This should not be taken as any sort of insight into how I'll be voting in a few weeks, and if you are expecting me to blog about that, you'll never take me alive. But the other day I was leaving a restaurant and saw this bumper sticker. As someone who isn't a card-carrying member of either major political party but did, with great pride, line up to join my fellow countrymen in buying the last Harry Potter book the day it came out, I laughed pretty hard.

As of 10:45 a.m., this is what Kate has done with her day besides getting up, eating breakfast and getting dressed:

Talked to daddy on the phone. He calls us every morning to check in since he leaves for work before we're up. Kate knows he does this and therefore assumes that if the phone rings sometime in the morning, it's Dan and she is entitled to talk to him. She demands this by going "Dadadadada!" until I give her the phone. This is cute unless, for example, someone else happens to call before 9 a.m.

Dan's phone call distracted Kate from her ongoing goal of eating this mirror from our bathroom. I think this is about teething, but possibly she just likes how it tastes.

Then it was time to try to grab the camera. End of photo session.

This next series of photos illustrates a series of things Kate did while I ate some cereal. First, she managed to get a lot of Cheerios on the floor, which is pretty impressive considering that she had to pull them out of one of those snack trap things that are supposed to prevent babies from spilling their Cheerios on the floor. She tossed the bowl and her pacifier aside and went to get her push toy. Then she rounded the corner and saw all those Cheerios lying defenseless on the ground. I just went ahead and got my broom out after I took the picture.

Once she had crushed a suitable number of Cheerios, she stopped to snack on the leftover ones.

And then immediately turned around to see what might be in the cabinet behind her. Nothing, as usual, because I moved all the cleaning supplies except for a spray bottle of water out of there a long time ago, but that doesn't stop her from checking every single day. Like maybe there will suddenly be some awesome loot in there.

And that is our day so far.Now it's time for lunch. Got to go.

I started writing this yesterday, but as a couple of other people have noted, it's hard to find the words, even a year later. So I also want to link to Kelly, Megan and, most of all, Pinky, so that I can use their words, and their pictures, too. Edie, we love you and your family.

I have been thinking a lot about heaven the last few days. Not because I am deep, but because this week makes it one year since a good friend of ours got there before us. I think Brent and Edie and their kids were some of the first people we met at our church when we first started visiting there in 2003 when we were engaged. After we were married and joined the church, we spent hours over at their house along with other friends. Brent was a Texas Tech alum, and so of course he and Dan had to talk trash for weeks before the Tech vs. A&M game. One Sunday after Tech stomped A&M in the Saturday game, we walked out of our apartment on the way to church to find Dan's A&M Aggies rock that sits outside our door replaced with another rock hand-painted by Brent and Edie, sporting the Texas Tech logo and the score of the game. It's probably not to my credit that I laughed as hard as I did, but really even Dan thought it was funny. Eventually Brent gave us our rock back, and then displayed his Tech rock on their porch. It's still there and I smile every time I see it.

Another Sunday a few years later, Brent and Edie and our friend Susie came to the hospital to meet Kate, who was born the night before. They brought me smoothies and chocolate pretzels and held the baby, and Brent got seriously uncomfortable when the women started talking about childbirth. But he was a good sport and stayed anyway, and held the baby, and I'm so glad for that memory.

And then one Sunday morning, we came to church and heard that Brent had died. Since then, probably as a result of needing to work on grasping the simple reality of his absence from us, I have thought about heaven more than I ever have in my life. It always seemed like a distant, hazy sort of eternal church service before. But now that I know someone there, it seems more real. Oddly enough, I also now think of it as a place with a lot of laughter. I know that the point of heaven is that we'll be in God's presence without sin or death forever. But, I mean, come on. Brent is there. So you know we're going to do some laughing.

We miss our friend terribly, and in this life, I don't think there will be an end to that. But we have no doubt about where he is, and that we'll see him again. That is the good news. And, as we say in our church every Sunday, to that good news all the Lord's people can say Amen.

"And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." Revelation 21:4

I am excited to announce that my awesome sister-in-law, Kelly, has launched a blog to chronicle the life she and my brother Aaron are starting in their new home of Oxford, Mississippi. Aaron is in law school at Ole Miss, and they just bought their first house. I am glad they have a blog so that I can see what their life looks like these days. But mostly I am happy that now, someone besides me can take on the task of telling funny stories about Aaron online. It's a big job, but someone has to do it.

To that end, I will link straight to my favorite Kelly post so far, How to be Married to Aaron Rice.

Of course, a close second is this post. I think it sounds like a fine idea.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Kelly! Happy storytelling.

Three cheers for Jason Morehead of Opus Zine. I think he has just articulated why I pretty much delete without reading 95 percent of the email forwards that I get, especially during an election season.

My favorite part:

"If you ever receive an e-mail claiming that so-and-so is a godless heathen who wants to teach America’s schoolchildren how to participate in gay threesomes, or that they have a history of committing war crimes and want to drown cute baby seals in crude oil—you know, the kind of e-mail that you just can’t wait to send off to your family members and friends (Facebook or otherwise)—there should be a red flag or two popping up in the back of your head."

Whole post here.

On Friday night, we headed out to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta with some friends of ours. The balloon glow we were gong to see was canceled due to high winds, but we still go to eat some fair food, hang out, and watch the fireworks after it got dark. Here are some pictures we took.

The city runs a great park and ride shuttle service to the fiesta using school buses, so here is Kate on a bus, talking to Chloe, her buddy.

Funnel cake. Yum.

Since the balloons couldn't inflate, some of the pilots entertained the crowd by blasting the flames up into the air. The kids we were with were alternately thrilled and freaked out.

Ellie (shown here on Luke's shoulders) was thrilled. She kept saying "Fire come again, mommy!"

This was definitely one of those occasions when I wish I could see what Kate is thinking. "OK. I'm not in bed, and instead we're in a giant field staring at a pillar of fire." As the evening wore on and we still didn't go home and put her to bed, she got more and more confused looking. But she was a good sport about it.

One day, I am going to make the Jeromins teach us how to take family photos that look like J. Crew catalog covers.

Ellie was the commentator for the evening. During the fireworks she kept getting Dan's attention and then telling him "Look at the fireworks, Mr. Dan!" Later on, Dan got Ellie's attention and told her to look at the fireworks and she was all "I see them, Mr. Dan," like "Stop distracting me me, dude. I have this fireworks thing down." It was hilarious.

Kate almost fell asleep in spite of the fireworks. Maybe next year she'll be a little more into it.

Thanks for a great night out, friends! Maybe next year we can see some actual balloons.

On the upside, at least she wants to be clean. And I promise you I did not stage this photo. This is just what naturally happens if I turn my back on her while I put away the silverware.

Kate takes in a Baby Signing Time video while kicked back in her Daddylounger, the baby equivalent of a Barcalounger. She looks like she's a guy watching a football game. She just needs a little baby beer cozy. KIDDING! I AM KIDDING. Please do not report me.

And since Dan, the the most loyal member of the ten-person Haley's blog fan club, asked, yes I do intend to write Kate a newsletter soon for her 13th month. Apparently, Dan wants to read it, which is odd since he pretty much knows all the punch lines. But it's good to have readers, even if they are your husband.

Having a kid is nothing if not humbling. And one of the strangest ways in which we are learning your kids will humble you is by making you look like a liar in public. For several days now we've been going around telling people that Kate can walk. Then, when we try to get her to do it for friends, she just looks at us and crawls away, leaving us to say "No, really she does walk." It hasn't helped that we've also been unsuccessful at video taping her new mobility. But today we finally got a brief snippet on tape. She still seems to view walking as an unusual hobby she's picked up rather than a way to get around, so mostly she is still a crawler, but at least we have solid evidence that she can walk when she wants to. And not any other time. Production note: Bear with the shaky camera. The only way we could get this on tape was to have her walk towards me while I filmed, and I pretty much had to drop the camera in order to catch her once she got to me.

We were rewarded for all the trouble we went through to get that video, though, because right after we got the footage of her walking, she laid down on the ground and did the crunches I blogged about a while ago. In case you don't recall, I said then that I have been using this ridiculous workout video to get some exercise into my routine, and Kate has picked up some of the moves. Specifically, she has developed an all-too-accurate impression of what I look and sound like (at least to her) doing the cruel and unusual ab crunches my deranged digital personal fitness trainer put on the video. At the request of many people, I have been trying to catch her on camera doing this for weeks, with no success. But at last, here it is. Try not to laugh too hard next time you see me. Perhaps soon I can just turn off the video and let Kate direct my workouts.