4th Saturday of Seven

In 7th grade, my world as I knew it came to a screeching halt. After 10+ years in a neighborhood where all the kids had assumed the privilege of running between each others yards and where kick-the-can tournaments had been held for countless summers, my dad announced that we were building a new home. The main reason was because the little gray home we had built in 1987 was bursting at the seams since my little brother had been born. I shed many tears during the process, some warranted, some, slightly dramatic, but none so much as the night we pulled away from the gray house with the beautiful bay window for the last time.

Our new home was beautiful. It was larger and more expensive than the first, and it was surrounded by other larger and more expensive homes. The idea hadn't phased me much, but at the dinner table, all of us in the family who were old enough would report being told by a coworker or a classmate or two, "Good luck on snob hill."

Such statements caused me to approach our new neighborhood with some apprehension. However, it truly all dissolved when we received the warmest of welcomes at our arrival. There were in this neighborhood, as in the first, good neighbors. In the eight years I lived there until I married, I can name many people from that area who had a hand in shaping me for the better during impressionable growing up years. Hard times hit our family and people from that neighborhood rallied around us during dark hours. I was also moved to see the way some of the families in that area used the wealth they had acquired in their medical practices and law firms and small businesses to quietly but generously bless the lives of others.

I am not saying my experience will be the case in every upscale neighborhood, but I am saying that in many instances, wealth does not equal arrogance. In many instances, individuals who possess wealth also possess the virtues of hard work, persistence, the determination to forge through difficult times, and ultimately the ability to be successful. And many remember to help others.

This is the case with Mitt Romney.

There have been several attempts during this campaign to associate Mitt Romney's success in the business arena with greed and to try to disconnect him from the American people, when actually, he is a true representation of an individual pursuing and attaining the American dream. These attempts to create a gap between the rich and the poor are unnerving and unAmerican. 

This is what Ann Romney had to say about it:

 "It amazes me to see his history of success actually being attacked. 

Are those really the values that made our country great? 

As [moms].. do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success?

Do we send our children out in the world with the advice, 'Try to do... okay?'"

Read the whole speech here.
Watch it here.

I am voting for Mitt Romney because he is a successful businessman. He was the CEO of a business consulting firm that took struggling companies and turned them around. And they were successful at it. That means he understands what is good for businesses. And he understands how to take things that are in trouble and turn them around.

Is it time to vote YET?

At the height of his success at the firm he was asked to take over the 2002 Winter Olympics, without compensation, and he left. And he decided he wouldn't go back after three years and try to pick up the reins again. He would leave it to those who had stayed behind.   

Yes, wealth can corrupt men and women.  But I have seen through the example of my neighbors what it can do in the hands of good people. I love how Ann Romney describes their experience of choosing to share what they have with others, "It's given us the deep satisfaction of being able to help others in ways that we could never have imagined."

I repeat, to take people who have used their knowledge and resources and through ingenuity and hard work have made better lives for themselves, their families, and others, and cast them as villains in the story of America is unAmerican. I am voting for Mitt Romney because he is a successful businessman who understands how to take organizations that are in trouble and get them thriving again. 
 
I will continue to share a reason I am voting for Mitt Rommey each Saturday until the election. If you don't agree with me, that's okay. I have friends who are very dear to me who don't see politics the way I do. But if you feel good about it, please use your reach to share these posts through email, Facebook, and Pinterest.

How will you make a difference in this election?

This is Mr. Collado after registering to vote this week. While I ran around my little gray house playing kick-the-can, he was living in one-bedroom apartments with his mom and sisters. He often expresses gratitude for the opportunities America has provided him, and what it has provided his mom who worked so hard to keep them fed and clothed. Today he has a bachelor's degree, works as an MRI technologist, and we purchased our first home a year ago. Needless to say, I am very proud of him.

P.S. There is a presidential debate this Tuesday. Watch it. More information here.

Camp Injury

I attended Young Women camp every year growing up and loved most of it. Every year the weeks leading up to camp would involve camp prep activities. Sometimes we learned about dutch oven cooking, or practiced three or four different ways to make a fire. And sometimes we would put on dramatic skits about how to built a splint out of tree branches for one of our fellow young women who broke her leg on a hike. Awful things always happened on the hikes in our skits. Girls would start on fire and have to stop drop and roll, snakes would bite us, we'd get terrible lacerations and have to tie them off with tourniquets. The camp manual has 13 pages of first aid information and up until last week I had never needed it. Dun dun dun. Do I have your attention now?

I was having so much fun last Wednesday at camp, this time in the role of a leader. We'd just completed a treasure hunt using compasses and were off to shoot pellet guns. After a few minutes of demonstration by the instructors, we were free to shoot at targets for 15 to 20 minutes. After a few adjustments, I was hitting the targets across the river bed every time.

pellet gun ready to load

pellet gun, ready to shoot

Don't tell anyone, but if you've read my blog, you know about my Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman fetish, and I may have let myself imagine I was in Colorado Springs protecting my family on the frontier. Load, cock the gun, shoot. Repeat. I was really getting into it.

I think I had two pellets left, and after loading the second to last one, I jammed the gun closed.On that piece of skin between your thumb and index finger. And blood started pumping out instantly. My first thought was, Oh shoot, where do we tie the tourniquet? One of our cute Mia Maids led me back to camp and as I wandered back through the camp I wondered if I was going to end up in a clinic that night with stitches.

The camp director pulled up a chair and turned my head so I wouldn't get woozy. A husband of one of the camp directors went to work cleaning my bloodied hand and assessing the damage. "I couldn't do blood six months ago, I do blood now," he said. I was so touched by what that meant. He had a horrendous bout with MRSA last fall that almost took his life and in the aftermath required him and his family to clean large wounds and grafted skin on his leg on a daily basis. I felt like it was a privilege to be under his care. He decided stitches were debatable, but if I kept it wrapped and didn't move it the wound should be able to close on its own. I stayed a few more hours. I had come up for the day and needed to go home that night so one of the Laurel advisors took me home in my stick shift (OUCH).

See me not looking at it ? I didn't look at it at all night. When I did look at it the next afternoon I had to lie down. Gashes in the skin just aren't my thing.

thanks to Jazmyn who was ready with a camera

I was grateful to all the people who stepped in to help me that day, and grateful too that I spent a good amount of time up at camp. We had so much fun and you get to know people on a different level in settings like that. 

It was very sore and I wasn't able to do things like my hair for a few days, but the human body is amazing and five days later it's completely closed up. 

So I didn't wrap it myself, and neither did a Beehive, but when it all came down to it, I was left with my very own camp injury that was worthy to be displayed in the camp manual. Truth be told, I'm proud of it. :)

For small cuts and scratches, clean
the wound by washing it with soap
and water. At home, use plenty of
water right out of the faucet. On a hike
or in camp, use water from your canteen
or a clear stream. Let the wound
dry; then apply an adhesive bandage.
For larger cuts, wash the wound
with lots of soap and water. Let it dry;
then keep dirt out of the wound by
covering it with a sterile gauze pad.
Hold the gauze in place with adhesive
tape or with a triangular bandage,
bandanna, or scarf folded into a cravat
bandage (see p. 43). If you don’t have
a gauze pad, fold a clean piece of cloth
into a pad.

Neighborhood Walkabout

There is a lot I love about our neighborhood. One thing I really love is the neighborhood walkabout that happens the first Sunday of every month in the summer. Five homes host everyone with a treat of some kind in their yard, and everyone comes out of their homes and just mingles together. It just feels good. You find out who lives where and what they do for a living and what you have in common, and you really get to like your neighbors after something like that. We hosted tonight, we went through over 70 ice cream cones and at least a dozen cups after that. I put one of the teenage boys in the neighborhood in charge of photographing the event.