Happy New Year!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog... The last post was way back in 2009... 

A lot of things have happened since then... Both of my kids are now married, so my wife and I are empty nesters now (which isn't as bad as they say... ha!). I'm still working, but now eligible to retire. No plans to retire yet, but each day brings me closer to the decision...

We've gone through a Covid-19 pandemic (still going through it really with all the variants), but I think the worst is behind us (depending on who you ask). I got it myself after getting all the shots, so it only seemed like a sinus infection thankfully and not anything like that some have had to endured.

Too many things have happened to try and catch up, but I am just thankful for God's blessings in my life and for good health in my family.

Until next time...

ps. Happy New Year!!

5 Years and Counting

I knew the anniversary date of starting this blog was getting close, but I looked it up and TODAY was the day, so I thought I'd better create a posting for the "special occasion." Wow... Five years... Can I quit now? HA!

Man, I haven't updated this blog since last November ('08)... I'm really slacking off... I don't think I've ever gone this long without an update. Guess I'd better hit the highlights of the last five or six months... :-)

I took off from work between Christmas and New Years for a little "R&R" and to play with the kids' new toys... It's always hard to come back to work after time off like that.

In January 09, we got a new division director as our old one retired (more like forced out by the new governor, but he was getting ready to retire anyway).

In some sad news, by maternal grandmother passed away on January 16th. She was 96. Her health had been going down hill pretty quickly the last couple of years, so we all knew it was coming, but it's still hard to see someone pass on that you've been close to. She was an excellent sewer and also taught me how to play the card game Canasta. Her favorite drink was Dr. Pepper and I always raise my glass to her when I order one. I love you Grandma!

I also had my 44th birthday in January as well. Ugh, getting older... No fun. At least I'll always be younger than my cousin Wesley who turned 48th five days before my birthday. HA!

In February, the Pittsburgh Steelers had an amazing comeback run and beat the Arizona Cardinals 27 - 23 on Superbowl Sunday. That was a great game!

My parents celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversay on Feb. 22nd. My sister and I hosted a party for them at their church on the day before where they renewed their wedding vows conducted by my dad's brother-in-law, the Rev. Donald Blaylock. We had a nice turnout for the service and reception and lots of great help from friends with serving cake and punch. My nephew Justin wrote and performed a song during the service and my son played the guitar during the reception. Congrats Mom and Dad and I pray for many more years together!

In March was Spring Break and after visiting the Dentist for the yearly checkup/cleaning ("Look Ma, no cavities!") and visiting my Dr. for my annual physical (all a-okay!) we took a little trip to Springfield and Branson to catch the show "Noah, the Musical." Great show!

I also ordered a new Dell PC. I "pimped" it out and it finally arrived on March 25. I basically had it designed for doing video editing, so I got all the latest and greatest you could get on it. I'm sure in a few years this will seem way out-dated, but it's got a Intell i7 940 CPU in it, 6 Gigs of Memory (for handling memory hungry Vista Ultimate), 1.2 Terabytes of harddrive space, etc. etc. etc. I even got a 24" monitor to go with it too... Nice!

Not a whole lot happened in April, at least nothing I can remember... except, that for my son's 14th birthday, I took him to Springfield for the "Rock and Worship Road Show" featuring Hawk Nelson, Jeremy Camp, Tenth Avenue North and MercyMe. Addison Road was suppose to be there, but their lead singer was close to having her baby, so they had dropped out of the tour a few weeks before. The tickets were only $10 and so we got there early and waiting outside for quite awhile. The concert was awesome!! My son loved it and we didn't get home until close to 1 AM! Of course he slept most of the way home, so I had to fight sleep to drive home... but it was worth it. :-) ROCK ON!

May brought about another important date... My 20th Wedding Anniversary!! Wow... 20 years! It has really going by fast... and I still love my wife!! HA!! I hope she still loves me!! :-) We didn't get to really celebrate it big time, but we did get to go out for a nice quiet dinner with just the two of us which was really nice.

School got out on May 22 for the kids. My son finished up the eighth grade which means he's now officially out of middle school. He's really happy cause now he can play his guitar "up on stage" in the high school services at church on Wednesday nights. He had an awards/celebration assembly at school on the last day, so I took off work and we went to that. Hard to believe I have a ninth grader now. My daughter finished the first grade this years. They have built a new elementary school building out by our house, so she'll be attending there next year. That will be nice... I'm sure it will be very nice inside and a lot betting than the old building that was one of the oldest elementary school buildings here in the city. Second grade, here we come!

That brings us to June and I think I'm about caught up now... Both my wife and my daughter have birthdays this month, so we have plenty to celebrate.

The dreaded Missionettes Celebration is coming up again this weekend. I do photo montages for all of the girls and video tape the event. A few of the parents STILL haven't given me their photos yet... UGH! Oh well... it'll get done.... somehow... ha!

Congrats to this blog's 5 years ... and I hope I can keep it going... ha!

Blessings!

Historic Day

Well, actually 'yesterday' was a historic day. It was Election Day and Americans turned out in droves to decide on the next President. 44th President-To-Be Barack Obama pretty much won in a landslide. Not only was it historic for record turnout, but it was historic in the fact that President-Elect Obama is the first African-American president to be elected. I feel sorry for Senator John McCain. It seemed to me that he really didn't have much of a chance. He had to carry too much baggage from the Bush administration and what was happening with the economy. It was just too much of an uphill battle for him. I guess we'll see just how much "Change" will happen in the next four years...

Republican Vice President nominee Gov. Sarah Palin came through my town for a rally on Monday, Nov. 3rd. My parents, wife, son and I all attended. It was a beautiful day weather wise and we got up pretty close to the platform. It was cool to get to see her in person. Hank Williams Jr. was there to help kick off the event with his political song, "McCain Palin Tradition."

Man, I haven't updated my blog in 3 months... Ugh! A lot of things have happened and I just keep putting off updating this thing... Let's see if I can recap a few things... :-)

In August, my kids started another year of school. My son started the 8th grade and my daughter started the 1st grade. It was a little hard for her since she now had to go a full day instead of the half day of kindergarten she was used to. My family along with my parents went to the State Fair for a day. We saw a lot of cool stuff and went to some neat shows. It was an exhausting day. The animated movie Star Wars Clone Wars came out to help kick off the new animated TV show. It was a little hokey, but typical Star Wars stuff. The Summer Olympics in Beijing, China kicked off for two weeks of brutal sporting events. Michael Phelps was the big star in swimming and won 8 Gold medals, beating Mark Spitz's old record. He was amazing to watch.

In September, we had a big Christian Music Festival here in town. Fee, Downhere, Caleb Rowden and quite a few local groups performed at the all day event. And the best part was it was all free! My sister turned 39 back on the 3rd too... Happy Birthday Sis! :-) The new Christian based movie "Fireproof" came out in theatres on the 26th. This is the third movie that Sherwood Baptist church in Albany, Georgia has produced and they get better each time.

In October, we went up to my mother-in-law's house for a Fall get-together. The little town where she lives was celebrating it's 175th anniversary as a town. There was a big parade and they had their annual Fall Festival going on downtown with carnival rides, etc. We also attended her church that evening as they had a special black gospel choir and a potluck dinner after the service. Oh yeah, that Saturday morning, there was a big pancake breakfast going on at the high school... It was a busy day from start to finish. On Columbus day, while the kids were in school, my wife and I did our annual Christmas shopping. We try to get a little jump on the buying so it's not so stressful later on. My son had to have 4 teeth extracted to make room in getting his teeth aligned. He did really well and was a trooper about it, but I know he wasn't looking forward to it. Who would?? Our church has a Halloween alternative every year, so we took the kids to that instead of trick-or-treating. They have all kinds of games, bounce houses, popcorn, cotton candy, free food and lots of candy, so they get more out of it than just going door-to-door.

I guess that pretty well covers the highlights of the past few months.

Today is my sister and her husband's 20th Wedding Anniversary! Congrats to them!! My sister got married 6 months before I did, so I guess my 20th is coming up right around the corner... Yikes! Has it been that long?? I guess I really love my wife as it "just seems like yesterday..."

Blessings!

Catching up again...

Wow, I let a lot of time get by between updates... Shame on me! :-)

Today is my maternal grandmother's 96th birthday. She's not doing to well physically. She's been in and out of the hospital quite a bit lately. Right now she's in a rehabilitation center at a local nursing home as she falls when she tries to get out of bed. Thankfully no broken bones! I'm meeting my parents there after work to help celebrate her birthday.

One of my uncles is also in the hospital and they think he might have the West Nile Virus. He's been having some brain swelling and an infection. I hope they get that under control soon.

We just got back on Saturday (July 26th) from a little family vacation. We went to visit a sister-in-law and her husband in Bloomington, Indiana. My mother-in-law went along with us as she has never seen their new house yet. We had a great time and it was really nice to get away. One day we went on a little hike in a park and right along a trail was a copperhead snake all curled up and read to strike. Yikes!! That cut short the hike! HA!

My mother celebrated her 75th birthday back on July 2nd and my dad had his 70th birthday on July 11th.

We took a short weekend trip up to my mother-in-law's house for the Fourth of July and we had a big family get-together for the holiday.

I also got news that my promotion here at work went through, so that was definitely great news! I had to fill out all kinds of paper work and descriptions of my work to get it going.

My daughter is doing pretty well still. She had a slight UTI a few weeks ago and was on medication. We had to take her to the Dr. right before we left on vacation and she was clear, so that was good. We had another appointment scheduled with a behavior modification specialist today, but he called in sick, so guess we'll do that another time.

Other slightly non-family news, Bill Gates of Microsoft formally retired on June 27th and the new movie Batman: The Dark Knight came out on July 18th and is on track to become the highest grossing movie of all time and is breaking all the records. Can it sink Titanic? Most likely and I hope so!

Enough for now... Blessings!!

Another Birthday

As I mentioned in my last post, Saturday (14th) was my daughter's 6th birthday. We were originally going to have a swim party, but due to the large amount of rain we received the day before, it was really muddy in the backyard and my wife didn't want it all tracked in the house. So, we just let the girls play in the house and they had a great time. She invited three of her closer friends over and they were just running through the house having a great time. I'm sure the two hours just flew by for them. HA! My daughter didn't want the traditional cake and ice cream for some reason, just some ice cream sandwiches, so at least we didn't have a lot of clean up. Like I also mentioned in my last post, she wanted a scooter and a goldfish, so that morning, she and I headed to PetCo to buy a goldfish. She named it Swimmy. How cute.

After the party, my folks came down again and we went out to eat again. :-)

Sunday started our annual Vacation Bible School at church. We have the founder of the Creation Truth Foundation as the speaker this year and we've made it more of a Family VBS instead of just for kids. After a brief opening with everyone, the kids then go out to various rooms for various activities and the main speaker talks to the adults. The theme is "Our Lost World: The Truth About Dinosaurs." The speaker brought a "mobile museum" with all kinds of dinosaur fossils and bones. Really cool to see a full sized dinosaur skeleton setup in the sanctuary. The VBS goes on each night through Thursday night.

My son also started an Art Camp this week as well during the day, so this week will be very busy and hectic.

Oh, also during my daughter's birthday party, she lost her other big front tooth. She got all excited about it which made the other three girls go crazy too. :-)

That's about it... Until next time...
Blessings!

Happy Birthday!

Today is my wife's birthday. I can't say how old she is or it's the "dog house" for me. Happy Birthday Darling!! :-) My folks are coming down and we're going out for dinner to celebrate.

I made it through the Missionettes program last Sunday (8th) night. It went pretty smooth, but like I mentioned in my last post, now I have to edit together the footage for the DVD.

My daughter finally lost one of her front teeth. It was REAL loose and was starting to discolor some, when my son hit her in the mouth with a stuffed animal and knocked it out. :-) Her other front tooth is also loose, but it's not quite ready to fall out yet.

She also did a number on her hair. She cut her bangs almost all off! Ugh! She also cut some off the length in the back too. My wife was mortified. She took her to a stylist, and she was able to fix it up some, but the bangs are pretty much... non existent. :-) Oh well, it's just hair and it'll grow back.

My daughter's birthday is this coming Saturday. She'll be turning 6... She wants a scooter and a goldfish. We're batting 1000 for killing goldfish, so I'm not sure this is a good idea... HA!

Congrats to my wife again for making it through another year... I love you Babe!

Blessings!

Four Years

Yesterday was the four year anniversary of this blog. I meant to update it yesterday, but life got in the way (as usual it seems). I'm getting way behind on updating it again as you can tell. So, here's what's been happening this past month...

Back on May 2nd, here at work was Employee Appreciation Day. Area businesses came and setup booths and gave out prizes, giveaways, food, drink, etc. It was crowded, but fun and I got a my pen and pencil holder restocked. :-)

On the weekend of May 16-18th, we headed up to my mother-in-law's house as we had a nephew that was graduating high school on that Sunday. Got back home late that Sunday night.

On May 20th, it was our 19th wedding anniversary! We didn't really get to go out to dinner, and I had to go to a church board meeting. But a couple of days later, we fed the kids earlier, I grilled some steaks, and we had a little candlelight dinner for just the two of us. It was really nice.

On May 21st, my daughter had her Kindergarten graduation ceremony. It was really cute as all the kids were up on the stage and sang quite a few songs and then got their "diplomas." My folks got to come down to see it and then we all went to Dairy Queen afterwards to celebrate.

My son finished up his seventh grade year on May 23rd. It really seems this past school year went by really fast. I'm sure it didn't seem fast enough for my son though... HA!

Had a three day weekend due to Memorial Day and got some things checked off my Honey Do list and got some outdoor yard work done. It's been raining so much, it's been hard to get anything done.

I took off work on May 29th and I took the family to the Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri. It was just a beautiful day. The weather was just perfect. There were quite a few people there, but it didn't seem overly crowded. Being there all day just about wiped the kids out. They had a special dinosaur exhibit with animatronic, life-size dinosaurs. The T-Rex was really cool. At the end of the day we rode the little train around the Zoo back to the entrance to leave. We stopped at a Ruby Tuesdays on the way home for dinner. It was a wonderful day!

It's that time of year again for the Missionettes Celebration at church were I put together photo montages for graduating girls. There are only three Honor Stars this year, but there are new groups now; Friends and Girls Only, which also has graduating girls and so they want photo montages too. I finally got them done this past weekend, but at the run-through practice last night, they wanted some changes. Ugh. So, I finished those up last night too. Therefore, I think I'm done with it, but then I have to edit together the footage for the DVD afterwards. Ugh. My daughter is a Honor Daisy this year. :-)

Until next time...
Blessings!