Baptism, Grandkid game night, Valentines and more

Lady got baptized on Saturday!  It was awesome.  “Monsoon” performed the baptism, Wayne confirmed her.  (When you type Monson in a program, it almost always changes it to monsoon..so that’s what the program said.) Poppy, Lady, Tayla, Elsie, and I sang the Rainbow Baptism song.  Alfie on piano, Sophia on Saxophone, and Andrew on Cello played A Child’s Prayer.  It was really beautiful.  Bre gave a talk on baptism.  We gathered at Lady’s home afterwards for soup, and it was great.  Lexi’s mom and sister came to town for this event.   Lady was so excited that everyone was there for her.

Tayla had her Shrek Jr.show this weekend.  She was darling as teenage Fiona and sang really strongly. She was in many of the group numbers, including the tap dance number. She loves performing, but at age 10, she is experiencing such foot pain and plantar fasciitis.  We loved watching her and seeing Drew Call as the Donkey in the same show. ( Jordan Call’s son) Megan Call does a great job with this age group as the director– she must have sooo much patience. 

It's hard to tell what's happening in the above picture.... but Poppy showed up with a request, after Addison tried to explain what was happening to many immigrants in our country.  She wanted us all to go outside and shout , “Immigrants deserve better!”  So we did just that with red, white and blue lights flashing on our house.  She’s a sweetheart who has great empathy.

Grand Kid Game Nightfor February!

George ran to the top of the mound, dropped his flashlight and did a He-Man pose. Then the kids all followed him.

We had Alfie, Geo, Tayla, Lady and Elsie for the first 2 hours, then at 7:30 Poppy showed up (since her mom went home sick and didn’t stay for the cast party)  We did our flashlight walk to Arctic Circle and Maverick for ice creams and slushies and playing at the Arctic Circle play place.  We love dark, cold flashlight walks. We sang a version of Follow the Prophet all the way home at the top of our lungs.  “Follow the Lady, Follow the Poppy…” or “Follow the Alfie, Follow the meemaw….”  We played dominoes and cards and drew very colorful valentines…and of course chicken nuggets and tater tots.  We love these nuggets( our grands)  so much!   NO Sophia and Andrew because they were in St.George visiting their grandparents.

 We had our annual Sidetracked band dinner. It’s great to do it on Valentine's.  We all get a free meal and a rose – all paid for by the Oborns to tell us thanks for being in the band.  Not very romantic, but very practical and nice to be with our band friends and their spouses.  We did it at Roosters in Layton this year in a private room.   I wore a red velvet pant suit that I picked up at the DI for $10.00.  It fit great and I can wear it for Christmas and Valentine's,-- then it goes back in the closet. 

Bre and Poppy finished up their HCT Frozen run! They performed in 70 shows…  the run was from Nov. 18- Feb 14th– so a lot of Let It Go!  Bre has been well, no sickness the entire run until this last week.  She got knocked down with a bad cold.  She had to call in sick for Thursday night's performance.  (So many friends and relatives were there to see her that night- so that was sad) She did not feel good, but she decided to power through Friday 4:00 performance for the under-3 crowd, which really did her in. She missed the cast party and went home and went straight to bed instead. Now with one show left- Saturday night – she woke up Saturday morning with no voice.  She felt horrible. She was sooooo sad!  She did all the things to try to get better –  cold meds, throat lozenges, steroid shots, honey, mucinex, steam room–  Trying to get this cold out of her body. She called her under study and had her on standby for the closing show.  Bre felt so sick.  Addison and the boys had closing night tix– so they thought they would just go and see Poppy and be sad that Bre couldn’t perform. Saturday at noon, Wayne and Addison gave Bre a blessing of health and recovery… and by 6:00 that night she felt like she could do it…and she did!  She was a powerhouse!  She was a walking miracle!  She finished out her show strong, and she and Poppy were so happy! Miracles happen.

Billionaires are an abomination

 The more I read and learn about the making of Billionaires-- the more I am disgusted and saddened by them.

We tend to refer to millionaires and billionaires in one sentence, as if they are the same.  The fact is that a millionaire is closer economically to a minimum wage worker than to a billionaire.  If I make $100,000 a year, just ten times that makes me a millionaire.   If I make a million dollars a year, a thousand times that makes me a billionaire.

This is what a billion is:  If you earned $1 every second, you would reach $1 million after 11 and a half days.  To get to a billion dollars, you would need 31.7 years.  If you earned $100,000 a year, you would earn a million after 10 years of work.  At the same rate, you would need to work 10,000 years to earn a billion.   A million is a 1,000 thousands.  A billion is a 1,000 millions.  If you spent $1,000 a day, it would take you just 2.7 years to spend a million dollars.  If you spent the same amount a day, it would take you 2,740 years to spend $1 billion.

That's what a billion is.  That's what billionaires have, more money than they could every ethically make, more money than they quite literally could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes.  

Across the world, 8 billionaires own the same wealth as 3.6 billion people, half the entire population of the planet.  8 people.  In America, the top 1% of Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 90%.  

Trump has an unprecedented 13 billionaires in his administration.  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg own more wealth than the bottom half of America.  More wealth than over 165 million of us.

In America, we are taught some sort of  "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense. Men are self-made. In America, we have a deeply curated and intentional story that billionaires are the natural result of extraordinary effort, inventive brilliance and brave risk-taking.  This is B.S.

Elon Musk gets government subsidies, grants, taxbreaks and contracts to the tune of $9.2 billion. Jeff Bezos has received more than $15 billion in government subsidies and contracts.

Take the Waltons, who own Walmart.  Walmart pays its more than 1.6 million American workers below a living wage, which means that roughly one in four Walmart employees relies on public assistance, costing the American taxpayers $6 billion a year.  While we pick up the tab, the billionaire Walton family collects the profits generated by their poverty wages, meaning that our tax money is directly subsidizing the Walton family fortune, which is now at $430 billion.  Taxpayers are effectively writing a check to the Walton family for roughly $3 billion every year, since they own half of Walmart, by subsidizing low wages through public benefits. 

Billionaires are not bootstrappers who pulled themselves up.  They are, in fact, an invention of specific policies that created them, specific laws that didn't exist until the 1980's that allow hoarded wealth to be limitless, while denying workers the fruits of their productivity.

A line from Ragimes goes:  "How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few?  The answer is being persuaded to identify with them. " We have been persuaded that billionaires are not unethical hoarders, but aspirational heroes, and that we too could be that wealthy if only we were clever enough and hardworking enough with a little luck.

The problem with idolizing billionaires is that we aspire to wealth we will never come close to touching.

In order to reach the low end of Bezos' wealth, the average worker would need to work for 4 million years. Elon Musk makes more in a single day than a teacher will earn in thousands of lifetimes.

The fortunes of the five richest men in the world more than doubled between 2020 and 2024, while billions of workers who make their success possible declined in wages and living standards.  Here's what we need to understand.  It's not that there isn't enough money and productivity.  Productivity per worker has nearly doubled since the 1970's. It's just that anyone who isn't at the top is denied access to the fruits of their own productivity. In the 1970's, median wages tracked productivity fairly closely, but from 1980 to today,  median wages have barely budged, even though productivity rose by as much as 80%.  this means that workers create far more value than they are compensated for.  That compensation is just captured by owners and executives.  In 1970, a US worker produced $28 an hour of output and earned $19 an hour.  IN 2024, a worker produces $50 an hour and earns $25.  Since 2019, CEO compensation has increased 50% while worker pay rose by less than 1%.

Right now, over 60% of our fellow Americans live paycheck to paycheck, yet we have billionaires living amongst us.

It's gross. It's wrong. Billionaires are an abomination...and we must change our economic rules and values in our country to benefit more people. When is enough money enough?  Why do greed and power get away with so much and break so many laws?  I'm sick of it. 

(I gathered much of this article from the We Can Do Hard Things podcast..and wanted to have it on my blog, since this is exactly how I feel and what I can't believe we have fallen for in this country.)

Dress for JOY

 I've challenged myself to dress for JOY every day this year.  Dressing for JOY entails color, creativity, confidence and memory.  I have mom's old jewelry chest filled with fun memories, that when I wear the neckalce or earrings etc... it always sparks joy.  

Dressing for joy means staying away from trends and the boring beige of the world and moving to dopamine dressing.   It means wearing the sweaters that I've crocheted.

Dressing for joy also means that when I'm out and about, I get a lot of smiles, double takes, and sometimes compliments.  But I don't need anyone to approve of what I wear-- only me.  

To hold myself accountable to this, I am posting on Instagram every day my outfit choice.  It's hard to want to do this every day, but I need something to keep my going and this has worked so far.  @whatluckywears

These are my January looks: