Proud (and thankful) to be an American

I read on CNN.com this morning that yesterday Michael Jackson’s death crashed a bunch of web sites for a time. Evidently the world wide web was brought to it’s knees by the King of Pop. And this just didn’t happen in the U.S. of A but all over the world.

This made me ponder the human race as I sometimes do. Everyone is so curious about MJ’s death and they want to know instantly when he died, how he died. And just to be clear I’m one of those people too. Yet, how many people were as interested in the protests in Iran and the death of Neda, the icon for those protests, or the genocide in Darfur that still continues. Why are we not as hungry for information on other more “important” global stories? Is it too painful to think about? Do we just feel helpless? Is it just to taxing on our brains to understand all the political, social, and other issues? Is it too far away to worry about?

For me personally, it’s very depressing to think about Iran and Darfur. I do feel somewhat helpless. I read the stories of people being killed for protesting their government and of women being systematically raped while their children look on and it’s absolutely horrifying. I turn away from that much pain and senselessness. It makes me so thankful that I was born an American in a time when someone else had already fought for my right to vote and fought for my civil rights and all the other freedoms that I enjoy. I am so thankful that I can sit back and be lazy and take these things for granted and mostly that I can surf the net to find out useless information about celebrities in a very voyeuristic way.

Brianna's Rainbow Birthday Cake

After having a stomach virus this week and being down for the count for a little over three days, we postponed Brianna's birthday party. But I started feeling much better Friday night and decided to have my parents come over and do just a family party. I had already decided to do a rainbow cake after Amanda made some rainbow cupcakes that came out looking so cute. Originally, we were going to do a princess tea party and I was going to make the cake in the shape of a teapot. That didn't happen, but you can see the progression of the cake in the pictures above (again thank Amanda for giving me the idea to take pictures through the whole process).

All the pictures will be on Snapfish soon. Brianna enjoyed licking the frosting off the spatula. She got some fun gifts. The biggest being a new outside climbing/slide thing. She also really liked the shopping cart we got her and was pushing all her other gifts around in it and making sure Liam didn't touch any of it. It was a low key birthday, but fun. When asked she'll tell you she's three now, which she wasn't doing earlier in the week when we would ask how old she was going to be. I guess even at three girls don't like to be older than they really are or tell you their age.

Now I can start thinking about our 4th of July vacation. YEAH!