It has been awhile since my last post, sorry.  It is has been a very busy last few weeks.  We had our Christmas production at church this past Sunday.  That has been eating up most of my time.  This week I’ve been spending almost all my time at work doing the mixdown and editing of the Christmas show for TV and DVD.  I would have normally stretched this out into a two week process, but since I’m on vacation next week, I had no choice.  Right now it looks like the finished product is going to be pretty good.  I’ve still have alot of work left to do, but hope to finish it tomorrow.  Kayce and Parker are doing wonderful.  Parker had a bad week last week, he had some kind of stomach virus, but it seems to have passed.  We are all just trying to catch up on house work and shopping before Christmas.  We can’t wait to see everyone over Christmas.  Merry Christmas!

Whew… What a week.  Let just thank everyone who called to wish me a happy birthday.  Whether you actually talked to me or not.  Let me fill everyone in on my week.  Sunday evening.  After the service was over at 7pm several of us  stayed around to help dismantle our old sound board to make room for our new digital board.  We purchased one of the greatest sound boards in production.  It is called the Venue and it is made by Digidesign.  It is awesome.  Monday.  They showed up with the board and started the assembly and installation which took all of monday (until 10pm) and most of Tuesday.  Wednesday we had our mid-week service, which went pretty well considering we wer still getting our feet underneath us on the new board.  In addittion to all this, the new board caused me to have to redo all of my video stuff to accomodate the new capabilities of the board.  I traced wires, re-wired, re-arranged furniture in the video room, un-pluged, and re-plugged everything that had anything to do with audio or video.  Busy week.  In addition to all that, I’m sort of overseeing the installation of the low-voltage in the four story youth and children’s building we are contructing.  They are just about to finish up the ceiling grid on the first floor so we have to get our network and telephone lines in asap.  Our sub-contractor is coming to start that tomorrow, but I had to meet with all the concerned parties (General Contractor, Electrician, etc…) last week and do a walk through of the whole thing so they could get started.  Oh, I forget to mention the same sub-contractor was in the sanctuary this past week running new video and audio lines to the camera positions so we didn’t have to tape cables to the floor under the pews (tacky).  Oh, and on top of all that… I had to get my weekly work done for Sunday.  Busy week.  Did I mention that on my birthday I was work for a training session until 9:00pm.
Kayce and I went out on Saturday and ate at Hananoki’s and saw the new Santa Clause movie.  It was nice to have a break from a week full of wiring!  Well, that’s my week.  How was yours?  Hopefully, slightly less busy.  I guess I earned my 24th birthday this past week.  I hope I don’t have work as hard to turn 25 next year. 

Carved an awesome pumpkin today.  I couldn’t find an Fun-Kin to carve (fake pumpkin that you can carve), so I had to use a real one.  Which made quite a large mess, but it was worth it.  Click the thumbnail to se the picture larger.  I used Parker’s 1 year old picture as the pattern for the pumpkin, and I think it turned out really well.  I have 5 others to carve before Halloween so I had better get back to work!  Just a quick note to mention Dillion Barker’s blog.  There, mentioned it.  So long, for now.

Today was a fun day.  I woke up at 11am, helped Mr. Shorter (Kayce’s Dad) unload some wood he had brought us from his neighbors house.  We have a great wood stove downstairs that will easily heat the whole house this winter and save us a ton in gas bills.  I went back with him and got a second load.  Some of the wood was rotten, but mostly it was good.  So, we should be set for the winter, now. 
After that we ate a little lunch, and headed out for The Right Place, to get some pictures developed and pick up some others.  I’ve gotten hooked back into to photography again.  Not a cheap hobbie.  To shoot with my medium format camera it costs me $10 per roll, and then I only get 12 exposures.  But today was worth it.  As soon as I get the film from today developed, I’ll post some of the pictures.  I guess I should tell you what I took pictures of… Well, I’m not there yet… 
After picking up some film, we went to ToysR’Us and did some early Christmas shopping.  Today, they were giving teachers 20% off (on top of any other sales, of which there were many).  We were able to get alot of shopping done for Parker today and for almost nothing.  Very Cheap day. 
Next we headed to the pumpkin patch.  This place off exit 11 were this family grows huge fields of pumpkins, and then pile them all in front of their house and sell them for $1,$3, or $5, depending on size.  We got quite a few.  I have alot of carving to do!  I like to carve pictures into the pumpkins.  This year, I’m doing Parker’s face.  I’ll post a picture if it turns out well.  This is where I took all the good pictures today.  Hopefully, one will be good enough for our Christmas card this year.  I think we are going to skip the snail mail cards and do eCard for Christmas this year.  I don’t have actually addresses for everyone we would send one to, but I do have e-mails, and it will save on postage.  People will just have to print them for themselves.  Maybe, we are still thinking about it.  Anyway.  It was good day.  By the way, Dairy Queens Mocha Latte’s are really good!  That is probably the reason I’m still going at 11pm and not tired yet.  I had better hit the hay, though, I’m running the switcher tomorrow at church.  Good night, God bless.