finite speck

Since purchasing a vacation rental home in 2020 in Gulf Shores we've had at least one crazy week every year since. In 2020 it was getting that first rental ready to rent in a week. In 2021 it was doing some repairs on that place and then finding another place at the end of that week, purchasing it, and coming back for another 2 weeks to flip that place and get it ready to rent. And this year it was selling the first place we purchased and buying 5 empty lots that we plan to build another 5 vacation homes on over the next 4 years. What will next year bring? Hopefully, this is it for a few years, I think we're going to stay plenty busy now with what we have planned!

On Christmas this year for the first time it was just our little family together all day because some of our extended family has been sick. So, my wife and I planned a bunch of things to do with our kids. We took them hiking, we made snow, we had a tea party, had a coffee cake with candles in it for Jesus' birthday, and to top it off at the end of the day after we put the kids to bed we woke them up a couple minutes later to get on the Polar Express. I dressed up in a conductor outfit quickly, we played some Polar Express music, and I woke up the kids. I was so loud saying, "Hurry... we've got to get on the Polar Express." that I scared my kids. My oldest son thought that the real Polar Express was outside of our house. Well, we got them up, gave them their ticket, and got them in our minivan decked out with the Christmas lights inside of it and snacks. And we took them around our town to look at the Christmas lights. It was a highlight of the day. My youngest can'

Do you sell or do you hold on? Do you keep going or do you stop? Sometimes it's all clear and you're moving forward, but sometimes things all of a sudden become a little blurry and you're not sure if you continue on or if need to change course a bit. More and more I realize there's a lot I don't know and I'm thankful for others who are smarter than me and have had different experiences than me. Like my brothers-in-law that I at times can bounce ideas off of. I'm also thankful for prayer that though I don't know the next move my God does and He is the one who directs our steps whether we realize it or not. He can make things clearer to us if we ask.

Right now I'm in the middle of giving 10 presentations over 2 weeks to a bunch of business owners. Until I just wrote that out I don't know that I've really internalized that idea. I would have never thought 20 years ago that I'd be giving talks to owners of businesses that are doing millions of dollars in sales. But as I think about it whether it's the actual presentation or just going through the week you just have to keep going. I'm learning more and more as I gain more experiences that you can learn so much by taking on new opportunities and stretching yourself. By setting goals and going after them. The worst thing I can do is just sit and wait for someone or something else to move me along.  There's a lot to be said for just trying things to see what works. Learning from mistakes you make. Experience really is the best teacher. 

If I could commend one thing to parents of young kids like I have right now I think it would be to have a memorization plan. Have something to daily work on with your kids on memorizing. A catechism, scripture, family values,... something of value. They can easily memorize it. Especially if it's set to music and it will stick with them for their whole life. I remember songs that my parents played for me as a kid. Our family has been working through a catechism a week from New City Catechism . It's nothing special as far as how we do it. We just sing the songs together as a family before bed every night. But our kids are memorizing important truths about God every week in a question-and-answer format. If you have young kids their minds are sponges that soak up anything that they see, hear, and experience in a day. As their parents, we have the opportunity to majorly influence what those things are.

My slog lately has felt more like a sloth's slog. I see it in my desire to even write on my blog. I just don't have a ton of motivation lately. I have a lot of ideas in my head and I enjoy learning about opportunities that are out there, but I don't know where to focus on and what all it would take. One of the last things I wrote about on here is revamping our website for our vacation rental properties and I still need to get that done here over this next month. I haven't touched it in months. It's easier to get distracted by other possibilities for additional income than focusing on what we have right now. On a totally different note, our family spent a couple hours working together raking leaves for some older people who can't rake leaves anymore. Our kids loved it and it was great to do something like that as a family serving others. We were thankful for that opportunity. I was also able to do some little house projects yesterday which always makes me feel go

We had a pin-sized hole in the floor of our shower. We were getting some water in our basement when we took a shower. So we had a choice... temporarily fix the problem or start over. We chose to do a total rehab of our bathroom. That meant that this past weekend I demoed the bathroom. I don't know how I get myself into these hard work projects, but this was up there with digging a huge hole in the backyard to fix our water issue in the basement. By the way, water is the worst enemy of a house! I spent about 2 days in our bathroom busting out the tile on the ceiling, three walls, the floor, and then concrete that was under the tile on the floor. I've got a couple hours left of work and I believe we will be ready for the skilled labor to come in and redo our bathroom. One huge thing I learned is having a hammer drill is a must. There is no way I could have done it without one. And a huge thank you to a friend that let me borrow his hammer drill. I owe him big time!

Last summer was learning to ride a bike for our oldest two and this summer was learning to swim. Josie picked it up much quicker than Baer, but by the beginning of this week, Baer started swimming on his own too. Besides the difference in age, Josie 6 and Baer 4, I've noticed a difference in personality coming out in overcoming challenges. My daughter will just put her head down and go after it. My son needs a lot of positive affirmation from me and others that help him get over the hurdle. It's been fun though to see the daily effort of investing pay off eventually. But it does take time. We decided to not do swim lessons and instead to get a pool pass and I would just spend time with them almost every day in the pool. And by the end of the summer, we were swimming. We have one last challenge for Baer and that is going down the water slide. He has to do it by the day the pool closes and we're even giving him ice cream at Dairy Queen. So I've got to keep loading on the

This summer we have tried to get to the pool as much as possible. Josie has really made a lot of progress in swimming. She's made it down the water slide, can swim across the pool, and can go down and touch the bottom. She's planning to go off the diving board before the end of the summer. Baer has gained more confidence, but he's not quite swimming yet. He's just got a lot more fear of the water, but he's also 2 years younger than Josie. The goal is to swim on his own in the next two weeks and go down the water slide.  It's been fun to see the progress they've made over the summer. It's a reminder to me of the importance of practice which is where improvement comes from.

My youngest is growing up. This morning might have been his first sentence. Two words put together. "Carry me." He's really starting to try to talk. And then as I was getting ready to take the kids to my in-laws' I noticed that Mac can now reach the door handle of the minivan. It's going by fast. They're getting big.

"I've been listening to your podcast." "Huh?" I said. "What is my co-worker talking about?" I thought to myself. Then it clicked. He'd been reading my blog. I said, "My blog?" That was it. It was one of the few times that someone has said something to me about reading my blog. It's not something I'm always telling people about so I'm usually surprised when it comes up. And I've kind of gotten out of the habit over the last 4 months or so of writing regularly. He mentioned it takes guts to write regularly and share some of what's going on in your life. I don't feel like I always write super personal stuff, but I've tried to do it in order to get better at writing. It was a good encouragement to keep up the blog and continue the practice of writing daily.

If you build it they will come. I believe this could be true if I will buckle down and build a new website. It's just the effort of getting going on it. I've built a website before and the one we have right now is fine, but there are things about it that could be better and it doesn't show all of our offerings anymore. I also want an area on our website that allows for us to share articles that bring value which I don't have on our current website.  My experience in building a website as a side gig is that it takes doing a little at a time. First, you need to decide on the platform you'll use and order that. Then you need to figure out where you'll buy your domain name and do that. Then where you'll host it. Then you need to layout the website on paper. Then you start building it. And for me, these tasks have mini-tasks that I can do in an hour or less. Because I usually don't have much more time than that to work on it. Lately, I've had a hard time

How does giving a presentation make you feel? Getting up in front of a group of people and speaking would not be on my list of favorite things to do for sure, but yesterday I spent my afternoon presenting to our sales team 4 times along with the rest of our marketing team. By the end, I'd say I enjoyed it. I definitely practiced the content, so it was already familiar. And I feel like our full presentations went really well. What was the goal of giving our presentation? To really educate our sales team on aspects of marketing. I think we accomplished that. I know we feel like we'd love to have gained more insights from the overall sales organization about how we can help them get dealers to market themselves, but that wasn't the goal yesterday. Yet by educating the sales team on the marketing team, I think we armed them with some things to help their dealers.

Yesterday I took my youngest on a walk and saw one of our neighbors out that had just moved over the last month to our neighborhood. They have kids close to our kids' ages and I took the opportunity to introduce myself and ask them questions. Turns out they lived in Chicago for a while, so we had that in common along with having young kids. You just never know what you might find out if you just stop and ask. They don't know many people in the area and I offered our help if they need anything. This definitely put me a little out of my comfort zone. It's always easier for me to smile and keep walking, but I know it's better to take the opportunity to get to know others. I want to keep growing in this for myself and my family. 

We were in Georgia for the 4th of July weekend and as part of the celebration down there at the pool my brother-in-law belongs to they dumped minnows into the pool and gave all the kids nets to catch them. When I first heard that they were going to do it I thought no way. But our kids loved it. I think they caught around 3 to 6 each. Even our youngest who is 2 had a good time catching them in the baby pool. They know how to have a good time down in Georgia that's for sure. I think it was one of the most relaxed pools I've ever been to and people were really enjoying all of the activities they put together for the 4th.

Right now I have maybe an hour of time where I no responsibilities for a kid other than to be here if our youngest, Mac, wakes up. Other than that I'm on my own. What should I do? I started by cleaning off some space on my phone so I can take some photos while we're visiting my wife's family. Then I thought about editing some photos for a bit or writing some content for our vacation properties. There's always something to do. It would be nice to just nap though too. Or read a book for a little bit. This hour is going to fly by and I'm going to be like what did I do? Oh, I spent time writing this blog post about what I should do with the one hour that I have that's free right now. I think I'm going to crack open a book and read for a bit while it's quiet right now.

Do ever think if I just do this thing every day for a certain amount of time the result would be something? I have. In fact, I know I've written past posts about it. I've said this about exercising. I've also said it about writing. The truth is it's hard to show up every day to work on a task that doesn't have a result that's noticeable right away, but those are the ones worth working on every day. The easier thing to do is work on a task that has a noticeable result right away. Like mowing the yard or cooking a meal or scrolling social media or watching a show. I was just thinking about this blog that I've been more lax in writing on over the last few months. If I wrote every day (which I used to do for the last couple of years) for the rest of this year I will almost be at 1,000 posts! That's a big milestone. But it's a daily slog. It's a daily deciding ok I'll write some thoughts down this morning.

My kids are at the age where I wish I would write down all the things that happen because it's funny. That's why I'm thankful I try to write something here most days still. Yesterday I had my older two kids help me clean our van and they did an awesome job. In fact, they worked so hard that I told my wife we needed to reward them. So we went and let them pick out popsicles at the grocery store last night. They couldn't believe how many options there were and it took them a while to figure out for sure what they wanted. My daughter kept saying, "I can't believe how many options there are." When you think about it, it is crazy that there were probably 4 or more freezers full of different kinds of popsicle and ice cream box treats! That's a lot for a couple little kids to look at and decide on.

Yesterday I got a call from a co-worker. At first, I thought she probably just needed help with a dealer that had a request since she was off yesterday. But quickly found out that she had run out of gas and needed a ride back to her car. So what do you do when someone needs help? Drop everything and go! It was only a few minutes from our place (which is why she called me), but I grabbed our kids, hopped in the car, picked her up with her gas can and we got her back to her car.  It was great to be able to help someone out in a small way like that yesterday. I kept thinking what if I was in that situation? I know I would appreciate any help I could get.  Help someone out today. Be ready to go.

What do you do when you're challenged and the challenge is truly subjective? I'm in the creative field and I feel like anything on the art side is a little bit that way. I know there are parts of it that are proven. Some ways of laying out a design are just better, more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. More professional looking. But, there are other parts that are truly subjective and that's where I struggle. How hard do you fight for design choices and why choose to engage in defending the work? I guess it is even really being challenged or defending or is it more just getting the work to a better place? I've been working solo for quite a while as a designer that it's been tough as my team has grown to now have others that have opinions pushing me in my work. I know the works ends up better in the end, but it also feels like I'm getting ganged up on, and then the work is less my own and more collaborative, but I guess why is that bad too? Why does it have to

I've been working from home for over a year now. I would have never thought that would be a reality. Maybe if I was a freelancer, but not working for a large company. Covid changed all of that. It forced almost everyone to work from home at least for a short time... or just not work. I'm still unsure as to if our department will ever totally get back to a full-time schedule in the office or not. I'm guessing it may be a while if it ever happens, but I could be wrong. Finally, after about a year I've put together a decent workspace. There's the occasional interruption at home, but there's always those at the office as well. The interruptions are just different.  I think in general our team may actually be more productive and enjoying work more in the way we're working today than all working a regular schedule at the office.

Have you ever made a video for work and needed a teleprompter type of setup? I've made a few and every time I've done something different. I used to record them using a product called Soapbox which works well for recording from your desktop. Then I tried Loom which I like a lot and I'll probably continue to use it some. But I think my favorite is actually a phone app called Video Teleprompter. It's everything right on your phone. You load your script into the app, choose the speed of the text, and hit record. While you're being recorded your script comes up on the side of the screen where the camera is and it scrolls making it not obvious that you're reading from a teleprompter. In my opinion, it works really well and I'll probably continue to use it for my video needs.

Do you get to be a helper? Do you want to be a helper? When someone asks you for help are you annoyed because you have more important things to do or are you happy to help? Do you tend to wish people were smarter and could just figure it out? This is the time of year when we have our big marketing summer program and typically there are frustrated calls from dealers around using our system for one reason or another. Things like not being able to find their logo or not knowing how to upload a customer list or just not knowing how to get into our system. And I believe it's gotten less, but it's always an opportunity to help them. I can wish that it wasn't the case and I do, but I have to remember it's my time to interact with our dealers and make sure they have a good experience or the best I can provide them. Same with my kids. When they say anything around needing help am I annoyed or do serve gladly? Many times I just want to fix the problem quickly and sometimes I say

I just need to start and keep going. That's the hardest part of any creative exercise for me. To just get that ball rolling. I'm wanting to build a new website and the hard work has really been done now as far as getting the website address, the software, and now it's just bringing it to life. I have plenty of video and photography and I'm able to create the words that need to be there, so now it's just sitting down deciding on a look and feel, and rolling it out. If I pace myself I feel like it would be very feasible to have this website launched by the beginning of July. What are some of my biggest hesitancies? Taking the website from one vacation to two properties. How do we show two properties on the home page or more someday? What are the right pages to have on the website? Do we have a separate reviews page? Do we need a photo gallery? I'm leaning towards putting everything for each property on its own page. I want to have a contact page, a blog, and a boo

The masks seem to be coming off. Not everywhere, but a lot of places. The latest I've heard is that if you've had the vaccine you don't have to wear a mask and if you haven't you're encouraged to wear a mask. People are shaking hands and smiling at each other. Only time will tell what things look like in this next year. We were just in a small town parade this past weekend and it was great to see so many people together. It really does feel like we're getting closer to the way things were pre-covid.

We just had my grandparents and parents over for dinner last night. I'm thankful for my wife who is such a good host. From thinking about others to invite them over to not making a huge deal about how picked up the house needs to be in order to have others visit. She makes it easy to have others over. I want this to be something that is always part of what our family does. Whether it's planned ahead or it's last minute.  I know my grandma especially loves the opportunity to get together with us for a meal. I believe she's 91 and I think some days are a real struggle for her as she becomes more and more dependent on others. My grandpa has dementia and I know that's tough for my grandma as he says a lot of the same things over and over again and he can't remember anything that happened recently at all.

One of my cousin's kids started a running club for the neighborhood kids years ago and he's still doing it even though he's in high school now. So our oldest who is six started running with the group yesterday. The younger kids go for a run around the block while the older kids do a longer run. They get shirts for being in the club too. I didn't go out and watch, but it sounds like there's a lot of parents there too. Just a neat way to be involved in the community and get to know people. I'm thankful that they started this years ago and that my kids can be a part of it.

Over this past weekend, our house turned from blue to totally white. I still have one small area to finish up, but it's another project in the books on our house. I probably have spent at least 30 hours painting it so far. And this morning I can tell that I wasn't sitting around this past weekend because my body is sore! It looks so good though. A fresh coat of paint really changes things up. I don't want to do it again anytime soon, but it sure feels good to look back at the project once it's done and say we did it. I think the toughest job was probably my wife keeping our kids busy over the weekend while I did a majority of the painting. My wife also did a ton of weed pulling with the kids over the weekend and our yard is looking good too! And the weather was really perfect all weekend for working outside.

This past weekend we started painting our house white. Our home is a ranch so it shouldn't take too long to do, but it looks like it's going to be 3 coats, so along with having three little kids, it may take a while to get done. We did get most of the entire back of the house covered in 2 coats of paint over the weekend. We'll probably tackle painting more this coming weekend. It's amazing the difference a color can make in a house. We're going from a fairly dark blue to white and it looks way different.

I got a new grill. A Blackstone. We splurged a little on this one. It's not a smoker, or charcoal, or really gas. It's more like a giant outdoor griddle. It reminds me of how they do burgers at Steak n' Shake. It does use gas, but the gas heats the plate/griddle instead of the flame heating the food directly. We had our first burgers on it last night and they were awesome. I'm looking forward to trying different things out on it. It cooks really fast once it's heated up. It's also super easy to clean since it's one flat surface and there's a hole in the back where you can scrape anything into that's remaining when you're done.

Thank you for the rain last night and this morning to water the crops and to cause plants to grow. Thank you for my family who I will get to spend time with this afternoon for Mother's Day. Thank you for a kid that crawled in my bed with us last night when there was a huge thunder boom. Thank you for a wife that takes such good care of our family. Thank you for a cup of coffee this morning and a warm blanket. Thank you for an easy way to record my thoughts. Thank you for grandparents that are still alive and will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary in a few weeks. Thank you for family that is super close by that can help out with our kids. God I have so much to be thankful for. Help me to be thankful each day instead of unthankful for the things that aren't the way I might like them. 

I don't watch the news very often or even listen to the mainstream news much, but there have been some very unusual things happening lately. We live in Morton, where houses are flying off the market as soon as they go up for sale. Many times the first time I see a for sale sign it says pending. People are paying way over the asking price and even buying without seeing the property. Another thing that's going on is there are shortages in materials. For example in materials to build cars. So most dealerships have very few cars for sale right now. Manufacturers are having to shut down because they can't get certain parts in order to build. I can't help but wonder where all of this is going to end up.

Will we ever be back in the office all the time? It's been over a year and I'm still working from home. Hey, I'm not complaining. It's been really good overall, but I do miss interacting with my team. I'm wondering if we'll eventually be back in the office or at least have a schedule where we go into the office a couple times a week. I never would have thought I'd be working from home where I work for a company. Freelancing, yes. That's pretty normal, but not when you work for a company where most people work at the office. Today I'm heading into the office for the day. It's been a while since I've been at the office for a full day. And I may do it tomorrow as well. They needed helping packing kits for a marketing program around flagging crops that we put together last month that's been hugely successful. Our print vendor that's fulfilling the kits can find enough temp workers to take care of the demand. So sometimes you've got to

All I've been able to think about lately is what's not getting done. Like how I haven't written on this blog in a while. Or I haven't been running regularly. How I need to get going on building a new website. And I haven't posted anything on social in a while for our vacation rental properties. Then I think about needing to back up my phone... I need to do that. What's the point of listing all these things out in my head though? It feels endless these days. Today I'm writing a blog article. Check. I'm going to run in 10 minutes. Check. I can start making a list of things that need to get done and prioritize them. Check. Not everything has to get done today. But if I can plan to accomplish something each day there is a lot that can get done over time. 

This week feels like more of a normal week. We haven't had very many of them in 2021. We're just doing normal things, no work trips to Alabama, no time in the hospital, no funeral,... and in the middle of thinking about this week and writing right now, my wife just texted me. Reminding me we need to get back into our schedule of running. She's running right now and said let's just get it done this morning, so you don't have to do it later in the day. She's right. So here I go. Here's to a more normal week. 

Over this past weekend, we've gone on 3 walks looking for painted rocks. One of our neighbors came up with a treasure hunt with her friend where kids in the neighborhood have to look for painted rocks and could even win a basket of art supplies. So we took off and started looking for rocks and probably found 20 on Saturday, but when we showed them to our neighbor we found out that none of them were hers that she'd hidden! So we went on a few more rock walks and found some of hers, but we never found the special rock where we could win the basket of art supplies. But this sweet girl then decided to make a special painted rock for our daughter and hide it and so we went out on another walk to find it yesterday afternoon. And our daughter found it. She was super excited about it. It's been fun to just go out looking for things on a walk with our kids. It's made us look in places we don't normally look as we walk and while walking we even found a duck's nest with a

All I can think about lately is the list in my head of things that I would like to get done. It's Saturday morning and I think it's supposed to be rainy today. I'd love to just tackle going through some closets today. Organizing and getting rid of stuff so we know where things are. I feel like if I just went through an area a week it wouldn't take that long to get things to a place where it was somewhat organized. I also think what about our kids today? Maybe they can help. Sometimes they get excited about doing some tasks. Then I just have to have patience with them as well. They get excited through the process and sometimes it doesn't go like I planned in my head. Actually, who am I kidding, it rarely goes like I have in my head. I know this is God's way of showing me I'm not in control. He is. 

This is my second night where my daughter was in the hospital. We took her to the ER on Sunday afternoon because she was having pain in the area where she had her appendix taken out last month. After a CT scan and many hours, we found out it was an abscess. Yesterday we heard she could be in the hospital for a while because they had to install a drain to remove the fluid from the abscess. It's been quite the ride this year so far between Brittany's grandma passing away last week, our daughter having her appendix out and now having this abscess, our renovation of The Little Lady in Gulf Shores, and all the challenges there. It feels like it's been one thing after another. Every week there's something. Oh and we had COVID at the beginning of the year, how could I forget that. But, one thing always remains through all the unexpected. God is still in control of all things. Nothing passes by Him without Him knowing what we will face. We take comfort in this. We don't kno

Should I post this week? Should I have posted last week? Should I get ahead of it and start having scheduled posts for every week? I'm thinking mainly of our rental property social media accounts. One property is booked up through the end of November and the other is booked up through mid-August. It feels less urgent to get people to book... but then it also seems like we need to keep our posting to remind people that we're out there. To continue to gain more followers, so that when the time is right they will book. There's always 2022. Believe it or not, we already have 8 bookings for next year as of today! The other thing I need to get on is changing up our website to reflect that we have 2 properties now. We haven't made any updates since late last year to our website.

I'm still struggling to really get motivated this week. I haven't felt great. I guess in saying this I'm communicating that I'm finding my worth in what I've accomplished. If I had gotten a lot accomplished and others saw it and gave me credit would I feel better? Sadly, I probably would. My blog has been littered with posts similar to this lately. How do I get myself back on track? In a rhythm of getting things accomplished. There are days when working from home is great and there are days when it's tough. Today is as good a day as any to get things knocked off a list or to decide on the top 3 things to get done and do it. So no more complaining. No more distractions. It's gonna be a productive day. Here we go.

Gone. Forever. I saw my wife's grandma for the last time yesterday afternoon. She died in the middle of the night last night. We knew she probably wasn't going to make it much longer and so we decided to go see her in the nursing home. She had been struggling to breathe more and more and had been on pain meds for quite some time. It was just a reminder to me that life is fleeting. Our bodies are only made to last so long and then they give out. Yet most of the time I live like I might last forever. I don't think about eternity. I don't think about others. God help me to think about the future of what we were made for. A life with you where all is made right. Where there is no struggle to breathe and there is no pain. Help me to think about others and ask whether they really know the Christ that has made a way to live forever. The one that conquered death, so that we could live with an active hope, knowing that we will not truly die. 

Yesterday I spent a lot of the day with a can of white paint and a brush painting all of the black grout of our fireplace white. I've probably got another half day of painting yet before it's all done. What a difference it makes in a room though. Going from a dark red, orange, and black to white. It's going to really brighten up our rooms. We also took out our inserts to paint the brick and we may end up leaving them out. I like the way it looks without the inserts in the fireplace since it's open on both sides. Now you can see all the way through it. 

My son loves to color pictures of characters and animals and when he's done he wants to cut them all out. He has tons of pictures that he's colored that are all cut out and then he plays with them. It's kind of funny that it's his thing he likes to do. My daughter doesn't do it at all. So whenever he's done coloring a picture he'll either ask for scissors or go and get one himself. 

I'm not sure exactly what my deal is, but I've been slacking lately. Slacking on writing my blog and slacking on getting going as early as I have been. My motivation just hasn't been there in the morning. I feel like there's a lot of things I want to get done and I don't know where to start. Home projects, personal projects, work projects, cleaning things up, ordering things, new business work,...  Well, today's a new day and I didn't get up super early, but I can get back on this. I also stopped recording daily videos in 2021, but I've really missed that this year as well. I'm not sure if I'll start that backup or not.

My best friend's dad passed away last week. His dad was 73. It came as a shock to me when I opened up Facebook this morning to see his dad's face as the first thing on my feed this morning. So I read his obituary. It stated his occupation and his schooling, then his involvement at his church, and then his love for his family. He died of heart failure. It made me think of my dad who just turned 69 last week. How much more time will my parents be here? I have grandparents that are still living in their 90s, but you never know how long you will live. We won't live forever. I need to reach out to my dad more often. I don't think I would ever regret initiating something with him. But I think if I never do I will regret that. I was with my parents and one of my sisters last night and I'm always struck by how much my dad reads. He seems to be an avid reader and smart. He's been studying some books on Revelations lately and is beginning to understand there are some pret

Enjoying a warm cup of coffee. I don't want to set it down to type. I think about my weekend this morning and know there is a lot going on. It doesn't seem like it will be restful, yet today is the day that God incarnate rested in a tomb before he was raised to life on Sunday. God this morning as I think about a day filled with visiting friends, visiting family, and desiring to do a few projects at our home, help me. Help me to love my wife and kids. Help me not to put myself above them. Help me to serve others. Help me to be engaged in others' lives. I can not do this on my own. I need your Spirit's help. Fill me with these desires and rid me of selfish ones. Rid me of perfectionism that stems from pride. Keep me from wasting my day on things that don't matter. 

What do you do with a pool table you don't use? How do you even get rid of it? They take up a whole room and ours happened to be in the basement. We called around to companies that sell pool tables and found a company in Bloomington, IL that would come pick it up for free. They came yesterday and disassembled it and packed it all up and took it. And now we have a whole other room in the basement that we can use that we didn't have before. I don't know what they will be able to sell the pool table for, but we feel like it was worth it. I wouldn't have known how to disassemble it, even though I may have been able to figure it out. I also would have had to find a buyer and then they would have had to reassemble it. It just sounds like a big hassle. They also are giving us a coupon to purchase something from their store at 40% off. The place is called Altman's Billiards and Barstools .

What do I enjoy the most right now? I think one thing that's new for me that I'm enjoying learning about right now is vacation rental property. I have really liked marketing it. Figuring out how to set things up. Especially the social media and website stuff. Learning how to take and edit great photos of our properties. I've enjoyed creating logos for our properties. It's also been fun to interact with people online, although my brother-in-law does the majority of that. I'm just getting my feet wet since it's only been one year since we started this, but it's been very good so far. I've learned a ton. Like some of the best content that we've put out so far was a top ten list of restaurants in the area of Gulf Shores that we gave away on social. We had a huge amount of interest in that piece.  There's plenty to do to keep our properties top of mind for those that are thinking about a vacation and the things we could do are endless.

When do you start a new home project? Do you wait until your cash is in a good place or do you do it when you have more time to devote to it? How do you prioritize what should be done? We have a few more things than we thought we might have this year. For one we want to paint the outside of our house. We need to plant grass seed in the backyard. We need to do some landscaping at least in the front yard and mulch in the back. Then inside the house. We need to renovate our master bathroom because of a leak in our tile floor. In the basement, we want to add a 5th bedroom for guests when they come. We also need to do some repair drywall work where we fixed a basement wall that was leaking outside. I think I placed those all in the order that we want to do them as well. If we get all of that done it will be a busy spring, summer, and fall it feels like. The thing is I think we thought we were getting close to being done with home projects.

Today is a new day. Will I waste it? Will I maximize it? How will I spend it? Today is Saturday. Sometimes it's a day of projects. Sometimes it's a day with family. Sometimes it's a busy day and sometimes there's not a lot going on. I'm just thinking about how I even qualify if a day is a good day or a bad day. I love to accomplish things, like a project, but I also have 3 little kids and there's plenty that can be done with them as well. A good day could be teaching my kids something. Like working with my oldest to learn how to read... not that it will happen in one day, but just working towards it. A good day could be visiting my grandparents that live a block away and spending time with them or spending some time with other family today. We think about our time a little like money. We talk about how we spend it or waste it. We each only have so much of it and then it's gone.

Just keep going. That's been my approach to social media for our vacation rental properties. Although, I have slacked off on our first one because we're booked all the way through November of 2020. So it feels less urgent than our new property that still has a lot of weeks to fill at this point. I'm trying to have 3 posts ready per week that are scheduled out ahead of time. There are tons of websites, posts, and videos that will tell you how to do it and claim that certain times work best, but I don't know how true they all are. I think you've got to just start going and really look at your own data and what it tells you as you keep trying more things.

It can be so easy to get scammed these days. A couple days ago I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and I saw something about a giveaway at ALDI that someone else I knew had liked and commented on. Without thinking I went ahead and liked it and commented on it as well and then proceeded to tell my wife about it. Upon seeing it she said, "That's totally a scam." I looked it up and she was right. Fortunately, I didn't give my information in the online form as well to get the free giveaway, but there were tons of people that were liking the fake ALDI Facebook account. It should have been obvious because ALDI never does anything like that. Plus, me being a graphic designer I should have noticed the rough Photoshop work on the box with the old ALDI logo. But I didn't. All I can say is be on the lookout. If it sounds too good it probably is.

Ever-changing. How do you keep up? Facebook had over 58,000 employees as of December 2020. I have no idea what that many employees are doing between Facebook's different entities, but that's a lot of people. When I thinking about keeping up and things always changing I was. thinking specifically of Facebook and the software changes that seem to roll out all the time. It does make the platform better, but it's hard to know the best way to do things because there's always a new way. I do create posts for our rental properties and we typically post on Facebook and Instagram to our business accounts. I think I've figured out a way to use the Facebook business account area to get our posts scheduled for both Facebook and Instagram, so I don't have to do it the morning of or during the day when I'd like for them to happen anymore. You can always just schedule them in the normal area of Facebook as well, but there's a new area under Publishing Tools called Crea

In this broken world there will always be things that need fixing. Just yesterday our double stroller had a tire that got a hole in it, so we'll have to replace it. Our tile floor in our main bathroom shower has a pinhole in it so water ends up in the basement, so we'll have to fix it. Nothing lasts forever. Those that create things try to give what they create as long a life a possible, but there's an increase in cost the longer that something will last typically.  The only thing that is made to last forever is our soul. God created each of us to last forever. To spend eternity with Him. In a world that is redeemed. In a world that isn't broken and that doesn't have things in it that break. Jesus is the one that redeemed our brokenness by being fully God and fully man and being sinless. He paid the payment for our sin upon the cross. He died for our sin and rose again, fully alive. He conquered death. This payment paid for our sin if believe in Him and turn from ou

There is a skill to introducing yourself to others. To being friendly. To some, it comes more naturally than to others. We're trying to work with our oldest on introducing herself to people she doesn't know as she gets ready for kindergarten. She can be pretty shy and can easily sit back and just observe. That's what happened yesterday with her when I could tell she wanted to go play with her neighbor girlfriends, but they had other friends over. So, she just watched them from across the street. I finally told her she had to go inside and my wife talked to her about introducing herself and being friendly. So my daughter decided she would go out and introduce herself to them and practice. She did great. We just have to push her to do it.  It's uncomfortable to talk to people that we don't know until we do it and then it's not. The only way we'll get good at it is to do it. I think we'll be trying to do this more with our kids. I think it's a great ski

We were made to share with others. Why is it that when we have something in common with someone else it's so easy to talk about it? We want to share our experiences and ask questions about theirs. I had this happen yesterday when a coworker approached me a few weeks back and asked if I'd be willing to get together and talk about our vacation rental property experience. So we got together and talked about all kinds of stuff related to buying a place and getting it ready to rent. We had some of the same pain points, but we also have experienced a lot of the payback that a vacation rental property can provide. It was fun. This also gets me thinking about getting together with others for me. With me, usually, there's an agenda. It's rarely hey let's just get together and chat about life. I'd like to push myself to just have some time getting together with other guys where it's just to see how they're doing, to form relationships. To do it because I care, not

Today you can basically have your own "show" that you can syndicate out to many people through the social media outlets that are out there. Between Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and YouTube you can reach a lot of people. My familiarity with these grew a lot through my current employer as for a while I handled all of the postings that happened on these platforms. That's not the case anymore, but now I'm using them for our rental properties and I believe it makes a difference. The big key with any of them though is you have to stay active, meaning continuing to post things in order to gain traction with your audience and gain more followers. I've chosen to mainly focus on Facebook and Instagram for our vacation rental properties, creating their own accounts on each platform and supplementing posts with my personal account and the other members of our LLCs accounts. I'd like to post more to Twitter, Linkedin, and even YouTube, but it means also staying

I like routine. I like getting up early and making a cup of coffee. I like sitting on the couch with a blanket over me and a pillow behind me while I read and write in the morning. I've missed this over the last 2 weeks and it feels good to get back to that. The comfort of home. I also missed my kids and wife so much while I was gone. Even the craziness of our life with three little ones!

I think this may be the longest amount of time since I started blogging that I haven't blogged. I have to say I've missed it, but the last couple of weeks with all the work on our newest rental property made it really hard to keep going with a post every morning. It was also hard to decide to start doing this again over the last few days back home with tons of emails to get caught up on and just getting back into life at home. We did it though. It took us about a week longer than expected, but we finished The Little Lady in Gulf Shores, Alabama. My brother-in-law, sister, and I had a lot of long days last week getting everything pulled together. Some days we were working 16 to 17 hours. We had things like the wrong size appliances that we had to return and purchase new ones. We had appliances that were badly scratched that had to be returned. We had the challenge of not having a truck and needing to have our maintenance guy run these appliances around for us. We had to go to Pe

We got a lot done yesterday on our new rental property, The Little Lady. Starting out the first few hours it felt like we were just spinning our wheels though. All of us owners were running all over the coast trying to get ahold of materials, including windows in Pensacola, Florida because we found out really quickly that the windows that were on the house were horrible.  We also decided to totally gut the bathroom, which wasn't on the list and we found out the day before that we were going to have to do work on the roof. We're over our budgeted amount, but I think we'll be ok for the year still... according to Chad. The biggest thing we got done was getting all the windows replaced yesterday evening. It rained almost all day long and it's been cold. I made 3 trips to Home Depot and I've got at least one trip already scheduled for the day today. We also gutted the bathroom yesterday. All the wiring got run for our mini-split (heat/ac).  Today, we're hoping to ge

I've been working with my brother-in-law just in enough to experience his lists now for home improvement projects and they are long and they are ever-changing. We got our list going last night for this renovation project and I'll just say I'm glad I've got a brother-in-law that knows home improvement because we'd be lost without him.  We'll see how the day goes today and what we're able to get accomplished!

I'm very thankful these days for YouTube as a way for people to share knowledge. I feel guilty that I've never created a YouTube video to do the same for the many different people of all ages and backgrounds that I've gained knowledge from on how to fix things or for the best settings for a camera or for do-it-yourself projects. I hope this never goes away, but who knows how long things like this will last. I've spent a decent amount of time this past week researching GoPro cameras and settings for shooting video on them as well as DJI equipment. I know I'll also be reviewing things for my DSLR camera too as I plan to do a lot of shooting photos and video this next week during our reno and of the final product.  I'm hoping to get some unique video of timelapse, drone, water, etc to set our new place apart from the thousands of places that are similar to it in Gulf Shores. We just have a ton of competition in the 3 bedroom space. Here we go.

What makes a day a good day? What makes a day a bad day? Yesterday I had a good day and my wife had a rough day. It seems like sometimes that's how it goes when you're married. One of you has the opportunity to encourage the other when the going gets rough. For me, a good day is getting things accomplished and getting positive encouragement from another co-worker. Both of those things happened to me yesterday. My wife had some expectations unmet where she believed she had communicated some things that weren't followed through on that just started her day off a little rough and then it was hard to not let that color the rest of the day. But, these things gave us a chance to talk more last night than usual before bed. I honestly can't really remember what all we talked about, but it was good for both of us.  Sometimes we ask the question at our house what was the best part of your day and what was the worst part of your day. It's some good questions to ask. To reflect

So I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of weeks about what gear to use to capture our new place down in Gulf Shores while I'm down there next week. I only have 1 week and during a lot of it, I'll be doing renovation work with the other guys. So how am I gonna get things captured and what equipment am I gonna use? That's been consuming a lot of thoughts lately. For one I won't have a vehicle down there, so I'll have to coordinate with others if I want to stay later or get going earlier to get sunrise and sunset shots or even night timelapse. Secondly, I'll be using equipment I'm not as familiar with either such as a drone and GoPros. I know the concept is always the same with photography and video thankfully, but there are still different buttons, different apps, etc. to get used to. I've got a high bar for myself and a lot of learning that will have to be done while I'm down there mostly, so I'm hoping it all goes well. I've got

Sometimes the best way to learn is to just get thrown in and have to do it yourself. Want to learn to fly a drone, to do accounting, to make a table, to file for a permit, or anything else? You'll learn a lot more if you jump in, ask questions, and do it yourself versus have someone tell you everything to do. This is what's going on with my wife right now as our bookkeeper for our rental property business. She said, "I can do that." and so she's had to learn a ton in this past year and do a lot of things wrong in order to get things done right. I would say there's only one other partner in the business that really knows the best way to handle all expenses and taxes and he's super busy and hands-off. It's one of my brother-in-laws and I'm starting to think his philosophy on teaching might be similar to Chip Gaines in that he'd rather you do things wrong and learn from them than he spends a bunch of his time teaching you everything he knows. My w

There's one hill in Morton that I know of for sledding and I took our kids there yesterday. They all absolutely love it. It was the highlight of their day. I think we stayed there for a couple hours and my older two actually road together and carried the sled up the hill by themselves while I went down with our littlest. It worked out well. The hill is at Northwoods Park in Morton and it's on the north side of town. At first, I was wondered if I made a bad decision by taking all three kids by myself, but it worked out great. They had a good time. No one got hurt and we really didn't have much complaining. I consider that a win. And we got outside for half of the day in February! Yes. That's a win. If you haven't gone sledding at Northwoods Park and you have little kids go sledding at Northwoods Park. They'll love it.

What will your weekend be like? Do you have big plans? Are you going somewhere? Staying at home all weekend? Are you doing something by yourself? Do you have a whole family to take care of? Weekends can be tough for me. Not always, but if I don't have a project or a plan for the weekend I can tend to get frustrated with my little kids and not be the father I want to be. I'm not saying that a plan or project is necessary for the weekend at all even for me. It's more my heart needs to be in the right place. I can't get upset about all the little things others do that aren't the way I would do them or the times when my kids do things accidentally because they're kids and they just can't hardly control their bodies right now. I mean I know I can tell them to settle down or don't hit your sister and work with them on those things, but things like spilling water or getting something out that's messy or work for me is ok. I have to realize that I'm in m

Yesterday I spent time with a Spotify customer service person on chat for a while because someone evidently hacked into our account. While my wife was playing some music at home all of a sudden music with explicit lyrics started playing and it kept switching songs every time she tried to play something. It took logging out of everything and resetting our password 4 times to get things fixed, but their customer service person was able to get us taken care of. I'm thankful for people that are willing to help others out with their problems. Even if it starts with a chatbot. I was able to get to a real person and they were able to fix things pretty quickly for us. She also said this won't happen again to us. I hope not, but I don't know how they can guarantee that.

Is it helpful for me to blog every morning as part of my morning routine? It's a good question for me to ask myself. I'm around 750 days that I've done this now and I do like the routine of it and the way I can record some of my thoughts and things that happen in my life. It also gets my mind going and creating early instead of just consuming what others have created. I do want to start preparing more and thinking about my family as well in the morning. What should we be doing as a family? How I can be working with my kids to teach them? Even thinking about how my kids are doing and ways I can encourage them. At one point I was working on our family goals and the good thing about that is there's something that exists, but that bad thing is we're not really talking about them and at least right now they're not being focused on.

Is everything going wireless and USB C (3)? I recently got a new Macbook Pro and the only ports on it are USB C. That's it. Nothing else. No USB, no charging port, no HDMI, no headphone jack, no SD card reader, nothing else but USB C. So now I've been trying to think through all the scenarios that I still have where I need an adapter. So far I've needed to purchase an adapter for my second monitor, for normal USB, and for SD cards.  The craziest part of this whole ordeal has been that my work computer lost the ability to connect to the internet, so I was given a loaner computer which I didn't install my design programs on. Then I received my new computer and it only has USB C. So until I can get all my files transferred over to the new computer from my old computer I'm stuck transferring files around between the 3 computers. Designing on my old one, working with old files. Using the middle one to connect to the internet and do daily tasks and waiting on these adapte

To prioritize. What's important today? What's important tomorrow? What could get done? What should get done? What brings the most value? What brings the least value? How do I know? A bunch of questions racing through my head this morning. Probably most urgent from a work stand point is moving from an old computer to a new computer. Along with that comes additional purchases that need to be made as part of that switch and then just transferring everything. Then we've also got this new property that from a marketing side of things needs a share of my time right now in getting things set up. Then there's also my family, my wife and kids that need my time as well and I need to focus on them as well. Many times I feel like they get some of what's left which isn't a good thing. Then there's the day-to-day work projects that different projects rise and fall depending on the time of year and our focus. Then there's friends and church which also needs to be a foc

It's decided. We've agreed upon a name for our new rental property in Gulf Shores. It was some back and forth last night between The Peach of West Beach and The Little Lady. We ended up deciding on The Little Lady.  We're thinking that part of trademark down in Gulf Shores may be using Lady in the names of our properties. We'll see. I was going back and forth thinking it could could cause some confusion, but we'll see, maybe there won't be any at all. The theme of this place is a mid century modern beach home and we're three weeks away from this being a total reality. Lots of work to do right now. Lots of purchases, hours, and decisions to be made quickly. But we've got a great team with everyone pulling their weight. We'll get it done!

I think this might be the most agonizing part of launching something out into the world. You work really hard on something and get ready to share it but it has to have a name and an identity. It reminds me of being involved with coming up with names for our products at Precision Planting. Many times we purposely call new products things we won't get attached to like "The Hobbit" so that we know the initial name won't influence what it eventually gets called at all when we get the product far enough down the pipeline. It always seemed to come down to the last minute for us until we finally agreed upon a product name to announce to the public. We're facing something similar right now with our rental property business as we get ready to fix up another place in Gulf Shores. It's a little place that sleeps 10 and we're trying to come up with the perfect name for it. So far it's looking like it might be Little Lady, but we're also not sure if we should h

What have you seen lately that really impresses you? Yesterday I decided to sit in on a live launch of a new product from Frame.io. They are a cloud-based software company for video editors that allows for feedback on video to the editor in a collaborative environment online. They had a really impressive new product launch that showcased their first in the industry camera to cloud technology. It's amazing and I can see how out of COVID this technology was born. It basically allows for much smaller teams to be on set and for everything that is shot to be streamed directly to the internet for instantaneous viewing, downloading, editing, color correcting, etc. There is no more waiting for a large hard drive to be delivered or having more people on set to view what is being shot. It saves a ton of time. Not only is the product a huge step forward, but the presentation was awesome too. They basically talked through how the product works by demoing an actual shoot and how fast video and

In a little over 2 weeks I'll be back in Gulf Shores again. A week ago I never would have believed you if you told me this. We found a place that needs some major fixing up and the price was right so we bought it and between me and my brother-in-laws we're heading down for a week of demo and fixing it up so we can rent it this year. We're basically doing something similar to what we did last year, but this place needs more work. I'm pumped and still a little in disbelief that our offer was accepted so quickly. We looked at the place last Friday, put an offer on it on Saturday and the offer was accepted on Monday this week. Now it's a scramble to get a plan in place, purchase materials and stuff for the place over the next 3 weeks and wrap it all up by the second week of March.  The address is 2898 W Beach Blvd in Gulf Shores. We're still trying to think of a name for her. We've thrown around Little Lady and Little Bitty. One of my sisters said the place is q

A week ago my computer just stopped connecting to the internet. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get on. I thought it was my VPN while I was on vacation, but I soon figured out that it wasn't that when I got home and I still couldn't connect and then when I went to the office and couldn't connect either. I'm still not sure why it happened. But, yesterday I was given a loaner computer until I get a new one. Not being able to connect to the internet on a computer left me feeling disconnected while on vacation, even though I could still connect via my phone. I wasn't able to blog on here and there were probably other things I would have tried to do online, but at the same time it was probably good that it happened. I spent less time online and more time with my family while on our trip. Of all the times for the ability to connect to the internet to happen I guess during time off from work was probably the best time for it it to happen. I'm back and read

Yesterday was good. We had a bunch of people over to our place to play in the pool. My brother-in-law and I had all the kids and took care of the guests. I should say my brother-in-law helped with the guests mostly including making them lunch. He's got a gift for being a good host that doesn't make a big deal about hosting and taking care of people. He also took our friends out to fish on the beach and to dig a huge hole with the kids. Our kids had a blast and were so out of it last night by the time it was time to go to bed. I was exhausted by the end of the night too.

We had heard that you could ride bikes at the Gulf State Park for free, but then when we first looked up bike rentals for Gulf State Park we couldn't find anything except for options to pay to rent bikes. But then we decided to just walk some of Gulf State Park with our kids and we discovered their bike-sharing program which is really cool. We didn't actually use the bikes yesterday, but we learned how it works. Basically, if you download their app called "Bloom Bike Share", you are then able to take a bike for free for up to 3 hours to ride around on the 28 miles of trails in Gulf State Park. Bike stations can be found at common places like the beach pavilion entrance as well as at major trailheads throughout the park (such as Eagles Loop or Gulf Oak Ridge). We plan to try it out later this week. It's an awesome option for those that aren't able to bring a bike with them on vacation but would like to try biking in Gulf Shores. Gulf State Park is huge and it g

What is it about seeing a sunrise or a sunset that is just amazing when it comes over the horizon? I probably sound like an old person, but when I'm on vacation at the ocean I actually enjoy getting up early and seeing the sun come up. This morning didn't disappoint. It was cold, but I had my coffee in hand. I walked to the beach and watched the sun change the sky from dark to light. As I was walking back to our place I also happened to see an eagle fly right over our place. Now I probably really sound like an old guy, but in my opinion, these things are pretty cool. I'm ready to start a good day!

We made it. We're down in Gulf Shores for a while. Today I'm working from "home" in much nicer weather than Illinois. Yesterday right when we got here we ended up heading to the ocean for a little bit while a few of my brother-in-law's family got shrimp along the beach with some "suckers" they made out of PVC pipe. Basically they would find holes in the sand where a shrimp was and then put the piece of PVC pipe over the hole and then create suction to pull the shrimp out of the sand. Leave it to my brother-in-law's family to figure something like that out! It will be nice to be down here a couple of extra days to get situated.

Is it because we're getting ready for a trip? Is it because one of our kids woke me up at 2:30 and another kid woke me up at 3? Is it because sometimes my mind just gets going? I don't know, but what I do know is starting at about 2:30 until probably 4:30 I didn't sleep, and then I fell asleep for an hour, and then I was up. The other thing I know is when you have little kids you just learn to function on less sleep and sometimes it's just a normal abnormal night sleep. I think our whole family is a little excited about getting away for a while. We'll see how it goes. It's gonna be 16 kids (all cousins) and the oldest is 12! And we're going to try to do some work on our rental property with all that going on! This is the second year we're doing it. Last year was probably a lot more work than this year will be... since we just purchased the property last year and it needed some love. This year it's a lot of smaller projects and clean up.

I filled out a life expectancy calculator this morning and it said I could live to 92. My grandpa Al just celebrated his 94th birthday. I'm 41 right now, so that could be another 51 years... which feels like a long time. I also could only live a few more years. I have no idea. I've been reading Chip Gaines' book called "Capital Gaines" and towards the end, he writes his obituary and talks about how long a life expectancy calculator said he has yet to live. At the time he wrote the book he was 42 which was a couple years ago. He's close to my age. It just got me thinking about the future. What am I getting after? What's important to me? Last year I got a little fire about having family goals, but it sorta fizzled, and I never finished it... like many things I get excited about. I've talked about writing a kids' book of some sort. I get excited about our rental property in Gulf Shores and the potential there. I do love my job and the people I get to

Having little kids means that you can't accomplish much right? I'm not sure that that's right. I would say you feel more drained at the end of the day, but I also think that they give you something to fight for. You fight much harder to accomplish things and work hard than you do when you're working only for yourself. There's something similar that happens when you have a spouse. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't always feel like pushing myself. At the end of the day, most days, once the kids are in bed I'm ready to call it a day too. If it wasn't for my family though I don't think I would be driven to invest in a rental property or to learn to build a website, or to have a blog that I try to write in daily or to try to stay somewhat up on politics.  There's also a burden to teach my kids and share with them. I think that more than accomplishing things and setting goals for myself this is a harder one. I know I need to invest in my kids and he

I and my daughter found a new store that we like in Peoria. The Book Rack off of Knoxville is a used book store with a huge selection. It's well organized and the prices seem reasonable from about $2 to $4 a book typically. If you're looking for a good used book store in the area I would recommend this one.

Yesterday was pretty exhausting. Yet all I did was sit around most of the day. I sat in the car and drove an hour and a half to Philo, IL to attend one of our Winter Conference locations in person. I sat there and listened to the conference for about 6 hours then drove home for an hour and a half again. Then once I got home we watched the NAMA regional conference for an hour and by the time that was over I was ready to be done for the day. I was excited for the day and don't get me wrong it was good. The day of the conference was great. It's always good to see customers enjoying our content. And seeing work from the ag industry at the NAMA regional event is also good to see. But once it's over, it's over. I typically think we could have done that better still or in the example of NAMA I thought we might have won in a couple more categories. Why am I discontent? Why can't I enjoy the fact that we had a great conference or the fact that we actually did win a first at

What do you do when you don't agree with someone? Do you stay quiet or do you speak up? This question could use a little more context. If you don't agree with someone around their favorite food or movie or something that doesn't impact you or others personally it's probably fine to not voice your disagreement with their poor choice in food or entertainment. But, when the impact of their beliefs and opinions are much more far-reaching you should speak up at some point. You don't have to know all the right answers, although that's good, and it shouldn't be your goal to make them think just like you. But that's the beauty of living in a country where we're able to still express thought and challenge one another in our thinking. For example, I believe that a baby is a baby as soon as it's conceived. I will challenge you on this. A baby is not a blob or matter or anything else at any other point. Once sperm and egg come together in the womb they form

This morning I'm thankful that my mind is working. I can have coherent thoughts. I was able to get out of bed this morning and make myself a cup of coffee. I was able to drink that cup of coffee and taste and smell it. I'm able to sit on the couch and type letters on a keyboard and create sentences with words this morning. I'm able to read and comprehend. My eyes work and can show me what's around me. I'm able to feel warmth and cold. My lungs are working this morning and I can breathe. My heart is beating sending blood all over my whole body. I can hear noises through my ears and know what's going on around me. I'm thankful that my muscles are working that I'm able to hold things and grab things. I was able to put my clothes on this morning on my own. Just thinking about basic amazing things that I'm able to do because of how God made me and I'm thankful. Sometimes I sit down to write something and think I have to think of this really cool thing

Today is the start of the Winter Conference and I'm usually on my way into the office by now, but I'm sitting at home on the couch with no plans to be at the office at all. I plan to go to one of the 27 remote locations on Thursday this week. One thing that was the same this year is I couldn't sleep that well last night, but I don't think this time it was due to Winter Conference starting the next day I just think I was restless in general. This year for the first time ever at Precision Planting we won't have our Winter Conference at our headquarters with thousands of people coming through there. We have 27 remote locations this year with almost 70 different event dates, plus a whole bunch of dealer hosted watch parties this Friday. We took a big risk because we believed that in-person events were by far a better option than anything simulcasted to people's homes. We started with 32 events I believe and ended this morning with 27. We're looking forward to se

Play it safe or take a risk? What would you rather do? Should you do the hard thing? What if you fail? What if you lose money? What if someone gets hurt in some way? On the other side though... what if you learn something? What if you make money? What if you succeed? What if you end up creating something you never would have created? Yes, you might fail if you take a risk, but you'll never know if you don't try. What will hurt the most if you fail? You're pride most likely. Pride is something worth working on too. It's not a good thing. Most of us have too much of it. So, in this new year what will you take a risk on? Will you record a podcast, write a book, record a video, or take a class? Start a new hobby or share the gospel with someone? Take a risk. Don't play it safe.

It'd mid-January 2021 and I'm still working from home. I've been working from home since April of 2020. It's still hard to believe this has become the new normal for so many people that have office jobs. My new co-workers are ages 5, 4, and 1, and my wife. My new work attire is sweatpants and a zip-up hoodie with slippers unless there's a Zoom call and then I might put on a button-up shirt. My trips to the coffee maker involve hugs from my kids and catching up with my wife. My breaks in the middle of the day involve running on the treadmill or cleaning the bathroom along with lunch. Sometimes there's the occasional watching of kids while my wife runs an errand. It's all different. My car doesn't get near the number of miles on it anymore. I have no idea when we'll ever be back in the office again. Maybe in a few more months... maybe next year. No matter when it is it's going to be different when "everyone" is back in the office again. T

I didn't get up until 6:30 this morning. Words I never thought I'd say when I was in my 20s and living in Chicago. I love my mornings now though. Getting up early is something I enjoy because I like some alone time. Time to think and get ready for the day. Time to read. Enjoy a cup of coffee or two before the crazy of 3 little kids kicks in. So when I get up as late as 6:30 that might only give me 30 minutes or even less before one of my kids is up. Right now I've got 2 minutes left until 7 and I hear them getting up! Gotta go.

It's Friday and one thing I enjoy on Fridays is the "Release Radar" from Spotify. I know I've mentioned it before in a post, but there's just something about new music curated around artists I enjoy listening to that I like.  Some weeks you open it up and there's a song that just really hits you and then there are other weeks where everything seems just kind of blah, but you never know. You might even stumble across a new artist that you didn't know about that you like. There's one other area of Spotify that I've enjoyed more than others and that's under Browse in the Discover area. They have an area called top recommendations for you and also artists selected based on artists I like. I've found that to be a great resource for finding new artists that I didn't know about before that I like.

Will they shut us down? How conservative do you need to be in order to be shut down? I've been thinking about this more in the aftermath of what has happened with big tech companies shutting down our current President and others. I don't know the answer, but as I write I'm using Google's blogging service today. I use Google for a ton of stuff including my email. I use Apple products every day. I'm sure I use Amazon services for hosting purposes. I use the big tech credit card companies. I utilize Facebook and Twitter today. What if they said we don't like what you think about "x" and "y" thing. You're too far right. Would I just be out of luck? Is that coming someday soon? I'm not trying to create conspiracies at all. Just observing where some of these things could lead. The freedom to express ideas and the open market may come to end for those that aren't aligned with those that make the decisions. The internet may not be a place

I can't taste much or smell much and it's a really weird sensation. Yes, we got covid over our Christmas break. We didn't get tested, but when you can't smell or taste... you have it.  One of the best parts is not being able to smell any poopy diapers these days. It's a gift I think any parent with kids still in diapers would appreciate. The downside is you can't smell or taste anything else. So, most food just tastes blah. You still have the typical hankering for different foods, but then you make it and it's a disappointment because the taste just isn't there. Hamburgers were one of the worst. They just tasted like warm mush. But somehow there's still a little sense of taste and smell. I can't explain it well. Things that are more salty or sweet tend to make a little impact in your mouth. It's definitely not something you normally experience that's for sure. Overall, our symptoms have been very mild. We've stayed at home and are rec

Sometimes wouldn't you rather not know. Once you know about something you're accountable to take what you know and do the right thing or choose to do the wrong thing and purposefully be in the wrong. I feel this way about taxes. I'm not saying that you shouldn't pay them, but some it is so complicated, especially when you own your own business, that if you do it on your own you probably aren't do everything right. It's been a steep learning curve for me with our rental property in Gulf Shores and paying the lodging taxes. We have to pay lodging tax on a monthly basis for the state, county, and city. This number is supposed to be taken from our total number brought in each month. What makes it complicated is that Airbnb pays this for us, yet VRBO doesn't and we're on our own for any private deals. Then we also have to pay this tax on the cleaning fee that we collect according to my understanding. If I only didn't know it would save me a lot of hassle

We are currently getting about 10 inquires a day on our vacation rental property. It must be that the beginning of the year is when people start thinking about taking a vacation because we typically don't have this much action. We're already at 32 weeks books for this year and have even booked a week in 2022. It's easy to get excited about our property when the iron is hot and people are interested in booking. There's plenty of times though when it's pretty quiet and you tend not to even think about it... unless you're doing all the day-to-day, which is my brother-in-law. When there's a lot of action it takes more of your attention and you think about what could make it even better. But really it's in the rest of the time when it's slower when fewer inquires are coming in that you need to continue to be thinking about how to keep the place filled up.  I've slacked off on doing social posts for the property and haven't touched our website in a

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." I haven't heard this in a while. I'm not sure how many kids still say it in school. In light of the aftermath of 2 days ago and then also of 2020 it doesn't seem very true of us. We seem to be very divided. What if we committed to serving one another? That doesn't mean agreeing with everything someone else says, but believing we are all equal. No matter what political views we might have.

I don't know what to think anymore. I tend to think 2021 is going to be just as crazy as 2020 was, maybe more. With the latest news of people taking over the Capitol building yesterday in favor of Trump, our world is getting crazier and crazier.  I more so want to just document that things like this have happened. It makes me wonder what other countries now think of our nation. One of the most powerful countries in the world with tons of internal fighting that's ripping our country apart. It's hard for me to look at the things I read and see and believe that we can really still say, "In God we trust." or "God bless the U.S.A." There seems to be a lot of corruption within our government and leaders, many opposing agendas and many leaders with their own agendas. We have a huge amount of debt as a country yet we act as if we don't. I'm thankful that through all of this and going into a new year I can say that I believe that there is a God and He is

I haven't been big on new year's resolutions lately, but I do like the idea of challenging myself in areas where I'd like to get better and setting goals for myself. Something that I've been thinking about doing is sending a note to someone different every week of the year just to say thanks or I'm thinking of you or praying for you. It wouldn't be hard to do and I know it's good for me as well as I think most people appreciate a little note. The other thing I've been thinking about along those lines is sending video notes. I heard this on a podcast recently. Since we don't see people as much these days it's easy to just record a video on your phone and email it or use a service like Loom to record your video and send a link or use an app like Marco Polo. It seems like this would feel even more personal than a note... though I haven't done it yet. So maybe send a note today to someone that's helped you out recently or maybe to someone who