by Greg

Christmas Report II

When I was trying to think of what I needed to do today, I also remembered the past few days that have been. It seemed like today might be the first kinda normal day in a while. (Which, strangely makes it feel like Monday, maybe Tuesday…)

It’s been quite a week! I’m sure it was for you as well. I think maybe we have an extra piece with Ian’s birthday being on Christmas day. Because of that there are a few more celebration days for Ian in there. Like, we did our annual Birthday Burger at Red Robin sometime last week for his birthday. Balloons, singing, and all. It was awesome! Then the fun started again this past week… maybe on Saturday.

Saturday was the day we were singing at Wal-Mart. That shouldn’t have been as eventful as it was, but after getting there and getting everything set up, I realized I had no guitar picks. And then we found out that Wal-Mart did not either! So, we went on a bit of a scavenger hunt, finally picking some up (pun intended) at a local music store. Then, to top it all off, after about an hour of singing – which was super fun! – I broke a guitar string. While that used to be commonplace, I am pretty sure that’s the first time I have done that in most of TWO YEARS! Crazy!

After the string broke, we packed up and did a little last minute Christmas & birthday shopping there at Wal-Mart and a couple other stores. It was nice, just me and Jen. 🙂

When we got back home, we did a few more things then packed up the troops for a trip to Victor. We actually went to the mall area on the Saturday before Christmas!! (We really needed an ink cartridge, and that’s the closest office store…) After we picked that up, we stopped by our friends’ house and hung out for a little while with them. Had some hot cocoa and fresh-baked Christmas cookies! 🙂

Sunday morning brought a visit from some other friends. They were dropping their girls off so that they could go to the Bills/Giants game over in Buffalo! (They bought our tickets from us, a nice Christmas present for our friend the Giants fan. Unfortunately, turned out to be a little TOO nice!!) We kept their girls all day, and had a blast! The evening ended with a visit from John Dupra for a recording of the Buffalo Bills Review, and then some good Christmas cookies from our friends. 🙂

Christmas Eve started later than I thought it would. We slept in a bit, then tried to decide what to do. We were going to make some Christmas gifts (food) for friends and drop them off, but then after talking with them, decided to wait on that. But then in talking with our football ticket friends, ended up deciding to bring Christmas dinner over to their house to share with them the next day. So, in between making Christmas cookies for Santa, Christmas Eve also involved baking bread and making a lasagna to bake the next day!

That evening we went to Willowbrook to see friends (and family!) we haven’t seen for a while – some of them a LONG while! That was nice, and was followed by a stop at another family’s house for a late night Christmas Eve party! Was nice to hang out with them for a couple hours. We stayed longer than we wanted to, but that was due to caring for one of our friends’ sick kids. Long story. Long night. 🙂 We didn’t get home, and get the kids in bed, until midnight!

We weren’t totally done with Christmas and Birthday preparations by Midnight, so… we were both up till 2am. For me, that’s fine… for Jen? Not so fine. Christmas morning came a little too soon for her. Even though it wasn’t till 9am. 🙂

Christmas Day was no less crazy. Once we got up, I took a quick shower, and then we all headed downstairs to find some presents left by Santa (alongside the ones we had already put under the tree) and our stockings full of goodies! The kids were fun to watch. 🙂 After unwrapping all the fun presents, we headed into the kitchen to make a big French Toast breakfast for Ian’s birthday! (His request.)

After breakfast, we headed back to the family room for Ian to open his birthday presents. (Yes, he gets LOTS of presents on Dec 25th, and the week before and after that!) We didn’t have a cake, so I stuck a candle in a giant navel orange, and we sang for Ian using that. Fun stuff. 🙂

After Ian’s birthday celebrating, we packed up pretty quickly, and took our big Christmas lunch over to our friends’ house to celebrate and eat with them. Spent about two hours or so there. They may be moving soon, so we’re enjoying all the time we can get with them. Will be strange if we are not living in the same town…

We packed up after lunch with our friends and headed out to Buffalo to visit with Jen’s family. Got there around 4:30 or so and got right to eating! (Yes, you’re right… that IS a lot of eating…) It was a great meal, and a fun time with Jen’s family. Her oldest brother and family were not there, but there were plenty of people to go around and we had a great time giving and receiving gifts… and eating taco dip! (One of my favorites…) 🙂

We left around 8:30 or so, putting us back home at 10pm. We were BEAT from the past three days. Jen was exhausted for sure. The kids were pooped. Most slept the whole way home. But not Kirsten. She sang Christmas songs with Dad most of the time. 🙂 SO CUTE!!!

But we weren’t done.

Wednesday morning was very busy for me! I did sleep in, but once I got up I was on the phone, IM, and e-mailing. Plenty of Boxing Day business I guess! I was also making bread because some other friends were coming over for a late lunch/early dinner. And the best part? They were bringing lasagna! Funny. I made/brought lasagna for some other friends, and then we had different friends do the same for us! Give and you shall receive. Or something like that. 🙂

We had a great time with them, and enjoyed all the good food. The really funny part was they came at around 3:30, and with the short days and all, when our friends left at 6pm, it felt like bedtime. BUT IT CERTAINLY WAS NOT! So, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves 🙂 The kids helped clean up, then watched some movies with Mom while Dad spent about TWO HOURS catching up on our finances! Crazy!

That brings us to today. And actually… it has been a pretty normal day so far. 🙂

A great, fun, fabulous Christmas and Ian’s birthday in 2007. Hope yours was as well!

by Greg

Christmas Report

Do you remember Christmas days gone by when, as a youngster, you couldn’t wait to see your friends or maybe your cousins – whoever would listen! – so you could tell them what you got for Christmas? Well, I do. But I don’t think that I really got to tell anyone that yesterday, so I’m going to write it down here!

I am drinking some tea this morning from a nice new mug I got from Santa. My wife got me a Buffalo Bills book that so far is quite good, and we also have mountains of great Christmas candy! (Mostly chocolate!) I also got some nice winter gloves (mine have holes … no… they ARE holes!) and a few cans of tomato soup! 🙂 (Yes… I’ve been wanting some of that…) 🙂

It was a fun day. Lots of smiles, and even a bunch of useful stuff. Fun to give, and to receive. And the best part is that Jen actually bought almost everything using money from sales of other stuff on CraigsList, ebay, and Amazon.com. 🙂 Nice!

Oh! Maybe the best present of all was one that was hand-crafted by Ian! He worked long and hard to build an iMac for me! it’s awesome! I’ll have to post a photo 🙂 Even came with a wireless keyboard AND an iPod! 🙂 He spent many days building it for me at my workbench in the basement. (I think that Ian has now worked there more than I have….) 😉

Hope you had a fun day as well. Feel free to share your favorite gifts in the comments below. 🙂

by Greg

Hey, You Never Know

This morning I awoke from a series of dreams that seemed mostly disconnected, except for the last two. The last two were definitely connected. Really, it was a dream where I awoke from a dream. That happened once before (even more crazy, though!) but in this dream, the two dreams were the same.

In the dream I awoke to find two people in business attire coming into my bedroom. They stood at the foot of my bed and began to introduce themselves. (Note: This was the room in my old house, where I had two twin beds. Jen was there, she was just in the other bed. For some reason, that part was not weird to me in the dream…)

They were from a local paper, the Courier Journal (which, is local to Palmyra, where we live now) and they just wanted to let me know that I had won their drawing. “You wanted to tell us that in person?” I asked. “Well, it was the grand prize.”

“How much?” I was thinking $1000 or something. “$120,000,” the business lady calmly replied.

I was just stunned. Silent. Until (still in the dream) I said, “Wait… I had a dream about this. Somebody from a small, local paper came and told me that I had won their drawing… and I think it was for $120,000!!” Everyone laughed, and at the same time thought it was very strange.

Not long after that – while thinking of all the joys of being debt free – I awoke from my dream. For real this time.

I can’t remember a dream recently that I have been more sad to wake up from, and to realize it was only a dream.

But hey, you never know…

by Greg

Hear The Angels Sing

We have heard a LOT of Christmas music lately. I’m sure you are feeling the same way. I do still love it, but it’s definitely getting close to time to shelve it for another eleven months or so.

It’s not all bad, though. One song off of Steven Curtis Chapman’s second Christmas album, All I Want For Christmas, caught my attention this week.

It wasn’t so much a lyric, as the way it was sung.

I believe the song was It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. It was sung with a nice gentle feel to it. And, at one point, Steven sings just lightly, “Hear the angels sing Hallelujah, Christ the Savior is born.” Those are words you usually associate with giant booming voices and big, majestic fanfare. But in this song, the words were sung almost at a whisper, almost as a lullaby for the newborn baby.

It got me thinking. Maybe that’s how it was? We think it should be fanfare and trumpets and “kingly”. But if you’ll recall, the King of the universe stepped into our lives as a baby, born to ordinary folk, in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. He was born in a stable. He was… born, period. He didn’t have to go through that, either.

But he did.

The simplicity of the first Christmas is a clue that God does not do things the way we think he should. And we’re (way) better off for it.

Enjoy your gifts today, giving and receiving. Enjoy time with family and friends. Enjoy the great food. Enjoy the Christmas cookies! But most of all, enjoy knowing that you are so completely loved by the One who has everything. He didn’t just become a man so he could die the death of a criminal… he wanted to live like us, so he could know us even better. All the way from birth. As a commoner.

That’s what you mean to him. That first Christmas day, and this one.

Merry Christmas. 🙂

by Greg

Tape Delay

So, you just gotta love TiVo. It’s so easy. You watch what you want, when you want to (or can) and you can even fast-forward the commercials!

I love hockey! Versus carries at least one NHL game on Monday and Tuesday nights. I’m busy every Monday night, and somehow we are usually busy on Tuesday nights, so I have gotten in the habit of TiVo-ing them.

Well, tonight after recording the show, I picked up where I had left off when I went up to the office to record. Thing is, Jen was there, too. And, while I like hockey… I like talking with my wife more. So, we did.

At one point I finally noticed that the hockey game I had recorded was playing in the background while we chatted and snacked.

Do you find that odd too? Who records something in order to not pay attention to it? 🙂

by Greg

Remote Control = God?

I remember when I was a kid, one of the coolest things in the world was remote control cars. I mean, you could make it go… even though you weren’t touching it! How cool is that?!?

Well, last night I noticed that remote control is still one of the coolest things.

I was walking away from our vehicle and needed to lock it as I was going out of sight of it, and all I had to do was press a button on the little key fob and … voila! It was locked! Like magic!

When I was able to do that, I realized that remote control is a bit like being God. You can manipulate things outside of yourself, like magic. (I know… it’s not magic, but… it looks like it is!) Whether it’s a toy car, or a boat, or a plane… or a real car that you can lock, unlock, or even start! You say it, or click it, or whatever… and it happens!

And there’s so much like that these days! The whole world is going wireless. Cell phones, GPS thingies, satellite radio, key fobs, Wi-Fi computers and other devices… everything is wireless. On our home network, I can log into Jen’s computer from my laptop, and send files from there to my computer in the office… without being on either computer! I can even do a “screen sharing” thing where I can use other computers as if I were right in front of it. I can print stuff in the office from any computer… WIRELESSLY.

We have some pretty amazing powers these days… 🙂

So, just a little observation. I still believe the next computer interface (probably Mac OS X 10.6) will be a spoken interface. So not only will things be “remote control”, but we will speak and it will happen.

And Greg said, “Let there be e-mail” … and there was e-mail.

Weird. 🙂

by Greg

Let It Snow! Keep It Coming!

In all the busyness of my web design work, and my Buffalo Bills show, and everyday life as a family of six, I have not gotten to say HOW MUCH I AM LOVING THIS WINTER!!! (AND IT’S NOT EVEN WINTER YET!!!!) 🙂

Just after Thanksgiving, people had their Christmas lights up (and on at night) but the ground was still green. Well, just about my birthday, that all changed! We got snow… and it’s set up camp! Looks like it’s going to be around for a long while and that is GREAT NEWS!!

It makes the Christmas lights look a lot better, too. 🙂

It snowed all day today – another 6-7 inches maybe? It’s supposed to snow all day Sunday. And Monday. And probably more after that! Oh man! This is my kinda winter!!!

The cool part for me is that I work upstairs. I don’t have to get the snow off the car, or shovel the driveway, or DRIVE in the stuff. I just get to have a nice hot cup of whatever and LOOK at it! Whoohoo! Oh… and I get to make snowmen with my boys at 10:30 at night. 🙂 (See below…)

Bring it on, winter! This is why I live in upstate New York!!!! 🙂

Our late night snowman!