The Wilhelmsen Botanical Blog

How do I register to vote?

Online Download and print either a Utah Voter Registration Form or a National Voter Registration Form (for individuals who are residents of another state). Once completed, mail the form to your County Clerk’s Office. If possible, include a photocopy of your driver’s license or another form of picture identification with the registration form, otherwise you will be required to present this information at the polls. Must be postmarked 30 days before the election to be registered for the upcoming election.

Phone Book There is also a voter registration form in The White Pages (located at the end of the blue government section). This form can be photocopied. Once completed, it should be mailed to your County Clerk’s Office. If possible, include a photocopy of your driver’s license or another form of picture identification with the registration form, otherwise you will be required to present this information at the polls.

In-Person Registration The 15 day or before an election, a person may register to vote in person at the count clerks office. You will only be eligible to vote on elections. Location listings are available through your County Clerk’s Office.

Drivers License & State Agency Offices Registration forms are also available at State Agency Offices, including the Drivers Licence Division, Division of Workforce Services, Utah State Department of Health, Women, Infant and Children (WIC) Offices, the Division of Services for People with Disabilities, the Department of Rehabilitation, and public colleges and universities.

When to Re-register: Voter registration is valid for life, unless you

• Move
• Change your name, or
• Wish to affiliate with a different party

To change your voter registration status for any of the above reasons, simply fill out a new voter registration form.

What are the requirements?

Age At least 18 years-old on or before the next election.

Citizenship A citizen of the United States.

Residency A resident of Utah for at least 30 days before the election. An applicant is considered a resident of Utah if he or she has his principal place of residence within Utah and intends to continue to reside within Utah indefinitely.

Ok, all you Utah voters. I have a bit of a plea for you. As you know there is an election coming up on Nov. 6th. I don’t know if it is too late to register to vote to be able to in this upcoming election but I very strongly encourage those who are not registered to vote to do so BEFORE the 2008 election when we will be voting for a new president. My motto is, if you didn’t vote then you can’t complain about the choices our leaders make. I will post another blog with voter registration information in it.

Now let me tell you about vouchers. I am strongly against them. Here is a brief and unbiased overview of exactly what they are. Vouchers (this info. is straight from the voter information pamphlet) will provide annual, state-funded scholarships for qualifying children to attend eligible private schools. Scholarships under the program range from $500-$3000 per student, depending on family size and income. Now at first glance this doesn’t seem too bad does it? Well, consider the fact that the money for those scholarships comes from our taxes. Do I want my tax money to send kids to a private school? Umm no. I believe it would be better used updating and improving public schools.

My next point is that the average tuition cost for a private school here in Utah ranges from $2,200 to nearly $15,000 a year. (info. received from http://www.sltrib.com/education/ci_5301412) This means that only those who can afford the cost of tuition above and beyond the voucher money that they receive will be able to take advantage of the voucher program. Which means that a child with a low income family will only be able to go to a private school if they are offered $3,000 in voucher money and only if they go to the lowest-cost parochial schools. It seems to me that the chances of this voucher program helping mid to low income families is very slim. The families most likely to receive “help” from vouchers are those who can already afford to send their kids to a private school and would like a bit of an income return for doing so. This doesn’t seem quite right to me.

My last point falls in what it takes to qualify for a scholarship (again this is taken right out of the voter information pamphlet)

Qualifying for a scholarship

To qualify for a scholarship under the Parent

Choice in Education Program, a student must meet

at least one of the following criteria:

• be born after September 1, 2001;

• be enrolled as a full-time student in a Utah public school on January 1, 2007;

• not be a Utah resident on January 1, 2007; or

• be in a lower income family.

May I draw your attention to the third bullet point. To be eligible they must not be a Utah resident on Jan. 1, 2007? Does this even make sense to you? It certainly doesn’t make sense to me that my tax money would go to pay private school tuition for a non-Utah resident.

Thank you to everyone who has taken time to read my opinion. I just want to mention one last thing. In a lot of the anti-voucher commercials it speaks of the NEA as “a liberal group on the east coast who wants to take away parent choice in Utah.” I would just like to let you know that the NEA is the National Association for Education. They are a union whose sole goal is the betterment of public education for our children. Don’t you think that they, if anyone, would know what is best in educating our children? I certainly do. They are not some evil group trying to de-bunk the voucher referendum. So there you go.

Our 2nd anniversary!  August 20, 2007

Hello everyone,

I know that many of you have enjoyed receiving our weekly e-mails and that you have read them on a regular basis. I also know that many people have simply glanced at them, while others ignore them all together. I love keeping everyone up to date on what is going on in our lives but I don’t want to fill up inboxes that are rarely checked or use up e-mail memory with something that doesn’t get read. This blog will be updated regularly, hopefully on at least a weekly basis and in lieu of the weekly news e-mail I will send e-mails informing everyone that the blog has been updated and to give them the opportunity to visit it if they want. Aiden will still have his own web page and most, if not all of the up to date baby information will be on there. Another thing you may start to notice is that I and/or Brandon may feel a need every now and then to rant and rave about the status of the world, politics, or other things that we have on our minds. These things will be the rantings and ravings spoken of in the fine print under our blog name.

As for any new news at this time, there isn’t a whole lot and for me to try and remember what in the tarnation happened two weeks ago to try and give you the highlights (especially with my pregnancy brain) is nothing but ridiculous. Although I must say that this week has been nice with Brandon having school off. I have seen him a bit more and he sure is nice company to have around. 🙂

Tonight we are going to a reception for a friend of Brandon’s who ironically I was acquainted with in high school. Sometimes it is amazing what a small world we live in, while other times the world seems very huge.

Tomorrow we will spend a portion of the day emptying out the nursery. We have a couple of things that will have to wait until we have a truck but for the most part everything else should be gone. I just really want to get the room painted while it is still warm enough to have the windows open to air it out. The days of warm temperatures are fast dissapearing.

Well, that is all for now. I do have a few things to rant about but those will have to wait until later. We hope that everyone is doing well and no, we do not really have things growing on the food in the back of our fridge. I throw things away long before that gets a chance to happen, even before the food will really be considered spoiled at times. Take care.

So, as some of you may have noticed my entry for 19 weeks and 4 days along has dissapeared. As computer savy as I can be at times I am completely baffled by this. The only thing that I can figure is that I went into the “journal entry” page to edit something and when I left it, I didn’t leave it properly and it didn’t continue to save the entry. Sad. Who knows what tasty morsels of goodness were written in that missing entry besides the meaning and correlation between Aiden and Brandon. Which I will re-add right now…

Aiden name is special because it came to me through inspiration in a moment when my mind couldn’t have been further from thinking up possible baby names. It is also very fitting because Brandon’s name means, “from the burning hill” and Aiden’s name means, “little fire.” So it is as if Brandon is the watchfire lit on the tower to be a warning and Aiden is the little fire passing the message on.

Next, for those of you who are wondering, I have not detected and obvious movement from Aiden yet. I promise that the day that I do I will add a journal entry saying so. Off and on, I have had strange feelings of what seems to me to be air moving around in my uterus but nothing that has happened consistently. There have also been a couple of times when I have put my hand on my belly and thought I had felt something, but it could have just been my imagination.

At my last prenatal visit the doctor talked to me about the ultrasound results. (They don’t even tell the obgyn what gender the baby is. Silly huh?) Anyway, he said that the heart and brain looked good, the spine has no gaps in it, and that all of the other things they check (I don’t even know everything they check) were normal. He also said that according to the information he got from the ultrasound, Aiden was only about a 1/2 week bigger then the average size and that he wasn’t going to change the due date. This seems funny to me because the ultrasound tech said that the size would put our due date at Feb. 10th which is 6-7 days earlier then my current due date of Feb. 16th. I guess that we will just have to see what happens as the due date draws closer.

Lastly, I will just say that I love Brandon and the cute way he talks to and rubs my belly. He also kisses it. I think this is his way of letting Aiden know that he loves him too and it is very endearing to me. I married a great guy, who will be an excellent daddy.

Well, before I begin I must ask that no one says, “I told you so.” or anything like unto it. Reason being that I am tender hearted and because I am really nervous about raising a boy. Sure I have dated them, and yes, I am married to one, I also had a little bit of experience with boys at the various day cares I have worked at, but I have NEVER been a tom boy, I don’t like sports, I am not a very rough and tumble kind of person, and what in the tarnation am I supposed to do about a little boy’s natural inclination to solve problems by hitting or kicking? Boys are just generally more physical then girls and this makes me nervous. I do realize of course that a little boy could also end up being a book worm, a builder, and enjoy computers, rather being into sports and aggressive things, but nevertheless I am scared. Boys are just so foreign to me. Luckily, I believe that one of the reasons we wait to create life until we are married is so that at least one person will have some clue about why any given child is acting the way they do and so if I am ever home and my little Aiden is doing some boy thing that I don’t know how to react to, I can always call my sweet Brandon and he will help me to know what to do. He will be a good father. He is a good role model and example for a little boy. He will lead gently but firmly, while I do my best to nurture and simply understand the inner workings of my little boys mind. We sure are lucky and blessed that Heavenly Father decreed that there be mothers AND fathers to balance everything out.

So, I do have a few pictures of little Aiden but no video. His tiny toes are cute and every time the lab tech tried to get a good picture of his feet he pulled them away…I don’t doubt that it was tickling his little feet. His head is currently in the down position and he kept putting his little hands in front of his face. His spine was very clear and everything looks like it is growing and developing like it should. We even got to see his brain and the four chambers of his heart (which looked very healthy in my estimation). When she had us looking at his face it was a little halloweenesque because you could see the eye sockets and the nose sockets in the skull. I was amazed with how visible the bones were. Anyway, my very favorite picture of Aiden is the profile of his little face. I just love how you can see the little curve of his nose and mouth. I guess this is all, I still haven’t felt him move yet, but he definitely is moving around in there, at one point in the ultrasound he had his little legs stretched straight out in front of him, like he was the letter “L”. There must still be a lot of room in there if he can do that! Well, ta ta for now!

Isn’t technology amazing? I can create a website soley devoted to keeping everyone up-to-date on baby Wilhelmsen. Seeing as how I am only 17 and 1/2 weeks along there is not much to share yet. Nevertheless it is important to note that I will find out the gender of the baby next week. Which for me is probably the most exciting part up to now. I have been patiently waiting to find out the gender, when all I have wanted to do for the last 17 and 1/2 weeks is decorate and shop for baby. I finally just had to buy the paint. I am going to be painting the nursery the same color regardless of gender so I felt ok doing that. The color is called vintage green and is a soft shade of olive green. There is also furniture to move out of the baby’s room before we can paint. I finally couldn’t wait any longer and have moved my sewing table out into the living room and have been working to empty out the chest of drawers that are in there. I have been patient thus far in the pregnancy, which, for those of you who know me, takes a lot of effort. It will be harder to be patient as the due date draws closer but hopefully if I can keep busy preparing for the little one, making clothes and a crib quilt, shopping, taking birthing classes and cleaning, then I will be able to keep my mind of my excitement and anticipation.

Well, mom and baby are doing fine. In fact, I had very little nausea early on and eventually learned that it was a direct result of the prenatal vitamins. You see, one of the side effects of the prenatal vitamins is nausea and every day with in an hour of taking the vitamins I would start to feel nauseous. I have been taking vitamin B6 all along as well and I learned that if I take the vitamin B6 10 mins. or so before the vitamins then it prevents the nausea. So, I thank my lucky stars that where nausea is concerned I have had it easy. My constant symptom from early on has been heart burn, this usually develops as baby gets a little bigger and starts to push up on the stomach but like I said, I was one of the “lucky” few to experience it early then most. Nevertheless even this is easily taken care of by heartburn medicine, which I consulted with the doctor about before taking. I have also been tired alot, but this is normal in pregnancy. No strange cravings yet and my only food aversion has been to homemade hamburgers. I can eat fast food hamburgers just fine, but I will not touch a burger fresh off the grill. Ahhh, the oddities of pregnancy.

I guess I better stop writing before this gets much longer. I will make sure to have Brandon put his two cents in every once in awhile. I will keep you all posted on baby’s gender and when he/she starts kicking!