Wow. So things have been incredibly busy here as of late, thus my excuse for not making a post in a while. I have been really busy doing activities with the youth, just in the last week went out for pizza, decorated houses for Christmas, had our regular meetings and attended some band concerts. The next two weeks are looking to be even busier. I love the Christmas season. As I was browsing through the channels last week I came across High School Musical again, it was on the Disney Channel and after about ten minutes I realized that I was still watching it. Maybe I enjoyed that movie more than I led on. I got to see the first half of Prince Caspian last night, watched it with the youth and man, that movie is pretty intense. I like it. Mandy and I have also recently started working out, doing the ole' Power 90 DVD...we realized something. We aren't as young as we once were (and I'm definitely not as light as I once was.) It's all good though. I have many things to do so that's about all for now. I would like some feedback on something though, if you read this then please comment and give me your opinion. If you were given the option of of creating two service times for Sunday morning church, what would they be and which one would you most likely go to? Thanks!

Currently listening to: Jeremy Riddle

Alright, well I watched High School Musical last week and it was a movie...and sometimes movies are good. Sometimes movies are not so good. This movie fell somewhere in between but in an ok sort of way. It was Disney at its finest, a movie that 8 year old kids can watch and enjoy without being bombarded with filth and a older people can watch and think, man, this is really cheesy yet I still find myself kind of enjoying it. I will say that I liked the Lizzie McGuire movie better, but this was not as bad as I thought it would be. Moving right along. Mandy and I ventured down into the South Hills this past weekend in search of the perfect Christmas tree and after about three hours of searching, we found a pretty good one. There are some pretty good sized little peaks in the south hills, nothing over 10,000 ft though. The location that we finally stumbled upon that had our tree was quite high and took us up a dirt road up the side of a mountain. Mandy said repeatedly, "Joel, drive to the right...drive to the right!" I think she was a little concerned that the road was going to crumble and we were going to plunge to our death. Needless to say, we did not. I have posted some pictures of the excursion for your viewing pleasure.

Well, it is two days till Thanksgiving and since I addressed being thankful in my last post I will spare my readers the expense of doing it again, just remember we should always be thankful. Ok, so since I got to watch Rambo I now have to pay a price. You see, the way it works with our Netflix deal is Mandy gets to choose a movie, then I get to choose a movie, then Mandy gets to choose, etc. Strangely enough, up until Rambo most of the movies we had watched were Mandy movies...it looks like we are headed back in that direction as the movie on its way to us today is none other than....High School Musical. Now, I'm very open to different types of movies, I will sit through almost anything and there have only been 2 movies that I actually got up and left the theater during, Master and Commander and the second Meet the Parents movie. I can only take so much. No doubt my limits will be tested again tonight as I subject myself to the teeny bopper phenom that is High School Musical. I will let you guys know how it goes. In addition to the HSM movie, I have another dilemma approaching. You see, I have a problem. I am an impulse buyer. I see things that are cool and are cheap (because I never pay retail) and I immediately want to buy them. It doesn't matter that I don't need it, or I already have three of them, I still need to buy it. Why is that a problem you ask? Well, because Friday is Black Friday and I will be up with the East Coast Friday morning knocking down the doors of various internet sites trying to get good deals....mostly on things that I dont need. Please pray for Mandy as she will get extremely tired of saying, "Joel...NO!" on Friday.

Currently listening to: The Fray

So last night marked the first time since being married that I was off duty. Off duty means Mandy was out of town overnight. Knowing that I would be off duty for a night, I got on Netflix and requested the latest Rambo movie. I was quite impressed to say the least. Even at 61 years old Stallone can still throw down with the best of them. Anyway, he is living in Thailand and working a boat and catching cobra's for a living, then some missionaries ask him to take them up the river into Burma, he initially is like, no way, but then does it. The missionaries are captured by some rebels that are pretty much just going through and killing everyone and that opens the door for Rambo to open up a can...if you know what I mean. Now, this movie definately deserved its R rating and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a squemish stomach (or sensitive ears). But it does give a good look into the kind of warzones that missionaries risk their life going into everyday.That takes a special kind of person. Its interesting because I was talking to my kids last week about how rich we are, even in the midst of this bad economy...I mean, we have a car to get from point A to point B, 92 % of the people in the world dont have that luxury. I may look at my purple Toyota and think, "man, that thing is such an eyesore," but 92% of the rest of the worlds population would look at me in my ugly car and say, "man, that person is rich." I can get up off my couch and walk to the fridge, get out my Brita Water Jug and get a drink of water. Millions of children would look at me doing that and and think, rich. As Thanksgiving rolls around I think it would be good for all of us to take some time to think about how good we have it, and then take some time to think about how we can spread it around. Despite what the media tells us, we are rich...and lucky that we aren't being stalked by John Rambo.

Warning: You should probably stop reading here.
I talked to Brad yesterday about the movie before I watched it and he is like, "dude, text me when he rips the guys throat out." So naturally I'm like, yeah, ok. I thought he was being sarcastic. Low and behold, just as this rebel is about to do away with the woman missionary, Rambo pops up behind him, grabs him and literally rips out his throat. It was crazy. If you read that and are regretting it, I'm sorry that I'm not sorry, I warned you.

The times they were a changing....

So today is the day after the election and we now know we will have a black president. Hooray. I'm bubbling over with optimism and enthusiasm. I watched the news for several hours last night and then again this morning and have observed a couple of things. First off, I didn't vote for Obama. My reasoning for this was not because he is black...I could care less what color he is, I just don't like him. I don't like his policies, I don't like the fact that he has no morals and dislikes America. I don't like the fact that he is going to make gun buying difficult or that he will tax the crap out of ammunition. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin. Everyone is making a big fuss over the fact that America has turned a new leaf...lets be honest, who cares? This is not 1960. There are not segregated schools, restaurants, water fountains...people of color have the same opportunities that whites do just like women have the same opportunities that men do. Let's see this election for what it really was, a cry for change. In saying that, McCain was probably doomed from the beginning, too many people saw a repeat of the Bush administration and that scared them. Now that McCain has lost it seems to be popular to turn around and point the finger at Sarah Palin, like it was her fault that 'Pubs lost. Palin actually made me feel better about my vote. But that's just me, you either love her or you hate her. I just hope people see this election for what it really was and that all these new voters knew what they were voting for because if this election was won due to the color of Obama's skin, we are in trouble. I do hope that he comes through though and is a great president, however at this point, I have my doubts.

I have also seen a lot of disunity as a result of these recent changes, I log onto facebook every few minutes to read the changing statuses of my friends and am going to post some of them for the reading pleasure of the audience. They are as follows:
1. _______________ is wondering if a wood chuck could chuck wood, how much of that wood would obama take and give to those lazy wood chucks.
2. "the world is not over people, we have 3 months before Obama becomes president...even then the world isn't over."
3. "oh crap we' re all gonna be muslims."
4. _________________ thinks a lot of "Christians" need to reread Romans 13.
5. _________________ is enjoying seeing all these crazy Christian Statuses :)
6. _________________ loves how bitter and angry "christians" are over the turn of events. "How about you pray for your New President. What's done is done. Get over it."
7. "you all got what you wanted...a socialist country that is run by a man who isn't proud to be an American."
8. _________________ is shocked Ron Paul didn't win!

Please note that these are not my statements but the statements of friends of mine as taken from Facebook. Very interesting.

On a different note, I returned home yesterday to find literature stuck in my door from none other than the Jehovahs Witnesses. I can finally relax a little bit in knowing that some things, will never change.

A squash is a squash...

Halloween is almost upon us and that can only mean one thing...actually, it could mean several things, but most importantly for me, it means Mandy's birthday. Of the other less important things that Halloween signifies, pumpkin carving. Last night I carved the first pumpkin myself of my life. Mandy brought the pumpkin in, did the outline that she wanted and then said, "here." Everyone knows that I am terrible with numbers so naturally when I see the sign at the pumpkin place that says $.18 lb, I'm like, sweet I can get one of those big ole honking pumpkins and its only going to cost like a dollar. Well, either I'm not a good judge of weight or am worse with numbers than I thought, that joker cost me like 8 bucks. So needless to say, as I am carving it with a filleting knife I start kicking myself for getting such a big pumpkin. The walls of this thing are like 5 inches thick. Anyway, this is what it looked like last night after I got done with it. We roasted the seeds and ate like 10 of them until I was about to throw up. I'm glad pumpkin seed roasting time only comes around once a year. Last night also marked the end of the World Series. Not that I really cared because my team was at their respective homes watching on their home theater systems. Gas has finally got down under $3 a gallon here, thank goodness. So anyway, like I was saying before I thought of that stupid pumpkin, Mandy's birthday is tomorrow. She will be....23...yes, that is correct. And I went out on a ledge and defied the "you don't have to get me anything," bull that I was given last week. I'm pretty sure she is going to enjoy what I got her, although since my money is now her money and her money is my money, it's like she bought herself something except, I bought it...oh well, at least I am covered because I didn't fall for the don't get me anything line.

Words cannot describe how happy it makes me to see the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Boston Red Sox to get into the World Series. For the last how many years they Rays have been the bottom dwellers of the AL East, it does my heart good to see them rise to the top and bully the Yankees and Boston. The Orioles...well, they are still terrible. Speaking of terrible, how about the Chargers? I mean honestly...3-4? And they lost to the Dolphins? I guess it could be worse, the Cowboys lost to the RAMS! Hahahaha. Oh man...