Snow!

With the threat of snow today, most of the area schools let out two hours early (some of the rural schools just canceled the whole day). The worst of the storm is supposed to hit this afternoon into the overnight hours. Here, we're supposed to get 3-6 inches. We'll see... :-)

Back on Sat., Jan. 19th, my family and I went to see the Veggie Tales movie "The Pirates that don't do Anything". It was pretty good and had some funny parts, but wasn't quite as good their last movie attempt ("Jonah"). But, it was something fun to do on a very cold day. When we got home, I had a phone message waiting from Best Buy's Customer Service department (see a few posts back about my new TV's missing remote - I had emailed Best Buy about it). I called them back and basically I could order a new remote from Sony and Best Buy would reimburse me or they would send me a $25 Best Buy Gift Card. Rather than trying to fight with getting a reimbursement, and the replacement remote I got from the store worked just fine, I opted for the gift card. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'm hoping to see it any day now. We'll see...

Last Friday (25th), was my 43rd Birthday! Yahoo! Happy Birthday to me! :-) My son spent the night with a friend who was having a birthday party, and his friend has a daughter about the age of my daughter, so the parents let her stay with them so my wife and I could go out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. We went to Longhorns and man, do they have great steaks! We were going to do a few other things, but it was so cold and the wind was blowing a lot, so we just picked up our daughter and went home, built a fire and watched a movie.

On Saturday (26th), my parents came to town and we all went out for lunch at Bandana's BBQ. After lunch, we went over to Best Buy and I picked up an amplified indoors antenna for my new TV so I could pick up the digital channels. It surprisingly worked pretty good considering the TV is downstairs in an area not very open to the outside. I picked up 6 analog channels and 9 digital channels. It's a bummer that our Fox affiliate doesn't broadcast in HD as it's considered a low-powered station and is having problems getting licensed to do so with the FCC. Maybe some day hopefully! I was hoping to watch the Super Bowl in HD this year... :-(

Today is payday and I guess we survived another month (barely!).

Blessings!

Rock Star

Last night at church, our son got to play his electric guitar for the Middle School worship service for the first time along with the rest of the worship band. He was really excited and nervous. He did a great job! He's been wanting to get involved in that for awhile now, but was waiting to get his electric guitar and to get a little better.

We did have a little emergency though before church... While my wife was fixing dinner, our son was practicing up in his room and all of a sudden we heard him cry out! I turned to my wife and said, "He broke a string..." and that's what happened... He was devastated and panicked... After dinner we went by the place where he takes lessons and was able to buy a package of strings and the owner thankfully helped replace the broken string and we made it to church on time... :-) Whew!

Our daughter woke us up close to 4am this morning crying. She had an accident in bed and the potty really smelled again (meaning infection was back). I sure hope not. When she went to the bathroom again this morning, she said it didn't burn. My wife was going to call the Dr. to get her checked out again just in case as a UTI infection, left untreated, can cause kidney damage. It has been a little more than a month she has been on any medication which has been nice!

Weather is turning colder for the next few days and not looking forward to that...

Blessings!

Happy New Year!

Well, that's a little late as it's already half way through the month of January and I'm just now getting my first 2008 post done! HA!

We had a pretty bad ice storm at the end of December 2007 which knocked down a lot of tree branches (and whole trees) and knocked out power for quite a few homes. We have a big tree between us and our neighbors that lost a lot of limbs. A couple limbs fell across our chimney on the house (no damage thankfully!). A couple weeks ago we had some really nice warmer days and with the help of my neighbor, we got them all cleaned up and the county works department came around and picked them up.

We stayed home on New Year's Eve, built a fire in the fireplace, ate some great finger foods that my wife made and we just enjoyed some family time.

On New Year's Day, I watched a great college football game, The Cotton Bowl, with the Missouri Tigers whooping up on the Arkansas Razorbacks!! MU running back Tony Temple broke two Cotton Bowl records of number of touchdowns in a game and total yards rushing! The final score was 38-7! Awesome (if you're a Tiger fan)!!

On Monday, Jan 7th, we had some major problems with a system here at work. I worked on it most of the afternoon and into the evening. I kept getting calls about it throughout the night and had to come into work a little early too on Tuesday. With the help from IBM support, we finally found a system fix for it, recycled it Tuesday evening and all was well with the world again.

Because of the comp time acquired, I took off that Friday (11th). I got the oil changed in the car, picked up a few groceries, had lunch with my daughter at home, then took her to kindergarten. After that, I ended up at our local Best Buy store where I bought a Sony 52" XBR4 LCD TV. Whooo Baby! I also bought a TV stand for it as well. I had a nice 12% coupon I got to use to help knock off a big chunk of the price too! Cool!

It was delivered yesterday (15th)! The only problem was that the delivery guys forgot to leave the remote to the TV. They had taken the TV out of the box before bringing it in and I guess didn't check the box for the remote. I was at work when it came and my wife was at home at the time. After repeated calls by her and me after getting home, I finally got a replacement remote (they couldn't find the original one which was probably in the trash bin with the box). Needless to say, I was pretty upset and stressed out by it all and didn't have a lot of time to play with the TV. I did get the PS3 (Playstation 3) hooked up to it and Man, does it look NICE!

Last weekend (11-13th) all three of my sister-in-law's came for a visit. They along with my wife went out "home decor" shopping most of the day on Saturday (12th). They had a great time and we all have a nice visit with them. It's not often that all of the sisters are together except for Thanksgiving or Christmas, so this was pretty special.

Enough for now...
Blessings!