I changed my profile pic to a cartoon from my childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on facebook until Monday the 6th of December. Join the fight against child abuse and invite your friends to do the same!

So how exactly does this stop child abuse? It doesn’t. This movement is the very definition of “slacktivism”. That’s a term I learned from my friend Jack. It describes online activity that gives all the appearance of being concerned and active for a cause without actually doing anything tangible for it.

Some will say that changing your profile picture to that of a cartoon helps raise awareness. But I’m skeptical that it actually raises any awareness. Stopping-child-abuse is something that’s easy to get behind. No one is actually in favor of child abuse. It’s like taking a courageous stance against cancer. The fact is, that for many people, this is a way to think about their favorite childhood cartoon and share it with their friends. I guarantee that in the last week much more thought has gone into finding pictures of cartoon characters than actually finding ways to stop child abuse. People don’t want to think about child abuse, but thinking about childhood cartoons is fun.

I’m not opposed to memes. I think they’re fun. But I was discouraged to see this one trying to piggy-back off of an issue I care a lot about. So I decided to try to make the meme meaningful. Every time I saw someone change their profile picture I posted this comment on their Facebook wall:

I noticed you changed your profile pic to show your support against child abuse. Would you consider donating to Olive Crest? I really believe in their work. I’ll match your donation up to $5. Just let me know. http://bit.ly/g1pk5Z

Olive Crest is the foster agency that my wife and I partner with. I know that they actually do something real and tangible to help stop child abuse. So if there was any way that I could get people to put their money where their mouth is I wanted to take it and funnel it towards Olive Crest.

So far I’ve had 6 people tell me they made a donation. That’s out of the approximately 40 people I contacted. According to Bit.ly I generated at least 129 clicks in 3 days. But it’s six people that weren’t already donating to Olive Crest and 6 people that wouldn’t have done it unless had they changed their profile pic to a cartoon character. So maybe the meme worked after all.

Really there needed to be twice as many craft tables, twice as many vendors, twice as many games and at least 10 times more snow. The sledding hill was the same height as last year but had half as much snow. So at the bottom of the hill, everyone slid into a big mud dump.

They advertised that there would be an $8 parking fee. They didn’t charge us for parking, but we would have gladly paid it if they had used the money to accommodate the large swarm of people they successfully attracted.

Check out these two pictures and tell me if you can see the snow all these Southern Californians are desperately trying get the opportunity to touch.

The final story was about Mike Nyberg, a Mormon that encountered corruption in international adoption.  Mormonism and adoption are two topics that really fly into my wheel house, so I was excited to hear how the story would unfold.  To be frank, the story made me furious.  A story about corruption alone is enough to make me angry.  But what really set me off were the number of really poor decisions made on behalf of the adopted children once the corruption was exposed.  What made me even angrier was the justification for those decisions was that everyone had good intentions and that there were no clear principles to follow in correcting the situation. The people responsible for the corruption, the owners of “Focus on Children” faced very little consequences and continue to think their work was “good”.

My wife and I approach adoption with four very clear principles. 1) God intends parents to raise their own children. 2) Poverty is not a reason for adoption. 3) Children with living parents are not orphans. (ahem, Madonna) 4) You should never adopt in a way that encourages other able-bodied parents to give up their children or get pregnant so that they can give up their children.

Please listen to this portion of the podcast and listen for these lies that go unquestioned as people explain their justifications.

• Children need stuff to be happy
• God’s intention for children is that they be raised by people with the most means
• God has no concern about American materialism
• Hope only exists in America
• Education is only possible in America
• Only parents with money can raise children well

Despite all the hardship and tragedy the Nyberg’s faced I’m glad they ended up making the right decision. You can download the audio directly here.

You can read more about the case here, here and here.

I had done a Google search of baby photography to get some ideas on how the make the pictures more interesting but he just wasn’t able to sit up well enough or wasn’t comfortable enough to cooperate.  I think at 6 months old it would have been easier.  But nonetheless we were able to get these great pictures of him on a plain old black sheet set up in natural light.  My youngest daughter (4.5 years old) is obsessed with babies.  So she wanted to be around. When we finally allowed her to be there it was a blessing. It turned out his most expressive moments came as a result of her trying to play with him.

You can watch David grow up here.

Keep your eye open for tank tops over turtlenecks with sweat pants under skirts.

Maybe some other day I’ll get a chance to take the picture I hoped to get. The girls did well in the balloon.  They didn’t at all get scared by the heights.  The balloon went much higher than I thought it would.  When we reached what I thought was our maximum height, the operator said “Okay, that’s halfway up”.  The view was only scary if you looked straight down.  It was much scarier than being on a tall building because it felt like you were standing on a boat.

Because it’s free I think I’ll definitely take them back.  They had a good time and it’s a good way to help them practice a lot without costing me an arm and a leg.

The Great Park pretty much has a free event for every major holiday.  We went the to their pumpkin patch in October and it was a pretty good event (except that it was on a tarmac in 90 degree weather). They’ve also got a free hot air balloon ride.  I’ve yet to take advantage of that, but some day soon I will.

Update January 9, 2010:

If you’re looking for information about the 2010 free skating event at the Great Park, it will be available January 30 – February 28.  Click here for more info.