The Wilhelmsen Botanical Blog

Where do I begin?  This week has been fairly good.  I have been very diligent about excercising on Wii fit every day (I plan to take Sundays off), I have taken Aiden out for a 15-30 min. walk in the mornings since Thurs. and feel that I am learning how to better carry my body by improving my posture and strengthening my muscles.  I have also been a bit confused by the whole propostion 8 thing and all of the media attention that it is getting (hence my previous article), I have been researching it and trying to understand why the leaders of the church got so involved, when in the previous Traditional marriage vote they made a statement and let individual members make a decision.  In talking with my husband I came to this realization, in 2004 there was the additional addendum to the Traditional Marriage proposition.  This addendum clearly states that… “No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect.”  This most recent election was simply a vote to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.  It was the possible implications of this definition ie. less rights for those choosing to commit to a union of same gender that have been the problem for me.  In this years statement from the church they mention, “The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility toward gays and lesbians. Even more, the Church does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches.”  In other words, those choosing to enter into a same gender union ought to have rights equivilant to those who are in a traditional (man and woman) marriage.  The church was simply standing up for marriage as God intended it to be, not agreeing with changing the rights of those who choose a different union.  Both Brandon and I agree that those choosing to enter into what should henceforth be defined as a “domestic union” (marriage being reserved specifically for a man and a woman who marry) ought to have equivilant rights to those of us who have chosen to marry someone of the opposite gender.  The persecution that was brought upon the church because of this proposition has been hard for me to swallow but when I realized that this proposition was slightly different then the other and that it was not President Monson but God who directed the leaders of the church to do what they did, then I am able to understand that the things that happened were foreordained to happen.  Persecution is only going to get worse, black and white will only become more and more gray, good will be called bad and bad will be called good (even more so then what is already happening).  Our trials will become more frequent.  These are the things that we have been brought forth at this time to endure and if we keep our eye towards our loving Father in Heaven, he will give us (and our children) the strength to overcome them.  Phew!

Anyway, so the happenings of the week.  Monday I spent a lot of the afternoon working on what will be the 3rd amendment to our 2007 taxes.  You see, Brandon has done some freelance design work for a company in Idaho.  As a result he didn’t have a W-2 for the 2007 tax year and although I reported the income with our other W-2 income I was unaware that I needed to send a schedule C with our tax form as a “W-2” for that freelance income.  Well, of course the U of U decided to do one of their random audits this year on Brandon and I ended up having to fill out a schedule C and an amended tax return along with the $105.00 we owed to the IRS.  Last week we received a notice saying that we owed another $250?!?!?!?  I was shocked but planning to pay it.  Luckily I found a paper that showed that the IRS had amended our tax return a 2nd time because of the schedule C and I found that they thought we had made and additional $1400 then what we originally reported instead of using the schedule C as an explanation for the wages that we had already reported but had no W-2 for.  I also found that they thought they had overpaid us $600 more then the actual total because of some telephone excise tax thing from 2006.  We did not receive payment for any telephone excise tax!  Good news is that they now owe us $9.50 because when I sent them a check for the first amendment I overpaid a little bit.  I just hope that I don’t confuse things more and that they get the same numbers I did (some of which I got from the IRS over the phone).  Anyway…Do you taxes correctly the first time and if you don’t know something ASK!!!!!

Tuesday was Veteren’s day and as such Brandon did not have to go to work (he did have school though, lame!).  It was good to have him at home but he had already planned to do some “other” work during the time that he would have normally been at work.  He has a book that he wants to write and so he was going to work on that as well as his portfolio website for class.  He also had a bit of homework I believe.  Anyway, so I planned to use the car since it would be home for me to use and went to run some Christmas errands.  It was fun even though it took a bit longer then usual due to having to get Aiden in and out of the car, shopping carts, and baby carrier.  I even went to pick up some books at the library and it was closed due to the holiday.  Doh. 

Thursday was a momentous day!  Aiden started to “cruise” meaning that his cheerio’s were on the other end of the coffee table and he side stepped over to them while holding on to the table.  You can see the video on the family adventure blog within a few days.  I also won a gift for Aiden on e-bay!  It is some fisher price peek-a-blocks and roll-a-rounds, I sure hope Santa did buy him the same thing.  I believe this is also the day he kind of face planted trying to crawl over my knees.  Lucky he was so low to the ground or he would have bruised.  I really believe Heavenly Father is watching out for him because while he does get a few red spots from the normal bumps and bruises of a baby learning to walk, they fade by the end of the day or the next morning. 

Friday I went and got a trim and when I got home we went on a walk as a family.  During the day I worked on another Christmas gift and also tried to sign up for a yahoo group both things had me frustrated by the end.  In the evening we watched Super Nanny and Super Manny.  I just hope that we can remember all of the awesome tricks and techniques used in those shows when we run into things in the future. 

Yesterday Brandon, Aiden, my dad, and I all went to Ikea so that my dad could go for his first time.  We were able to find a couple of things we had been needing, including a t.v. stand for the living room!  Hooray!  It was fun to go there again, Aiden was enjoying having a lot to see and he did not nap from when he woke up at 8:00 until 3:00 that afternoon.  He started to get a bit crazy and I am going to do my best to avoid that again.  Oi!  While we were there we also got to eat the yummy meatballs and we picked up some cinnamon rolls to go which we enjoyed for breakfast this morning along with some scrambled eggs.  That night (Sat.) Brandon and I watched Journey to the Center of the Earth which we really enjoyed.  We also intend to watch Water Horse sometime soon.  Oh then when I was feeding Aiden his bedtime bottle he threw up twice and I was scared because I had no idea what was going on.  I called Brandon up to give Aiden a blessing and noticed Aiden was chewing on something.  It turns out he had a fiber of the carpet in his mouth (it was the thickness of yarn and two of them stuck together about 1/2″ long) and was gagging on it because it was tickling his throat as he drank.  This caused the throwing up.

This brings us to today.  This morning we were cleaning and things because they were in need of happening.  I ran downstairs to check something and bring the iron up when I heard Aiden crying.  I rounded the corner to see that careless mom had left the door at the top of the stairs open and he had tried to come down them.  He was spread eagle on the top two stairs before the landing, head toward the bottom of the stairs.  Thank goodness he had not tumbled all the way to the bottom and there were no injuries.  I feel very blessed and will NEVER leave the door open again.  As you can see Aiden has had kind of an eventful week.  This afternoon we went to church and now we are working on our “shake and bake” dinner.  We are having chicken coated in french fried onions and potatoes coated in onion soup mix and oil.  It will be mmm, mmm good and there was very little preparation.  Gotta love that!  Well, have a good week everyone!  Thanks for reading…