A Day of Thanks

So Thanksgiving was yesterday, and we had loads of fun. There was delicious food, great people, plenty of fun and plenty of relaxation. I just wanted to share a few short stories that occurred in the past few days that illustrate some things I am thankful for.

I am thankful for my amazing wife. We have so much fun together. The above picture is of us together at Thanksgiving dinner. Today we were having leftover turkey for lunch and she instructed me on the proper way to each leftover turkey. I was under the impression that the only objective was to get it into your stomach, this is not the case at all. It is extremely important to eat it in a sandwich with white bread. You have to put potato chips in the sandwich for "potatoey salty goodness" and then you have to mash it slightly so that the potato chips all crunch together with the turkey. It's actually quite delicious. She always shows me fun new things and she always does things for me, she's truly amazing.

I am thankful for my family. The above video is from me interviewing my brothers (and my brother's girlfriend.) I went around harassing everyone and asking them questions. I won't put all the videos up but this was just a sample of some of the craziness I got.

I am thankful for friends Thanksgiving night we had our annual Thanksgiving night bonfire. I got to see my good friend Jared W and of course my good friend, fire.

I am thankful my mom intercepted the flying trash can Okay, basically, I needed a reason to put the above video. My cousin was flying across the room on a trash can. My mom intercepted before he ran over my wife.

I am thankful for the internet This morning while everyone else got up ridiculously early to run to stores, I slept in. When we woke up it was time to do Christmas shopping. So Robyn stayed upstairs and I went downstairs and we got all our shopping done. Admittedly, it took me almost 45 minutes to find all the things I wanted to get Robyn and something great for everyone else. But compared to the hours upon hours that others were spending, I definitely had my testimony of the internet strengthened.

IDK My BFF Jared W

So I recently created a fan page for my good friend Jared W on facebook. I felt it was important that all fans of Jared W should have a place where they can discuss recent Jared W sightings, share their appreciation for Jared W or even just have raving, screaming girls that fawn over Jared W. As part of my function as the administrator of this most important page I was converting a powerpoint that one of his friends made, about why girls should date Jared W, to video, so I could post it to the fan page. Of course, once it was converted it was important that I use it to do a little Jared W tribute.

I'm not the first to do a tribute to Jared W on a blog. Kayli did one a while back on his birthday. Jared and I have known each other since sometime around Kindergarten age. He's a little over a year younger than me which is alot when that's 20% of your life as it is in Kindergarten, so we didn't get to be good friends until sometime in the high school years. When I was a missionary I wrote him. When he was a missionary he wrote me. (That meant that we actually recieved replies during the months that our missions overlapped.)

We've been through lots of good times. We were always each other's wingmen in meeting girls. We've played countless hours of Super Smash Brothers together. (If we were to string all of our smash time together it would probably be over a month of consecutive time. I'm a little ashamed to think of how much time we've spent on that game.)

We've discussed politics, movies, books, people and basically every subject. Jared has taught me so many things about life and we've always been there to build each other up when times get hard. Basically, Jared is an all around great guy, which is why I would like to invite all single girls that are reading this to date Jared W. If you'd like to know more about him you can read his blog or you can contact me for more information. The following video will get you started on the reasons you should date him.

What You Need

The title of today's post comes from an episode from Season 1 of The Twilight Zone where there is a character who sells everyone exactly what they need. He enters a cafe where he first gives a woman a vial of cleaner. Then, he gives a down-on-his-luck ex-baseball player bus tickets. The ball player receives a job offer in the city the tickets are for; and the ball player needs his jacket cleaned, which the woman just happens to have the cleaner for. The episode continues until he is harassed by one man who continually wants him to let him know what else he needs. As is often the case, the episode ends with a chilling twist that I won't spoil for you here. If you'd like to watch it sometime, come over to my house and we'll watch it together.

Why am I telling you about this episode? Well, today's post is about my thoughts on a fabulous website that has the same powers as the little old man in the twilight zone. It has the magical ability to tell me exactly what I need on a daily basis. Of course, the website I speak of is W00t! and its sister website sellout.woot. For those of you unfamiliar with these websites, they sell exactly one item each day and when it runs out you just have to wait until the next day to see what they are selling. Every day, it seems that I need exactly what they are selling. For example, just the other day they were selling a memory card that would go perfect with my phone. Or when I saw a really cool power squid at Bed Bath and Beyond and no one got it for me even though I registered for it, soon thereafter one appeared on W00t!. Since being married and having a more restricted (and more sensible) budget I've had to convince myself I don't need everything they sell. But someday when I'm uber wealthy I'll just be on standing order and they will just automatically ship me the item of the day.

I just wanted to express my appreciation for such a great website. And I want everyone to know that anything on W00t! is free game to purchase for me for Christmas, Birthdays, Thursdays, We love Jeff days or any other day that you may buy me something.

My First Moniversary

Today is my first Moniversary. (I know that's not a word, or at least it wasn't until I made it up. But now that I made it up it means the day that is exactly one month after my wedding day.)
Robyn already put up wedding pics and several others including Mom, Ann, Kayli and Carol have posted some pics and thoughts. I will be taking a little different approach. I don't have lots of cool pictures or anything. I don't have any super fabulous words of wisdom. But I just wanted to share a few of the adventures we've had in getting to know one another.

1. Our amazing Honeymoon. I already wrote about it here but I just had to mention it because we had so much fun.

2. Hitting Robyn in the face. I have no memory of this event, but apparently one night I rolled over and started tapping on Robyn's head. She impatiently said, "WHAT!?" Only to hear me snore in response. I was totally asleep.

3. Robyn's tyrannical takeover of the entire bed She's half my size but takes up way more space. It's one of those paradoxes, similiar to how she can be cold even when the room is hot.

4. The DVD Extravaganza I was sad that all of the wedding presents were for Robyn. (Yes, I recognize that I benefit from them when she cooks me stuff.) So Robyn took me to Target and we spent a bunch of our gift cards on DVDs. I was a happy boy.

5. Becoming Superheroes After we got the DVDs another gift came in the mail that was something I too could enjoy. Ann gave us capes. (Some people might call them towels)




That is just a few of the fun adventures we've had. But the most fun adventure has just been getting to know each other better and beginning the start of a new life together. Happy Moniversary!

The New Regime

Normally, I pride myself on being a fairly positive person. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling very positive right now so I apologize in advance for the somewhat negative approach of this post. I just watched the speech of our new President Elect. Our country has just elected the most socialist leader that we've had to date. Why am I concerned by this? Well, I'd like to share a quote by someone I respect greatly both for the position he held as Prophet, Seer and Revelator as well as the position he held in government as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Of course I speak of Ezra Taft Benson. In a BYU devotional he gave in 1968, he told the following story:

“I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Khrushchev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor. But, according to President Eisenhower, Khrushchev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture — and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why. As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom he arrogantly declared in substance:

“ ‘You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.’

Mason Weaver, a favorite author of mine, said something similiar when defining the difference between socialism and communism in his book, It's OK to Leave the Plantation he said: "A communist is a socialist in a hurry. Socialism is a gradual process on many fronts. It will grow on you like cancer. Communism is the result of a revolution and is very rapid. We are ready for communism, but are defenseless against the onslaught of socialism."

It honestly scares me when I think of the shape that our economy is in right now and I imagine what more social programs will do as they continue to tax our economy. Our society has become so inundated with the mentality of entitlement. Citizens of our country are slowly trading their dignity, self reliance and self respect for the easy road of handouts. Of course, many will ask, "what of those in need? Shouldn't the government help them?" The answer is no. That is not the role of government. That is the role of private charities and churches, most of which are very good at it. (The welfare program of the LDS church is truly phenomenal.)

In his book, The Mainspring of Human Progress Henry Grady Weaver said:
"Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own ... The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional 'do-gooders,' who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others - with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means."

I could go on forever about the danger our country is in. But I won't further bore those of you that actually read this far. I apologize again for my negative nature. I'll try to make my next post happy and joyful. But, for now, enjoy this tongue in cheek video that Glenn Beck made to commemorate the new regime.