Vote for your team

In preparation for this Saturday's "Holy War," go check out irivalz.com. Vote for your team and find out who really has the most fans. You can also download a free app for your iphone so you can vote that way too. There's even a "smackboard" where you can talk smack if you want to. It's fun, check it out. Go BYU!

Aida

For Christmas the last couple of years, my in-laws have given us season tickets to a theatre in the area. It is a theatre-in-the-round, which means that the audience surrounds the stage and there's not as much stage settings as a regular stage would have. Almost every play or musical we've ever seen there has been excellent. I don't think the actors are paid very well, but they love what they do and it shows.

Last weekend we went to see Aida. I didn't really know anything about it and I didn't know what to expect. It was amazing. The music was great, the acting and singing were wonderful, and it was a beautiful story. This was the Elton John and Tim Rice version based on the opera Aida. It's a rocked out version that I thought was very cool. The princess wears evening gowns and is very fashion conscious, the bad guy's henchmen look like Keanu Reeves and they just stepped out of the Matrix movies, and the leading man looks like a rock star. So even though the setting is ancient Egypt, it has a modern day feel. If you ever get the chance to see Aida, I'd take it.

Election Day

I just voted. I was in and out in a few minutes. I thought that might be the case. There has been early voting going on at the library for the past couple of weeks. I've driven by a couple of times and the lines were coming out the doors and around the building. I wondered if the polls might be pretty slow on election day since so many people were voting early. I went at about 2:00, which isn't usually a very busy time, but I wonder what it will be like during the normal busy hours.



It will be interesting to see what happens tonight. I predict that Obama will easily win. I just hope there will be enough checks and balances in place to keep us from turning into a socialist government.

Halloween candy follow-up

We decided to let the kids go ahead and just eat their own candy. By Saturday night, we remembered the real reason for putting the candy in the community bowl--OrphanAnnie's(7) candy was almost gone. She had originally had at least 100 pieces of candy. I hate to even think about how much sugar she had that day. Bookworm's(9) candy was almost gone by Sunday night. Thank goodness, Littleman(5) has a little self control--he still has quite a bit left. I don't know how to teach self control but I think my girls need some lessons.

Socialist or Capitalist?

Ever since our first child started trick-or-treating we have let the kids pick out some of their favorite candies and collect the rest of the candy and put it in a large bowl on top of the fridge. We like to encourage the kids to share with each other and it's also a way that Mom and Dad can have some candy, too. :) As we were talking about this tradition this morning, Mr. Dad made the comment that it's kind of a socialist thing to do. Then I said that if we allowed the kids to eat their candy at their own rate then they would be able to have control and if they work hard at controlling themselves then their candy could last a lot longer. Thus, they would be rewarded when they still had candy and the other siblings don't because they couldn't control themselves well, i.e. capitalism. It was a big light bulb moment for me. Are we teaching our kids to be socialists by trying to make everything "even"?

I may be stretching this metaphor too far and over thinking things, but what do you think? How do you handle Halloween candy? Are you a socialist or capitalist?