finite speck

I see little glimpses of my three-year-old boy maturing... glimpses. Usually, he's pretty crazy, a typical boy. But, last night we burned a bunch of wood from some tree limbs I cut down and he helped cut the branches down and put them in the fire and he was so calm. Maybe it was the seriousness of a fire that could harm him that made him calm down a bit, listen to me, and work together with me, but it was nice to see he can do it. He can be a helper. He can control himself. The other thing I noticed is the difference between boys and girls. My daughter just sat in a chair and watched us cut limbs and put them in the fire. She was totally content to observe. While my son just couldn't help himself. He wanted to be right in there cutting limbs and throwing them in the fire. There's something about a little danger that draws a boy in. That desire for excitement and a little unknown of what will happen when I throw this branch in. It's fun to see our kids growing up.

I finished my second book of the year and started my third. I really do enjoy reading, but like I've mentioned before it takes me a while to get into a book. Now that I started the Wingfeather Saga series of books I'm guessing that I'll get through the next three rather quickly. My goal was to read 6 books by the end of this year. If I read the full Wingfeather Saga plus Andrew Peterson's "Adorning the Darkness" that will put me at 5.

With 3 kids and our oldest only 5, sometimes we have a hard time coming up with something to do as a family. Obviously, an easy one is to just put on a movie, but we really try to limit the amount of TV we watch. So what did we do on a Sunday afternoon? Well, we ate outside for lunch. Then we filled up the water table and our kiddie pool for the kids to splash around in for a bit. Then we played a little game of whiffle ball. We had naps, while I fixed my daughter's ceiling fan and my wife and daughter did a puzzle. Then we had a frozen pizza for supper and afterward headed to the Morton high school football field to just run around for a while. The football field was probably one of the kid's highlights of the day. They loved running around the track and on the field itself. It's the astroturf style field so there's something kinda cool about that for them. Then once we got home we played a game of Go Fish and Old Maid before bed. Oh, and we even let our two oldest sle...

I've got to get that project done. I ran out of materials. The kids need to stay out of the way. It will just be a little bit longer.  Have you ever had scenarios play out like this over a weekend? I do. I feel like it's the challenge of owning your own home and keeping up with it. The other side of this is spending time with my wife and kids. Yesterday I ended up running to the hardware store 3 times. To times in the town we live in and then once I had to go to the next town over. It took longer than I expected for sure. How much time should I devote to projects? What actually needs to get done versus what do I just want to do? I know my family is important so I don't want to neglect them.

My older son is three and he loves to have something in his hands at all times. I've written about him before usually holding at least 3 things in his hands. Yesterday he got a bunch of free McDonald's toys from a garage sale and that means they got carried around everywhere and probably will for a few days now. They all were in his bed last night and right now they're all on the couch with him this morning. I forgot to mention he also won a Megablocks car at a church movie night last night. So he also slept with that car last night too. I don't know how he even had a place to sleep!

I used to think I was a good gift-giver... and I enjoyed giving gifts. But, I'm not so sure anymore since I've been married. You see my wife is not a big gifts person, in general, she'd rather have some quality time with someone than get a gift. She's also super practical, so she likes practical gifts. I'm still trying to figure it out and in the process, I feel like opportunities come up really fast like her birthday or Christmas. So, we're about a week away from her birthday and I don't have anything figured out. I'd kind of like to get her a nice photo book made from the last few years, but it's a decent amount of effort to get that pulled off and it probably won't be done by her birthday. I would guess that just doing things that make her feel like she's thought of would make for a good birthday for her. And maybe that's where I should start.

I'm not a web developer, but I decided earlier this year that I would build a website. So I did it. I built a website for our vacation rental property in Gulf Shores, Alabama called The Lazy Lady . After failing to understand the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org I got back up again and built our website on the wordpress.org platform using Elementor (the free version). I also had the help of a lot of YouTube videos to get it started. Now that the website is up I'm learning about SEO (search engine optimization) and that there's constant tweaking to try and get your website to show up better in organic search. We've got a lot of challenges because we're such a small business... 1 vacation rental home at this point. So we're probably not going to show up in the first page results of Google much unless someone searches for "Lazy Lady Gulf Shores". We're up against all the large vacation rental companies and even the mid-size ones tha...

What will 2021 be like? It's only 3 months away. Who will be our president? Will there continue to be riots? Will there still be fear around COVID-19? Will we know more about the virus? Do 3 months and a new year even make a difference? We tend to put markers on things and think that at the end of a timeline things will be different. We say things about getting through this time or it will be interesting to see what happens when this is all over. I don't know what 2021 will be like. I don't think it will be like the beginning of 2020. But in the meantime, I want to be praying for our community, our leaders, and our country. There's more and more division and I don't see things getting more united. I see the divides getting greater.

We had a sort of plan that my brother-in-law that lives in Alabama would go down and clean up the debris outside our property after Hurricane Sally later this week. His plan was a wheelbarrow and a bunch of hand tools and hours and hours of work, possibly in the rain. One of my other brother-in-laws has family that also has a place down there and they had some connection with a guy and a skid steer and so they hired him to do work clearing away the debris. The skid steer guy was able to knock out clearing away everything in no time at all yesterday evening. There's still work to do down there at our property, but things are coming together! We got a few photos of what it looked like after everything was cleared away and we now have a beach! Before Hurrican Sally, we weren't able to touch any of the grasses on our property or disturb anything because of the beach mouse. I wrote about the beach mouse before here . Because of the hurricane that just happened, it gave us the abilit...

It typically takes me a little time to get into a book, but once I'm in about 50 to 100 pages then it's easy to keep going. I was just thinking about that last night as I'm about 150 or so pages into the first book in Andrew Peterson's Wingfeather Saga. It just takes a while to figure out the characters and the places and the things talked about. Many times you don't get right into all the action either. But, now I'm to the place where it's easy to pick the book up and read a few chapters at least and want to keep going. What's my point in sharing this? If you're not a big reader I would encourage you to push through those first few pages... keep going. You'll get to the exciting stuff typically. I would also say just read. It's good for ya. Good to imagine things and think about things in a different way than you do when you watch TV and it's all been done for you. I'm going to finish my second book by the end of this month for the y...

A direct hit. That's what happened this past week in Gulf Shores, Alabama where Hurricane Sally came through. We were following it pretty closely at the beginning of last week. Thankfully we didn't have anyone staying at our rental property. The storm was bad. It took us a little while after the storm to get an idea of the damage to our property. Thankful for our neighbor, Tom, who Facetimed with me and showed us some of our property. Then we had some family take a look at the inside, as well as my brother-in-law's co-elder from church. In the end, there really was little damage to our place. There was a small amount of water that came in around a few windows. There was a little bit of soffit that came off and a couple of picnic tables that got wrecked, but that was about it.  We are so thankful because there's a ton of damage down there.

I've been working from home for the last few weeks because my kids had a little bit of a temperature. Working from home means working in the basement in a room with a large egress type window. A couple of days ago I was talking on the phone to someone and I look out the window to see a baby bunny huddled in the corner of the window well and a few flies buzzing around it. Then I saw the bunny blink and realized it's still alive. Then I noticed blood on the window and on some of the rocks in the window well. So, I decided I'm going to attempt to hop in the window well and get this little bunny out. I put on some gloves and grabbed a bucket. First I dropped the bucket in to see if the bunny would move. The bunny didn't budge. Then I lowered myself in the window well and the bunny still didn't move. The little guy was so scared. So I bent down and with the bucket and my hands kind of pushed the bunny into the bucket. Then I lifted the bunny out and put him on the grass....

My son's favorite word this year made it into a song by one of his favorite artists, Randall Goodgame. I missed his initial reaction when he heard this song, but my wife said it was hilarious. I don't think he could believe that someone would sing a song about poop. Way to go Randall Goodgame! Way to write a song that sticks in your head and that's catchy and includes the word poop in it. It is hilarious. I haven't had a chance to listen to the entire album, but there are definitely some gems for kids and adults together. Here are the lyrics to Poop in a Bag. Poop in a Bag by Randall Goodgame Walking my dog Down the street Leash in my hand Shoes on my feet We slow down when she starts to squat I scoop the poop and I tie the knot I’ve got poop in a bag Poop in a bag I’ve got hot fresh poop in a bag Poop in a bag Poop in a bag I’ve got hot fresh poop in a bag My friend Suzanne Rounding the block With her best friend Cody Out for a walk They slow down when Cody starts a sn...

We got a call last night from one of the judges of the Morton Pumpkin Festival pumpkin decorating contest. My daughter right away heard who I was talking to and started jumping up and down and told my wife, "I think my pumpkin won the contest!" She was right. She won first place in the 4 to 6-year-old age group. She was so pumped that she couldn't hardly control herself. We're not sure what she actually wins, but we go to pick up her prize today at the Chamber of Commerce. She worked on decorating her pumpkin for a lot of time this past weekend and spent a ton of time even thinking about decorating it ever since she picked up the pumpkin from the farm. So I'm glad she did win! Sadly, our "jazzy shark" pumpkin that we did as a family must not have won because we didn't get a call about that one. But if I had to pick which pumpkin should win I would have rather it been my daughter's because if hers hadn't and our other won it would have been a ...

 I'm not sure how long I've been doing this now, but it's probably been a year at least. Almost every weekday morning I will have the exact same thing for breakfast. Peanut butter oatmeal. I take some oatmeal and milk and heat it up in the microwave. Then I add in a large spoonful of brown sugar and the same of peanut butter. I mix that all together and that's my breakfast. It's super easy, I'd say pretty healthy (at least the oatmeal and milk is) and I don't have to spend any time thinking about what I'm going to eat. I also typically will have a coffee first thing when I get up. My favorite coffee is a Starbucks Pike Place with a little half and half in it. Pretty plain.

Our first week with no renters at our vacation home happened this week. Our renters backed out last minute because of the weather this week in Gulf Shores. They are supposed to get 12 inches of rain in a couple days. It took us a while to figure out how they were able to cancel the last minute though. Typically you're not able to cancel your booking within hours of when your rental starts, but evidently, if the weather makes you feel unsafe Airbnb will allow you to get a full refund and cancel your reservation. We also decided we will not allow weddings anymore at our rental house. We had a wedding party at our place last week and between a few things we heard from our handyman and then complaints we got from one of our neighbors about a group of people going through their property and getting in a fight with them it sounds like no weddings would be a good idea.  Between these two incidents, there was a lot of back and forth between all of the partners in our property and my poor b...

If you would have told me in high school that I'd get up every morning (or most mornings) and write I would have said you're crazy. Twenty-some years later though that's what I've been doing. For almost 2 years now I've been writing every morning in an attempt to become a better writer and just as something to be disciplined in. I don't have a bunch of followers and that's fine. I'm not writing to gain a big following. I think it will be fun to look back someday at all that I've written about. I've actually had this blog going for longer than my youngest son. This makes me think of him and all that's changed with him in the last year. He's walking everywhere now. He likes putting his shoes on when anyone else does. We have to be careful when we say things like outside because he knows words and will want to go outside then. In the last week, he's started to be interested in trying to say words. We can't make out much of what he tr...

Right now all my daughter can think about since we picked up pumpkins to decorate is decorating her pumpkin for the Morton Pumpkin Festival pumpkin decorating contest. She's sitting right beside me already this morning and I asked her what she's looking forward to today and that's what she said. She has the biggest smile on her face as I told her that's what I'm writing about this morning. She has some sticks for arms for her pumpkin. She has some rocks for shoes. She wants to use marigold seeds for her hair. The pumpkin is going to have a dress made of fabric. She's thinking maybe acorns for the eyes. She's been thinking about this a lot since we picked up the pumpkin. It's fun to see her excited and I need to remember that she's excited about this during the day today to make it fun. There's nothing worse than looking forward to something and no one else really cares. What are you excited about today?

I've been working from home this week and so taking a day off means I'm still at home. Still at home means the kids are all here and it's a little chaotic. Which makes me think of my wife. Day off? There's rarely a day off unless my wife and I take a day away, which has never happened to date. And dates haven't happened for a while either. Right now I'm sitting at the table and all of us are eating cinnamon rolls. I didn't get up until 6:30AM this morning and so I only got about 20 minutes until kids started waking up. And then the... "I want, I need, Dad, Mom,..." starts. Today is also September 11th. A day in 2001 I will never forget. It was my second day of work after college at my first full-time job and I remember going into the office, walking over to my cubicle, and seeing a bunch of people gathered around a little tv in someone's office. They were watching the towers in New York City get hit by a plane and explode. I remember our office...

I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do. What does that even mean? I like to think that I have a good eye for design. I've had experience working for some large advertising agencies and working with a lot of very talented individuals. I can tend to think pretty highly of myself and not listen to others if I don't think they have as much experience. I also am not afraid to tackle doing something new if I have a little experience in it and instruction from an expert.  What if I didn't think so highly of myself though? What if I would sit back some and let others with less experience also talk, share, and bring ideas to the table? What if I didn't think my stuff was better than others, but other people's stuff was really good too? Could I be more of a team player? My wife and I were talking about work a little last night and I mentioned how this year has been a little tougher because it's been a year of growing in size of our department which has been real...

You may not like every new fangled gadget that comes out, but chances are pretty good that you enjoy something new every so often. What is it about a new thing? It could be a new song, new shoes, a newly organized area of the house, or new food from the grocery store. We enjoy it don't we? But a week or two or three later do we still enjoy that song, those shoes,...? Why doesn't it last? I believe all these things are good, but they point out something about the world we live in. It's passing away. These things are pointing us toward something in us that longs for something new and that's a kingdom that is coming someday when all things will be made new for those that believe in Christ's payment for their sin. We long for all to be made right one day. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more." Revelation 21:1

We went hiking with all 3 kids yesterday at Rocky Glen Park and had a good time. It's a little tough with small kids especially when you hike down in the bottom area, but we did alright. I know the kids enjoyed it.  And my son just woke up as I was writing this carrying his Simba costume. My sister dropped a few things for us over the weekend and one of the things was the Simba costume. He's had that costume on most of the day yesterday and as I type he has it on right now. He didn't wear it hiking yesterday or swimming, but I'm sure he would have if he could.  Baer just cracks me up because he's always got one or two things that are his "favorite" thing for a few days and then it's on to another one or two things.

We have a website for our rental property and I created it a couple months ago now. I know it's a solid website with the correct information and it looks good. But I've since learned that there's also a whole other side to a website as well. SEO. Our website address is lazyladygulfshores.com . It's not a super long website address, but most people aren't going to type it in. Most are either going to click to it from somewhere else like social media or they're going to Google something and possibly find it that way. The challenge is getting our website to rank very high for more general terms since most people aren't going to type "lazy lady gulf shores". That's where SEO starts to come in. I'm learning that there are all kinds of things you can do to help your pages rank better. For example, you can change your title tags (the name of your web page), you can change the meta tags (the description that you see about your web page in search), ...

I sanded a desk with my wife and our two oldest kids yesterday to get it ready to paint. It's been a project Brittany has been wanting to do for a while. Once we got it all sanded I took the kids for the rest of the day and let my wife (she wanted to) paint the desk. I can be really critical of how things are done and it was good for me to step away and let her do it. I checked in a couple times and just gave some positive encouragement. It's something I've learned through work being on a team. It's much more helpful to other people, in general, to let them do a project versus micromanage it. I could have grabbed the brush and said do it this way or I could have said I don't know about how that's looking, but instead I chose to let her do it and encourage her. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but it's looking good and I believe she's going do an awesome job refinishing our desk.

We're into September of 2020. It's been a long year, but these last four months typically go by quickly. I'm sure they won't be quite the same as they have been in the past. I can't imagine there will be huge lines for Black Friday this year, but Cyber Monday might be really big. Lines for other things like Santa probably won't look the same either. This weekend is Labor Day Weekend. The weekend where you take a trip or get a bunch of stuff done at home. We won't be taking a trip and I'm not sure what all we'll get done at home. My wife wants to repaint a desk, so that will probably get done. I'd love to see us get more of our stuff put away and organized if we're able to this weekend. It seems like our life is a lot of picking up and putting things away or finding a home for them with little kids. Mac our youngest also woke up at 4:30AM this morning to start our Labor Day weekend and went back to bed a couple times, but he's now up for g...

I got out of bed at 5:30 it's now 6:09. Where did the last 39 minutes go? I got distracted. I made some coffee, checked some boxes on a health app, then sat down to read the bible, read the blog, and write,... It wasn't until about 6 that I started those last three things because I decided to open up Instagram, Facebook, Google, and my email. All of those are bottomless. They're easy to get into and hard to get out of and should be reserved for rewards, not starts to the day. Of course, if you want to start your day on Instagram, Facebook, and Google or Twitter feel free to. I just know they're really good at sucking time out of your day fast.  Where did it go? Down the "social" hole.

This week has felt really long. I think it's because we had plans and they got canceled and I started working from home yesterday. This is one of those mornings where I just don't even know what to write about and I even had thoughts of why am writing. Does writing a blog article every day really make me a better writer? Should I stop for a while? I guess I don't know the answer. What I do know is that it's been a discipline that's been good for me. Overall, it helps me in getting going in the morning. I rarely get up later than 6AM and usually, it's a lot earlier than that. Being at home one day for work was a little tough. I hope today will be a better day than yesterday. I just seemed to be annoyed a lot and took it out on my family. I would see things to do around the house and want to take care of them, but know that I had work to do and also knew that my wife needed to take care of the kids. I need to be thankful like in my post a couple days ago for what ...

About this time today, we would have been getting ready to leave for a short trip to Michigan. But, I'm at home instead. After I got home from work yesterday my oldest said her tummy was hurting her and she had a little bit of temperature. So, we canceled our trip. I also decided I would work from home for the rest of the week in case it's anything serious. It just makes me wonder what things are going to look like as flu season picks back up. What are other people going to do when they have a sick kid? Will everyone stay at home for a few days? Because people are going to assume it could be COVID-19. Yesterday I wrote about being kind of pumped that we were able to move our day for this little vacation by one day and still stay at the place we wanted because of the weather being rainy. Well, that all changed with a sick kid. Life is like that with some major ups and downs. Yesterday morning I also heard our company had our best sales day ever! We went over our goal. But then h...

My wife has taught me something about being persistent. I've watched her on the phone before with customer service stay on hold until the right person that can do something gets on. I've also watched her confront people when the price is wrong. She's typically patient and knows how to ask the right questions. So I put it into practice yesterday when we ended up having to switch our free Chase anniversary night through IHG. We needed to move our hotel reservation one night because of the weather. Unfortunately, the next day had no more free anniversary nights available for that hotel. The first person I talked to at IHG said she couldn't do anything about it, but she could check on other days. So I hung up. I called back later and talked to another customer service person at IHG asking for the same thing, to switch to the next night. This person said he couldn't do it either, but he said what I can do is have you call the hotel and ask them if they can make an except...

Yes, today I'm having a meeting this afternoon about meetings. It's one that sounds like a meeting you might not be very excited about going to. Like it could be a waste of time. But, I'd argue that a meeting like this might be the type of meeting many teams ought to have. My boss and I were talking about the topic a couple weeks ago and I encouraged him to discuss it as a team. The goal would be to decide to have meetings on two days and two days only every week. The rest of the week would be blocked off so you could get focused work done without being interrupted by meetings. So, for example, we may say that we are going to have our meetings on Monday and Tuesday every week and then the rest of the week would be blocked off so no more meetings could be scheduled for the rest of the week. If someone wanted to have a meeting with you or someone from your team they would set it up for a Monday or Tuesday. I'm excited about the idea and look forward to the thought of maki...

We all know there have been shortages on toilet paper this year as well as personal protective equipment and sanitization. There have also been surpluses of food due to COVID-19 and shortages of some foods as well. The supply chains have gotten royally screwed up with production facilities not operating at their normal capacities. My neighbor was telling me yesterday that there has been a shortage in treated lumber and there's a shortage in white electrical wall plate covers. This all has made me think about how interconnected everything is at this point in history. A virus that is easily spread and decisions that our government has made in the attempt to keep people safe has shut down entire businesses. It has made large companies find new suppliers. It has made suppliers not be able to fulfill requests. It's put all kinds of pressure on different businesses to provide services at levels they never have before.

One thing that I hope to never get tired of is writing is posts of thankfulness. I'm thankful for a wife that takes care of our kids almost every day, week after week. I'm thankful for the home that we have. I'm thankful for the town that we live in. I'm thankful for our three kids that make me smile every day. I'm thankful to have both my parents, my wife's parents, and my grandparents all living within less than a mile of our house. I'm thankful for a job. I'm also thankful for the employees that manage the company that I work at. I'm thankful for the solid group of co-workers that I get to labor alongside. I'm thankful for a country where we have many freedoms. It's easy to complain about how things are. It's easy to be discontent. But, there are always things to be thankful for and it's good to go through the exercise expressing thankfulness.

Sometimes there are things that seem to have little or no value because they don't work anymore for you. Does that mean that they have no value? Sometimes. Other times it just means that you have to find the right buyer and sometimes you have to be patient. Enter VarageSale and my lawnmower that stopped working this summer. It was a great used mower that I got from someone who had fixed it up. It was a TORO self-propelled mower, but it stopped working and I'm not that mechanical so I didn't know how to fix it. I also knew if I got it fixed it would probably cost me about $80 at least to get it working again. So I put it on VarageSale and asked $25 for a nonworking mower. Did I sell it? You bet. I didn't end up getting $25 for it... I only got $15, but I was able to get something for it. 7 years ago I bought it for $50. I did put some money into it with oil changes and upkeep, but I was happy to find a buyer versus throwing it away. The guy who bought it had the same one...

Last weekend my older son got a hand-me-down plastic toy sword from his great aunt and uncle. He loves it. He's slept with it for the whole week and carries it around with him wherever he goes pretty much unless we tell it can't go with him somewhere like to the store.  Imagine carrying a long plastic toy sword around with wherever you go for a week. It makes it hard to carry much else. But he also has a toy fish that's become a new favorite toy, mostly because his cousin left it here last weekend. So, not only is he carrying around a toy sword, but also a plastic fish as well. He's also sleeping with the plastic fish too. When something is new we want it with us all the time. Maybe it's in our thoughts and we don't physically carry it around like my son, but it still dominates our lives for a while. Eventually, it loses its newness though and we move on to something else. We're wired to always want and we become discontent very quickly. There is one that ca...

Yesterday evening I just needed to get the kids out of the house. They were whiny and so was I. It was one of those evenings where I wanted things to be a certain way and it wasn't and when things are like that I like to go into task mode and just have alone time, but when you have 3 little kids and a wife you can't just do that. So I took them to an open field and we all just ran around outside for a while. Kicking soccer balls, throwing footballs, playing follow-the-leader, and tag. We needed to get outside to run off some energy. We all needed it. Sometimes all we need is just to get outside.

I have four brother-in-laws and no brothers. Each one of them is unique and I'm thankful for each one. One is extremely entrepreneurial and knows a ton about construction. One is one of the best cooks I've ever eaten a meal from. One is very mechanically minded and isn't afraid to tackle a project. And one is probably one of the most knowledgeable people I know that can remember just about anything. There you have it, my brother-in-laws in four sentences. It's been a while since I've written a thankful post and it's always a good exercise for me. It makes me think of how many good things God has given me. I'll never forget when my sister and brother-in-law took me into their home when I needed it. I know it probably wasn't easy with two little kids and I was a mess at the time too. That was about ten years ago and since then they've lived in California, back to Illinois, and now Alabama. I'm extremely thankful for them.

I think anyone with a phone has done it at some point. You're around other people, but your face is in a phone. Maybe you're pushing your kid on a swing or your walking with someone. Maybe you're at a restaurant or a park. Maybe you're at home and it's the evening and your kids are around you or you're in bed at night with your spouse and you're both just scrolling on your phone. Stop it. Engage with people and limit your screen time. Use it when you have downtime. Use it as a reward. But don't use it for the times when you're just bored and you need a dopamine hit.

Yesterday I got about 90% done on a project we've been wanting to do for a while. We had a bunch of areas around our master bath shower where the grout was cracked and water was settling. It's been that way since we moved in about a year and a half ago.  About half of the day was just removing the grout mainly using my multi-tool with a grout attachment. Thank you Andy Slotter for the multi-tool you gave me about 5 years ago. Side note, but I would say if you don't have one, get one. It's a tool you'll use a lot. Back to getting the grout out. It's just a lot of work and slow. If you're going to do it make sure you have water on hand to keep the blade cool as you're cutting the grout out. Once you're done removing the grout, regrouting is fairly easy. It's just a laborious project. The last couple of things you need to do before being done is sealing the grout which I think you can spray on wipe one. Then lastly if you have glass like we do own o...

We are into late August and I'm finally getting a start on exercise. I ran three days this week for about 20 minutes each time. About 2 miles. It feels good for sure. But getting myself to a consistent time that I run in the morning may be more of a challenge. Each day was a little different, but they were all before 7.

Communication. This has been a theme for me this week. I'm sure working in marketing is part of why it comes up so often, but it's huge. What if we just communicate with a part of the company we work with? But other parts of the company we say very little too or maybe nothing at all? What if then they start working on a project that we're also working on? There's a positive there. It means that we're focusing on something that we both believe should be addressed, but there's also a negative. The negative there's probably one team that's more suited to solve the issue or parts of the project best. If we communicate what we're working on this doesn't happen and we're able to be more efficient. Is there value in not communicating everything? Sure. Not everyone needs to know everything. But, there are areas where there's cross-over and those areas need to be communicated. Teams can help each other out and bring more ideas to the table IF they...

How many times in a day do I say "don't do that" or "stop that" or "get off"? I have no clue, but I think I do it a lot. Not at the office, but at home with my kids. I think my kids need to hear it, but then again sometimes maybe they don't. All the comments above are negative. Sometimes they're not even doing anything that bad, but it's just something I don't want them to do.  What if instead, I would say "do this..." or "let's go..." or "what about..."? I many times want the easy stop to what they're doing that I don't want them to do, but it's just using my parental authority to get them to stop instead of getting to their heart and teaching them to do something else instead. As a parent of little ones, 5 and under, I have so many opportunities to teach, and many times I use excuses like I'm tired or I want to just do something else. What something I could "do" today with th...

Do you ever wonder what makes certain people so good at presenting? Why are others so bad at it? Some people you could listen to and never have your mind wander and others can't hold your attention at all. Like in most things I believe there can be some natural gifting, but the biggest part is practice. For some, it might not be that they practice presenting itself, but they're just always presenting. I think of my boss, he's just naturally good, but he's also in that frame of mind all the time. Get together in a group and he will eventually give a little "presentation". I also listened to a guy named Vinh Giang talk on presenting yesterday that talks about vocal image along with your visual image. He makes the argument that the way your voice sounds is just as important as your visual image in a presentation. Your vocal image consists of 5 things. They are rate, volume, pitch/melody, tonality, and pause. I'll encourage you to look him up to learn more.

When you go for a run before 5AM in August it's a different way to see your town. I didn't see one other person out walking or running. I think I only saw 2 cars. I could actually see the stars because the sky was totally clear. It probably would have been really quiet, but I was jamming out to some music. I ran just under 2 miles and it felt so good to just get out and get some exercise before everything else gets going. This is really tough for me to get up and get going and decide to do this. I'm lazy. I'd prefer to get up, grab a coffee, read, take my time, write, and then get off to work.  Today, I'm thankful I got my butt out of bed and into some running clothes and out on the road before 5AM. Feeling good right now.

We got a hammock a couple years ago for Christmas and I finally got it out and put it up in the backyard. After I did I thought why did I wait so long to put this thing up? Especially on a nice day, this thing is so relaxing. It was easy to install too. Two straps go around the trees and then there are carabiners that clip onto the straps that around the tree(s). That's it.  When the weather's nice it's a perfect spot to relax and read. Our kids loved it too, but they can't sit still in it.

What if you knocked out one project every weekend for a year? They wouldn't have to be big, just something. That's probably more projects than you even can think of right now. You end up accomplishing 52 projects in a year's time. My wife made the comment to me yesterday, "If we could just get one thing accomplished each weekend." This came after we got some cabinets hung in the basement. It just felt good to get them off the floor in the basement and somewhere we can use them. It didn't even take us that long to do. We probably spent 2 hours on it. So, this coming weekend what you are going to do? Do you have a project?

He was sitting on the side of his bed. Opening up books and turning the pages from the back to the front. Looking at every picture. When he was done he would toss the book on the floor. I just sat in the doorway of his room and watched. He had no idea I was there.  My son is 3 and a half. In that little brief moment in time, I really felt compassion for him. I thought to myself, even though he can be a real stinker he's also so little yet. He has no idea what's going on in our world right now. I went to my room and just spent a little time in prayer for our kids. Praying that they would come to know the gospel. That they would trust in Christ. That God would protect them from evil as they grow up. That I would lead them well during the little time that I have with them.

It's been good working with my family on our rental property because it just again reminds me that we're all different. Just like when you get married you realize that your spouse doesn't think exactly the same way you do, this group of family that owns our rental property doesn't think exactly the same way I do on everything either. But we're able to work together to get the jobs done. There are certain things that some of us care more about than others and then there are other things that are are the same way. I think I've mentioned before here that I've been working on the lodging tax for our property and it's not as complicated as I thought, but yet I just had to figure it out because none of us knew anything about it before. In figuring it out I really needed to get it into a spreadsheet and I had no clue the best way to do it... I still don't know if I did it the best way, but it makes sense to me and I'm the one reporting/paying it so I gu...

You went to a trade show or a conference in person before and now you can't, but there's still this virtual event in its place. So you attend it, but it's nothing like the real thing. Why even call it a virtual trade show or a virtual conference? It's not really the same thing at all from what I've experienced. It's not very interactive, but more passive. You can watch sessions and sometimes interact in person via Zoom or some other kind of conferencing software. One of the benefits is you can do it when you want whether you want to get in on it live or watch it later at your convenience. But why not call it something totally different and not try to replicate it in the same way? Maybe instead you make it like what people that are doing things online typically experience. Make it last just as long, but space it out during times when people have free time. Those attending the conference during a full day are free for the full day because they're away from eve...

For the second year in a row now we've received first place at the National Agri-Marketing Association's annual conference. This year it was supposed to be in San Diego, which then got moved to Kansas City, which then moved to a virtual conference. I have to say virtual is way less fun than a real conference. We actually watched it as a family while eating dinner yesterday and it was all over in an hour. We won first place for our 3 consecutive page ad campaign that was also targeted based on what we knew about our customers. It's a good feeling to be recognized by the agriculture advertising community and win at that level, especially when the work you do is mostly in-house. We also won a second-place for a  video we produced about our farm in Pontiac as well.

I'm learning more and more that taxes are complicated. As a small business owner now it's even more obvious. We're trying to do what's right in paying our sales tax on a monthly basis, but I'm having a hard time figuring out for sure what all needs to be included in our reported income.  Do we pay our sales tax on our full gross number? That's what I've been told. But then we have cleaning fees, linens, etc. that our guests currently aren't paying sales tax on through VRBO. Then the service fee that we pay to VRBO do we pay sales tax on that as well? When I look at the numbers for VRBO it seems like our guests are paying sales tax only on their nightly stay number. There's no tax collected on cleaning or service fees. Airbnb pays the sales tax on our behalf so we don't have to do anything for that service. Then we have our private bookings that I have similar questions to VRBO except we don't have the service fees. I thought I had it all figu...

I don't take advantage of the teaching moments that there are as often I could with our kids. Especially the whiny moments. In those times I typically want to try and shut the whining down as quickly as possible by either giving in or threatening with a consequence. Last night as we were leaving my sister's place my kids started complaining that they didn't get to have a s'more but their cousins were going to have some. At that moment we were ready to just tell them that they need to stop complaining and I could see there might be a tantrum coming from one of our kids too. I told my wife let's try to teach during this time. I can't remember all that I said, but I know I asked our kids what whining is. They responded that it's sin. I briefly talked about how they need to have a thankful heart for all they got to do with their cousins today. They did stop complaining and we didn't have a meltdown. As I'm trying to retell this I honestly can't remem...

This time in life is very different from anything I've experienced before. There's so much uncertainty. It's a little like the weather. You never know for sure what it's gonna be like, but you have a little bit of an idea.  We're heading to church today and we were planning on being inside, but then I checked my email this morning and it looks like now we are having outside services again. Earlier in the week, it was planned to be outside, but then I received an email that it was going to be inside. Anything that substantiates a lot of people gathering is extremely uncertain. One place you need to wear masks in one place you don't. One place can remain open one place can't. One place people are willing to work in another they aren't. People are all over the board too. Some people aren't willing to get together at all for one reason or another and others have very little concerns at all.

How many audiences do you personally have? You have your address book on your phone. You have your email application. You have your social media followers. You have your neighbors. You have your physical social groups (church, activities, school, etc.). You have your family. Maybe you have other things like a website or a podcast or a channel as well. My point is that there are a lot of people that we all have access to in different ways. I was thinking about this as I'm thinking about different ways to let people know about our rental property in Gulf Shores, Alabama. When you sit down and think about it we all have a lot of different ways to reach out to people. Some are better than others depending on what you're wanting to do, but there's plenty of tools out there.

Yes. I gave away everything in the title of this post today. I ran. I got up this morning a little before 5 AM and I went for a run. It was cool out. The sun wasn't up yet. Everything about it felt so good. To those that have never found running good this may sound awful, but I enjoyed it this morning. Now the challenge is to keep this going. The other challenge is to not push to hard right at the beginning and injure myself. We'll see how this goes.

One average I quickly found said restaurant owners make an average of $60,000 a year salary. Multiply that by 15,000 restaurants and you have $900,000,000 million... almost a billion in dollars that are now gone as roughly that many small business restaurants have closed their doors in the United States and most of them probably aren't going to be able to open back up. That's just the salary number of restaurant owners.  Let's just say each of these restaurants do 1 million in business in a year. That's 15 billion in business that's gone in the restaurant industry due to all that's going on with the COVID-19 pandemic. Don't quote me on any of this, just running some really rough numbers to put things in perspective in my head. A quick Google search says nearly 16,000 restaurants have closed permanently due to the pandemic according to Yelp data. 26,160 total restaurants had closed in the United States as of July 24th. 

Today is going to be productive. I'm going to do what I can. It's a new day. As I sit here and wake up on the couch with a computer and a cup of coffee my thoughts are all over the place. I should connect with that person on LinkedIn. I need to fill out that form for taxes. I need to report our income for the month. I should check off the daily boxes for health insurance money back. Oh, I should check my personal email. I need to really clean up my email inbox. The things that go through my head go on and on. There's a ton of things I could do. But, what should I do? What does it mean to be productive today or any day? I continue to go back to some advice I remember from earlier this year on having 3 main goals max for the day and that's it. You can have more things you get done, but they might be just filler... like cleaning up your email inbox or filling out some paperwork or making phone calls. Today. I'm going to make it a good day. I'm going to work hard. I...

Today is a Monday and I just don't want to get going. I had a hard time getting up. I had intentions of running but didn't. I have about 5 more minutes and I need to start getting ready to head to work. I scrolled on Twitter for a while, briefly checked my email, procrastinated, then read my Bible reading for the morning. I'm sure none of this motivating for anyone to read, but it's the reality of the beginning of today. I've had a little coffee and now it's blog time. I wish I could say every morning I'm just ready to go and I'm motivated. Today is not that morning. My wife made the comment to me yesterday that it just doesn't feel like we ever really get ahead of things to do. There's always more and then there are the daily things that just have to get done too. I sound like a major complainer. I like to blame it on having little kids, but I think some of it I just need to set some goals for myself.

When someone compliments you on your shirt or on how you look or something that you've done what do you do? Do you downplay it like it's not that big of a deal in an attempt to be humble? Or do you receive it? I don't know why many people like to act like it's not something that's really meant to be said to them. I say take it. Receive it. Why would you withhold from someone the joy of being thanked for a compliment that they meant to be received by you?

During every interaction that you have during the day, you're earning trust or losing trust. In the way, you wrote that text or that email. In the way, you interacted with your spouse or a fellow employee. Are you communicating in a way that says you're important and I value your opinion? Are you just dismissing people? Each interaction that you have has an impact. No one's keeping a tally (at least you hope not), but if every time you interact with a certain person it's negative do you think that they're going to want to work with you? How can you be positive and think about your interactions at this level? Today think about your interactions. Is what I'm about to type or say going to build someone up or is going to tear things down? Why is it that I'm going to choose to take a jab at someone if it's going that way?

I found a really good service a while back through Stickermule that will turn almost any raster image into a vector image for you for what I would consider cheap. The cost is $29 and the turn around time is about 24 hours! I tried it out with about 30 dealer logos that came to us as raster images and need to be converted. They turned out better than the originals that were sent. I could have never done them all that quick or that well. Sometimes it's better to hire things out than do them yourself. It probably saved me days of work. I would totally recommend this service through Stickermule. What are some ways that you could be more productive? Are there things that you could outsource instead of doing them yourself?

When the incentive isn't there for me it's tough to keep showing up. I'm thinking specifically about social media right now. But it goes for anything. There's a daily slog that you have to keep going through even if you don't see results. That goes for anything that you want to see improvement in I believe. You don't have a better marriage by just showing up once and doing a really good job. You don't improve your job skills by doing it to the best of your ability once. It's a daily or regular process of showing up. There are many days when the process of showing up and doing the work isn't rewarding, but you do it because you believe that there's value and there's a good result that will come from it. I'm not saying that your marriage, job, and social media posts are on the same level or require the same amount of time... each one is different, but each one requires your time regularly. So are you going to show up today? Are you going to...

On the side of the office that I work on it was only me and two co-workers yesterday. It was really quiet. Quieter than I expected. I think some people may have been on vacation, but I believe many are working from home again. I'm not sure as we haven't heard anything from our department about working from home. Not much surprises me anymore though. I don't understand it all with COVID-19, but there's been a lot of change. Kids are getting ready to go back to school here and they will be required to wear masks and they will be asked to social distance. The church we go to will be having services outside again unless it's too hot this coming weekend.

I think we're getting close. Mac is over a year old now. He's walking on his own. He's starting playing on his own really recently and he's sleeping through the night. The last two nights he's slept in a little longer too. Before that, he was getting up between 4 and 5ish. I think we're getting close to not really having a baby anymore. Which is a little sad, but that's how it's been for the last 5 years. I'm sure we'll still have diapers for a while and waking up in the middle of the night sometimes, but I think we're over the big hump.

We had a problem. Our guests at our rental property called and said they only had 16 towels when they arrived. There is supposed to be a total of 60 towels available since our property will hold up to 30 people. Right away my wife got a hold of our cleaning company to find out if we could get them the towels they were supposed to have. Our cleaning company said that they could either get them to our property later that evening or the next day. My brother-in-law checked with our guests to see if dropping them off the next day would be ok, which they said would be fine. This is where I stepped in and said here is where you need to under-promise and over-deliver. So my wife called the cleaning company and said we needed to have them delivered that night. Our guests received all the towels they needed that evening the same day that they requested them. I'm guessing they were happy that they got taken care of right away. A problem is actually just an opportunity to go above and beyond a...

I ended up trimming all of my bushes in the front yesterday afternoon. The front of the house looks so much better now. It was all looking so overgrown before. It felt good to get that task done, but even better was seeing my oldest who is 5 help me. She was working hard pulling weeds and helping me pick up all the trimmings. Last week we started giving our kids a little money and I think that's been a little bit of a motivator for our five-year-old. So another thing happened yesterday. Our mower died again. I think it might be for good this time. So, I talked to my wife about getting a new one to which she also agree, but our idea of when was not the same. You see I'm ready to get one now where she's looking for the best deal. So we had to talk it through realizing we have different reasons as to why we think the way we do. She brought up a good point that it's about the end of the season and maybe prices may go down on mowers and that we could borrow her parents. I br...

I typically go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30. I'm usually pretty wiped by the time my kids are in bed. I usually get about 8 hours of sleep which means I get up between 4:30 and 5:30 and I prefer getting up closer to 4:30. But many times I don't get up right away and then one of our kids ends up waking up before I really get going. I like my quiet wake up time. This morning was one of those mornings. I didn't get up until Mac was already up. He doesn't usually want me in the morning so that means mom has to get up then too.

Since January 1, my wife and I have been making sure we get at least one video captured every day. Many days it's not until the end of the day that we get something. Other days the moment is obvious. Either way, the idea was made possible by an app called 1 Second Every Day. I think I blogged about it earlier in the year, but it's a simple app that you take a second of video from a video that you take each day and it compiles it into a long video of all the days in the year. It's a great way to be able to go back and look at a year.

How bad do you want something to happen? To get a task done? To learn something new? To write a post? To read a book? To lead your family?  What's holding you back? What are your excuses? What do you do in the time when you have nothing to do? What do you do in those rare moments when all of your kids are playing well together? Do you make up things that are easier to do to distract you from the things that need to get done? Or even from the things that you really want to get done? What are the buts? If there's something you want to see happen make it a priority. Make it the most important thing of the day or the week. Get going on it. No "I want to... but..."

Staying up late. Sleeping in until 7 AM eastern time. So, 6AM still central. It was nice to just change things up a bit over the weekend and yesterday. It was relaxing. We played some games with my brother and sister-in-law and my wife's parents. We had some good meals. I didn't do any work. I didn't even blog or work on any other stuff on my computer either. Some times it's good to just kind of shut things down for a few days. This was one of those weekends. Today will be a day of getting back into the swing of everything.

We took a trip yesterday to my brother-in-law's place. It's about 4 and a half hours' drive. My in-laws' took our two older kids earlier, so we just had Mac. Which meant either we would have a really quiet trip with him sleeping or there might be a lot of crying. My wife kept him from taking a nap in the morning and so as soon as we took off he was out and he slept for 3 hours! So we just had about an hour where there was a chance of a crying baby... and he did awesomely. The one thing we've learned with little kids is to get them to sleep as much as possible during the trip. This means a lot of times for a longer trip we'll take off in the middle of the night and hope they'll sleep all through the night. I'd highly recommend it.

We were at Josie's soccer practice and Mac had a poopy diaper. So I took him to the van to change him and realized we no wipes in the diaper bag. What do you do? Well, you hope for the best. Try to keep your kid's hands out of his diaper and wipe up as much as you can with the diaper. Then the only other thing I had was more diapers. So I took a second diaper and wiped as much as possible could off of him. Then I up a clean one on. Now that's how you change a poopy diaper when you have no wipes.

Whether they are typed and read or spoken and heard, words do things. They cause us to think differently. They bring us to action. They cause others to do things. They reinforce what we already know. They make us feel something. They attract us to someone. They cause to not like someone. What are you saying? What are you writing? What kinds of things are you setting in motion by the words that you write or speak?

What if I just started doing 20 sit-ups a day? Every day. If every morning as part of morning routine along with getting a cup of coffee, reading the bible, writing my blog, I also did 20 sit-ups. That would be 7,300 sit-ups in a year. That feels like a pretty big number compared to zero. I used to exercise every day as a teenager except for Sunday and I'm thankful for the discipline of it. Once I hit college that discipline of physical exercise has been very up and down. I've never been very consistent. I do best when I have a goal of a race that's looming ahead or some sort of deadline. So that's what I'm thinking about here and trying to establish.

I took the kids out for a bike ride. Josie and Baer were riding their bikes and I had Mac in the carrier behind my bike. We were almost to where we were going when I looked over and watched Josie slam right into the down tailgate of a truck with her lips! She had been looking over at Baer and hadn't noticed she was coming up on a parked car. I felt helpless. There wasn't much I could do but get off my bike and hold her. Thankfully she wasn't going that fast and she didn't get hurt that bad. My neighbors walked by and brought her bike back home for us so I could put her in the carrier with Mac. She ended up with only a puffy lip. No other injuries. We learned it's always a good idea to look where you're going when riding a bike otherwise you might run into a parked car!

One highlight from the weekend was cleaning the house and getting some help from our older two kids. We told them we would pay them a little if they helped out and that was a motivator. We don't have it all figured out as far as how to instill the idea of work, getting paid, and saving, but we're trying.  It was very ad-hoc. We had them help put all the toys away and pick up so I could sweep the floors and told them when we were done vacuuming we would pay them. Then we decided to give them dimes. Josie, who is five, got five dimes and Baer, who is three, got three dimes. Then my wife and I talked to them about giving, saving, and spending. We encouraged them to save some of what we gave them so they have money for something bigger later and said we would double what we gave them if they save it. So they each gave some back which we'll invest for them. It's not a lot, but it a way to get them started thinking about it.

So today will be the first time we're inside a church building since COVID-19 hit. I'm looking forward to it. We are following all proper protocols and have to wear masks at certain points while we are at church, but it will be good to be together inside instead of outside in the heat. This week it's just going to be me and our two older kids so we can see how that goes and see what makes sense with our baby for next week possibly. There is the option to be in the nursery, but you have to be with your kid and somehow stay away from other kids I think. So Josie, Baer, and I will be in the main sanctuary this morning. We are supposed to wear masks while singing so we'll see how that goes too. 

So many, many good memories with you and grandpa like picking raspberries and eating them in your backyard, having popsicles at your place, watching movies in the basement, and having sleepovers with the cousins there.  I think one of my earliest memories of you, grandma Geri, was calling your phone number when I was around 5 or 6 and my mom left me at home for just a few minutes and my sister Andrea or maybe it was Julie started crying. And you came over right away. But this is just an example of the kind of Grandma you've been to us growing up. From remembering what my favorite meals were and making them when we came to visit... like your huge crepes filled with all kinds of fruit and whipped cream! I remember you coming down multiple times to Kentucky as well for a band competition or a swim meet (I think you went to a few of our meets any way... my memory is getting bad!) You were always interested in what the grandkids were up to. We always loved coming to visit your place and...

A couple days ago we were outside with the kids and a couple walked by that's moved onto our block recently. So we struck up a conversation with them and introduced ourselves. We found out the husband is a pilot and they lived in Dubai for about 5 years. But the thing I found most interesting in our conversation was when he mentioned that in Dubai they do this thing called cloud seeding because they get very little rainfall. They basically take planes that have what looks like a bunch of roman candles on the wings and inject materials into clouds to speed up the process of them being able to produce precipitation. From a quick google search, this can be done to produce rain or snow and it's being done some in the United States as well. From what I can understand of the process it's not creating more precipitation, but it does speed up the process so that there's the ability to change potentially where the precipitation happens. So there have to be clouds to work with fr...

Do you get frustrated with a co-worker, a spouse, a teammate, or your kid? Don't forget you're on the same team. Your end goal should be the same. It might not be exactly the same, but in the end, the largest goal is you want the company to succeed or you want to stay together or you want to win or you want to be part of a family.  When things happen that aren't exactly the way you would have done them that doesn't make the other person wrong. It just makes them different than you and they chose to go about the challenge in a different way. Remember that. Be thankful that they bring a different perspective to the table and trust that what they are doing is also trying to bring success or whatever is needed for the relationship(s) to be good. Sometimes there is intentional hurt that is done but don't assume that's the purpose of the other person on your team when they do something you wouldn't do.

One thing that I've done that I wouldn't recommend doing is having 2 financial advisors. It's just awkward and neither knows what the other is doing. Neither knows what the others percentage is and it's not really motivating to them to know that someone else is working on behalf of their client as well. I realized early on that it was going to be a challenge when I mentioned something to my first financial advisor about having invested some money with another advisor and once that was said it was a little awkward from then on. Neither one has done a bad job for us. I think it just puts them both in a funny place. But, there's something good that came out of the process for us. That being that we found an advisor that connected with us well and that was able to give advice on some of the things we were considering. I'm thankful for that. There's also another side of consolidating that's good and that's that you're able to get a better return most ...

There are these words that only get used for one thing and shuck is one of them. I hadn't really thought about it before but did this weekend when my parents said let's go shuck the corn. We don't use the word shuck for anything else that we remove from something. Like I don't say I'm going to shuck my clothes or I'm going to shuck the tires on my car. Maybe I should try bringing the word shuck into the mainstream and use it for references to removing something from something else. Then again there's probably a reason why people don't use the word shuck or shucking for much besides removing the husks from corn. That's probably enough.

Just start typing. The first step is to write. Nothing will come if you just sit there. Writer's block isn't a real thing. It's just what happens when you decide not to write. It doesn't mean that when you can't think of what to write about and you start writing that what you write is going to be awesome, but at least you're going to be choosing to keep writing. So much of getting better at things is just practicing. Even creativity. Practice. Choosing to do the hard work instead of no work. Choosing to learn a new skill instead of doing nothing. This past weekend was good for my creative juices too. Just getting outside in nature and being with our kids. We played in the creek, made a huge slip n' slide, went on the four-wheeler, and jumped on the trampoline. Lots of playing outside.

Yesterday was a great day with plenty of time to get going and wake up. This morning I didn't get up early and we have to get going early to get to church and we'll be gone for the whole day with family. I could see myself getting frustrated as we're getting ready to go. God help me to love my family. Help me to see these moments better and prepare myself for them. My tendency can be to get mad when I don't have much me time in the morning and we're rushed... which could be this morning. So help me to not be selfish and instead serve my family.

How many times did someone like what I posted or how many views did it get? Why do we care? Does it actually equate to something in the end or is it just a metric? It feels good to say my post got thousands of likes and I guess in a way that's not a bad thing that means that real people saw a post you put out and decided to hit some sort of like button. You got their attention. But are they going to buy or are they going to engage in a discussion with you? Do you know who they are? How do you know that the next time you put a post out there that they will see it? Can you control what the social media giants decide to show to people and don't decide to show to people? It can feel pretty black boxy to me. There are parts of the social media platforms that I like, but every time you're putting something out there you're hoping that people will see it and engage with you. They might have liked your page or started following you, but how long ago was that? You have no metric...

I don't do it very often. Maybe once or twice a year, but going through my office area and throwing stuff out, organizing, and taking stuff home feels really good. Yesterday I spent a few hours going through filing cabinets, drawers, boxes, and my desk to clean up some. I know there was more I could have gone through, but I got through a lot. I threw out a couple garbage cans of stuff that I probably never would have looked at again or used. Why does it feel so good to do that? I don't know... and some people could care less. For me, some of it is probably about what others think about my space. Some of it might be that I do like things clean and picked up even though it can look like I don't.  I'm fairly particular. I like organizing. I also think at least for me it makes it easier for me to find things. Yesterday was a pretty good day and it was all because I tackled cleaning out and organizing. I may do a little more today... it felt that good.

I'm getting ready to put in hours of time to set up syncing between our rental property booking website, Airbnb, and VRBO. There's a whole process to go through in order to make syncing possible as well as take bookings and credit cards through our personal website, but I believe it will be worth it. The company we're using for the integration is Lodgify and they seem to be a growing force in giving rental property owners a way to get bookings through their own website. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Covid-19 has made a mess of things this year for sure. I've already talked about it some starting back in March and April. I just found out yesterday that the biggest farm show in the United States has been canceled this year. I'm not sure if there will be any summer farm shows that happen this year. With large events like this getting canceled people are getting lots of time back to do something else. Not just the people that might go getting a day back, but what about the people that run events like this? Events this big take months of many people's time. I know there is work that I won't be doing because there is no Farm Progress Show this year. Will the time just get wasted? Will people find other work to do? What about the electricians, caterers, landscapers, and other groundskeepers? There's a lot of lost revenue due to these events being canceled. Then there's the big question of whether companies will see a negative impact in sales because they aren'...

We're almost halfway through 2020! What a year it's been. This was the first year in a while where I set some goals for myself. Unfortunately many of them I still haven't hit yet. Then there are other things that weren't even on my radar that happened. The big one was purchasing a rental property in Gulf Shores with my siblings' families and wife's brother's family. Along with that came learning all kinds of things and we're still learning. Then there's been being quarantined for about 2 months because of COVID-19. With that came working from my in-laws' basement. And this past month there's been a lot of unrest in our nation around the treatment of blacks in our country. And by the end of the year, we will have another presidential election.  Did you have some resolutions for the new year? What were they? How has all that's happened impacted them? Has it made it harder or easier? I know some of the things that were on my list were writin...

As a parent, I'm starting to get better at telling if one of my kids is sick. Yesterday morning Mac woke up and just seemed a little warm. Most of the day he seemed a little off... more fussy than normal. He also had a little goop in his eyes after his naps. So by the time, it was time for bed last night I was already thinking we were going to be up a few times and... I was right. Hopefully, he'll be feeling better this morning.

Yesterday, after we had dinner with my in-laws I got asked to help move a couch and a few other things from my grandmother-in-law's home to my in-law's home. I wasn't planning on doing it yesterday, but we decided we would help and got it done. We could have said no. But we would have missed out on the opportunity to help someone out. Plus, afterward, we went to The Icecream Shack in Peoria which made it all worth it!

I'm learning that a website can be a never-ending work as I build my own and start to see the different areas it can be improved. Thankfully it's fairly simple right now... only 5 pages. Even with only 5 pages, there are things like load time to consider, there's security, there's the way the code is written, there's the size of the images. And I don't have someone that I can just run my website by to examine what I've created from a backend perspective. So, I continue to utilize Google and YouTube as great resources to find other content on how to improve our website.

Our daughter just turned 5 on May 3rd and she could go to kindergarten this year, but we could also hold her back and let her go next year. We were planning to send her, but now with the changes with COVID-19 this year we're thinking we might as well hold off and see how this year goes for others and then have her start next year. I don't think anyone really regrets holding their kid back a year... it's usually the opposite. So, we'll see what we end up doing, but that's our thinking as or late June.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a deep hole with a lot of different facets to it. To summarize it though it's making changes to your website in order to rank higher in search mainly on Google. So you could change your headline words to score higher. You could write more content to create more opportunities to be found. You could link within your website from one article to another article. You could link from your social media accounts to your website. There are also tools out there that can help with SEO as well. Some are expensive and some are fairly cheap or free. Companies like MOZ or SEMrush are just a couple that are fairly inexpensive. This whole exploration of SEO started with some calls from Brightedge another SEO company that's probably one of the more expensive and automatic type options starting at around $70k a year. They seem to have a really good platform and depending on your needs it might be a good option because it doesn't take a lot of time and it...

Does everyone like to be recognized? I think on some level we do. Probably not all in the same way. Some would love for tons of people to applaud them others may just appreciate a note. But I think there's a little bit in all of us that appreciates some words of encouragement. I know I do.  I just received a certificate in the mail yesterday from the parent company I work for. I'm not sure exactly what it means though. It said on it "Above and Beyond Champion". It was sent by one of the VPs of AGCO. I'll have to ask what it's for today at work. It felt pretty good to get that in the mail, but not knowing what it's for or who it's from means a little less. But, I also received 2 texts from my brother-in-laws last night and this morning saying that the website I just built for our vacation rental property "looks fantastic" and "looks so good". Those probably mean just as much as the certificate knowing it came from them. When you have...

What do you show a customer first? What do you show them second? What is the first thing you say? It matters. Have you thought about it like this? I believe there is an order to things and if you can figure out the best things to place in that order first you'll drive more sales from your customers.  For example, if you're creating a website don't put the main driver of sales or conversation with a customer way at the bottom of your homepage or for that matter on a secondary page. Put what you want you offer right upfront. Don't make them work hard. Make it easy.

If it wasn't for my dad... I would not have invested in stocks in high school. I would not have started working at Precision Planting. I would not have taken some really fun vacations as a kid. I would not have learned how to work hard and make money. I would not have learned how to open up a bank account. I would not have bought my first house when I did. I would not have bought my first car when I did. I would not have done the sports I did. I would not have gotten to experience our dog having puppies. I would not have gone to England. I would not be living in Morton, IL. I would not be the hard worker that I am. I would not be the detailed person that I am. I would not have the education that I have. I would not be in the financial situation that I am. I would not value the church as I do. I would not value our country and politics as I do. I'm thankful for my dad and the many things I am, have and do because he's my dad.

What is it with most homes? It seems like every house has a little stack of bricks somewhere inside or outside. It's usually not very many. Maybe 6 to 12. My father-in-law made the comment about it yesterday pointing to a small stack in my neighbor's yard and I had to think he's right. I have no idea why we hold on to them after a home is built. What are we going to do with them? Why can't we throw them away? What can you really do with a few bricks? I don't know that we'll ever know. I'm not going to even bother asking Google because I doubt there's a good answer. It's just an interesting observation.

My nephew broke his Nintendo Switch the other day and I got to fix it. Somehow it fell at his grandparents and the one side broke off and was dangling by some wires. After fiddling around with it for a while I was able to figure out how to get it apart and get the wires connected again. It actually wasn't that hard, but my nephew was so happy that I was able to get it fixed for him. It would have probably been a long next week without it. It was cute to see my nephew who is probably 10 get really thankful all of a sudden because I was able to get his Nintendo Switch fixed. I'd say it felt pretty good to help him out as well and get it to work.

Our youngest kid just turned one last month and he's not walking yet. He's taking more attempts though over the last week trying to walk back and forth between people. He's probably taken about 3 or 4 steps and then he's down. It's so fun to watch him because he gets so excited. Once he gets to the other person we all cheer and he starts clapping, falls, and has the biggest smile on his face while his feet are going crazy. I'd say I'll be writing another post really soon saying Mac is walking.

What kind of things get you excited? I really enjoy learning new skills. I like seeing something that I've never done before and mastering it. For example, I've realized that it's now very possible to create a good website by myself. Not a huge corporate website, but a basic website. There are enough tools out there that take some mastery and skill and use the design capabilities I already have that I can do it. So I'm working on making it happen for our vacation rental property. I also enjoy creating things. Starting from a blank sheet and ending with a finished product. Seeing print ads in a magazine. Seeing social media posts posted by one of our dealers. Seeing signage out as I'm driving. I enjoy seeing something I created or helped create make it out into the world and others believe it's good enough to use to promote their business. These are just a couple things that get me excited.