Winter?

For all those of you out there who are in the middle of winter, we're thinking of you. Ok, not so much. Yesterday at our home it was in the mid 70s. We went up to a nursery/greenhouse and looked at plants. We contemplated putting in a couple trees, but decided to wait a couple more weeks until it's prime planting season for citrus so that we can put in all the trees we want at one time.

I talked to my mom tonight who informed me that she got 3 inches of snow today. My sister just posted a picture of the snow in front of her house. In many ways I miss the snow, but there are certainly good things to be said about living in southern Arizona. You just tend to forget that the rest of the country has winter.

High fructose corn syrup and the media blitz

I'm not sure if it's because these commercials have started recently, or because we got rid of DVR and can no longer skip commercials, but I've seen several commercials recently illustrating how high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no worse for you than any other sweetener. What follows is one of their commercials showing how informed anyone is that thinks that HFCS is any worse than anything else.



I thought it was quite amusing and it felt so much like a political ad that I just had to go to their website to get the "facts". I quite enjoyed the "myths" section where they repeatedly dodge their own questions and insist on pointing out that they're no worse than the other choice. Hmm. The similarities to a politician's campaign grow stronger.

As they lay out their arguments, they're incredibly selective in what they point out. When they ask "questions" the answers are really just the same propaganda spun over and over. It reeks of being made by a political marketing firm between elections.

I will point out that while I have much in the way of second hand reports about HFCS, I have not personally looked at the facts and would be unqualified to give a true opinion about if HFCS is good or not. However, with the way that the corn industry runs their advertising campaign, I have to say that I trust them about as much as I trust politicians. That is, not at all.

It's About Time!

I've been meaning to post photos from Thanksgiving, Chase's blessing and Christmas for some time. I went to look for the files, but it turns out, we took a lot of video and not so many photos on both Thanksgiving and Christmas and we only took a couple of shots at Chase's blessing. I don't know what's happened around here (ok, yes I do, we've been very busy lately) but we haven't taken many pictures. Also, I can't find the cord to upload some of the photos from of our camera. Grrrr! Anyway, I have time and am in the mood right now to post photos (which needs to happen because it's a rare event) so here are a couple of photos taken on Chase's blessing day. Yeah, they aren't the greatest photos, but you take what you can get. Chase is wearing the cutest little paisley tie, but you can barely see it here. We'll have to take some photos of him in his outfit because, let's face it, girls like to dress up their kids like they are their little dolls.

And some background, before we post the photos...We went up to SLC for Thanksgiving and spent the actual Thanksgiving day with Brett's family having a lovely dinner at Brett's sister's house. We missed his oldest sister and her family, but everyone else was there, and it was so nice to be with everyone again. Adie had a blast playing with her cousin who is only a few months younger than she is (we do have a few cute photos of them playing together, but no cord to get them to the computer right now). We spent the remainder of the days going back and forth between our two families. On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, we invited family and friends to meet us at a ward house for Chase's blessing. It was really nice to have everyone just come for that event and then have some refreshments after. So many of our family and friends came. We felt very loved and supported. It was wonderful to get to see everyone, even if only briefly, so thank you to all who could come (and sorry to those of you who thought it was on Sunday, which of course, makes sense - we just do things backwards sometimes).

Back to Blogging?

Whew! We've taken a long hiatus from blogging. I've had various posts running through my head, but just haven't even sat down to write them and now I can't remember most of what I was going to write. It's been a busy month and will continue to be, so I am not sure how much blogging I will be doing, but suffice it to say, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Chase's blessing were all awesome. Maybe I'll post some photos of all of that soon. The kids and I have been in St. George for the last couple of weeks to help out a friend. I remembered that I hadn't packed our camera when I was 20 minutes away from home, and I wasn't about to turn around for that, so I didn't take any pictures of our little adventure. Bummer! Anyway, we are alive and well and glad to be back together again.

Before I get back to any serious blogging (which may continue to be not so often) here is the link to an excellent talk given by Elder Bednar at a CES fireside last May. It was the topic of the first Sunday RS lesson I attended in St. George: http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538-1-4830-1,00.html . I highly recommend you taking the time to read it. It gives a very interesting perspective on the body as related to over-usage of the computer and virtual reality. Definitely good food for thought.

I hope you are all having a wonderful 2010 so far. I hope it's as good as 2009 for us. We had an excellent year.