finite speck

What's the worst thing that could happen when you have a vacation rental property? Well, there are quite a few things bad that "could" happen. Over the weekend we discovered what might be the worst though. My wife handles the relationship with the cleaning company and she got a call from my brother-in-law who handles all correspondence with our renters. He mentioned that he hadn't seen any communication that the cleaning company had cleaned our property that day and the renters were going to be arriving at any time. We have a system set up that links with our booking sites so the cleaning company knows what day to come and clean and my brother-in-law had made changes a couple times to the check-out day. We had a freakout moment and weren't sure what we were going to do. The worst guest experience would be to walk into a dirty rental property when you arrive. Well, my wife ended up getting ahold of the owner of the cleaning company and she assured her that the prop...

We finally got it done. I didn't want to do the project at all. Come to think of it there's a lot of home projects like this. I blame the kids, thinking it's just too tough to break into a home project with them around. So my wife yesterday morning said (and had said a few times last week), "Let's get the ceiling painted." To which I replied in so many words, "No." So, we painted the ceiling yesterday. Because we knocked out a few walls in our home before we moved in the ceiling had to be redone. We painted it once and noticed that some areas didn't look that great so we asked the guy that plastered our ceiling to go over it again. He ended up redoing the entire ceiling. That meant that we had to repaint the entire ceiling as well.  My mom and Brittany's mom both graciously watched our kids for a lot of the day. By about 4 PM yesterday the ceiling was painted and we hopefully don't have to do it again. My wife and I think it looks nice, b...

I just finished my fourth book of the year on November 28th. My goal this year was to read 6. I think I can do it, but I feel like a procrastinator for sure. I plan to finish "The Wingfeather Saga" by Andrew Peterson. Actually, everything I've read this year has been by him so far. I'm not sure what the last book I read will be yet. I've got a few I could read. I would have to say the series I've been reading is way up there as far as series type books that I've read. It's full of twists and turns and keeps you guessing. I'm going to be reading these books to my kids when they get just a little bit older. I started reading a few of the chapters to my daughter and she enjoyed them already.

We went to Farm & Fleet a couple nights ago to just get out of the house for a little bit. They have their toys out now for Christmas so we spent a while looking at everything they had getting ideas for our kids as well as trying to figure out some ideas for gifts for the cousins. My son Baer just wanted us to get something either for him or his cousin Boone. "What about this?" "Can we get this one?" He's three right now and it's hard for him to grasp the concept of "looking" and not "getting". He was loving looking at all the toys but kept asking to get something that night.  All of a sudden Baer was ready to go. "Let's go, dad!" I thought to myself, "That's strange. Why is he all of a sudden ready to leave the store?" We had been talking about heading out since it was getting close to our kids' bedtime. I looked at him and he had this funny look on his face and he wouldn't totally look me in the e...

Thank you for three kids and a wife. Thank you for a warm home. Thank you for our health. Thank you for our parents really close. Thank you for the town in which we live. Thank you for a church close by. Thank you for siblings that know Jesus. Thank you for jobs that are continuing to do well. Thank you for the food available. Thank you for vehicles to go to places. Thank you for our rental property that was a success this year. Thank you for a mind that can think clearly. Thank you for the good news of Jesus coming to die for sinners like me. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for a refrigerator to keep our food from spoiling. Thank you for the dishwasher to wash our dishes. Thank you for warm showers. Thank you for good books to read. Thank you for music to listen to. Thank you for stories told through movies. Thank you for podcasts. Thank you for the ability to find things on the Internet. Thank you for a warm blanket. Thank you for coffee in the morning. Thank you for the ab...

What if you could only share certain ideas on all the mainstream technology tools that we have today? And if you didn't play by the rules you simply wouldn't be heard. You would be shut down. So, if you had a podcast that the mainstream outlets had you on and they didn't like it and could somehow filter it you would not be able to air your podcast anymore. The same if you had a video channel, or a book, or a radio program. What if it even extended to people that don't have those things, but maybe they're on social media, or text message, or email. And those things get filtered as well and you could get shut down or wouldn't be allowed to say certain things. I wonder if a day like that is coming? Right now you can say anything you want basically, but we're also seeing some individuals with a lot of influence getting canceled/filtered on the major social networks. Or we see people getting absolutely humiliated for things they've said on social media by the...

Our 1-year-old really likes Spiderman right now for some reason. His favorite book to grab is a Spiderman book and he will sit and listen to us read it. Also, if you ask him to say Spiderman, he will attempt to say it. It sounds more like Sblahblah, but he's consistent with the sound. He will also put his hand out sometimes like Spiderman if you ask him what Spiderman does.  Mac does not say a lot of words yet, but he definitely knows what's going on. It's funny to see the kind of things our kids tend to like. This kid likes superheroes for sure. 

Where did that go? I know it's around here somewhere. I know I put it right there. These are things that I feel like I say pretty often at our home. And it's never my fault, right? Wrong. It's easy for me to blame the fact that I can't find things on others in my family, but the fact is that it's just as much my fault. I see things out and I don't put them away either. Or I open up a drawer, closet, or even room and see that things could be picked up and organized and I choose to do something else instead. In reality for having 3 little kids, we do really well. It could easily look like a tornado hit most days and most days it doesn't look that bad thanks to my wife. Also, my oldest is starting to get pretty good at organizing and putting things away. A reminder that I'm just as much the one to blame was that I took a work trip over a month ago and just yesterday I finally put away my clothes and suitcase.

My older son is going to be ready for a bigger bike next year. He turns 4 in just a few more weeks. We currently have 2 bigger bikes, but one is Hello Kitty and the other is a Disney Princess bike. Our daughter ended up with 2 because we borrowed one from my parents and we got another one from VarageSale. Do we just have him ride a pink "girly" bike? He's going to need a larger bike again at some point. It's not that we can't afford a boy bike. I tend to feel like we should get him a boy bike. We also have a younger son too that would end up riding it. I don't know that I would give it a second thought, but my wife brought it up to me asking if we even needed to get Baer a bike. She asked why does he need a "boy" bike? There's really no difference other than the characters on the bike. I get it. I mentioned though that it's different with some "girly" characters on a bike than just a color of a bike. Our daughter probably would have...

Would you rather share something that others have created, create something yourself, or just consume something? The easiest is definitely just to watch, scroll, take, consume, whatever you want to call it. It's passive and you most likely don't include anyone else in it. You can also share what others have created, but it still doesn't take a lot of thought. You can fairly easily click "share" or "forward". You could go a step further by including a message about what you're sharing, why you believe it's important, or worthy of others taking a look.  The hardest yet most rewarding in my opinion is to create and I think in one way or another we all enjoy being part of that process. It's something "original" to us. Typing a blog post, drawing a picture, renovating a room, painting a wall, recording a video, making a meal and there are so many more. These all take time, but there's something more rewarding about them. I know some ...

That blinking cursor. It stares at me every morning when I open up my blog. What do I write about today? You're kidding yourself. You're not a writer. Why are you even doing this? Then I open up Instagram and scroll for a few minutes. Nothing. Then I open up my email to distract myself. Nothing. I sit and stare and think back on the last 24 hours. I think about my kids and my wife. I think about this last year. I think about how work has been so different because of COVID.  I'm 683 posts into my blog today and two years ago I was going to just try to write for a year to see how it went. I do still enjoy it, but I don't know if I've gotten that much better at writing or not. It's definitely a good way to get my mind going in the morning and record some thoughts. This year with all that's happened in our world will be interesting to look back on. The blinking cursor makes me think of exercising. I've written about it on here before. I don't really like...

We played a couple games of Old Maid with our older two last night and they loved it. We're getting to the point where they're starting to get fun to play games with. Baer who is almost 4 thought it was so funny when I took the Old Maid from him and I lost the game. We're trying to be intentional about doing things with our kids and not letting them watch a lot of TV. Last night we read some books to them and played a couple games. I feel "old fashioned" saying it as much I enjoy watching a movie or show, but there's something much more stimulating about reading, playing games, or with toys. I've heard of multiple families having their kids earn screen time and I tend to think it's a good idea. I grew up playing a lot of hours of video games as well as watching probably an hour of cartoons after school most days. Even Saturday mornings I feel like I watched a couple hours of cartoons. I understand why as a parent it can be easy to let your kids do it s...

How will you use up your time this week? You have 168 hours.  How much time will you spend alone? How much time will you spend with others? How much time will you spend in front of a computer? How much time will you spend working? When you have "free" time, what will you do with it? Will you use it on yourself? Will you reach out to others? When you are just thinking where will your thoughts go? Are they selfish or are you thinking about others? I don't know about you, but these are convicting questions to answer. I'm selfish. A lot of time I think about myself. Yet I have a wife and kids to also think about. What do they want? How do I love and help them? As we approach the holiday times of Thanksgiving and Christmas and I have more time with our family these questions come up more. Also, as our days get a little shorter (amount of daylight) and we're stuck inside more due to the cold weather it's easy to just want to turn on the TV and just try to get to the...

Sunday we tried to rest. We know we should, but I tend to still see things to do and it doesn't end up being restful. Yesterday it was restful. I did clean off my wife's phone because it was almost totally full of photos. We got our kids out of the house for a bit and ran over to my parents to see them for a bit and then walked back home.  I danced with the kids in our basement for a while to some Rend Co. Kids music. We also made a "Give Thanks" sign for our front window for Thanksgiving. And for dinner last night we grilled hamburgers and made some homemade sweet potato fries and coleslaw. Oh and then we played Go Fish at the end of the night with the older two kids. It was a full day and restful in the sense that we didn't do a bunch of projects/work, but we just enjoyed time together as a family. I don't think I've mentioned this on here either, but Mac has learned how to nod his head to say yes. He still won't say yes, but he's started nodding...

Our youngest has become very mobile in the last week. Mac is 18 months and between him being able to climb up on anything, go up and downstairs, and he can "run", makes him one to watch. He likes climbing up on the fireplace or the on top of the coffee table or even the kitchen table. We have to keep the bedroom and bathroom doors closed or he'll be in them. If the bathroom door is left open he'll either have his hands in the toilet or worse someone's toothbrush. He loves getting into the pantry too if it's left open even just a little. He's also picking up on words. Like we can't say anything about outside or he'll want to go outside. If he hears the word snack he'll want one. If you ask him if he wants to go to church he'll shake his head no.  Though he knows words and what they mean. He won't try to say very many. He'll try every once in a while. He can say momma, dada, papa, and that's about it.

Are you generous with your talents? What kinds of things do you know or can you do? Are you willing to help others who want to know or can't? Obviously, this takes time, but are you willing to give some of your time? My wife has been encouraging me this week to do this. We were asked by some friends to take some photos of their kids and so we made that happen. It actually didn't take that long and I'm confident we got some good ones for them. Also, my cousin asked me to design a logo for her business so I put some time into that and came up with something that she's going to be able to use. How much did I charge? Nada. Nothing. Sorry for those of you making a living in these areas. I know I'm not helping you, but sometimes it's just good to help people out. Believe me, I know what I could charge for these activities. As a freelance art director/designer my hourly rate is not cheap, but I guess I'm not at the place where I'm doing a lot of freelancing the...

Did you ever think people would be working for large corporations from their basements? Did you ever think that you'd be talking to people through a video camera across the world? Did you ever think there'd be a shortage of toilet paper? Did you ever think that there would be mask mandates to enter stores or companies? Did you ever think you would be asked to stay 6 feet away from other people? Did you ever think that there would be concern about playing with the neighbor kids or that your kids would get sent home because they'd been exposed to a kid that tested positive for the coronavirus? Did you ever think that sports stadiums would be empty during the regular season or that tv shows would be cancelled? Did you ever...? I'm just sitting back here in early November and thinking about how different this year has been and how different our future is going to be as well. I could never have imagined that 2020 would be a year like it has been. One thing that has reminded ...

Is social media a good place to share your political views? Is it a good place to reshare the political views of others? What do social media giants want us to share and talk about?  I think these are good questions to be asking, especially after an election. Do I need to engage in the mudslinging? I read a good article yesterday from Kevin DeYoung called "When You Say Nothing At All" . In the article, he talks about this topic. He wasn't saying that politics doesn't matter, and I totally agree with him. He states though that politics is becoming more and more divisive and toxic and lines are being drawn on who I will associate with due to political leanings. This in turn is making the church more passionate about politics and the world's priorities than about the gospel. He gives the example of athletes, movie stars, and musicians sounding off about their political leanings and how many people get annoyed at this. Sometimes it results in people never tuning into ...

Why do I do it? I have no clue. When I'm brushing my teeth I typically put my left hand in my pocket. More of a random thought than anything else this morning. While on the subject of brushing teeth I totally recommend an electric toothbrush. My wife is a dental hygenist and while she doesn't use one after a few dental checkups where my teeth needed a lot of cleaning I've found using an electric toothbrush has helped me keep my teeth cleaner. Especially in those harder to reach back areas. Plus, the toothbrush has a timer on it so you know when you've brushed long enough. The other thing that I've been doing since I've been married is flossing regularly. I admit I still don't like doing it, but it's become a habit (like blogging) and I typically do it. My two recommendations if you have more challenging dentist visits is to invest in an electric toothbrush and start flossing every day. I'm not a dental expert at all, but I'd say these have probab...

I've been getting a lot of help lately with the basement project. I'm thankful for it. Yesterday as we closed in on finishing the project. We got the pea gravel dumped in and then my dad showed up (he said he was coming), but I didn't realize he was going to help me out a little. He came and offered up some materials he had to cover the pea gravel. Then he blew and rake our leaves for us and then ran a few errands for me picking up 20 bags of topsoil and picking up a rototiller to chop up the soil for me so I could get the ground leveled. Today it's supposed to rain a little bit, so the last thing I need to do this morning is connect the gutter downspout so we have the water draining away from the house. Then we wait and see what happens in the basement.

This time of year it gets dark so early. With our time change, it's dark at 5:30 PM. Of course, it's light earlier in the morning, but it just feels like you don't have much of an evening this time of year. By the time it gets dark outside it seems like it should be about 7 PM or so, but it's not even 6. It sounds like for the last 5 years or so there's interest in abolishing the time change in the United States. I think time change started close 100 years ago in order to conserve energy, but it sounds like it's really hard to prove that there's actually much energy conserved by having that hour of light in the evening versus the morning. I always thought it was done for the farmers, but turns out that was a myth.

Thanks to my neighbor Mike across the street for letting me borrow his grinder and his wheelbarrow. Thanks to my neighbor Ben across the street who let me borrow a piece of wood to get our heat pump off the ground. Thanks to my neighbor Bob next door who help me and my wife get our heat pump raised up and level. Thanks to my mother-in-law who helped me move dirt all afternoon. Thanks to my wife who watched the kids and helped move dirt as well. Plus, thanks to my daughter who helped me move dirt too. It was a family project yesterday with help from my neighbors at times as we keep working on wrapping up this basement wall repair project. Also, thankful to Billy Daniels who is bringing pea gravel on Monday morning to fill the hole. He's been giving me a lot of help over the last week to get this project done. And I'm thankful for my brother-in-law Chad who has helped me make decisions on how much dirt to move around the house, whether I can use a certain product, how to do the p...

It's Saturday morning. We are four days past election day now and we don't know who the new President of the United States is. Many said there would be a lot of chaos after the election either way and so far we haven't seen that to my knowledge. I don't have any idea how long it's gonna take to get the presidency sorted out. I'm also not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. We definitely are a very divided country at this point. That is clear. I don't know whether we will become united again or not.  Sometimes listening to political reporting of the kind of words used in our political system about one another reminds me of elementary school. Lots of name-calling from the media, the influential, the officials, and the public. There seems to be no filter. 

Being able to find someone that can help you that's trusted and reliable is a big deal. I'm thankful for living in Morton, Illinois where my grandparents have lived since the 1950s and where my dad grew up and my parents live now. There's a lot of people that know either my grandparents, my parents, or my dad's siblings. That goes a longs way when trying to find someone that can help when you're working on a house project or need a car repair or you just need a hand with something. Such was the case as I'm working on repairing our basement wall. I got a recommendation from our realtor to contact a guy named Billy Daniel who's really good at foundation work. Unfortunately, he's scaling back and wasn't able to help us out with our repair, but he offered to answer any questions I had and provide any resources if I needed them. He also said he knew my parents from church when he came over to look at our wall. I've been able to text him photos as I...

Last night we had dinner at my in-laws which is typical when both me and my wife work. I'm so thankful for my in-laws. They are just great at handling our 3 little kids. Dinners are usually chaotic and they typically just go along with it. Last night at one point some food flew from my son Baer's plate into my drink and then seconds later my other son, Mac, dropped his sippy cup on the floor sending a nice splash of milk into my face. There's was tons of noise... I don't know if I'd call it all conversation. Mac threw plenty of food on the floor. Then there's the amount of time it usually takes our kids to eat as well. Through it all, Tim and Jeanne seem to just enjoy being with our family and having a meal with us. Thankful for them. 

I'm still working on fixing the wall of our basement where we're getting some water in the house. We had the local basement expert come by last night to get an idea of what else I need to do and it sounds like I've still got some work cut out for myself, but he's willing to give me advice along the way. I was able to get ahold of the sales rep in the area so I could get some of the tar product to apply to the wall once it's cleaned. I'm meeting a driver in Normal, IL to get that. I couldn't find anyone around here who had it so I had it picked up in Belwood, IL, and a driver meeting me in Normal, IL to pick it up. The guy we met with last night recommended digging out all of the existing pea gravel as well down to the tile and opening up the tile to check it out. He said he would recommend me remove the existing tile and put in plastic tile. He also recommended that we not have our downspout underground with a popup as it will freeze during the winter and we...

Today is election day in the United States. It's been made to feel like a monumental day this year due to how polar opposite the two candidates are on everything. The voter turnout will probably be bigger than any other election the United States has had. I myself still don't know a lot about politics, but I've definitely learned a lot more than I ever knew before over the last 2 years or so as I've listened regularly to some conservative podcasts by the alternative media that's out there. I don't trust a lot of the mainstream media that's out there at all. I don't believe they are trying to report everything, only what supports their agenda and the agenda of the politicians they deem worthy. That said I'm thankful for a co-worker of mine that turned me on to "The Ben Shapiro Show" podcast that comes out daily during the week. I believe it's one of the most unbiased reports of the news that's out there and it's easy for me to li...

Today is the day our first print ad is due to one of our media publications and I've got a little work to go in wrapping it up. It's been in the back of my mind over the last three days as it's been the weekend and I took Friday off to work on a house project. I could have chosen to wrap it up over the weekend, but instead chose my family and the house project instead. I don't regret the decision and it's the decision I typically make as I've learned in the last 20 years, no matter what, work will always be there when it's time to work. No matter how much time I put in at work there will always be something else to do. Having little kids help with this as well. It's pretty tough working from home to just any old time break away from the madness and start working unless they're all sleeping or it's your planned work time. I wouldn't be able to easily just decide I'm going to work in the middle of a Saturday with the kids and wife at home. ...

First an update. I finished digging the hole in the backyard yesterday with a shovel. It's about 3 feet from the house, 8 feet down, and 9 feet across. My body is feeling it. Especially my hands, feet, and my lower back. We only have 2 months left of 2020 and our election day is this Tuesday. It's going to be a wild week I have a feeling. Most people are expecting some kind of unrest no matter what happens on Tuesday as far as the election. No matter if Biden wins or Trump. I also just checked and I only have 28 more workdays for the year. An average of 14 days per month for November and December, between having Thanksgiving, Christmas, and unused time off that I need to use. The next 2 months are going to fly by... I think. There's also the looming Coronavirus that looms over everyone when we get sick this season. I have a cousin and his wife that have it right now. My mom got contacted a couple weeks ago because she had been exposed to it through her hairdresser and had t...