Advent Conspiracy

Nobody wants a Christmas worth forgetting. What if we would worship fully, spend less, give more and love all? Check out adventconspiracy.org for more...

Snow Day (for some)

Today was a snow day for most of central Arkansas. The temperature began to drop yesterday morning, and misty light rain began around noon. Soon after, the rain began to freeze and the rest of the day was a mix of sleet and a few snow flurries.

Schools and many businesses are closed, and Rachel was already off today. She is spending the day making and baking Christmas treats with her mom. The roads are not really that bad, especially because every TV and radio station tells people to stay home and do not get on the roads unless absolutely necessary. They think that the first sign of winter weather must be the beginning of an ice age (like the movie Day After Tomorrow). But hotels are still open and it is business as usual for me. I'm not thrilled about driving home on these roads in the dark, but since the roads should be pretty empty, I have no reason to be worried.

It was nice to get up this morning and see our first snow and ice at our house.

We finally have our garage back!

Ever since buying our house in May, our garage has been full of extra stuff. Boxes and boxes of stuff. Most of which was in storage for over a year - we didn't need it then and haven't needed it since being in the house.

We finally set a date for a garage sale and Rachel's brother, Karl, helped to split our garage into things to keep and things to sell.

Karl and Robyn had a lot of things to sell and we had a combined garage sale last Saturday. Being a holiday weekend and the day after Black Friday, we didn't know what to expect. Then it was rainy on Friday and early Saturday morning.

We were very surprised at how much we were able to get rid of! We started out with a HUGE mountain of clothes and ended with enough to fill only two boxes. Altogether, we made almost $500 and now there is room to get a car in the garage.

Mid-November Update

My birthday was November 5th. Rachel surprised me that Saturday with a birthday party at our house. We had invited our friends Brian and Maria over to have lunch and play cards. They showed up and I went outside to start cooking on the grill. Then the doorbell rang and it was Ryan and Samantha. I realized something must be up, people kept showing up, and we ended up having about 20 family and friends from church.

Rachel's brother Karl came over and helped us move/organize/get rid of stuff in our garage. He and Robyn will be having a garage sale with us on November 29th and hopefully we will get rid of a lot of stuff that's just laying around taking up space. I'm just glad that we can get one car in the garage now!

Leeland concert at church

I'm a scrooge when it comes to Halloween. We decided to go see Leeland in concert at church.

Cold weather moving in

Rachel and I raked some leaves in the back yard last week, and we'll have a lot more to do once all the leaves fall. Oh well - just another thing that comes along with home-ownership... The cool weather this last month has been great, but now the cold weather is starting to move in. Our house has been pretty cold in the mornings and we turned on the heat Saturday morning. The temperature was down in the lower 40s this morning, and it will be even colder tonight.

We had a late night Friday hanging out with 3 couples from church. Saturday was spent getting the house ready for the cold weather. We finished adding some weather-stripping to our windows, caulked the inside of our windows, and installed a programmable thermostat (fun job and a lot easier than I thought). I even bought some outlet/switch insulation - pre-cut pieces that go behind the covers and around electrical outlets and light switches. We've never had (or paid for) gas heat before, and all you hear is how expensive heating costs will be every winter - hopefully what we did will help with our heating costs, but we'll just have to wait and see...

Great cartoon

Not an endorsement for one candidate over the other - just thought it was really good... (click for larger image)