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...

Yesterday I was stoked about starting the "hole" project. This morning I'm sore and a little less excited about it. I made a lot of progress. There's a ton of dirt in my backyard, but I didn't make it all the way down to the foundation yesterday. I hope to finish up the hole today.  What did I find? It looks like the previous owners of our home tried to fix the issue from what I can tell. There's definitely some sort of coating over a lot of the block in the area where I believed the leak to be. But I can see a couple areas where water could be seeping into the basement already and we're gonna get that fixed. I'm thankful for my wife's help yesterday. As she helped dig and move dirt away from the hole so I could keep digging more out. Part of the challenge with living in Morton is it's built on swampy land and therefore it's super wet and a challenge for people with basements. Hopefully, we can get this issue fixed and not have to deal with...

I'm digging a hole in the backyard today with a shovel. It's gonna be about 8 feet deep and about the same across and 3 to 6 feet away from the house. We've had water getting into our basement and we're hoping to get it fixed by digging it out patching it, tarring it, putting in pea gravel, and covering it back up. After it's all done I really hope it works. Because I think it's going to be a lot of work. We'll see what I find out once I get to the bottom of it. Bad dad joke.

There are a few musicians who stand out in my mind as great creative artists. Ben Rector is one that's at the top of my list. Take a year like 2020 where you can't be on tour because of the Coronavirus pandemic and you see what a musician is really made of. I don't know him personally at all, but follow him on social media and noticed that his family had twins this summer, plus they have a toddler... so they're definitely busy. Earlier he released a song called "It Would Be You" and challenged people to make music videos and share them on social media tagging them with #coffeedadshuffle. It was something fun to follow along with as part of the craziness of covid. There were hundreds of people that submitted videos and here's a link to the compilation . But, that's not all... this week he just released another new song, that I understand came from a void he noticed while working on a new Christmas album. He noticed that there are tons of Christmas songs...

We are down to only buying diapers for our youngest now. Baer over the last month is sleeping through the night and not peeing in bed. We promised a Paw Patrol toy when he made it 10 days in a row with a dry diaper and he did that! He's almost 4 now and has been potty trained for about a year and a half. Getting over the hump of not peeing in a diaper at night though was a big one. With our oldest, it happened really quick. Basically, as soon as she was potty trained she was also not peeing at night either and she was potty trained before 2 I think.  This example is like many other things for some people change comes easy and for others, it's more work. You may have more determination and desire to make a change. You may have to just keep showing up day after day even though you "wet the bed again" or "peed in your diaper". Eventually, it won't happen anymore if you don't give up and you keep at it. 

That deadline. It drives action. It looms out there and you know you have to get it done by the date. So why do we wait? Why do we procrastinate? How does that help? I've written about this before . When I did a search there's are quite a few posts about deadlines. Not sure what that says about me... I wait until the last minute? I would argue that even if we're not "working" on the work, we're still thinking about it somewhere up there in our brain. We know the deadline and there are solutions that we have half baked. Now whether or not the scramble is the best work compared to the daily plod... I would say it depends. I'm sure it's better to be plodding along more than just in your subconscious so the final product doesn't suffer. I have a print ad due in less than a week and I'm barely started and after a meeting yesterday the direction changed as well. So what do you do? You buckle down and do the hard work because there's a deadline. I...

I slept last night. I woke up this morning. My eyes opened. I could see. My arms pulled the covers off of my bed and I was able to get out of bed. My legs moved me through the house. I was able to make my coffee. My mind is working. I could smell the coffee being made. I could hear my kids getting up. I was able to type on my computer and read words and comprehend them. I was able to speak words to my kids and comprehend what they said. I was able to taste the coffee and swallow it. These are just a few things that seem small but are actually huge that I'm able to do each day that I probably take for granted. This doesn't take into account all of the things going on inside my body to make them happen either. For example, my heart pumping blood to every area of my body. My lungs expanding and contracting to bring oxygen into my body. My brain sending signals to different parts of my body to move muscles and bones together to do things. We are fearfully and wonderfully made by Go...

What's happening in our world? As a parent of our three young kids, it's very concerning to me. My wife and I were talking about it last night during dinner. None of our kids are in school yet, but what all will they be taught? We're becoming a culture where everything is acceptable... you can be whatever you want to be including something that you're not. Like a woman if you're a man. And then there's becoming special treatment for those that choose to make these choices as well. There's also plenty of falsifying of information for political gain or pushing certain agendas and I wonder how that then will impact our youth. I see the breaking down of the family. The belief that it's not important. That mother and father figures in the home don't matter and that they don't impact the way a kid grows up. I can see it being very confusing for a kid growing up in the world today if they don't have a parent figure teaching truth and explaining what...

We've been wanting to fix a leak in our basement and we've been working on trying to figure it out but hadn't really started tackling it yet, until yesterday. That was when we started tearing out some drywall and insulation in the basement. I had the day off again yesterday and we started planning what to do I decided to call my brother-in-law that's a home builder. He gave me the low down on the full project to get the leak fixed and said the first step he'd do at this point was to confirm where the leak is at by tearing drywall in the basement. So that's what I did yesterday morning. Next Friday and the weekend are going to be the big part. Friday I plan on digging a huge hole in the backyard to the foundation of the house, cleaning the wall, filling any cracks, and then tarring the wall, before filling the hole with a bunch of pea gravel. It sounds like a bunch of work, but we hope we'll eliminate the water in the basement.

The crazy started early this morning at 6AM and I had the day off today. Josie got up at 6 because I thought I set her alarm on her clock for 7 and for some reason it went off at 6. Then about 15 minutes later Baer got up and then 15 minutes later Mac was up. So I put Mac back to bed, but he woke back up by 7 I think. Since the kids were up I let them watch an old episode of "Dennis the Menace" and then we got going with breakfast. It's 8AM now and we're all wide awake.  Not much of a plan for the day today at this point. I'd say the mornings when I don't get much quiet time are definitely harder. And sometimes I throw a pity party for myself thinking wouldn't it be nice if I had more quiet time. Of course I could have gotten up earlier, but I didn't. The day is going so I better to. I need to be thankful for these kids that I have. I really am. They're not going to be little like they are right now forever.

I have a very distinct memory of elementary school in our music class. We sang a song called "Chocolate" and we got to try out for a couple lines in the song of which I tried out for the line "You know I ain’t no jokuh, give me all your Almond Roca" and landed it. I remember thinking it was fun because of the way the line sounded. And probably 30 years later it stuck with me. I also remember singing this with our class at a Shriner's Hospital and totally forgetting my line in front of a bunch of kids. Maybe that's why I remember it too. I couldn't remember how the rest of the song went but actually found it on YouTube performed by an elementary school here .

What will you do today? Today is halfway through the week. It's a Wednesday. Today I plan to work about 8 hours from home... the new normal since COVID became a reality earlier this year. What will I work on? That's a good question. Probably the highest priority is some new material around a newer product that needs to be put together for next week. But, then there's catching up on emails, a couple of new platforms we're incorporating for our dealer network that need more attention, a new dealer initiative, and there are probably some things I'm forgetting as well. How do you prioritize? Then once I'm done working I'm done really done for the day. Upstairs I have 3 kids and a wife that will require my attention for the rest of the day? What will we do? I know we'll have a meal together. Tonight we have Awana Cubbies. So either I or my wife will take our older 2 kids to that and the other will stay at home with Mac. Then our plan for the rest of the week ...

We all like being recognized for work well done. I'm working on entries for the annual National Agri-Marketing Awards this week and it takes a decent amount of time to get them all together. Cutting boards, taping boards, mounting the work, writing up the entries, printing it all out, and then getting them mailed out to the entries office. It's only Tuesday morning, but I'm hoping I can get these wrapped up and out by tomorrow. I've been submitting these entries for the last 4 or 5 years and in the last 2 years, we've received first place at nationals... which I think is a big deal. Especially when you look at some of the competition like Pioneer, John Deere, Bayer, and Case IH. Then there's also the fact that we do most of our work in house and we're going up against a lot of agencies.

Just finished my third book this year. 3 more to read to get to 6 by the end of the year. I forgot how much I enjoyed reading a good book. My plan right now is to finish the Wingfeather Saga (2 more books) and then I'll probably try to finish "Capital Gains" the book from Chip Gains. Yesterday I was just feeling kind of punk with the weather getting cooler and not much sunshine. Today is kind of similar day as well. It's good book weather. Yet there are other things that I want to get done as well... only so many hours in each day.

The more time you spend with someone or something the more you tend to enjoy that person or thing I think. Maybe not in the case of work for some, or cleaning the house, or cooking, or cleaning... maybe this doesn't necessarily play out like it sounded in my head. Maybe it depends on what it is or who it is. I think in the case of my kids I do enjoy them the more I get to know them and spend time with them. The same with my wife or other family members. The same is true many times with things I enjoy listening to or reading. The more I get into it the more I enjoy it. Maybe my point here is it takes time many times. Most times it's not "love at first sight"... it takes work or time to enjoy or love something or someone. You get to understand the quirks, the little things you like, the things that are hard, you think about them, and you pursue them.  This all started with thinking about my father-in-law as he's in the hospital this morning and they're doing som...

I said to myself last night I'm gonna run this morning. That's as far as I got. This morning I didn't get up until about 7AM... I justified it because yesterday was a long day with an early morning, but I didn't go to bed too late. The other thing is I'm in Georgia and they're an hour ahead so it was really 6AM.  Had I told my wife I was going to run or some co-workers I more likely would have done it. That isn't always true, but I would say a lot of times if I say I'm going to do something I'll follow through. So, tomorrow morning I'm going to run. I brought running clothes and the weather down here is great. So, I'm going to do it. What are your plans for the day today? Have you shared the ones that you're less excited about that you still want to do with someone? Let's get after it today.

Do you sing with your kids? Last night was the first in a while that we've sung some songs with our kids at home. I played the guitar and our kids made some pretend guitars that they got to play too. Even our youngest Mac had some sticks and he was playing pretend drums. The best part is they were singing loud. We found some Ellie Holcomb songs that had the guitar chords to them and played a few of them. One of our kids' favorites right now is "Sing". Did the waves make a song as they crashed to the shore? Or was it the whales? Or the lions' first ROAR? Did the first flowers hum as they burst into bloom? Or was the first song when the thunder went BOOM?

Over the last 4 days we spent time with my wife's brother's family in Indiana. We also traveled there with her parents. On our way back we were commenting on how are kids really have some neat opportunities when they visit their cousins to spend time outside. Her brother, Chris, has a place on about 10 acres and the kids had a blast taking out the power wheels on some paths in the woods. Chris also took us out around the property on all an old Jeep that he restored. The kids got to paint pumpkins, have a bonfire with s'mores, watch some movies, play games, crack open hickory nuts, and just play outside. When we first got married I thought of vacations as only when you have a big trip planned and you stay at a vacation property or something like that. But, I've come to think of these little family trips to visit family as a sort of vacation as well. When your kids are little it helps for them to have other little kids to play with. A couple highlights for me were seeing ...

Yes. I look at the photos that I take currently with our DSLR camera and though I've learned some I still want to get better. I like to think if I only had a better camera I could take better photos. I also think if I only knew photo editing in Lightroom better my photos would look better. How much better can I get? How many things can you be good at? I think I've gotten a better understanding of lighting for sure when taking a photo. I'm not great at the composition of the photo though with a group of people. And then getting good at using my camera... well I typically shoot in aperture priority mode with a high aperture setting and I let the camera adjust the ISO and f-stop for me. A lot of my photos still turn out blurry and I haven't totally figured out why either. I think I have a hard time getting my focus locked where I want to or I'll have one person in focus and then another not-so-much. I hope one day I'll get there. But for now, I'll just keep pra...

After Hurricane Sally, I thought our vacation home made it through the hurricane season fairly well unscathed, but Gulf Shores just had all vacation guests evacuate yesterday with the anticipation of Hurricane Delta. It sounds like Delta isn't going to hit Gulf Shores, but will probably be further west. We will probably see some impact though from it... which means we'll be following another storm this weekend. I think it's supposed to hit land late Friday afternoon. I feel so bad for the people that live in these areas along the coast that get hit by these hurricanes. I'd never really realized the impact of them until we bought a rental property down there. They can be wicked. It's unbelievable the amount of water that can come with them and the amount of damage they can do.

Who pays when you go out to eat? Do you do separate checks? Do you make it complicated? Do you try to keep it simple? Do you fight over paying the bill? In my opinion, if it's a family thing, in general, one person should just pick up the tab. When I say a family thing... I mean you're all sitting at the same table and ordering food together. But if it's you and say one other person, you make the call ahead of time if you're doing separate checks or together. I'd say also in general you can never go wrong in picking up the tab, especially if you're the client or you're taking someone younger than you out to a meal. But, what if someone else is insistent on paying, but you'd really like to take care of the meal? Sometimes you just have to feel it out. Don't make a big deal over it, but see if you can get them to back down or not. If it starts to seem like a verbal argument back down and let them pay. It almost feels like a little bit of an awkward dan...

Would you rather work for a big dog or an underdog? I've been both at different times. There's definitely a sense of safety that comes with being part of the big dog and you may get the opportunity to do things that many others don't. But I would argue that working for more of an underdog company is the place to be. It's usually a much more nimble company. The culture is typically more collaborative. You're always looking to see if someone's coming after you. There's lots of room for improvement. Typically you're doing things that no one's done before. There's a lot of excitement. You get to wear a lot of different hats. You're always learning. When big things happen you realize it was a lot of hard work and pushing through and not just that you were a big dog and everything was calculated so it had to happen. Yeah, I'd rather work for an underdog.

I've come to the end of what you can get done with the free version of Elementor. I know there are workarounds, but the extra time it takes to figure them out with other apps would be saved by just biting the bullet and moving up to the paid version. Things like having different headers aren't possible in the free version of Elementor. And you can't create a blog easily in the free version. It's tougher to have consistent fonts, colors, as well in the free version. There's probably more that I might never use that's part of the paid version for $49 a year as well, but I think I'm coming to the conclusion that there's definitely value in the paid version. Once I start using it I'll let you know here.

I love quiet early mornings. Grabbing a cup of coffee, sitting on the couch, and preparing for the day. This time of year it's getting colder outside and I can tell in our house a little and pulling a big blanket over me as I read or type just has a good feeling about it. No one is up yet. It's relaxing to me. The crazy hasn't kicked in yet. Sometimes I think it'd be good to try and actually do some picking up or cleaning this early in the morning, but that never happens. It's typically more about trying to think through what I'm going to try and accomplish today, reading the bible, praying, and writing. Right now it's 7:10 AM and no one is up yet and that's pretty abnormal. Usually, I hear some little feet around 6 something. Enjoying a few more minutes of quiet.

Why is it that we can so easily be discontent? Especially in a place in the world where we have so much? Why is it hard to be thankful? These are good questions for me to ask myself. I think a lot of it stems from us being made for something greater than even the things that are good that we have. We are constantly on a search for something that will fill us. Many in the United States are hungry, not necessarily in a physical sense, but hungry in a seeking sense. I think they believe things should be different than what they are, but they don't really know what that looks like. They think they know. That thinking might be different government policies, more or less government involvement, different leaders, more or fewer taxes, more justice, less discrimination, less racism,... the list goes on and on. I have my own opinions on some of these matters, but I believe more than anything else we need a savior. We all have a sin problem. We have pride. We think we know best. We think we ...

At around 4:30-5 AM... "I peed my diaper!" "I peed my diaper!" "I peed my diaper!" That's what I've been waking up to from my son. At least he's realizing he's peed his diaper now and doesn't want to be in a wet diaper, but oh if he could just hold it a little longer or get up and go. He's almost 4. I keep hoping we'll get through the night consecutively, but it's very hit or miss.

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...