My husband's thoughts on Romney and the Election

I expect that after the dust settles someone will write an op\ed that says what I think, but until then I'd like to give my thoughts.

The Romney candidacy has been a bigger deal for members of the church than most people think, and that's why there's so much lamenting about his loss. Mitt Romney was one of our best examples. He represented what we members hold up as a good member: he was Bishop and Stake President, he's got five boys and is a family man, he served a mission, he's proud of his faith, he's successful in business and politics. He's even good looking.

A lot of hope was wrapped up in him and excitement for this guy (not Harry Reid or some right-wing crackpot) to be the guy we wanted to present on the world stage as being a model of us. We'd have an opportunity to explain our religion finally and when people would see the Romney's and their good example they would be curious to learn more. Missionary work may even pick up. There was an article in the Deseret News that basically said all this a couple of days ago.

So when the country got to take a look at Romney and the church it didn't really go as hoped. People and reporters asked hard questions about us. It wasn't misunderstanding. On the contrary, they understood and asked up to clarify. The church, Public Affairs especially, responded quite often like they would to members asking questions, with half answers and "don't worry about that" type responses that might work on members who feel the social and spiritual pressure to not push it anymore, but that don't work on others. Like when the church said that no one who says disparaging remarks about people because of their skin color is a true disciple of Christ, and then CBS brings up Brigham Young quotes from the Journal of Discourses that does just that and Public Affairs responds "it is what is it." that's not convincing.

So Mitt Romney became each member of the church in spotlight by proxy. We wanted to succeed, to impress, because it represents us. While a lot of other people see in Romney so little concern for others, arrogance and condescension, lies and misrepresentations, weird religious beliefs, we didn't. Because that's us up there.

Criticism of Mitt Romney from the right will probably come out soon because "how could anyone lose to Obama and this economy?" Then the protection of being the front runner of the Republicans will be gone and Republicans won't give Romney a pass on his mormonism any more. We'll see who his true friends are.

The country took a proxy for us as members and did not like what they saw. The nation said no, and now we're all distraught because we were rejected. Now we ought to look more clearly about how we really are and if we are admirable, likable, and nice to people.

Rather than predicting the end of the nation and a rejection of God's favor because the nation rejected a "righteous priesthood holder" maybe to ought to do some introspection into what things we should improve on, and how we can more clearly see ourselves as we really are. To me Romney losing was a relief that other people could see what I saw, and what I see in other people in the church that have caused me quite a lot of grief. I'm glad it's over.

For FHE the other day we talked about how without charity or love you are nothing. I asked the kids if they'd like to be in heaven with a bunch of people that read their scriptures, went to church, said their prayers but were mean. The disgusted look on their faces gave the answer. Or would you rather be with nice, inclusive, and loving people even if they didn't come to church all the time or even were members. I think that's what we should work on instead of righteous indignation.

My Thoughts on the Election

As an independent-- I am glad that Obama won over Romney. I didn't like either candidate, but I think we will have less wars with Obama than we would have had with Romney-- that was the main difference for me. I think Romney lost because he offended a lot of groups of people-- Ron Paul supporters, the London Olympic committee, Nascar racers, 47% of Americans who would never vote Republican, and the list goes on. He got 14 million less votes than McCain because of lower voter turnout.  The Republican base never really liked him, they just hated Obama more.  That was especially true for the South.  It is amazing that that was the best the Republican party could do.  The Primary race was full of lousy candidates-- and they thought Ron Paul was crazy!  He was the best chance against Obama.   I'm glad we have a Republican house to keep President Obama at bay. Although I disagree with Obama's ideology-- he seems like a "nice" guy and says nice things and acted with class throughout the election as far as I could see.

my little girl is 12!

My second little girl turned 12 today!  I can't believe it.  I'm kinda sad to see the little girl era end.  I loved the little dresses and hair bows and cute shoes and dollies and ponies and ribbons and princesses and pink, etc.   She is way excited to be going into Young Women's and I am sad to see her leave primary and all the little girl stuff behind.  The older girl stuff will be fun too I'm sure.  Life always changes and I will miss those little girl times.  There are a lot of little boys in this house.  I took 6 of them shopping today without their sisters and it was quite different.  They were good, but they have no interest in frilly clothes or dolls.  It's cars, trucks and sports time at our house now and for years to come!

Halloween

We had an awesome Halloween.  My kids said tit was the best one ever.  It srated last Friday with our co-op-- we went to a nice pumkin patch for a field trip-- then we drove to Layton and closed on our house-- yay!  Then we had an extended family Halloween party on Sat.  I sewed a monkey costume that morning and sewed on the ears on the way over-- it only took me about an hour to sew and I used another costume for the pattern and I didn't have to unpick anything-- I was very proud of myself.  Anyway, we had a colonial girl, a cat, a monkey, a ninja, iron man, batman, Po from teletubbies and a little lion.  They werre cute, but I don't think we even got a picture of them all together we were so busy just trying to gather up all the pieces and kids we needed for each activity.  Then Monday night we picked out our pumpkins and the kids carved them the next day during school hours.  They really did a nice job and I think we got pictures of those.  Then Wed. was Halloween-- we took the afternoon to decorate the entryway.  I told the kids we weren't going to buy anything new but they could use anything in the house.  We had a bunch of white row cover material that worked perfectly to look like a drop cloth on the stairs banister, and we covered the stairs with white sheets and had some white tulle for the holding rail on the other side.  Then we strung pictures of bats and a scary face the kids made across the ceiling and one of the kids made silhouttes we put in the windows, adn we scattered straw all over the floor, and had a fan going and a black light and a little table with the candy and some cardboard tombstones, and my husband set up speakers all over the entryway with really scary music and some speakers hidden above the candy bowl that he would play some more creepy screams and sounds right when the kids would reach for the candy.  It was a lot of fun.  We had way more tricker treaters here in this new neighborhood than we ever did in the old neighborhood-- I think we had 5 last year and maybe 10 the year before.  So the kids loved it.  We closed shop around 9 and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas.  I forgot about the soup so we had candy for dinner instead.  The kids traded most of it in for screen time minutes.  They played a ton on Friday.  A most successful Halloween!  The best part was the next day when everyone helped clean it all up and the house looked pretty good!  We are going to have to do that again!