If you haven't read it, you should...

The speech, entitled "A More Perfect Union", was given by Barack Obama, D-Ill. on March 18, 2008, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennslyvania.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story...

Read the rest: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/Story?id=4472228&page=2

Wait until it comes on TBS next year...

We went to go see 10,000 B.C. Saturday night with Brian and Tammy Harrison for Tammy's birthday along with 2 other couples they know from college. We had a great dinner at La Parilla and were fortunate enough to miss the tornados on Friday and Saturday. We went to the theater in Atlantic Station for the first time. We had both seen the previews for the movie (you can too at http://movies.aol.com/movie/10000-bc/23948/main) and it looked really cool from those. We had planned on seeing it for about 2 weeks. Well, let's just say that I was never scared, it wasn't suspenseful and I laughed...A LOT. I think that either middle schoolers or perhaps very confused screen writers wrote this movie because the timeline was all over the place. To begin with, let's just pretend for a minute that 10,000 B.C. was a year...that's a whole other debate in itself...I know. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that in 10,000 B.C. there was no metal so I'm not sure how they would have come up with the sword that one of the men had. I'm also pretty sure that they didn't build the Pyramids in said year, nor did they use Wolly Mamoths to do so. I was pretty bummed that there were no camels. There was however a saber tooth tiger (see movie poster) and a couple of giant ostriches. More pictures and videos can be found at http://www.10000bcmovie.com/. I was very disappointed when there were no dinosaurs...I thought I saw that one coming but they never did. The most outrageous thing about the movie is that it began in what appeared to be the Himalayas or something because they traversed through the "great mountains" that were covered in snow. After a few days walk, they were in a rain forest, and then a couple days later, a desert. Now I'm not sure where this movie is thought to take place but maybe they are going for the Pangaea theory and all land is connected together or something. I know, I know, it's fiction and I'm fine with that. But this was overkill on the cheese factor so all of these other points just made the movie a flop. I won't give away for any of you that want to spend $10 on the movie but let's just say that the ending is really what made it hilarious. I'm not sure if they were going for the Braveheart "actually could have happened thing" or the Lord of the Rings "fantasy" thing. Either way, I don't think they got it. I would like to hear what you thought about it...

Snowshoe

We went skiing this week and it was awesome. We went to Snowshoe, WV Sunday through Wednesday. We got to skii all day on Monday and it was 50 degrees so it wasn't cold but conditions were great. Tuesday, it rained ALL day!!! It was crazy because it was a constant downpour and melted all the snow. So, on Tuesday, we sat around the cabin all day and watched it rain. Wednesday morning, we woke up and there was a dusting of snow all over the ground so we thought it would be great skiing for the morning before we had to leave. Well, we got on the slopes and everything was covered in a sheet of ice with about a 1/16" of snow on top. It was crazy sketchy because in some places, you could hear water running under the ice that we were skiing over!!! It was also snowing/sleeting really hard at this point and the wind was blowing so you couldn't see 3 feet in front of your face. So, we didn't ski very much yesterday. It was still a blast and now we are going to go buy ourselves skiis so that we can try to make a couple of day trips in the NC mountains. Hopefully, we are going out west next year for a trip, too.





On the way home, we got to stop in Charlotte to see my best friend Penny~ yay!!





Here are some pics from our back door at the ski trip:



Deer outside our door just before we let G out to chase them...

G trying to chase them...he was tied to the stairs though.

G trying to find a tennis ball in the snow


The downfall of snow the day we left