On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...a Sweetie in a Christmas tree

This is to funny! Normally Rudy is the one that's always getting into every thing and I had been blaming him for getting in my tree because you can tell one of them had been getting into it because the branches on the tree were no longer fluffed out the way I had them. It's obvious a kitty had been sitting in it, lol! Well I owe Rudy an apology :)

God Blessed Texas :)

As most of you know I am partial to the State of Texas. I love it here, so when I got this email I just had to post it, lol.


Please note that Texas is the only state with a legal right to secede from the Union . (Reference the Texas-American Annexation Treaty of 1848.)

We Texans love y'all, but we'll probably have to
Take action since B. Hussein Obama won the election. We'll miss you too.

Here is what can happen:

#1: Barack Hussein Obama becomes President of the United States , Texas immediately secedes from the Union .

#2: George W. Bush will become the President of the Republic of Texas .

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic?

1. NASA is just south of Houston , Texas . We will control the space industry.

2. We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States.

3. Defense Industry--we have over 65% of it. The term "Don't mess with Texas ," will take on a whole
New meaning.

4. Oil - we can supply all the oil that the Republic of Texas will need for the next 300 years. Yankee states? Sorry about that.

5. Natural Gas - again we have all we need and it's too bad about those Northern States. John Kerry will have to figure out a way to keep them warm....

6. Computer Industry - we currently lead the nation in producing computer chips and communications- -small companies like Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, EDS, Raytheon,
> National Semiconductor, Motorola, Intel, AMD, Atmel, Applied Materials, Ball Miconductor, Dallas Semiconductor, Delphi, Nortel, Alcatel, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.

7. Medical Care - We have the largest research centers for cancer research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world, as well as other large health centers. Dallas has some of the best hospitals in the United States .

8. We have enough colleges to keep us going: University of Texas , Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Rice, SMU, University of Houston , Baylor, UNT ( University of North Texas ), Texas
Women's University, etc. Ivy grows better in the South anyway.

9. We have a ready supply of workers. We could just open the border when we need some more.

10. We have essential control of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc.

11. In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas
National Guard and the Texas Air National
Guard. We don't have an Army, but since everybody down here has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an Army in 24 hours if we need one. If the situation really gets bad,
We can always call the Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over Chuck Norris and a couple of Texas Rangers.

12. We are totally self-sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs, and several types of grain, fruit and vegetables, and let's not forget seafood from the Gulf. Also, everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good. Don't need any food.

This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic of Texas in good shape. There isn't a thing out there that we need and don't have.

Now to the rest of the United States under President Obama:

Since you won't have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only President Obama will be able to drive around in his big 9 mpg SUV. The rest of the United States will have to walk or ride bikes.

You won't have any TV as the Space Center in Houston will cut off satellite communications.

You won't have any natural gas to heat your homes, but since Mr. Obama has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas as long as you survive the 2000 years it will take to get enough heat from Global Warming.

Signed, The People of Texas

P.S. This is not a threatening letter - just a note to give you something to think about!

SLEEP WELL TONIGHT THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU!!

One Nation Under God

Thanksgiving with the Bullocks

Between them they had 14 kids in the house! They are a good group of kids. In order starting from the top left is Vicente, Mcay, Aiden, and Anthony. The next row is Christina, Madison, Stephen, Nathaniel, Michael and Zacharay. The next row is Joseph, Kaitlyn, Travis and Blake.

Yesterday I got to spend the day with Claudia and her family. We had a blast :) The pic above is Claudia and her brother and sisters. In order from the top is Seth, Claudia, Talita, and Zena.

The Day After Thanksgiving

Mom sent me a few Christmas things that she used to put out when we were growing up. Rudy and Sweetie like the boxes and newspapers mom uses to send me things, lol :) Thanks mom for all the goodies we had a lot of fun today :)

Today I put out my Christmas decorations. It was always a family tradition that we would put up the tree and put out all the Christmas decorations. I love this time of the year :)

After we were done it was time for a nap :)

Four Christmases

Last night I went and saw Four Christmases with a good friend of mine. I have to say this was really good! So if you haven't seen it yet go see it. It's hillarious :)

Thanksgiving

I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with Lisa and her family. I am so blessed to have such great friends like her! Thanks Lisa for letting me share Thanksgiving with you and your family. It really meant a lot to me.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on the things that we are thankful for so I would like to share a few things that I am most thankful for.

I am most thankful for my family. I don't live close to any of them so I don't get very many oportunity's to tell them that I love them and am thankful to have them in my life.

I am so thankful to have good friends as well. With having no family close by it helps to have good friends to lean on. And I want to tell them how much I appreciate and love every single one of you. I have been through some difficult times in the last few years and don't know what I would have done if I didn't have you all there.

I am thankful for my kitties :) They are a joy to my life and I love them like they were my children.

And I am also greatful to still have a job to go to with this mess that the economy is in.

A weight has been lifted off my shoulders!

This morning I had a weight lifted off of my shoulder. Yes, as of this morning my little Cavalier is officially mine!! :) I'll be celebrating this time next month, lol!

Trick or Treat

Last night I got to go trick or treating with my nephews :) Aren't they adorable! We have Indiana Jones, a teenage mutant nija turtle, Obie one conoby (sorry if I mis spelled that!) Spider Man, and Zachary was the grinch. Claudia was a fairy, Richard a Texas Long Horns fan and I was Cruella :)

We also celebrated Zachary's 1st birthday! I can't believe he's already 1!

Financial Crisis

I just rec'd this email from a good friend of mine. It does not surprise me that the media is not disclosing the truth about the financial crisis we are in. If you read this blog I don't mean any offense to you. However if Obama gets elected we are in a world of trouble. Please continue to read below (especially to the last paragraph):

Financial CrisisDate: Monday, October 6, 2008, 2:46 PM

I personally can't attest to all the facts in the attached. However, this was sent to me by the President of a bank. The comments about the Community Reinvestment Act [CRA] are accurate. According to him, the regulators only graded the banks upon how many census tracks they loaned money into, and, they never questioned the underwriting standards on those loans. If youdidn't meet their census track standard, you were graded down which resulted in negative consequences. Congress should be ashamed. The following is a condensation of a series from the Investor's Business Daily explaining 'What Caused the Loan Crisis':

1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the Community Reinvestment Act into Law.
The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify. The Premise: Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime,investment, jobs, etc. Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help. How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?
Answer: Bill Clinton wanted it that way.

1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stockholding few.

1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopoies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.

1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.

1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin's Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robert Rubin's Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating. The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.

1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Developement, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back on their investments vs 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks theirenterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often 'no doc', 'no income', requiring no money down and no verification of income. Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During the 1990's Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as much as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poorborrowers as claimed. Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie's excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. 'We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manageour credit and interest rate risks,' Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to investors in 1999.

2000: Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the 'special status'. Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO's who knew how to reward and punish. 'We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets' Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.

2001: Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.

2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called 'the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago'. Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.

2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: 'We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk'. Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, 'If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to theenormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financialsystem and the economy as a whole'. Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP ;of trying to 'cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding homeownership' The bill went nowhere.

2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in '07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. Thecrisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.

2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats' talking points about this being a 'Republican' disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulatedby Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That's why taxpayersare now being asked for $700 billion!! If you doubt any of this, just click the links below and listen to your lawmakers own words. They are condeming! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related#

Postscript: ACORN is one of the principle beneficiaries of Fannie/ Freddie's slush funds. They are currently under indictment or investigation in many states. Barack Obama served as their legal counsel, defending their activities for several years. Please share this with everyone you know. Send it. Print it. Talk about it. America needs to know!!!

A Portrait of Barack Hussein Obama

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?rsrcid=2036

And why do we want this muslim in office? This video says it all!

Who Caused the Mess we are in......Not Bush

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Getting into shape

Earlier this month I finally got myself a gym membership. So for the past couple weeks Carmen and I have pulled ourselves together and decided we were going to lose weight and get into shape! I never thought I would say this but I feel sooooo much better after I have a good work out! I will keep you posted as to how we are or not doing, lol!

The Work and The Glory

I have finally finished reading the 9 volume series of the Work and The Glory by Gerald N. Lund. For those of you who have not read this series should read them. Gerald N. Lund takes the fictional Steed family through historical church events and made church history come to life in a whole new perspective in my eyes. Those of us that were born into the church have heard all the stories growing up but I had no idea the severity of what the early saints went through until I had started reading this series.

I found out that they are not going to making any more movies. They are stopping with number 3 :( This saddens me. But the books are outstanding! I would highly reccomend these books :)

Wedding Dress shopping

I spent all Wednesday with Carmen. She had gone and looked at dresses the day before and found this one she really liked. We went back to the store and she tried it on and it is absolutly gorgeous! I'm not going to post pictures of it just in case the groom just happens to see this :) But the shop did a cute little thing when she put the deposit down on the dress. The pulled out bubbles and played this song. It was fun.

Cable TV

I have taken this week off from work and today I had the AT&T cable guy come out install my new cable TV. My apartment complex is doing away with their bundle cable package begining the first of September, so to avoid disruption in my service I had someone come out while I was off :) and while they were at it they installed wireless internet! I love it! I can go where ever I want to in my apartment and have the internet and no cords or wires attached to the lap top :) It seems like the little things tickle me pink :

Peachy King Continued :)

Last night we finished our project from Saturday. However when we would open up the dish washer to pull a jar out our glasses would fog up, lol!

mmmmm, don't they look good!

Peachy King

Today Erika, Sara and I went to a peach orchard in Gainsville, TX to pick our own fresh peaches.

This is me. It wasn't even 10:00 in the morning and it was already hot outside!

Doesen't the fruit look yummy!

Sara sorting out the most ripe ones

Peeling and slicing

Bottling them in syrup and getting ready to put them in the pans to boil for a little bit.

A finished project

Project

This is my project so to speak for this month :) I'm the Visiting Teaching Leader in my Ward and it's a singles ward. So needless to say it's real hard to encourage some of the sisters to do their visiting teaching. I found this really great web site. I think it's the ideadoor.com I'll have to double check that. But it's got all kinds of great stuff on it for any calling in the church you can think of. They post what I like to call cliffs notes of the monthly visiting teaching message and they make it look real nice and pretty as you can see above :) So I printed and cut these out and put them in a bag with some candy to pass out during Relief Society this Sunday.

I also found this great program at the book store! I'm going to be cutting these out to pass out next month. I don't know if you can really read what it says. It says : "When Visiting Teaching becomes a burden and your "sole" is wearing thin....Just try to remember whose steps your following in." And I found these really nice sticker pictures of Christ to add to it. I just love it! :) I can't stress enough how important visiting teaching is. If it weren't for one I had in Rockwall I probably would not have gotten involved in church activity again.

New Computer & update

For those of you that don't know my old lap top gave out on me :( It did however give me an excuse to get the one that I wanted :) Check out the new P.C.

The sad thing is nothing really has been going on during the time I haven't had a computer. Last weekend I went to a going away pool party for a sister in my ward. She accepted a teaching job in SLC. That was a blast.

Nothing else has been going on. :(