Published on November 3, 2009 by DPS
When you look like this everyday, what's left to do on Halloween?
Halloween was never my favorite holiday. I always liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it was never the huge deal for me that it seems to be for some. Now that I have kids, I’m reliving my childhood a bit, and I’m not complaining about the metric ton of candy that currently sits in my kitchen.
I took vigil on the front porch this Halloween handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. I call them that only because that is the accepted reference. Truth be told, I handed out about 100 little bags of candy and actually heard “Trick or treat…” about ten times.
And what about the costumes? The little kids are still traditional. Some superheroes, some princesses, some TV characters like Spongebob. One Star War reference, as in a Darth Vader tot who proves that franchise will truly never die.
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Published on September 28, 2009 by DPS
You'd think that a mom would know better.
When was the last time you felt really foolish? It happens to me more often than I’d like to admit. Here’s a recent example.
I suppose I have never mentioned this on MB before, but I am the father of five. Making up my “yours-mine-and-ours” family are as follows:
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Published on August 31, 2009 by DPS
Kelsey
If you’re like me, your email in-box gets flooded with messages about all manner of “interesting” topics. Chain e-mail, product offers, please to help the needy expatriated Countess of Ghana recover her billions of dollars in inheritance. For obvious reasons we ignore most of this nonsense as soon as we identify it as such. every once on awhile, however, I receive another email message about Kelsey Smith-Briggs. Each time I do, I read the message and watch whatever videos that it directs me to. I will continue this practice because I want to make sure that I never forget this one little girl.
It seems unlikely that there could be anyone out there who has not heard the story, but in case there is, here are the important details: Kelsey was murdered at age two by her stepfather. After months of obvious physical abuse, local child protective services returned Kelsey to her mother and a few months later she was gone. The official cause of death was homicide by blunt force trauma to the abdomen – her step-father kicked her in the stomach. The story gets even more heartbreaking when you hear that Kelsey’s natural father was serving in Iraq and was about two weeks from returning home when Kelsey passed. Kelsey’s mother and step-father received prison terms nut neither for charges related to murder.
There are many, many details to this story that I won’t go into again here. There are many places to get the full story and I’ve included links to some of them below. One I will mention is that at least one source has pointed out that Kelsey’s biological parents divorced originally because her father was very abusive to her mother. Apparently, Kelsey is the only truly innocent one in the whole sorted mess.
The theme that runs through the Kelsey Smith-Briggs story seems to be the list of people who failed to stop her murder. There was the legal system and child protective services, her mother and other family members, various others who later admitted they saw signs of Kelsey’s abuse and did nothing. (The signs were hard to miss. Several months before her death – and before her mother married her daughter’s eventual murderer – both of Kelsey’s legs were broken!)
No matter how many times I pass a link for something to do with Kelsey, I click on it. If an email comes, I read it. I never want to forget her and her story for as long as I live.
Info on Kelsey can be found in many places. Here area few:
Article on the entire story, including natural father’s past
Wikipedia
YouTube
