Just typed out the first of many scholarship recommendations for this year, I just love bragging on my kids.

Every year we buy a new Christmas tree ornament, just a little family thing we do. I'm thinking about getting one like this for mine this year. This one was on ebay, but I found a company online that had them very similar to this but just slightly larger and a little better quality and they could engrave my initials on the back. It will feel like Christmas in just a few days, that's when my new lights and grill come in. I decided to go with single round headlights. It's different, most guys go with quad rounds, but I wanted something a little more original. I'll put up a pic when I'm done. Suspension comes next, then that's pretty much it aside from the bodywork that I plan to do a little at a time. Audra pretty much hates the rims on it so I may be looking to go in a different direction with that as well. This is like a dream, I've always wanted to have money to spend on a vehicle like this, but because I bought this one so dirt cheep, I've actually got it to spend.

It's for real, I really did see this sign on a church last Wednesday. It was south of Tallahassee while I was on my way to Ocala. Bet it's down now after they got it handed to them last Saturday night.

Had a great visit with the family. I usually only see my grandparents, aunt-uncle-cousin at Thanksgiving so it's a big deal. Taking a trip in the Explorer was soooo nice, I liked it way better than the minivan. On the way down there was hardly any traffic and I rarely had to take the cruise control off and I actually got 24.5 mpg on one tank, better than the van but with a bigger engine and tires, crazy. The other times I was averaging 22.5, which is about what the van got.

So I'm looking for guys to take a trip with and swap driving duties with this weekend. Destination - Miami. I figure that if I've got a few guys to ride with, we can all swap out driving and sleeping and not have to get a hotel room. Yeah, we will probably stink by the time it's over, but this is serious stuff.

Why do I want to go to Miami so badly? Port St. Joe plays Fort Meade at 7pm Friday evening in the state championship game and I want to be there, but almost more than that, I want to be there for the game before it...Graceville! 3 seasons ago the Graceville Tigers, due to very poor coaching, had not won a game in 2 seasons. That season they won 2 games, and then the next year they were doing very very well until the coach got fired for something or another and they had to forfeit their games. Then a new coach comes in last season and turns things around and this Friday afternoon they play Evangel Christian from Lakeland at 1pm for the state championship in their division.

Why do we sometimes keep something on our mind for so long but don't do anything about it? I've had a dear friend from way back on my mind for several weeks now. She and I were lifeguards together and stayed very close thru most of college and then all of a sudden the contact was lost. She was busy trying to get married-go to school-work, I was busy trying to get married-go to school-work 2 jobs...

She had a very distinct maiden name so last week I decided to Google her name+St. Augustine and it wasn't hard to narrow it down to her family. She had a large family and she and her youngest sister were the only ones who weren't deaf. I was able to get her dad's email address and I wrote him, he wrote her, and for the past 3 days I've had a wonderful time learning all about my friend's new life, husband and son, and job in South America.

There have only been 7 people through out my life that I've really felt the need to keep in touch with and she was one of the last ones I needed to contact. Now there's just one more on my list, I think I'll email his mom this morning.

She's alive! I finally got the Jetta finished up late last night. Hooked everything up and wouldn't you know it, it wouldn't start! Battery died pretty quickly, but it's old and I'm going to replace it this morning. Jumped it off and it ran without a hitch. It's really fun to drive, very surprising. Doesn't have much horsepower, but it's got very good low end torque which makes it a blast around this small town. It's so nice to zip around and not worry about how much gas I'm using, I was really looking forward to that.

Once in middle school I was dubbed by a friend as TGB-Thanksgiving Boy-because I love it so much. I was the kid who always got a little too excited about the Pilgrims-Indians activities at school. The reason I love it like I do is because this is the one time a year that my whole family gets together. I don't have a very large family and we are spread out so Thanksgiving was always so special to me and still is. My brother will be there which is a big deal considering that he has a hard time scheduling time off since he works for Uncle Sam. Last year was JonMichael's first, this year will be Jolenn's first, hope we don't continue the trend in '06.

Allllllmost there, if this rain would stop I could finish the Jetta. It's decent outside right now so I plan to knock off an hour early today to run home and finish the job. Then I gotta order my suspension kit, which will lower the ride and stiffen the suspension, making it a lot more fun to drive. I've also got to decide what to do with my headlights. As they are now they need some work, work that could be costly. I could fix them and keep the rectangular lights, or do a conversion and go to quad rounds. I like both, just don't know which I'm going with at this point. I guess I need to break out the calculator, that may end up making my decision for me.

Trust me, this one was super funny, but I messed part of it up.

No more, never again. Audra and I walked into our bank on Monday and made our last van payment...then we turned around and sold it. That's not usually the idea, but we've got the Explorer now and love it and I'll be rocking the Jetta pretty soon. I plan to get it on the road this weekend. So we're done with all car payments and we plan to finish off my student loan in a couple of months and have zero debt...that is until we sign our lives away on a mortgage.

You may have noticed someone by the name RyanG who's been posting comments, well he's on the web in full force so go check him out. Where do you find him? Simple, it's Just Before Between.

Just couldn't think of a catchy title to this entry, but that's fine since I have been wanting to get away from them anyway. This will mark the beginning of my title-less blogging.

So, have you seen the new nickel? I hadn't heard that they were making new ones and I was rather surprised to pull one out of my pocket Friday night when I was getting change to buy Audra a coke. All she needed was a nickel, and that and some pennies was all I had. But when I pulled it out I saw a buffalo and got all excited that I had been given a very shiny buffalo nickel. I got greedy and didn't want to give away my prize nickel, but then I turned it over and saw that it was vintage 2005. Dang, thought I really had something special.

In a comment a couple of posts back I said that I use my blog as an on-going email to my friends. So here goes the latest greatest.

The house is being built. A month ago there was dirt, now there is a house. Now starts the slow stuff, all the internals. I'll post a pic, maybe this afternoon.

I'm getting ordained Jan 8th. You're all invited, yes, even the random passer-by. A good friend is getting ordained next month, but I won't steal his thunder since he'll probably announce it on his new blog as soon as his designer gets it finished for him, which should be today.

I preached last night. After an extremely busy weekend and a nearly sleepless night Saturday, I was drained by last night. Hungry, bad headache, the works. It didn't flow like I had it mapped out. Funny now, but I hit a spot about midway thru when I just wanted to stop talking and I had to will myself to go on.

Several years ago, pretty sure it was 2001, the church I interned at did a mission trip to Baltimore. I was thinking about that trip recently, probably because of a conversation I had with Ryan G. about the pastor I worked with at the time.

It was a new church, geared toward the emergent scene, and if you've got time to kill you can check out Horizon Church on the web.

I hope you guys are all doing well. We're good here. Life with the new baby is just fine, hasn't been the huge adjustment that we feared. Probably because it's so crazy with a 20 month old that we just haven't noticed. Funny how when you have kids, everything is about months, and 5 and a half hours of sleep is normal. I was getting over 6 but I gave up that last little bit to get out and start running again and I feel way better for it. Lots more energy, much easier to make it thru my day now.

Can hardly wait for....

My little black car to get on the road.
The van to sell and get out of my driveway, I'm tired of looking like a car lot.
The first playoff game Friday night.
Thanksgiving.
Christmas.
Ski trip.
January(new budget year!).

Just ordered a transmission for the Jetta. I'm hoping to put it in the shop by next week at the latest. I decided to go ahead and fix the car, rather than part it out. I would have made more money than I spent by parting it out, but it will be much easier just to fix it and then if I sell it I will make lots more than I put in, even with the new tranny. I've grown quite fond of selling my vehicles for more than I originally paid, $700 seems to be the magic number, won't be hard to keep it up with this car if I decide to sell. And looking at my recent track record, I'm sure that will happen before too long.

This is a sight that never gets old to me. No, this isn't the first time I've pulled over to take a picture of the Southern Snow.

Wednesday night - 3 hour drive to Crestview.
Thursday - Spend all day driving in Pensacola while car shopping.
Friday morning - 3 hour drive home so I can work and do all the homecoming hoopla with my students.
Friday night - 3 hour drive back to Crestview after the football game.
Saturday morning - Go to Pensacola and back to pick up our new truck.
Saturday night - 3 hour drive home.

uno, dos, tres

You all know I sold my truck to buy another family vehicle. We were talking about either a 4 door Windstar or an Explorer. Not sure exactly how the Expolorer came up but we decided to give them a look as well. I bought an AutoTrader magazine and started making notes and phone calls. There turned out to be no Windstars that met our specs, which were pretty detailed - 4 door, quad seating, rear air, 3.8 liter v6. I didn't really want to buy one on eBay either as most of them that I see are quite a distance from here. We decided that we would go check out some Explorers.

Armed with a list of possibilities, addresses and phone numbers, printed out directions and blue book values, we went car shopping in Pensacola yesterday. After crawling into several nasty Explorers on dealer lots and talking with sales people who were as greasy as their vehicles it just wasn't looking too hopeful. There was one person who was selling privately and we decided to make them our last try before heading back to Crestview.

Turned out to be the one we were looking for, wish we would have stopped there first. Everything about it is just right and we're excited about picking it up this Saturday. This will be our 3rd vehicle that we've bought with cash, a very good feeling. Something we learned about paying with cash though, it takes a lot more time and patience to find the right one. When we bought our van, it was easy to stroll up to a nice dealer lot and sign a loan for a beautiful van. This time we had to hunt, shop around, be picky. I saved a ton of money, which is always worth my time.