Our new president is busy at work.

In one breath he talks stimulus package, in the other breath, he's spending taxpayers money on things that have no business being funded by the population as a whole. I was hoping I'd be wrong about this president and things weren't as bad as they seemed to be, but I'm afraid we're in for a whopper of a term.

As I type this, my 15-year old daughter is in Washington, D.C. with hundreds of other teenagers praying for a reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision. Murder of a baby is illegal, but not if the baby is an unborn baby. I challenge everyone who belives in a woman's "right to choose" to watch pictures or videos of abortion. IT IS MURDER.

Obama to reverse foreign abortion rule
Existing policy bans U.S. funds for groups that promote or perform abortion
The Associated Press
updated 10:42 a.m. CT, Fri., Jan. 23, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

The move, long expected in the Democratic president's first week in office, will be welcomed by liberals and criticized by abortion rights foes.

The policy bans U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of U.S. Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. It is also known as the "global gag rule," because it prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that even talk about abortion if there is an unplanned pregnancy.

Also known as the "Mexico City policy," it has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. President Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but President George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.

The Democratic official and senior U.S. official who disclosed the plans to The AP did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to pre-empt Obama's announcement.
Obama was expected to sign the executive order at a low-key event, one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.
The move was not a surprise as both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away with the gag rule during the presidential campaign. Clinton is to visit the U.S. Agency for International Development, through which much U.S. foreign aid is disbursed, later Friday.

Reversing Bush policiesObama has spent his first days in office systematically signing executive orders reversing Bush administration policies on issues ranging from foreign policy to government operations. But, save for ending the ban, Obama has largely refrained from wading into ideological issues, perhaps to avoid being tagged a traditional partisan from the outset after his campaign promises to change "business as usual" in the often partisan-gridlocked capital.
Rather, Obama has chosen to focus initially on issues in which there is consensus across the political spectrum and support from the public, such as closing the prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to making government documents more accessible.
Organizations that had pressed Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.

"Women's health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama's actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don't have access to family planning," said Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, an advocacy group.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Christmas picture - having fun!

Happy New Year!

I've been slow posting because I just never seem to have the time to get on the computer and do "personal" stuff these days! We have had a wonderful "holiday" so far. Rob and I took off from December 24th to January 5th, so we're hanging out with the kids and doing house projects. All of our parents were here from the 24th through the 29th, with staggering arrival and departure dates. The kids love it when all their grandparents are here!

We've all been working at cleaning and organizing the house in anticipation for my best Christmas gift ever - a cleaning lady! She starts in a couple of weeks, so we're tring to get everything presentable for her. Of course, it's never that easy. The AstroStart that Rob bought me for my birthday wasn't working 100%, so we had to take it back in for some additional tweeking, and we've been researching tires for my car. The latest problem is the garbage disposal breaking. My handy husband was able to replace it tonight in just a few short hours, including another trip to Menards to get a P trap as the old one was rusted through.

For those of you that usually receive a Christmas card from us, you don't need to keep waiting - it will be a New Year's card this year. They should be arriving shortly and i will have them out in a week. I'll also be posting some of our Christmas pictures soon.