Graduation and Other Events

The happy, long-awaited day finally came on July 31st! James became a Doctor of Philosophy in Entomology. What a culmination to an awful lot of years of study, preparation, hard work, diligence, and sacrifice. I was very proud of him. He did an awesome job on his dissertation and had so many other great publications and awards and travel and great opportunities. It was a great experience for him and we all had a lot to be proud of and celebrate that day. Besides the actual graduation, it was a real highlight to be able to go to his dissertation defense. He spoke for an hour on "Phylogenetic Systematics of the Cerylonid Series of Cucujoidea," and yes, the remainder of his talk would make about as much sense as that title does to most people. He sounds like he's speaking a foreign language, though fortunately after all these years, I'm able to follow a little bit. He just sounded amazing and gave such a great talk. I wished all his family could've heard him because they would've been so proud. I was so proud. And relieved. :)

Here's a faraway picture of him on the big screen being hooded by the Dean and by his advisor, Joe McHugh. He looks happy, doesn't he?

Lots of pictures were taken, but for some reason, the handful taken with our camera aren't that hot. But as you can see, I was pretty darn happy too. And a little emotional at times. Even the boys knew what a big day it was. We were very happy to have my mom and dad there, as well as my sister Liz and her daughter, Jessica.

Like I said, my pictures weren't great. Sorry I got one of you looking down, Floyd. On the right is Joe McHugh, James's highly talented, capable, amazing professor. He and his family are not just incredibly smart and accomplished, but they are also some of the kindest people we have ever known. I don't know if it could've happened with anyone less amazing than Joe. We owe him a lot.

That evening we had a fun graduation party for James (thrown together at nearly the last minute) with my family and friends from work and church. It was all about showering James with his favorite things and some unexpected gifts. Here are his two favorite sushi rolls from his favorite restaurant, Utage, as part of the refreshments. He deserved it and so much more after seven years of hard work!

James, Henry, my dad, and Joe visiting in the kitchen.

My mom and a few of our Georgia friends.

Immediately following graduation, we traveled to Orlando with my family for a mini-reunion with my parents and siblings followed by a special family event. My sister and her husband, who recently finalized their adoption of baby Jessica, were sealed together as a family in the Orlando Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A temple is a place similar to temples you read about throughout the Old and New Testaments. It is more sacred than a church building, and in them, special ordinances are performed through the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Among these are the ability to bind or "seal" families to be together not just in this life but in the next as well. It's a very wonderful feeling to know that death can not permanently separate your family. That we will not only just hopefully all make it to heaven, but that we will still be a family and my children will always be my children and my husband will be my husband. We will always belong together, which is what brings us our greatest happiness.

It was very special to be with Liz and Dave as they were sealed to this sweet little angel whom we all love so much and whom they waited so long for.

Here are Henry and Wesley (and WALL-E) with my Grandma and Grandpa Bosen. It was great to see them in Florida. It had been such a long time!

Random Life

Well, much, much, MUCH has happened since my last post, as most of you know. It has been one of the busiest seasons of our lives. Everything changed. I thought I would write a couple posts about the last few months with some pictures. Pardon the randomness of it all.

Speaking of random, here is one of Henry's great Lincoln Log creations. He definitely thinks out of the box.
Not sure what to say about this one except that I was a little freaked out when Henry surprised me with his "mask." Luckily Wes didn't get too far other than one piece stuck in his hair.
Henry's graduation from Friendship Presbyterian Preschool. He had the best year imaginable with the sweetest teachers ever, Miss Chris and Miss Lisa. They are missed. Here he is with one of his good friends, Layla.

Our 4th of July celebration consisted of going to the downtown festival in Watkinsville. I'm going to miss all those cute, old-fashioned, smalltown events. We had a great time with our friends the Francoms, minus both James and Greg. Us grad student widows have to stick together, I guess. James worked literally around the clock all through June and July, so it was always me and the boys trying to stay out of his hair.

A particularly delicious pizza we made with some of the fresh basil and other produce from my awesome garden. Well, awesome until it was neglected by me and the heat wave hit. But it was a pretty great first try. We particularly enjoyed all the fresh herbs.

Actually this picture is a little ironic because what shortly ensued after the creation of the pizza was the sickest first trimester of pregnancy I've had yet. About the time of my last post (Mother's Day--nice timing) I found out our lives had yet another MAJOR change coming up. Kiddo #3! When it rains blessings, it pours. But it did complicate things a bit. Food was my dread and my enemy, and all my tastes changed from loving to cook and loving fresh foods, Asian, homemade this and that, to only being able to stand all the things I formerly avoided/disliked: processed foods, fast food, doughnuts, soda, junk, junk, junk. Were it not for my all consuming craving for orange juice and a few other items, I probably would have been admitted to the hospital for malnutrition. Fortunately, the sickness subsided quite a bit by the time James graduated at the end of July.
Henry played soccer this spring and was a pretty awesome player by the end. He really developed his confidence and abilities and was scoring great goals by the end. And thankfully, it was also the last season where poor Wes, the truer soccer lover, had to watch from the sidelines and be told he was too small.
Wes with his favorite puzzle. He can put together all 50 states by himself and there are no lines or pictures as clues or anything. Wes is a wild one but he is also one smart kid!

My first successful blogpost in a year and a half

No I have not forgotten how to blog--I expect nearly everyone except for 2 people have stopped checking my blog. There are a multitude of reasons for my being such a slacker, all of them quite good. But I'm back, courtesy of the iMac, and here are some recent Mother's Day pictures taken outside our home with Henry (5) and Wesley (3). I had wonderful Mother's Day by the way. Nothing scheduled, nothing stressful. After a lovely and inspiring day at church, it was just me and the fam at home, just the way I like it. James made delicious Swedish pancakes for dinner and I had a rare and glorious 3 HOUR NAP on the couch. Woohoo! My boys were very sweet to me today. It's good to feel loved. They are pretty patient with their mommy.

Watkinsville Scarecrow 5K and Fall Festival

It's our yearly tradition to participate in the race and fall festival. This year I ran the race and James tucked the kids snuggly in the stroller to watch. Don't the look cozy? Doesn't it look cold? It was at first.I was happy with my time--28:47, as you can see. Slowly but surely I'm am getting a little bit faster. Woo hoo! Our good friends Brett and Alyson and their son Will did the races too. They all got amazing times.

Here is Henry, getting ready to start the kids 1 miles fun run. You see those clenched fists and that tense posture getting ready to run? Henry took this race very seriously. We "practiced" for it a few times ahead of time and he was very determined to be a fast runner and do his best.

Here he is at the end, holding his little finisher's ribbon. He ran the whole time without stopping and finished the race in 12:10. I was very impressed by his determination! He loves running. The highlight for him was finishing before James, who ran it with him. All he could say was, "I was faster than my dad!"

Here are the boys on a tractor from the hay rides in their lovely matching overalls. We didn't get any other pictures of the festival, but we did the usual--funnel cakes and shish kabobs, looking through the rock collectors' booth and all the craft booths and riding the pony and playing in the corn crib at the petting zoo. It was fun hanging out and we saw lots of friends there too. Good old Watkinsville. We sure will miss it.

Happy Birthday Little Wes!

We had a really fun time celebrating Wes's 2nd birthday. It was so fun to see him finally begin to catch on to the significance of the day. He just beamed at us and soaked it all up as we sang, "Happy Birthday" to him. Wesley is such an awesome, fun, intelligent, sweet little kid. He and I have always had a very close attachment from the time he was born (not always by my own choice), but he's always been my little snuggle-buddy, joined at the hip.

A few of his nicknames include the Wesinator, Troublemaker, and Little Wes, and we have a special song we sing about him to the tune of the William Tell Overture. It's hard to imagine life before Wesley. He's so adorable and so opinionated and affectionate. We sure love you, Little Wes!

We camped in our back yard for Wesley's birthday. Here you can kind of see the wilty streamers and balloons that we had up in the tent and which weren't handling the humidity very well. Sleeping next to our kids all night in the tent is always an adventure--being steamrolled by them all night, the hard ground in spite of many layers of bedding, the howling coyotes (where am I, back in Wyoming?), and the gigantic daddy-longlegs crawling all over the outside of the tent like they own the place.

It is actually fun though. We always watch a movie on James's Mac and we get all the pleasures of camping without tons of work or nasty port-a-potties.

The cake of course had to be something to do with jets. I'm not sure any obsession my boys have had yet compares with their current infatuation with rockets and jets. And try as I may, this is as fancy as my cakes get. But that's probably ok because probably about 5 minutes later, while my back was turned, both boys starting licking the sides of the cake and sucking off all the frosting. Oh well, you're only a kid once!

Protecting Marriage and Family--Proposition 8 in California

I could write pages upon pages regarding how I feel about this issue. It makes me so sick at heart and worried that I don't even like to think about.

It has nothing to do with intolerance.

It has nothing to do with me or anyone else "not liking" people who choose to pursue a gay lifestyle.

This issue about changing marriage to include any union other than that of a man and a woman is not simply about extending certain rights to those who choose to follow a gay lifestyle, as they would have you believe.

By making it law that same-sex couples can be "married," it is forcing the entire nation to conform to that limited brand of morality, in spite of their own beliefs about marriage and families.

Supporting Prop 8 and the traditional definition of marriage is not about intolerance. It's about tolerance--tolerance for the majority of Americans who are not hateful, who have gay friends, who are willing to be understanding and accommodating to a degree to those who have made that lifestyle choice, but who do not wish to have that morality forced upon them. From adoptions to church weddings to any professional service that furthers a lifestyle we believe is not right, natural, or healthy for society--let's have tolerance for our differences of beliefs, including mainstream, traditional, or religious ones.

The following article summarizes this very well. Californians need to realize that what happens with Prop 8 not only bears heavy consequences for them but will likely pull the rest of the nation in the same direction, whichever way it goes.

When Gay Rights and Religious Liberties Clash
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
NPR.org, June 13, 2008 · In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.

Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group's view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, "parachurch" organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing. Here are a few cases:

Adoption services: Catholic Charities in Massachusetts refused to place children with same-sex couples as required by Massachusetts law. After a legislative struggle — during which the Senate president said he could not support a bill "condoning discrimination" — Catholic Charities pulled out of the adoption business in 2006.

Housing: In New York City, Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a school under Orthodox Jewish auspices, banned same-sex couples from its married dormitory. New York does not recognize same-sex marriage, but in 2001, the state's highest court ruled Yeshiva violated New York City's ban on sexual orientation discrimination. Yeshiva now allows all couples in the dorm.

Parochial schools: California Lutheran High School, a Protestant school in Wildomar, holds that homosexuality is a sin. After the school suspended two girls who were allegedly in a lesbian relationship, the girls' parents sued, saying the school was violating the state's civil rights act protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The case is before a state judge.

Medical services: A Christian gynecologist at North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista, Calif., refused to give his patient in vitro fertilization treatment because she is in a lesbian relationship, and he claimed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs. (The doctor referred the patient to his partner, who agreed to do the treatment.) The woman sued under the state's civil rights act. The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May 2008, and legal experts believe that the woman's right to medical treatment will trump the doctor's religious beliefs. One justice suggested that the doctors take up a different line of business.

Psychological services: A mental health counselor at North Mississippi Health Services refused therapy for a woman who wanted help in improving her lesbian relationship. The counselor said doing so would violate her religious beliefs. The counselor was fired. In March 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the employer, ruling that the employee's religious beliefs could not be accommodated without causing undue hardship to the company.

Civil servants: A clerk in Vermont refused to perform a civil union ceremony after the state legalized them. In 2001, in a decision that side-stepped the religious liberties issue, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that he did not need to perform the ceremony because there were other civil servants who would. However, the court did indicate that religious beliefs do not allow employees to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Adoption services: A same-sex couple in California applied to Adoption Profiles, an Internet service in Arizona that matches adoptive parents with newborns. The couple's application was denied based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The couple sued in federal district court in San Francisco. The two sides settled after the adoption company said it will no longer do business in California.

Wedding services: A same sex couple in Albuquerque asked a photographer, Elaine Huguenin, to shoot their commitment ceremony. The photographer declined, saying her Christian beliefs prevented her from sanctioning same-sex unions. The couple sued, and the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographer guilty of discrimination. It ordered her to pay the lesbian couple's legal fees ($6,600). The photographer is appealing.

Wedding facilities: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of New Jersey, a Methodist organization, refused to rent its boardwalk pavilion to a lesbian couple for their civil union ceremony. The couple filed a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. The division ruled that the boardwalk property was open for public use, therefore the Methodist group could not discriminate against gay couples using it. In the interim, the state's Department of Environmental Protection revoked a portion of the association's tax benefits. The case is ongoing.

Youth groups: The city of Berkeley, Calif., requested that the Sea Scouts (affiliated with the Boy Scouts) formally agree to not discriminate against gay men in exchange for free use of berths in the city's marina. The Sea Scouts sued, claiming this violated their beliefs and First Amendment right to the freedom to associate with other like-minded people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court ruled against the youth group. In San Diego, the Boy Scouts lost access to the city-owned aquatic center for the same reason. While these cases do not directly involve same-sex unions, they presage future conflicts about whether religiously oriented or parachurch organizations may prohibit, for example, gay couples from teaching at summer camp. In June 2008, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals asked the California Supreme Court to review the Boy Scouts' leases. Meanwhile, the mayor's office in Philadelphia revoked the Boy Scouts' $1-a-year lease for a city building.

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So seriously, do these changes that are being made speak more of tolerance or of intolerance for personal beliefs?


I tolerate those whose morality and belief system differs from my own, even substantially.


But I tolerate them. I don't embrace them myself or wish to have them forced upon me or upon the institutions I support. My church has the right to marry people according to our doctrines and beliefs as we believe God Himself has set forth. We have the right to support and help build families that we believe are, by divine design, intended to be an eternal union between a man and woman, and children with the right to be born to that union.


If I haven't already emphasized it clearly enough, it's not about extending marriage to a small group of Americans so they can be happier in their lifestyle and I can continue in mine. That alone, if that were reality, might be possible.


But the reality is that changing the legal definition affects all of us. And imposing that idea on the majority of Americans, particularly in a country that was founded on faith in God, seems like a very un-American thing to do.

Lovin' it!

Wouldn't it be great if we could all just get along this well?

Thanks, Roslyn, for the picture.