Elections: The Silly-Season for Economics

I don't know how many of you have seen this ad from the White House, but it's the perfect example of how politicians use shoddy economics as propaganda during the election season:

This kind of thing drives me bonkers. I won't go through all of the things that are wrong in the video (there are a lot), but there are two big things that really stand out: First, he's making it sound like the president (either Bush or Obama) is the main driver of job growth/losses in the economy. This is just foolish. True, governmental policies can have large impacts on the economy, I won't argue against that. But there are dozens of factors that caused the recent recession, and I can think of at least 10 that are far more important that Bush's policies. At the same time, the reduction in job losses that has occurred since Obama took office are due to a multitude of other factors. In terms of the full jobs picture, Bush and Obama should just be footnotes, in my opinion.

Second, he's making it sound like the policies that are enacted have immediate impact on the economy. I love how he makes the point that job losses hit their worst in the month Obama took office, as if things turned around exactly at that time because of Obama. This is ridiculous! Think of the economy as a very heavy, very large boat. If it's going in the wrong direction, even if you throw it in to reverse at full throttle, you're going to keep going forward for a long time before you can slow the momentum down and get things turned around. It seems unlikely that there is anything that Obama could have done that actually shows up in the jobs numbers in February or March 2008, after he took office on Jan. 20th. In my opinion, at the earliest you might see something show up about six months after a policy is enacted.

What gets me about all of this is that Goolsbee (the economist in the video) is a smart guy. He's got a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and is generally well-respected within academia. Either he has been severely brainwashed from his time in Washington, or he knows that most of what he is saying is bunk. I'm guessing it's the latter. Don't be fooled!

Side note: This wasn't meant to be a defense of Republican policies or an attack on Democratic policies. Both sides like to use sham economics to make their points. This was just a particularly awful display, and since elections are on Tuesday I thought it was timely. I actually think that Obama has done as good a job as could be expected with regards to the economy. I don't agree with everything, but he's doing alright in my view.

Making Whoopie!

Announcement: I just discovered the dessert recipe of the year: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies! I cannot even begin to describe them to you. Look at the picture; look at Ellis' delighted expression; go get the ingredients; make them today. You will not be disappointed.

So . . . one would think that a weight goal like this one ["Try to only gain 1 pound per week"] would not be that hard to stay on top of. Let's just say that all of the wonderful fall foods are getting the best of me. Cider donuts, all the yummy pumpkin and apple treats . . . aah! There is still a half bushel of apples sitting on my counter waiting to be turned into pies, dumplings, and crisps. I need like 10 people to come live with me and help me eat all that I desire to bake. Anyone?

Scottish Lads

Ben's parents sent these darling plaid ties from Scotland, where they are serving their mission. I finally got white shirts for the boys so they could show them off at church this week. Aren't they just dapper? Both boys kept their bowties on for the entire day -- they were so proud of them and didn't want to take them off. Henry commented that bowties are the best church clothes ever because "they just look the best." It's hard to argue with that one!

Apple Picking Pics

Just another perfect autumn day for apples, pumpkins, cider, and donuts. For those of you in MA, we went to Berlin Orchards (Berlin, MA) and really liked it a lot. They're a good place to keep on your list of possible places to pick apples. For everyone else, click here for a great song about another farm we went to, Breezelands Orchards. Breezelands was closed for the picking season (hence the trip to Berlin), but they had great cider donuts, and the song is quality. Enjoy (we did)!

Columbus Day Weekend

Of course, Columbus Day has always been one of my favorite holidays (love that Nina-Pinta song). Since moving to New England, though, it has become even more significant -- only because, according to Ben & Jenn's personal almanac, Columbus Day marks the beginning of peak "Leaf Season" here. Hooray! We decided to go big in our celebrations this year, thanks to some encouragement from our friends, the Sorensens. We drove to New Hampshire and stayed here:

Cozy little chalet in a Swiss village -- perfect place to hang out and play!

The view from the chalet

Getting ready for the train ride of their lives

Here's our train on the Conway Scenic Railroad.

Fully-equipped with a window seat, a hot chocolate, and a buddy

Lovely views from the train

Let's top it off with a rainbow to wow the kiddies!

STORYLAND!!! Storyland is such an adorable little theme park based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes -- PERFECT for the 7 & under set. Our boys loved it! Ellis' favorite part was actually this Humpty Dumpty statue. He's been waiting a long time to meet "Humpdee-dee-a-wall."

I opted out of the teacup ride :)

Look how adorable - a pumpkin coach that takes you on a ride to Cinderella's castle!

And our dear friends, the Sorensens, with us inside the pumpkin!

Meeting Cinderella herself

And meeting "Grandpa Dave" shortly thereafter

Isn't this just a dreamy little place?

Next, we drove to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Vermont (which is the most beautiful middle of nowhere I have EVER seen) and stayed with "The Other Ben and Jen." Ben Allred is my wonderful cousin who has an amazing wife and a beautiful house filled with 4 strapping boys. The littlest of those boys is named Henry, which makes our friendship with them even more fun. It actually took Ellis some getting used to, and by the end of our time there he decided his name was Henry too :)

We had a lot of fun family time with our closest-living relatives! Henry and Weston bonded and played together mostly the whole time. We are so glad Weston is not too cool for Henry, even though he's almost 5 years older.

Next, a bike ride in Stowe, VT

The start of the trail

The view along the way.

The town center, where we had a nice little lunch.

In other words, the PERFECT weekend!

2 Boys

2 Boys = 1 gallon of milk intentionally dumped on the floor (Ellis) + 1 muddy pair of shoes intentionally tracked through the entire house (Henry), both while Mom was screaming, "NO!!! STOP!!!! What are you DOING???"

2 Boys = 4 irresistably kissable cheeks + lots of hugs and snuggles + infinite laughs.

2 Boys = 2 dish-washers in training (shall we make it 3?).


Did I mention that I love little boys?

20 Week Update

He Who Must Not Be Named has reached his halfway-mark! Here are the obligatory 20-week belly photos.

I couldn't resist adding some extra pink to my life, to help boost the femininity in our house. Somebody's gotta provide the pink around here! (Thanks to my mom for sponsoring this effort :)

For Amy

If you use a blog reader, you might have already had a sneak peek at this picture due to a glitch in my computer. Oops!
It is my most recent project -- a tribute to Amy and Dave, who just added a new little boy to their family. Congratulations guys, and let's just say for the record, that boys are the BEST!

It's a Boy . . . Again!

Now that I can see his cute little head, I can't deny it anymore. There is a baby growing inside of me. It's true. A real live little person, roughly the size of a bell pepper. But this little guy is a lot cuter than a bell pepper . . . and he's very much a B-O-Y.

Yes, you did your calculations correctly. This will be Boy #3 for the Iversons! Most people's first reaction is to ask how I'm taking the news. Well, I must admit that early on in the pregnancy, I was dreaming of pink. I even warned friends and neighbors that if they saw a dark cloud forming over our house this week, they would know we had received the news that this baby is a boy. Well, no dark cloud has formed, and it appears that everything is going to be okay. About 2 weeks ago, I was blessed with lots of wonderful experiences with Henry and Ellis, enough to make me tell Ben I would be really sad if we were to never have another little boy again. We love little boys! And we make pretty good ones! So . . . I have arrived at a very calm and peaceful place regarding the gender of this child.

At the beginning of the pregnancy, we started calling this child "Princess Nocandy." It comes from one of Ben's favorite ridiculous websites, Name of the Year, where they vote on and post listings of the most outlandish, real, verified baby names from each year. Princess Nocandy was the Name of the Year from 2006. Anyway, it appears that the "Princess" name is a little inappropriate now, in light of recent news, so we need a new prenatal name for this little guy. The options are A) "The Baby Formerly Known as Princess Nocandy" or B) "He Who Must Not Be Named." If option B is chosen, acceptable nicknames might include, but would not be limited to "You Know Who" and "Voldy." The nickname, "The Dark Lord" will NOT be accepted. If you'd like to have a say in the new name for Boy #3, please vote for your favorite in the sidebar on the left. Thanks!

Block Party

Our town's community foundation gives a $200 grant to neighborhoods who want to hold a block party! This incentive made it easy to get a bunch of our neighbors on board to plan a party. It was fun meeting with the committee and making plans -- we had a few meetings in our house, and the committee members were awe-struck by our meeting-planning-and-running abilities (thanks, LDS Church upbringing!).

The party turned out to be a hit, with 50-60 people, clowns, balloons, and tons of food. My favorite part was how many neighbors I met that I had no idea even existed! Several young families were there that we didn't even know about. How do we live near these people and not even know them? It was also fun meeting the old-timers. Those who have lived on our street for 30 years said our neighborhood has never done anything like this. These are the people who seemed to enjoy the party the most, staying until the last table was put away. We had good feedback, and we plan to make our party an annual event! I'm a big fan of neighborhood bonding, so it really made me happy to see so many people making their first attempts at mingling and mixing. It was no "Celestial Circle" (the cul-de-sac where I grew up), but we'll get there someday. Baby steps . . .

Balloons

This picture was taken in the middle of the night, although the flash makes it look like daytime.

I don't know if I'll ever really understand why balloons are the most exciting thing in the whole world. After our block party, Ellis would not let go of them for anything. Rather than saw off his hand, we let him sleep with them, thinking we would go in and pry them out of his hands when we went to bed at 11:00. Even then, when I tried, he wouldn't loosen his grip. He ended up waking up and throwing a huge tantrum.

Ammendment

 

Lest any of you think Ellis didn't get any decent presents from my parents, here he is in his cute Froggy rain gear that came from Grandma and Grandpa. Oh, and just for the record, he got great gifts from the other grandparents and several other wonderful people. I just didn't get pictures of all of them! Thanks, everybody!

Meet Ellis, Age 2

Okay, one more post about Ellis. I realize that most of you haven't seen this kid recently, and even if you have, you may not have had a chance to get to know Ellis' personality. He is such a funny boy. He definitely has his grumpy side, and he definitely has a shy side. But what I get to see most of the time these days is a happy, talkative, hilarious little guy. He brings smiles and laughs into our home all day long.

I am completely smitten by the way Ellis talks. I love his cute little way of saying words like "church" and "Monkey George" and "Henwy" and "Right there!" I love his funny phrases: "Mommy, I need come-meer" (for "I want you to carry me") and "Henwy do it" (for "Henry did something that bothers me"). I love how he says, "I need hug and kiss" when he first sees us in the morning, before he goes to bed, or before one of us leaves.

I could go on all day. Instead, I will show you a video. If you're a die-hard Ellis fan, or you just want to get to know the kid in 5 minutes or less, watch it! I should explain a couple of things first though:

1. "NO!!!!" He got in the habit of yelling "No!" to get people to laugh. This has gotten completely out of hand, especially in public places. When Brady and McCall were here, he got started in a restaurant. It was horrible.
2. "Be happy" is the opposite of sleeping. There are two choices in our house when you get grumpy: you can go take a nap, or you can be happy. Ellis brings this up every time I even come close to mentioning a nap: "No -- I be happy!"
3. "He needs a shirt!" Not sure where he got this phrase, but he started saying it EVERY single time he sees someone (or a picture of someone) without a shirt on. He is amazing at spotting these people. It has been pretty embarrassing in several situations when we were quite close to the people, and Ellis loudly, clearly, repeatedly remarked, "He needs a shirt!"
4. "Enjoy the show." If you have seen many Baby Einstein episodes, you know that they say this at the beginning of the videos. Sometimes this is Ellis' favorite part, as you will see in the video. Other times it's his least favorite part. He'll say, "No! I don't want enjoy the show!" until the segment is over. Picky, picky.
5. I will mention that on the piano song, I have no idea what he's singing about. I just love his loud, screechy voice, and the few words I can pick out: breakfast, choice, sisters, "when grandpa is coming . . ."

With that long intro, "Enjoy the show!"

Meet Ellis, Age 2 from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

Whale Watching

Jenn already shared the story of the lemonade stand a few days ago, but really there's a bigger story involved. To get the whole story, you've got to go back to last May, when Henry announced that he wanted to go whale watching. As it happens, Boston is near one of the premier whale watching locations in the world, the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. I was thrilled with the idea of going whale watching; it was something I had wanted to do since we moved here. So, I made a deal with Henry that if he saved up $25 of his own money to pay for his ticket, then we could go. This would be no easy task. We only give him a meager allowance of $8 per month, and we make him save half of that in addition to 10% for tithing, so he only ends up with $3.20 per month to spend. I wasn't sure he'd be able to do it, but I wanted him to try.

Being the kind of kid that Henry is, he came up with the brilliant idea of making a chart to help him remember not to spend his money. Jenn helped him make one (making charts is her department) with 25 bubbles that he could fill in as he saved his dollars. Slowly but surely, those bubbles filled up between his allowance and the occasional extra chore here and there. Finally, he got fed up with how long it was taking and decided to take matters in to his own hands by having a lemonade stand. As you know, he totally made bank selling lemonade and cookies, and this pushed him well over the $25 threshold. It was time to go whale watching.

After waiting for Hurricane Earl to pass by, the stars aligned on Tuesday for us to go. Henry was so excited on Monday night he couldn't contain himself. Here's a direct quote that we just had to write down: "I'm so excited that I'm excited as 20,000 sideways skyscrapers and then another and then another stacked on top...until it's as tall as a skyscraper! That's how excited I am!" I love that the skyscraper is one of Henry's main units of measurement.

Leaving from the New England Aquarium, we had to go about 38 miles out of Boston Harbor to get to the whales, so while we rode Henry worked on one of his dinosaur activity books:

Then, all of a sudden, the boat slowed down and right off the bow we could see some spouts blowing in the air! It really was incredible seeing these huge creatures out in the ocean. We had a very lucky trip, coming across 3 humpback whales and 3 minke whales that were all feeding in the same area. Here's a sampling of what we saw:

One whale beginning a dive, while another rises for air (see the spout on the right?)

This is why they're called "humpback" whales--they arch their backs when they begin a dive.

Humpbacks have several eating methods, and we saw most of them. In this picture, the whale is "kick feeding"--slapping the water with its tail in order to stun the fish, and then it will turn around and eat them. We also saw them blow a "bubble net" to trap the fish, as well as perform simple "open mouth" feeding, where they just open their mouths wide right on the surface and swallow as much water (and fish) as possible.

No, this isn't my picture, but we did see one breach like this! I wasn't anywhere close to being fast enough with the camera to catch it, but it was astounding to see that giant beast come clear out of the water! No one's really sure why they breach, but I was glad we got to see it!

Here are the happy sailors back on solid ground! We had a great time and I would totally go again (although I'd take some motion sickness medication beforehand--I got a little queasy for part of the trip!). I love going on these kinds of trips with Henry because he's just as interested as I am in learning all of the details, and I know about as much as he does about whales. We have a great time seeing, doing, and learning all of this stuff together. We're just two peas in a pod in some ways!

And, I'm super proud of Henry for saving up his money for so long in order to go on this trip! What a great skill to have. He's already started scheming up his next adventure: the Circus!