Casey Anothony Trial

The Casey Anthony verdict came in a couple of hours ago as Not Guilty on all of the important counts regarding the death of her daughter. My Facebook immediately lit up with comments from people in disbelief. I've been pondering this myself since the verdict came in and with few platforms from which to voice my opinion, I resort to my blog.

I am not surprised by the verdict. Do I believe Casey Anthony murdered her daughter? At this point in time, with the information I have, I do. However, the prosecution had no PROOF of this and therefore lost the case. There were no witnesses, no DNA evidence and no cause of death could be determined. The evidence that was presented either did not link Casey directly or had alternate possible explanations. On what then, should she have been convicted? Gut feelings? Emotions are running high, but you cannot convict on emotion. I have heard a loud and general outcry that justice has not been served and that may be true in this particular case, but I would argue that this illustrates the superiority of our judicial system. I, for one, am grateful that I live in a country where my guilt would actually have to be proven to be thrown into prison for life or put on death row. Second and third world countries have judicial systems where there is no need for evidence, trials or jurys to hold a person hostage in a brutal prison system and thank God, that is not America. Heaven forbid that any of my friends who are so upset at this outcome would ever be incorrectly convicted of a crime of which they were innocent because a jury of their peers thought they probably did it, but had no direct proof of guilt.

In this case, someone definitely failed that poor little girl either in inability or incompetence. I don't know if the police botched the investigation or if the prosecutors failed to connect the dots. I wasn't there. But I know the jury is not to blame for concluding that no one was able to provide hard, undeniable proof of her mother's guilt. It may never be clear what happened to her.

The one solace I have is that the murderer of a two year old baby will, one day, face the Ultimate Judge and receive eternal justice. He has all of the facts and proof necessary to redeem and condemn and human error will never play a role in that judgement.

Budding Artist

Our eldest loves art. I enrolled her in a summer art workshop through Young Rembrants. The theme was "South of the Border" and they used pastels to create Mexican images. They also studied a bit about the artist Diego Rivera. She had a really good time and learned a lot.

I think two of the pictures are pretty obvious. The other is a dragon and was copied from this Diego Rivera mural. In my unbiased opinion, I'd say these are all pretty good considering they were all done freehand.

My task now is to figure out a way to display them. Their odd sizes mean there are no inexpensive framing options. Time for mom to get creative.

It's a GIRL!!!

We had the ultrasound and confirmed our fourth child is another girl.

While we have been receiving "condolences" of sorts, we are sincerely thrilled to be having another girl. Once upon a time, we wanted a boy, but that has long passed as we have spent a great deal of time reflecting on God's plan for our family and have greatly enjoyed the three girls we have. The decision to have a fourth child was not about "trying for a boy" as many put it, rather it was just a decision to grow our brood and simply have a fourth child. There is something about raising girls that agrees with us (God must think so too) and we accept the tremendous blessings they bring to our life. So much fun!!

I have to say, the technician got a good picture of the baby crossing her arms in an "x". The girls saw it and decided it was their super hero sign and she was sending them a very important message from the womb - GIRL POWER!! It has since become the mantra in the house.

Now, we have a lot of bedroom rearranging and redecorating to do! We're fortunate to have enough room in our house for four children, but we have a lot of reorganization to do before November.

The most difficult challenge ahead.....a name for this little sweet pea.

Summer Vacation!!

We recently returned from our 10 day vacation of the summer. This was a bittersweet trip for us since we have just decided to put a hold on vacations for the next couple of years in order to concentrate all of our efforts toward making some serious headway in our 5 year financial plan. This was a hard pill for us to swallow as we LOVE travel and LOVE teaching our children how to travel. However, with a little delayed gratification now, we hope to have mountain-loads of fun later. Over the next couple years, exploration will be limited to areas close to home for shorter periods of time. *sigh* Anyway, enough of that......

This trip started in Atlanta where we were invited to celebrate Micah's paternal grandmother's 90th birthday. What an amazing thing to celebrate!! She has lived a long and full life (as an avid traveler, she's probably a contributing source of Micah's travel gene) and was happy to spend the weekend surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

We decided to continue on from there on our own to visit parts of the great South we have never seen before.....Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC. We enjoyed exploring the beautiful towns and beaches and mostly spending some much needed time together.

Personally, I love the South for it's rich culture and history. In Charleston we stayed in an old wherehouse that survived the Civil War and was later converted into a hotel. You just don't see very many buildings that old out here in the West. And in Savannah, we rented the floor apartment of an old Victorian house with a gorgeous garden - Awesome!

Our days at the beach were probably the most fun. In AZ, we have all beach with no ocean, so it was especially fun for the girls. All of them dove right in with no fear whatsoever and getting them out was nearly impossible. When they weren't jumping waves, they were gathering seashells and digging holes. Hours and hours of fun were had.

Sadly, it all came to an end too quickly and we had to come home to temperatures above 110 degrees and much to do.

Acts 9: 1-9

The Kindergarten class will be leading the school Mass this week. #1 was assigned to do part of the first reading. I should note that some schools change the scheduled readings for the younger grades in order for them to be easier to read. Our school does not do that and not all of the words and concepts were easy to pronounce and understand. She's had a lot of questions about what this all means and seems to have a pretty good understanding now.

For the Mass, the kids, of course, have the readings in front of them, so they just practice for fluidity. Today, I asked her to go get her paper so we could practice some more and she said "I think I actually have it memorized." So I told her to go for it. This was the result.

She was already pretty excited for Friday, but now she's uber-excited.

With Children Comes Grace

I ran into a mother at my daughter's school today who just figured out I'm expecting my fourth child. She launched into a fairly familiar speech I hear nearly every day. Some of the common statements mothers with larger families hear include:

"I don't know how you do it! I can barely manage the 1 (or 2) I have!"

"You're amazing!"

"Are you crazy?"

"You have your hand full."

"Did you do this on purpose?" (or some version of this question)

"How do you do it?"

Most of the time, when people say these things, I'm not bothered. Instead, I smile as I remember feeling the exact same way. I remember quite clearly, when I had only one child, seriously contemplating not having any more because it was literally the hardest thing I'd ever done and I wasn't sure I had it in me to handle two of them. I remember the occasional bursts of anxiety when I was pregnant with each of the first three children, wondering if I would actually make it through the next 20+ years without spontaneously com-busting. How on earth would I raise each of these children successfully into adulthood??

Now, pregnant with my fourth, I'm not at all worried. It took me three children, but I FINALLY figured out the secret.

No child comes into this world empty handed. Each and every one comes bearing an abundance of gifts from the Lord. With every one, I have a little more experience under my belt, a little more confidence, a little more strength to make it through each day. God sends each of these children to their parents with an entire bucket filled with GRACE! I finally have tangible evidence of what I knew intellectually, but did not fully trust until now. He would never give me one of His own children without providing me with everything I need to properly care for and raise that child. Whether it be 1, 2...7 or 8, the Lord provides the tools.

These incredible gifts that each of my children have brought to my life make me infinitely grateful. Pushing aside my fears and replacing them with faith has brought me more grace and joy than I could have ever thought possible.

More Mud

The latest craze in running seems to be these obstacle races. Mud, fire, climbing, push-ups, etc., etc. Every running events group is doing one now and Micah has caught the bug along with everyone else. He says it's more exciting than just running down the road. I just nod my head, smile and take pictures.

This past weekend he competed in the Warrior Dash - three miles and the usual obstacles. He managed to convince a few co-workers and family members to join him as well. Micah placed 2nd in his heat, 7th out of 820 in his age group and 45th out of 7222 overall for the day.

Not bad!

The girls and I stood at the mud pit at the end because it's where we can get the most exciting views. They remembered, from the last race, a man yelling "CRAWL BABY CRAWL!", so they pretty much screamed that for 20 minutes at everyone coming through. Note: You might be asking yourself why Micah is covered from head to toe in mud, while the other two guys in the picture are only muddy on their front half. Well, it's because he literally dives in while the others just start crawling. Usually the dive has some trick attached like a jump spin. His philosophy is that if you're going to sign up for this, you might as well go all out.

This coming weekend is the Dirty 6 - 6 miles of fun this time.