Well, I guess our parents’ hippie genes finally kicked in – we took the kids to their first ever protest last night. We made a sign that said ‘California has no room for hate – overturn Prop 8!’ and we got all bundled up and headed over to a huge anti-Proposition 8 rally that was going on near our house at the Sunset Junction. We were very excited about the whole thing. Our friend Michelle came with us and, as an added bonus, Finn’s best friend, Hana and her Mom, Kei showed up at the last minute and they went with us, as well.
At first, everything went great. Patrick and Jack got their picture taken with our sign and Kei was interviewed for some news channel or other. There were LOTS of people there and Jack was excited by the policemen on horses - although I have to admit, their riot gear made me a little nervous. We duly waved our sign around, though and chanted “What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now!” with the thousands of other people who were there with us. It was very interesting to be in the heart of the gay community at such a difficult time. There was a certain amount of anger palpable in the air, but there was also a tremendous sense of unity and a few people expressed their gratitude to us and a few of the other heterosexual families nearby who had shown up to support them.
One gay couple near us had blown up their recent marriage certificate and posted it on their signs. That got to me more than anything else and I thought about how I would feel if someone told me that my marriage to Patrick was an affront to God and was going to be invalidated. I told Patrick recently that one of the main reasons why I support gay marriage is because of the feeling I got after we got married. We lived together before we were married and I don’t think either one of us really expected marriage to be all that different, but I was surprised by what a profound feeling I had after our ceremony. That feeling has sustained us many times over the years and I really have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to prevent gay couples from sharing in that same experience.
Anyway, that’s it for my 2 cents about this subject. For the most part, we had a great time at the protest, but things took a bit of a sad turn towards the end when Mr. Jack started to get sick. We could tell he was a little out of sorts, but pretty soon, ‘out of sorts’ turned into a more violent and icky form of protest when he actually started throwing up. Unfortunately, he and Finn have a stomach bug that caused us to cancel Jack’s birthday party that we had scheduled for today. We’re bummed about that, but at least we got a good joke out of the whole thing. We decided that we should have changed our sign to ‘Prop 8 makes me sick!’ Ha! I bet that would have made the evening news.
We had a nice joint birthday celebration for Em & Jamie this past Saturday. Petur made fantastic omelets & we had a beautiful fruit tart. Presents were opened and I love all of the colors in this picture of Em with her gifts! Also, I got to see both of my awesome sisters, which is always a treat.
For Jack's (extended) two-year birthday we went to the Los Angeles Live Steamers on Sunday. This is a great, kind of hidden place in Griffith Park where a group of very strange people build and operate scale replicas of steam and diesel trains. It's not (the much better known) Travel Town - those are real trains. This is a place close to Travel Town where, on Sundays, you can go and ride on these fantastic 
little trains for a small (suggested) donation.
to a week-long birthday!
t - those are people in those orange suits! At first I thought for sure that these must be photoshopped, but they're straight out of National Geographic. And if you can't trust National Geographic, who can you trust? Anyway, I thougt they were pretty amazing! 
Well, I guess our parents’ hippie genes finally kicked in – we took the kids to their first ever protest last night. We made a sign that said ‘California has no room for hate – overturn Prop 8!’ and we got all bundled up and headed over to a huge anti-Proposition 8 rally that was going on near our house at the Sunset Junction. We were very excited about the whole thing. Our friend Michelle came with us and, as an added bonus, Finn’s best friend, Hana and her Mom, Kei showed up at the last minute and they went with us, as well.
d wine we snuck in) while listening to Van at night was pretty teriffic!
dad Lars who isn't in these pictures). Unfortunately Kim's wife and their new baby couldn't make it - baby Nick is only about a month old I think, so he's a little young. But we all had a great time, and the kids slowed down long enough to take some cute pictures.
