Dylan and Becket feed the geese

Hanging out with our buddy Dylan Monroe. He is the best jumper around!

This is what our gingerbread house looked like on the box... oh and look at our PERFECT copy below. Hard to tell which is which- right?

Aunt Peggy and Aunt Debbie bought us a "Christmas House" to decorate... we ate most of the candy first, and licked a lot of the frosting off as it went on the house. Oh, and we smugged the camera with our fingers (I didn't notice) giving most of the pictures that beautiful glow. It was a blast!

We have been so lucky to have baby Kate hang out with us a few times. She is so fun for the boys. She really likes to go get the boys from school with me in the trailer. She is also the only one who knows how to keep her eyes open for photos.

The boys adore her.

The first night we were riding in the trailer and Augie put her arm around her and said

"See that baby Kate, that is the moon... See the moon baby Kate?"

hmmmmmmmmmm

Perhaps I should make a "bragging about Jeff blog" before all the space gets used up on this one... but for now, I am just to excited not to post stuff (plus Jeff will never do it):

Seven Plus Seven
Thursday November 13, 2008

I've never been a fan of studies of the seven deadly sins. I did purchase the New York Public Library series since it had two of my favorite authors, Phyllis Tickle and Joseph Epstein. Recently I got a book in the mail and when I saw the title "Seven" I thought, "Here we go again." No, it is not here we go again. Jeff Cook, in Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , uniquely and eloquently combines the seven deadly sins with the seven beatitudes.
What Seven does is combine something we need to repent from with something we need as a virtue. Instead of leaving a person feeling guilty, as so many of the studies of the seven deadlies do, this book stiff arms us a bit and then points us to the way of Jesus.I recommend this book for church small groups, for college groups interested in exploring Christian morality, and to anyone who needs a good reminder of our moral calling. The prose is gentle and informed and accessible; the quotes very good; the stories exceptional.Notice how he puts them together:
Pride and the poor in spirit
Envy and the mourner
Sloth and those who hunger for a life made right
Greed and the mercy giver
Lust and the pure of heart
Wrath and the meek peacemaker
Gluttony and the persecuted

Scot McKnight is a widely-recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois). A popular and witty speaker, Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly asked to speak in local churches and educational events. Dr. McKnight obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986).

Our daddy makes us proud! You have done so much in the last two years ...

He was selected as Professor of the Month for UNC in October (we just found out)

I am sure this had something to do with it:

UNC MIRROR
Book money goes to African village
Tara Spencer
Issue date: 10/22/08 Section: News
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 To purchase a well in Africa that can produce 600 gallons of water per day and radically transform the lives of everyone in the village would cost $5,320.

Jeff Cook, a professor of philosophy, has made it his goal this semester to transform the lives of people in an African village by asking his students to donate $20 instead of spending nearly $100 on a textbook.

Cook said the textbook he was planning to use had readings and articles that could be found online.

Cook had the class take a poll at the beginning of the semester to find out if they wanted to save the money and do the readings online, or if they wanted to dish out the money to buy a hard copy.

"I went to UNC, and I know what it is like to buy an expensive book that I probably won't even read," Cook said.

More than 60 percent of his students have already donated this year, which matches the percentage of who donated last year.

Cook is hoping students will use their spheres of influence to raise more money for this cause.

"I am glad that our professor didn't make us buy a textbook," said Mikal Achtner, a freshman biological medical science major. "It would have cost a lot more, plus the money is going to a good cause."

Cook said if every American gave $20, it would take care of more than half of the water problem on the planet and save thousands of lives.

"I don't want to be part of a culture who is unaware of the desperate and suffering people of the world," Cook said.

Cook outlined in his philosophy class that the amount of money Americans spend during the Christmas holiday is about what it would cost to eliminate world poverty.

"Isn't it interesting that on Christ's birthday, Americans go out and buy expensive and somewhat unnecessary gifts for their loved ones instead of helping others?" Cook said.

What Cook is doing is impacting the lives of his students.

"This is really a big deal," said Korey Askew, a junior recreation and communication major. "We don't understand that we are blessed more than other people. We don't even know their struggles."

Askew said he wants to spread the word to organizations that he is involved in raising more money.

"It's great to think that I helped to save kids from a horrible death at the expense of a book," said Scott Wharton, a senior communication studies major.

Wharton also said that Cook is one of the best professors at the University of Northern Colorado and that many students are inspired by his goal.


and, maybe more importantly, on ratemyprofessor.com he got a pepper for being "hot!"

way to go dad!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scenes from Halloween

 

Photos of Becket by Emily and Lexi

Dear Boys
Yesterday something amazing happened
The country we are handing you changed

I am so proud to tell you
that the generation before you decided to be brave
and risk
and for the first time actually do what they believed
instead of just saying it.
Your country elected an African-American to the position of leader of the free world. They told me, you, the future that any one can do anything. The people of this country decided to be leaders in the world again and stand up for the ideal of freedom.
I write this to you so that you know what things used to be like. It used to be novel to think that a person of color could ascend to a position of leadership. We had laws that insured women and minorities would be able to work for the same pay as everyone else. There was fear, there was hate, and I think that by the time you care to read this you won't really know those ideas the way that I know them now. I think that people will still be people, and still be flawed, but they won't be people who understand the ideas of division and race the way that dad and I have seen.
Our HOPE
for you
and this world you inherit
is that you won't know why I had to write this.
That you don't understand why this is such a big deal
that this is only a part of history to you.

Congratulations boys
I am so happy for you
and so thankful
that there is ONE thing
in our broken world
that dad and I can give to you
and that is the legacy left by a nation
that said today the legacy of slavery
and a nation divided are over


forever

**photos by Erick Burke and The New York Times**

Finishing Our Work

By Thomas Friedman

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.

A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.

This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.

That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.

How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.

But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.

Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.

And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.

Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.

“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.

“F.D.R. did not run on the New Deal in 1932,” said Sandel. “He ran on balancing the budget. Like Obama, he did not take office with a clearly articulated governing philosophy. He arrived with a confident, activist spirit and experimented. Not until 1936 did we have a presidential campaign about the New Deal. What Obama’s equivalent will be, even he doesn’t know. It will emerge as he grapples with the economy, energy and America’s role in the world. These challenges are so great that he will only succeed if he is able to articulate a new politics of the common good.”

Bush & Co. did not believe that government could be an instrument of the common good. They neutered their cabinet secretaries and appointed hacks to big jobs. For them, pursuit of the common good was all about pursuit of individual self-interest. Voters rebelled against that. But there was also a rebellion against a traditional Democratic version of the common good — that it is simply the sum of all interest groups clamoring for their share.

“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”

But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”

None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done.

The Civil War is over.

Let reconstruction begin.