Bible Boot Camp!

This past weekend, John and I were in charge of the first annual Mountain View Bible Boot Camp. What an amazing, exhausting, fun, challenging, and fulfiling experience!

Sgt. Perkins ran camp for 24 hours with about 25 kids aged six through twelve. We managed to pack six Bible study lessons, six crafts, six activities and the grand finale obstacle course into that 24 hour period. I still can't hardly believe we got through it all!

Most of all, this experience made me incredibly proud of my husband. We had a lot of help from our wonderful church family, and certainly couldn't have done this by ourselves. But John was just an amazing leader who set the pace for the whole weekend. He not only kept up with the kids, he led them in everything--from the water balloon war, to the marshmallow gun war, from lesson to lesson and meals to snacks...and through the very short night.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the experience and there are more on my Facebook page for those who are interested.

God is in my calendar?

I had an interesting experience over the last few days. Last week was a pretty tough week work-wise, and it unfortunately culminated in a very long, very difficult Thursday for me. About 17 hours into my work day, I said some things that were a bit unprofessional--and in a not so professional manner.

On Monday, my lack of professional behavior was pointed out to me in a blunt, but ultimately helpful way. Naturally, me being me, I wound up dwelling on my actions and allowing my disappointment in myself to cloud up the day.

Here's the fun part. I have a "Psalm a Day" calendar on my desk that has a short Psalm and little prayer for every day. On Monday I caught up on the Psalms from last week, and here was Thursday's:

"The Lord gave the word." Psalms 68:11 "Today may I choose my words wisely."

Hmmm.

Today, I realized I had not yet read the one for Monday, which turned out to be:

"For I am poor and needy." Psalms 86:1 "And may I not forget to be a bit more forgiving of myself."

Nice.

Now John wants me to look into the future and see if he's getting the Corvette he wants for his birthday in October.

Commencing

Once a year I am lucky to have my mom come visit when she attends the University of Phoenix Online Campus graduation. Mom teaches undergraduate and graduate courses online in business and marketing classes, which means she gets to wear this cool regalia.

I don't know any of the graduating students each year, but that doesn't matter--it's still always so touching to watch the students who have worked so hard and the families that have supported them.

Naturally, it also brought back memories of my own graduations. I've been through three of them now: Albuquerque Academy High School (1995); George Washington University (1999); and SMU Dedman School of Law (2002).

In some ways they were pretty similar -- someone always points out that "Commencement" is both an end and a beginning...there are always speakers that any other day most students would be interested in hearing from but this day you just hope will be quick...you're both proud and happy to have survived, and terrified that you're now starting a new chapter of life...

Of course in other ways, each ceremony had its own flavor.

At the Academy graduation, I had the unique experience (well, for non-twins) of graduating with my brother Frank, who is 11 months older than I. What a wonderful way to finish school, to walk across the stage after my big brother and share the moment before we went our separate ways.

GW was pretty amazing since we our ceremony was on the Ellipse, which is between the White House and the Washington Monument. Naturally the outdoor ceremony made for some odd moments--the beach balls someone brought (deflated until partway through the ceremony) that came out during the keynote speech...the champagne bottles and flasks that followed...the overwhelming feeling that this was a major moment given the surroundings.

And my most recent ceremony at SMU, also most likely my last as a student, where I achieved a dream I nurtured since I was a small child by getting my law degree. Also, I didn't trip despite the most steps of any ceremony!

It's a good thing, every so often, to make sure you spend some time remembering these moments in your life.

This also seemed an appropriate moment in time to commence--conclude my semi-sabbatical from blog posting, and start a new chapter of posts. So here's step one.

"Bailing out of 2008"

I've long been a Dave Barry fan, and he's hit the nail on the head again (or several of them) with his year-end column.

Merry Christmas 2008

What a wonderful and mostly relaxing Christmas holiday! We had a lovely service at our church on Christmas Eve, and John participated by doing a reading. Here is an excerpt (he has such a great reading voice doesn't he?):






On Christmas Day, we enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in late--itself always a treat. Then we headed up to Clay, Jenny, and Emily Perkins' house for a relaxing celebration of Christ's birth.




First, and most importantly, I got John to join me in wearing pajamas all day--it helped that he had fun new fuzzy pants with deer heads and a camo cap to wear with his fuzzy jacket.






Anyway, we then headed up north to Cave Creek for a family feast and gift exchange. First, the meal: smoked turkey and pork butt, a smattering of side dishes like cornbread casserole, baked beans, and sweet potatoes. YUM!







After the tasty meal, we had a white elephant-type gift exchange. As you can see, Tina was pretty happy with the gift Cole wound up with: Bailey's.

One of the gifts wound up being a lot of fun--once we figured out the instructions (thank you John).

After a fun round of Yahtzee free for all, we gals played some Rummikub while the guys spent quality time with the Wii. Cole and John boxed, and then John, Cole, Clay, and Logan all played doubles tennis.

All in all, it was quite a fun day. The only down side is that John has been fighting some sort of flu-like-bug for a few weeks now and it came back full force overnight. He's spent the majority of the last day and a half in bed. Hopefully all this sleep will get rid of this before we leave for New Mexico on Tuesday!

Finally, in case I missed anyone in the distribution of our Christmas letter, I thought I'd go ahead and post it on here...unfortunately we couldn't get the upload to work right so that you could read the letter. So let me know if you'd like me to email you a copy instead.

I hope all of you had a wonderful time celebrating and reflecting on the birth of Christ!

An Excellent Point

In my capacity as President of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, a little over a year ago we hosted Denver Post columnist and author David Harsanyi.

On Christmas Eve, David's column "Lassez-faire punditry" provided some excellent insights and thoughts regarding the current economic situation and the (IMHO) laughable claims of some (notably Ariana Huffington) that this economic situation is an indictment of the free market system. As Harsanyi documents, recent years have not by any means been years in which our economic system has been "free market":

The Federal Register, a list of regulations, reached an all-time high of nearly 79,000 regulations, up from nearly 64,000 in 2001. New regulations have mounted rather than diminished under the Bush administration.

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has studied regulatory spending and effectively squashed the "deregulation" mythology that is extensively peddled these days.

"Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009," she writes, "outlays on regulatory activities, adjusted for inflation, increased from $26.4 billion to an estimated $42.7 billion, or 62 percent. By contrast, President Clinton increased real spending on regulatory activities by 31 percent, from $20.1 billion in 1993 to $26.4 billion in 2001."

De Rugy also points out that adjusted for inflation, regulatory spending under the category of finance and banking were cut by 3 percent under Bill Clinton and rose 29 percent under the imagined Bush deregulation binge.

Where are all the tributes to the laissez-faire economic boom of 1991-2000?

Instead, the far left has taken up concerted scare-mongering — much like they accuse the right of employing after 9/11 — to transform a short-term economic crisis into a radical long-term foundational alteration of our economy.

It's a great piece, and if you haven't encountered Harsanyi before then I highly recommend his book, "Nanny State."

Scary

Check out this poll for Second Annual Worst Prosecutor of the Year. I can't yet figure out who to vote for, but am certainly further depressed (see earlier blog on Bill of Rights Day) regarding the health of the Fourth Amendment.