I love being able to customize things… Thanks Wells! (For people making custom wells cards, I think now would be a worthwhile time to note that the black on the far right is not true black… but rather like… #111111)

The 4 days known as “Thanksgiving Day” weekend have come and gone, and I’ve found I’ve caught up on quite a few things in my life. To start with, and most importantly, I connected with all my family members.

First there was Thanksgiving with Amber’s family on Thursday afternoon. Great Turkey, Great Potatoes, and a great time playing pool. Afterward, Amber and I went and visited my family, saw my sister and cousin Ali, just “hung around.”

Friday, I spent most of the day at home, catching up on some work, and starting the “Clean house project”. Amber spent most of the day shopping, and actually got a good amount of our Christmas shopping done, which is great. Also got to watch Nebraska beat Colorado. If Nebraska can beat Texas for the Big 12 Title, the college football world might riot.

Saturday was Thanksgiving with my family. Amber worked most of the morning, allowing me to continue cleaning some of the house. Also gave me yet another chance to catch up on work. Dinner was great, shot pool with my dad for about 2 hours, while Amber and my mom watch a movie (my sister and cousin ditched us after dinner to go hang with friends… lame!)

Sunday started with serving at sound board in Genesis. All in all, a great service. No major problems. Got done with that and came home and really went to town on the cleaning. Managed to get all the major rooms done, the tree up, etc. So much so, that we actually invited Amber’s parents over for dinner, cards, spaghetti. For the 3rd time in 4 days, I ate way to much. And now, I find myself working again… just catching up on emails… trying not to be buried come tomorrow (it’s going to happen anyway).

Well goodnight world. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I look forward to the next month of preparing our hearts with a love that can only be described as “amazing.”

Farmville, a facebook app that I don’t use, is reporting staggering numbers on it’s twitter account:

25 Million people played FarmVille yesterday. Thanks to the support of our awesome players, we keep making history! 11:51 AM Nov 12th from web

Since FarmVille was released over 50 Million people have made farms! If all of you were to hold hands, it would circle the world 1.5 times. 5:23 PM Sep 28th from web

I’ve long said if I wasn’t a computer programmer, I would be a farmer. Work the soil refreshes the soul. Maybe I’m not the only one.

I do not want more people to read my blog.

I wonder if shorter blog posts would encourage more readers.

How short can your posts be before their only considered to be tweets.

140 Characters…

As many of you probably know, Amber and I gave up cable TV a few months ago. Reasons included that we wanted to save money and watch less TV, and if you’ve looked at your Cable TV bill lately, your probably seeing close to $100.00 being lost on the TV portion of your bill. Kind of sad when you realize most of it can be watched online for free thanks to Hulu and the various network tv websites…. But I digress.

The one thing I find I am missing is at this point in the Christmas sequence is the pure joy you get from Christmas. I think part of it might be that I’m still working every day, I’m still not spending massive amounts of time with family… All in all, the Christmas activities haven’t really started at all…. And what I’m finding is this: It’s really hard to get and stay in the christmas spirit without my annual christmas TV movies that are found on the Hallmark and Family Channels (both cable).

However, I’m wondering if that’s going to make the times I’m in the “Christmas Spirit” that much more important, or if it simply means I need to find another source for poor quality christmas TV movies… (I’m sure their out there…)

For the last 24 years of my life, every December 24th, you can find me in Nebraska.

My family hasn’t missed a year there in over 24 years. Every Christmas eve you can find us in my Grandpa’s living room. Every Christmas day you can find us gathered in some random location (anyplace with a hall big enough to hold us) eating mashed potatoes and turkey. Over the years we have lost some loved ones, and gained some new loved ones. In fact, since I started coming to Christmas at age 0, the group has *almost* doubled in size of new people. Maybe I’ll post some pictures .

This year though, could mark the first year where things change. A series of family changes have occured that has made it excessively difficult for everyone to get to where we all have Christmas. New babies. People who are sick and can’t travel. New marriages. All of these things reshape families in ways that can make it difficult to figure out if old traditions stay or if new traditions get formed.

At this point, I don’t know exactly where I’ll be on December 24th this year. The one thing I do know though: I WILL be with loved ones.