The Langleys Lately

Christmas greetings from the Langley household!

Here is our yearly summary, starting as usual with Jordan’s birthday. We had 5 friends for the 5th birthday celebration, comfortably played at home and had the usual birthday cake of a door and dead-bolt, by far the easiest birthday creation yet! Breaking the piñata was another story, it wouldn’t bust open for anything!
This year was difficult with aides for Jordan, we saw 6 aides come and go, and keeping him happily going to preschool was challenging. Re-training someone new every couple months was frustrating. In preschool, while they originally welcomed us with open arms, it turned out that they weren’t very willing to work with us after all. We stuck it out to the end, but I don’t know who was happier when the final day came, me or Jordan! During the summer months Jordan got hooked on a few TV programs, which have been absolutely great teaching pretend play and he has really expanded his playing skills. Currently we are all “Go Diego Go!” and learning lots of Spanish to boot!
In March, Jordan and I flew to Prince George to attend Great Grandma Robertson’s 95th birthday. My sister Val and family were there the same week so we had a good time reconnecting with family and friends.
April brought lots of final changes to the house, we finally finished off the basement! It was very exciting to finish the flooring and the carpet installed, then Uncle Jim built and installed our cabinets for the washroom and kitchenette, and tile for the bathroom. He also tiled the entryway, hall, laundry and washroom. I am so pleased with his work and having these major projects finally completed! Both our Dads and my Mom came to visit shortly after, and they put in the drop tile ceiling and baseboards! It looks great and we use the basement everyday. Jordan loves using the counter down there to draw and do crafts. It is very cozy with the fireplace, which we are using during the recent cold snap!
In June we spent a “trial” weekend in Red Deer to see if we could stay in a hotel and actually sleep at night, and it was a great success. So in July we took a week holiday near San Francisco, while Sean worked in the Ditech Communications home office. It was fun to do the tourist thing and Alcatraz was a hit with Jordan as he is still loves to play with every lock he sees.
In August we drove to Abbotsford for my brother’s wedding, which was beautiful and we are so happy for PJ and Michelle. We celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary since we were all together.
Fall was full of change, Jordan started kindergarten and once again with a new aide who is a wonderful answer to prayer for our family. Sean’s job came to an abrupt end when the Ditech Calgary office was shut down. Emerson Process Management welcomed him back and he is flat out busy with his new management position, and enjoying his work.
The first month of school was full of upheaval, with all the transitions and new environment, we were in complete survival mode. But God has provided a wonderful teacher, a dedicated aide and class of a very sweet and calm kids. I am simply amazed. The staff at the school have been completely supportive for which I am daily thankful. Jordan has also begun piano lessons and astounds everyone with his ability.
This year we fly to San Diego for Christmas and hope to enjoy the sights there and the sun! We will join my sister’s family there for a week. We wish you a very blessed Christmas and joyful 2007! Let us come and adore Jesus this season!

Linda, for the family

In Alberta, we have a new premier. His name is Ed Stelmach and he came to power riding high on a platform of ethics, openness, and honesty.

Keep that statement in mind as you imagine yourself in the following scenario:

You have ambitions, convictions, desires or whatever other reasons to serve in public office, you choose a party you wish to represent based on the best match you have with your personal ideology. You purchase a membership to that party, organize a campaign and become a candidate to represent a riding for your party. After door knocking, campaigning, generating new memberships and membership revenue for the party, election day arrives and you win by capturing a landslide majority in the nomination vote. Congratulations, now you figure that the next step is to win the riding in the next general election! That is where you are wrong!

Now suppose, that the newly elected premier is more than happy to have you run as a candidate and generate new memberships along with their dues, as long as the only acceptable outcome is that you lose. That is only one example, but the most recent one where our new Premier has demonstrated his moral deficit.

Every citizen of Alberta and in particular every member of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party should look at this with a great deal of disgust! It is the party’s right to ensure that whatever individual represent the party as a candidate embrace the virutes of the party. But to permit someone that they clearly had no intention of allowing into their caucus to participate in the campaign for nomination is a disgrace, even more so when that individual wins a landslide victory in a process that the paid membership believed was a democratic process.

In this particular case, Ed Stelmach is benefiting from the way the media is spinning this issue surrounding his decision not to allow Mr. Chandler to run as a member of Alberta’s Conservative Party. I personally have very little knowledge of the core issue the Premier is using to justify his decision, but that issue is a moot point! On one hand, Mr. Stelmach would love to endear himself to the population profile represented by Mr. Chandler by claiming a few key buzz words such as ethics, openness, and honesty. There are a lot of votes in Alberta that are cast from people who hold to the values that Mr. Chandler proclaimed in his campaign. Mr. Stelmach would be delighted to include these people as far as getting their memberships and membership dues as long as they don’t have a real voice in the party. Mr. Stelmach has a word for that, he calls it democracy, I have a word for that too, and it’s called hypocrisy!

The lesson that we need to learn from this, is that Alberta is not the democracy that we think it is, and that its current leadership has completely lost touch with the party rank and file as well as general population. A grass roots movement, with real leadership (not the reactionism that we see now) is the best hope for Alberta.

Before ending this article, I suppose I could explore one other possibility that could explain how this scenario has played out. It could be that the Progressive Conservative Party was completely unaware of what platform Mr. Chandler represented when he put his name forward for nomination. In that case, the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party would be showing some pretty severe incompetence to allow Mr. Chander to venture so far through the process prior to disallowing him.

So the question we must ask ourselves is this: Is the leadership of Alberta’s ruling party unethical, dishonest, and heavy handed or merely incompetent, or perhaps even both? What do you hope the answer to be?