Christmas All Week Long

We've been celebrating Christmas all week long -- first at our house in Edmond and then with cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles in Bartlesville.

Christmas Eve




Christmas morning






Christmas in Bartlesville

Ollie Rancher

Creative Daycare Solutions

"In the past six months, two child-care programs in or near downtown Tulsa have closed, leaving few options for parents working nearby," Sara Plummer reports in the Tulsa World. "Options for downtown child care have shrunk in the past decade from more than 10 centers to just a few."

Fortunately, options exist:

Scenes from Bartlesville

Never Seen Anything Like It

Does Santa Fill State Coffers?

Or does that money come from somewhere else?

Great Moments in Lefty Christmas Parties

The homosexual-rights group Oklahomans for Equality recently invited folks to "don your gay apparel" for a grand ball in Tulsa featuring "pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus and the naughty and nice elves." Pretty audacious, to be sure, but for my money it still doesn't top the Democrats who decided to commemorate the birth of an unwed teenager's unplanned baby by throwing a Christmas party at a Planned Parenthood abortion facility.

UPDATE: Daily Kos takes the cake. Stay classy, lefties.

My Three Daughters

I've been posting a lot of photos of Oliver lately, but I ran across this picture and realized it's the only one I have of my three daughters together (picture here with their mom).

Ollie Jolly Christmas

Trial Bah! Humbug!

I think most people have at least a vague awareness that the trial bar makes us all poorer. One study estimated that the nation's legal system imposes an annual "tort tax" of more than $9,800 per family -- raising the cost of countless goods and services (most notably health care) and whacking the bejeebers out of our retirement accounts.

But I've had occasion this Christmas season to notice how lawsuit abuse makes our lives poorer in other, nonquantifiable ways. A couple of weeks ago when we bought our Christmas tree, the store employee helped me hoist it atop our SUV, and even gave me some twine. But, somewhat apologetically, he said he couldn't help me tie it. Lawyers, you understand.

Then today in Tulsa we watched Mary Margaret perform in Tulsa Ballet's "The Nutcracker." The performance was at 2:00 PM, and it's a good thing we didn't get there at 2:01 or the usher wouldn't have let us in. Not because it distracts the dancers, but because too many plaintiffs have slipped and fallen (or claimed to) when making their way to their seats.

These two inconveniences aren't the end of the world, of course. They're just small reminders of the corrosive effects of an out-of-control legal system which is "carving a rift in the moral terrain of the American culture."

Just as John Denver would be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly, lawsuit abuse makes all of our lives poorer. Noneconomic damages, you might say.

Smile!

Liberalism as Self-Liquidating Malady

In a new column entitled "Thomas Friedman and the Higher Education Bubble," economist David P. Goldman observes that

Liberalism, like cancer, is a self-liquidating malady. Eventually it kills the patient. Secular Americans, mainline Protestants, loosely affiliated Catholics, and Reform and Conservative Jews breed like Germans or Italians, with fewer than 1.5 children per female. By contrast, Hispanic Catholics have 3 children, and evangelicals 2.6 children. America is like Schroedinger’s Cat, in a superposed state of being dead and alive. And long before demographics catch up with liberal culture and extinguish it, like the post-Alexandrine Greeks or the 5th-century Romans, the economic destruction wrought by liberal education will have impoverished most of a generation of American young people.

I made some similar observations in an Oklahoma Gazette piece called "Dude, Where's My Voters?"

Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

"Christopher Hitchens was baptized in his infancy," Douglas Wilson writes,

and his name means "Christ-bearer." This created an enormous burden that he tried to shake off his entire life. No creature can ever succeed in doing this. But sometimes, in the kindness of God, such failures can have a gracious twist at the end. We therefore commend Christopher to the Judge of the whole earth, who will certainly do right. Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-2011). R.I.P.

Merry Christmas, Little Anne Marie

Happy OllieDays

Tulsa World Reviewer Praises 'Nutcracker'

James D. Watts Jr. writes that "fresh" is a good word to describe Tulsa Ballet's Saturday afternoon performance of "The Nutcracker," which "showed the company in excellent form from start to finish. Even the children and young dancers in the show seemed to be operating at a slightly higher level."

Yes, Oklahoma Is 'Leading the Nation'

Unfortunately, we're leading the nation in the wrong direction.

Come See 'The Nutcracker'

My sweet Mary Margaret is dancing in eight performances of Tulsa Ballet's "The Nutcracker" this month. Buy a ticket and come see it!

Five Months Old

Dear Oliver,

Today you are five months old and you are growing so fast. We wish time would slow down just a little!

You still smile all the time and sometimes you even laugh out loud. You like to play in your ExerSaucer or on the floor, and you've also figured out how to suck on your toes. Mostly you like to be held -- which is fine with us because there is always someone here to hold you.

The other day I took you to the doctor because you had your first sniffle and I was worried. The doctor checked you all over and announced that you were fine except that you "have a serious case of cute." Of course we all agree with her diagnosis!

Your biggest milestone this past month is that your first little tooth poked through. We can just barely feel it and see the little white top of it. We can't believe you already have your first tooth!

Happy five months, Oliver! We can't imagine what we did without you!

Parents Deserve Preschool Choices

That's the argument I make today in the Edmond Sun.

Thanksgiving Pictures