giving out handouts, but instead he gives us the greatest gift of all....the ability to find such things within ourselves. Having faith in God, gives us the ability to have faith in ourselves, because God...has faith in us. I like that.