Happy New Year! Change is a coming

 

Well, it is the last day of year 2008!! Overall, I believe that it was a good year for me and my family.   It was a year about change for us and the United States. 

The election of Barack Obama showed the world that even the United States could finally live up to the “all men are created equal” theme of our constitution and elect our first afro-American president.   We have definitely  evolved from the equal rights movement and “separate but equal” philosophy of the 1960s and are finally attempting to judge people on things that are in their control not their gender or color of their skin.  I am hopeful that Barak will help lead us to abandon the  “us vs. them” theme that has been prevalent in American society  since 911.  I am hopeful that we will be able to understand that people are complex beings can not be judged and/or  written off strictly by stereotypes/labels such as:  “liberals” , “conservatives”, “right winged” , “left winged”, “pro war” , “pro life” , “pro choice”, “black”, “white”,  “woman” etc..  As labels such as these do not truly represent the target of the label and these labels are many times distorted in their meaning to benefit the “labeler”.    I am glad that we have the freedom in the United States  to be different.  With difference, we need to have tolerance and acceptance to ensure that we maintain our rights/beliefs and do not make everyone subscribe to our particular moral  belief systems as we could be on wrong side of the fence someday.   Can you imagine what our world would be like if everyone was exactly the same?  I would say it would be pretty darn boring …  Oops!! I am starting to get too philosophical here… :)

Anyway,  as mentioned previously,  my family has moved across town into a new house that will gradually become our home. A home is what you make it.  A house is a building where you live.   Earlier this month, I took some pictures of the family outside our new home for our annual Christmas cards.  Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.

  

Happy New Year!!!! I wish you and your family the best in the year 2009!!!