Check out this story from the Tucson Citizen newspaper.

Can you believe that?  Actually, I can.  This story is completely infuriating to me.  Since when do Mexican government officials get off coming to America and calling for a change of laws that are “unjust” to their constituents???  I guess, since President Bush and many of congress, including my good old former representative (from when we lived in Salt Lake), Chris Cannon, have decided to stay soft and even give in on many key illegal immigration issues.

Of all the statements in the story, there is only ONE valid one:  “Amparano said the Mexican legislators are already asking the federal government of Mexico for help for Sonora.”  WHAT???  ALREADY???  That’s what you’re SUPPOSED TO DO, Mexicans.  @#$%$@!

Every single quote from a Mexican official in that story smacks of “You are responsible to take care of us”, like these:

“Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems” (Well that’s MEXICO’S problem, right?)

“What do we do with the repatriated?” he asked. “As Mexicans, we are worried. They are Mexicans but they are also people – fathers and mothers and young people with jobs – who won’t have work in Sonora.”

But maybe the most twisted arguments are the ones that appeal to our sense of family:

“We are one family, socially and economically,” she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona.”

and even worse…

“He said the Arizona law will lead to “disintegration of the family, as one ‘legal’ Mexican parent remains in Arizona and the other returns to Mexico.”

Personally, I think it’s about time that we saw some common sense immigration laws being made in the U.S.  Heck, we sure don’t see any of those in Utah, nor from what I hear, in Texas.  What happened to the days back when I was in high school in Texas when a local McDonalds got raided by INS and EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE got shipped back to Mexico because they were here illegally?  We laughed about it back then, but I’d sure love to hear of a story like that now.  So a great law, removing the source of income for the Mexicans, is passed, but now we have to listen to (and read about) Mexico crying about it.  And undoubtedly, this will lead to liberals crying about the “injustices” and lack of compassion we have for others, and calling for change.  It’s unjust when we enforce the laws, and just when we look the other way?  How twisted is that?

[audio http://www.netrixweb.com/OneBoyOneGirl.mp3]Oh man, I am SOOOO tired today. I swear, the twins have been up all night the last 2 nights, not to mention the time spent eating regularly every night since we brought them home, and it’s really starting to take it’s toll. Julie and I are both dragging. We were warned by other parents of twins how little sleep we would get with 2 babies, but I just don’t think you can understand or prepare for it until you’ve experienced it. My experience has allowed me to formulate my TWINS theory (an abbreviation for The Widening Increase of No Sleep, of course ). This theory states that as the number of babies increases, the amount of sleep attainable by the parents decreases exponentially to zero. In other words, we’re not getting half as much sleep as we did with 1 baby. We’re getting far less. Given this theory, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have triplets or, heaven forbid, quadruplets. Those parents must seriously be walking zombies.

Logan is 4 years old today! He wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese in Sandy for his birthday tonight, so we’ll be braving the mass of children and cheap rides and games tonight! Anyone who wants to is welcome to join us. By the way, I worked at Chuck E. Cheese in high school in San Antonio for a year or so. I could turn out a mean pepperoni pizza! But the highlight was the few times the regular Chuck E. didn’t show up and I got to BE Chuck E. Cheese! Up on stage, dancing around, sweating like CRAZY! Woohoo!!! Actually the real highlight was probably making 2 large sausage pizzas for Shaquille O’Neal who had a weakness for Chuck E. Cheese sausage pizzas. He was from San Antonio and would come in often the summer before he was drafted and believe it or not, would order 2 large sausage pizzas for himself and then challenge us to a game of the arcade basketball game that was back with all the games. You know, the dual kind, like this:

I beat him once. But of course, Shaq’s never been a great free throw shooter anyway.

So anyway, sorry for getting off track! I doubt Shaq will be there tonight, but WE will be, to celebrate 4 great years of our little boy. They got off to a rough start. I will forever have awful memories of seeing our little baby boy a few weeks old, literally just skin and bones, hooked up to tubes and monitors as he suffered with RSV in the hospital. It was a scary experience (and the main reason I’ve said we’re not taking our twins out of the house, except to go to the doctor, until spring). But he pulled through and has always (well, ALMOST always ) been a delightful little boy to have in our home. Here are some of my favorite pictures of Logan through the years. We love you Logan! Happy Birthday!

So this is my response to Jenny and David’s blogs about embracing winter. David, I like your positive thinking there. However, as a fellow Texan, I REALLY struggle with this. As I mentioned in the title, the only embracing of winter that appeals to me is the really tight, right around the neck, kind that would render it non-existent. Actually I really don’t mind it for 2 days — Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I like having a white Christmas. But then I want all the white stuff to go away and not return for 363 more days. Or at least stay up in the mountains. It’s pretty up there. However, it is not pretty piled up by the foot all over my sidewalks and driveway. And the last month has been especially crazy with snow. We’ve had a TON of it. And it isn’t warming up so it can melt, so instead, it just keeps piling up. This morning is a prime example. At 4:00 am this morning I woke to the new double alarm clock we have (aka “the Twins”). When I went downstairs to get a bottle, I noticed out the windows that we’d had what looked like a few inches of new snow sitting on top of the walkway I had just shoveled yesterday. Of course. Well later, I went out to shovel. By the way, all this shoveling would not be required if a certain Texan who dislikes the snow — ok, fine, it was me– hadn’t tried to start his snowblower without checking the oil level first, thereby seizing the engine and causing $400 worth of repairs that are currently being undertaken at the mechanic while we receive foot after foot of snow. Anyway, when I went out to shovel and opened the garage, not only was it snowing quite a lot, but there was actually ALMOST A FOOT of very new, very wet and heavy snow awaiting me and my surgically repaired back. The truck is parked outside on the driveway and with all the accumulation, it now looked about 8 feet tall, the bed is filled up and the snow on the ground was up ABOVE the tires. Our mailbox now looks like it is about 8 inches off the ground. And to top it off, we have a 4-FOOT TALL berm of snow running clear down the street, blocking our driveway, leftover by the snowplows during the night. In the backyard, the 3-foot tall fence we put in dividing our yard from our neighbors has about 1 foot of fence visible on it. And the big hole we dug for our trampoline is almost filled to the ground level with snow now. It’s crazy! It took about an hour to clear a path to get the cars out of the driveway. I also cleared the walkway leading to our front door. And I’m happy to report that 2 hours later, we now have at least 2 more inches covering what I’d uncovered. Isn’t winter great!!!!

Now honestly, we REALLY DO need the moisture. We’ve been at or near drought conditions the last few summers here in Utah and our water levels are extremely low. So it is nice to get this. However, we’ve had big snowfalls in previous years and almost always, in the spring it warms up too fast causing all that snow in the mountains to melt too quickly, which leaves us with hyper-saturated ground and flooding and mudslides. So my preference would be to instead have a spring with TONS of those AWESOME South Texas rainstorms where the rain isn’t really falling, it’s flying horizontally and not in drops, but in SHEETS of water. Add in the huge thunder and lightning and it’s an amazing spectacle. I could live with a month or so of that to get our water supply.

Twins Update
Anyway, like I said, I did finally get the snow cleared enough to get a car out. But by that time I had given up on actually going in to work today. The snow continued (and continues) to fall and it would take a LONG time to get in. So I’m working from home. But I did have to take the twins in to be weighed. Last week, at their 2 week checkup, they were still almost a half pound lower than their birth weight. So the Doctor gave us some special formula and wanted to see them back in a week to be weighed hoping they would gain 5 to 7 ounces by then. Well, they pulled through with flying colors! Maren went from 4lbs 15oz to 5 lbs 9 oz, and Roman went from 5 lbs 11oz to 6 lbs 3 oz, putting each of them just above their birthweight!