Jumbo's Quote of the Day:

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice, had I abided by it I might have been saved from my most valuable mistakes.

~Gene Fowler~
1890-1960

It's that time of year again...

It's that time of year again when days get hotter and people get lazier. It's time to whip out the Popsicle and lemonade as you watch the busy cars drive by and you plan out your summer in your head.


I think I might play a little volleyball this summer; haven't played it since Olivia and I were wee, bitty munchkins, with big head and knobby knees. And now nostalgia has caught me in its reminiscing hands and I can't wait to get back to the good ol' volleyball court :D



I'm also gearing up for a lot of out door grilling, as it's getting a little too hot for indoor cooking--
of course I wouldn't mind a indoor cooking if it were in, say, an In-N-Out. *hint, hint* ;P


I'm also hoping, without much enthusiasm that Hollywood, maybe, might, just come up with an enjoyable Summer flick--a girl can dream right.


As always, accompanying the start of summer is the start of our (Olivia and I) plotting and skimming to get our parents to take us on a long refreshing bike ride, or to a picnic, prefect park...or...or...



TO THE BEACH!!!!


Here's hoping

Sarah

Summer Break

School has let out, thank goodness! Finals are over!!
Well at least for me they are, I think Matthew and Andrew still have one or two left...

Boy does it feel nice to be free!
No more homework, no more crunch study hours...over, done, finished :)


At least until July, then it's back to studying. Till then however I'm going to enjoy my time of homework free days :)

I would love to say that I'm going to be sleeping in late for the next month and not doing anything which involves hard labor...but then I would be lying.

Even though the hard studying is over I'm not exactly a free woman. Matthew and I were invited to join the track team at our college so for the next month we will be running and training and weightlifting like manics to get in shape.

It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be fun :)

So much for being free...

~Olivia

Have a Happy Day!!

A few of the folks in our house have a teeny bit of a cold, and one day when Olivia was looking a little peeked I asked her how she was feeling. She replied “I always feel fine!!” nothing like a little positive affirmation to keep you moving along when you may not be up to snuff physically.

It’s been about seven years since Ruben first started reading about positive psychology and then sharing with the family the concrete benefits of a positive mental attitude and the results in our household are palpable.

Here’s a cute little video of a young girl giving herself a great start to a wonderful day. Isn’t she just the funniest thing?

Salud!

Momsie

Heart Warming

While checking my mail the other day AOL had this video in their daily line up of news. I thought it was one of the sweetest things I’ve seen in awhile so I wanted to share it.

The look of wonder, amazement and then recognition of his mother’s voice for the first time was a joy to watch and left me uplifted. I felt happy for him and his family; and once again grateful that this sort of technology is available to help people live ‘normal’ lives when nature provides a challenge like being born deaf.

Here is the link to the original article: Baby hears mother's voice for the first time

Momsie

Human Powered Vehicle Event

Remember when I was telling you all about the Human Powered Vehicle club I joined at college? And how we, the club, were building this bike to take out to Northridge Cal State to compete against several other Universities?

Of course you remember! You've been sitting on the edge of your seat just waiting for more info ever since I wet your appetite about the whole thing :)

Yes well now I have actual proof...see I wasn't just making everything up, I have cinematic evidence to back up my claims about our Human Powered Vehicle!

Anyway here is a video one of my team mates put together you might not be able to tell, but both Matthew and I appear in this video a few times.
I'm riding the bike for the most part and Matthew is running around making "repairs" on the bike...

Enjoy:



This event was a lot of fun, there were so many fancy bike designs out there and everyone was just great, helping each other out and cheering all the teams on even though we were competing -- it was just a great experience I really enjoyed being part of it not to mention our team did an awesome job! :)

Photographic proof of the above mentioned events coming soon, so stay tuned...

~Olivia

Kid's denial of gratification discipline tested

Word of the Day--Agnosticism

Agnosticism (ăgnŏs'tĭsĭzəm), denying that human beings can know if God exists, emerged in the 1860s and 1870s as the opinion of a small but influential minority of religiously serious, well-read Americans. Many belonged to the class of writers, academics, and scientists soon labeled "intellectuals." They commonly enjoyed relatively high economic and social status. The word "agnosticism" itself was coined in 1869 (from Greek roots denoting "unknown") by the English scientist Thomas Huxley, and American agnosticism closely tracked similar, somewhat earlier tendencies among British bourgeois intelligentsia. Several of the most prominent early American agnostics—such as the scholar and cultural critic Charles Eliot Norton, the journalist E. L. Godkin, the historian Henry Adams, and the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.—were deeply entwined in transatlantic webs of friendships that linked the two countries' intellectual life. And as these names suggest, agnosticism first developed in the United States among urban north easterners.

Agnosticism was not so much a positive belief as a negative conclusion. Victorian agnostics wished to apply to all questions of knowledge what they took to be the criteria of the natural and human sciences. To decide matters of fact by any other standard they characteristically regarded as immoral—a credo classically articulated in the 1870s by the English mathematician William Clifford: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." That agnostics readily carried this principle into religious issues can be explained not only by widespread faith in science but more specifically by the fact that for two centuries theological writers had enlisted science to prove religious belief. That this hoary scientific apologetic foundered after 1860 owed much to contraction by scientists of what counted as scientific evidence, a restriction associated especially with Darwinism. In ensuing decades, a growing number of Americans weighed the evidence for the existence of God and concluded that nothing approaching scientific evidence existed to prove a God.

Typically, agnostics bore no grudge against those who did retain faith in God. Although agnostics tended to see themselves as clearer thinkers and more rigorous moralists, they rarely trumpeted their unbelief or publicly attacked the churches. In this, agnosticism was unlike atheism, actively denying God. Atheism in both the United States and Europe flowed from dislike of organized religion, and atheists—their outrage at "priest-craft" often stoked by class resentment—were usually anticlericals. Lacking powerful established churches to resent, the United States proved much less fertile ground for atheism than did Europe, and agnosticism became the more common form of unbelief.

Agnosticism was entrenched in American culture by 1900, although the vast majority of Americans have continued to believe in God. Unbelief has probably remained chiefly an opinion of intellectual elites, especially academic ones. Unlike atheists, agnostics have rarely felt any need to institutionalize their views (the Ethical Culture movement was a rare exception, founded in 1876 by Felix Adler). To invent a structure to house a lack of beliefs perhaps seemed oxymoronic. Hence, agnosticism did not really evolve intellectually after establishing itself (except among academic philosophers) but rather in the twentieth century blended into low-key religious indifferentism.

Bibliography

Turner, James. Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Un-belief in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

—James Turner

Poet's Respite: Work upon immortal Minds...

Image editing by Sarah

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust, but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity."

Daniel Webster

Jumbo's

Jumbo's Quote of the Day!

Keep cool; anger is not an argument.

~Daniel Webster~