Enough with the corny jokes… In a lot of ways, I am glad to see 2011 become history. There were a lot of hard times in 2011, and I’m not just talking in generalities. Several of our church members have had a really, really rough year. I know that new year’s day is just like any other day in the grand scheme of things, but we humans like to think of it as a fresh start. A time to reflect on the past for a bit, then to make it into a new start.

I do pray, for all of you, as Moses did:

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

I’ve had last Friday through Monday off from work. I worked yesterday, and I’m off again today. I only have to work a half day tomorrow, then I’m off again until Monday. Becky and I are thinking of making a trip to Dollywood before our season passes expire. We’ve been wanting to go for the Christmas season there, but have been waaay too busy.

After these last few things to do with my time off, things should begin to get back to normal for us. Working every day, taking care of things around the house that have been neglected for the entire month of December, and everything else that goes along with normal life.

Now is the time of year that people are thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I’m not much for those really, but I do try to set some goals. This year I had a goal I failed miserably at – posting a daily verse either on this blog or as my twitter status. I’m rededicating myself to that goal. I’m also going to do my best to slow things down a little. Every time somebody asks how I’m doing, my response usually has something to do with being too busy. I need for that to change. I’ll probably expand on these thoughts on my other blog in the next few days, so stay tuned for that.

For now, Becky and I are going to enjoy the last few days I have off. Maybe I can sneak a football game or two in while I’m at it.

Saturday evening was nothing but rain, but that’s significant because it washed off all the treatment that had been put on the roads before hand. When it turned to snow early Sunday morning, it began sticking to the road. At first it wasn’t bad, as it was just a dry, powdery layer that blew off the road as soon as you drove over it. Later Sunday afternoon, though, it started snowing harder and sticking (and staying) on the roads.

On the way home from church, one family wrecked in their driveway, nearly crashing into a pond. Another family began sliding on the road and pulled over to call for help from a family member with a 4WD vehicle. Another young man was heading home and went into the ditch avoiding a pile-up. I haven’t heard how bad the actual damage to the vehicles was, but thankfully no one was hurt.

Becky and I made it home safely Sunday night, sliding only a little while we drove up the steep part of Snow Hill. Since then, we’ve been kinda stuck here. Our little road has only gotten worse. It did melt off some while the sun was out yesterday, but it refroze when the sun went down. With a low of around 10 overnight, there was no chance of it clearing off.

Hopefully today the sun will shine some more and melt some more snow as well as dry it off so we can get out tomorrow.

We bought Braden an RC boat, and he was dying to take it out to the pond to try it out. He was pretty excited.

It’s always fun to get to spend some time together with family. It made for a relaxing evening, even though the bugs were out like crazy. Oh, and it was hot and humid.

Yes, snow.  I’ve been glad to see it honestly, although I’m over it now.  It started snowing a little bit on Sunday night, but snowed fairly hard all day on Monday and part of Tuesday morning.  In all, we probably had about 5 inches – at least that’s what I eye-balled on the handrail outside the front window of our room.

I’m usually one to say that I’m good with one or two good snows in the Winter, then I’m ready for Spring.  Well, I’ve had my good snow – I’m ready for Spring.  I’m ready to do a garden and mow the yard.  I’m ready to cut down some more trees for next Winter’s firewood.  I’m ready to be outside without freezing.

The snow is still beautiful though.  Here’s a pic to prove it – stay tuned, I’ll try to add more pics to this gallery later on rather than keeping it at just the one.

Christmas is coming up really soon, so Becky and I (mostly Becky) have been doing as much Christmas shopping as we can. I’ve noticed that as I get older, Christmas gets here faster and faster. When I was a kid, it took forever to get here! Becky and I are also heading up the Christmas play at church this year, so that has been an added, but welcome challenge as well. We’ve really enjoyed working with the youth and hope to be able to do more with them in the future.

I guess all of the Christmas preparations are what has been keeping us busy, but we’re also having to take care of all of the normal day-to-day stuff at the same time. Last year I think I let all of that turn me into sort of a Scrooge – just ask Becky..she’ll be honest with you. I’m determined not to let that happen this year though. I’m trying to stay full of Christmas cheer. See?!

Something else that’s cool is that this entire post has been written on my iPhone. This is the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and probably the most useful as well.

We had a good time while we were there.  We got to relax some, and were able to do a few fun things, too.  Of course, anyone that has been in or around Gatlinburg knows that the scenic views in the area can be breathtaking.  This particular photo was taken at Newfound Gap in the Smokies.

While we were there, we spent about a day and a half in Dollywood.  I don’t know if they do this all year, but we found that if you go in after 3pm on one day, you can get in the next day for free.  So we took advantage of that.  We enjoyed a couple of bluegrass bands, saw the Kingdom Heirs (We found that their piano player, Andy Stringfield, lives about a 20 minute drive from where we live), got sick on a couple of roller-coasters and shopped around a bit.

After Dollywood, we spent some time in the Great Smoky Mountains.  We drove up to Clingman’s Dome, took the .5 mile hike up to the top and enjoyed the view.  Don’t let that .5 mile fool you though – it’s steep, and pretty challenging.  Neither Becky or I are in the best shape, but we’re not in terrible shape either.  We had to take a few breaks on the way to the top.  Once we got there, the view was awesome, but the wind was chilling.  We enjoyed the view for a while, took some photos and made our way back down.  We spoke to a Marine, a Vietnam Vet, who had some interesting stories to tell.  We enjoyed talking to him for a little while, then had to move on.  On the way back down towards Gatlinburg, we stopped at Newfound Gap.  We took a few more photos, and learned a few things about the area that I’m sure most of you already know about.  There is a monument there where President FDR dedicated it and the National Park.  The Tennessee/North Carolina state line also runs right through the area where that monument was built.

That evening, we went to the Dixie Stampede.  This makes about the 3rd time we’ve gone, I believe.  It is expensive, but it’s always a fun show to watch, and the food is always very, very good.  I finally saw a mess-up for the first time in the show.  The girl that rides standing up on two horses fell off when she was trying to get them to bow at the end of her act.  She wasn’t hurt at all – she just had to jump off before she completely lost her balance.  Again, though, the show was a lot of fun as always.

We packed up and headed home Wednesday morning.  We had a lot of fun, but it’s always good to get back home.

If you’d like to see, here are a few more photos from the trip.

Becky and I went up to Ohio to see my sister and her husband, and then on to Michigan to see her grandparents.  On our way back south, we stopped back in Ohio to visit some more and then went to a Reds game.

When we first got to Ohio, it had already been a hard day at work.  I had to work on Saturday the 9th for maintenance – that’s a time when we can do work on servers that can’t be done during regular hours.  My job was simple that day – cable up the new storage to the SAN, and update the patches on our VMware hosts.  We ran into a small issue with the SAN, but it took us a while to fix it.  The VMware stuff went just fine.  But I didn’t get out of the office until about 2:00 in the afternoon, and it was too late to make it to Ohio for the main purpose of our trip in the first place.  My sister’s husband was being ordained as the assistant pastor at First Baptist Church in West Union, Ohio.  We made it to their house around 8:30 that evening I believe.  We went to church with them and several other family members on Sunday.  My sister’s father-in-law preached both services.  We all stayed with them again on Monday night, and went to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati the next morning.  I’ll blog about that trip in a different post since there is so much to tell.  After that, Becky and I headed straight up to Michigan.

Becky’s grandparents live in Lexington, MI.  It’s a small town right on Lake Huron.  This photo to the left is from the ‘Rock Wall’ that extends out into the lake in this small harbor.

We stayed with them for three nights and had a great time overall.  We were also able to visit with some of Becky’s other family members – cousins, aunts and uncles.

While we were there we also drove down to Port Huron to see the sights there.  Becky’s grandma (Oma) wanted so bad to take us ‘across the bridge’ into Canada.  I honestly hadn’t been crazy about the idea at all from the start, and then one of Becky’s aunts told us about how she was detained one day when her name/age/description was flagged as someone they were looking for.  That was enough for me – I didn’t want to spend any extra time with the authorities than I had to.  Going through customs was going to be bad enough for me – I hate subjecting myself to searches, etc.  Not that I have anything to hide, just that it violates my sense of privacy.  Anyway, we did go to the river and look across at Canada.  In the photo here, you can see two land masses – the one of the left is Canada, and the right is the good ole’ USA.

Lastly, on our way back home on Thursday, we stopped back by my sister’s house.  We got there around 8:30 again I believe.  They made home made chocolate ice cream for my birthday and we watched a movie.  Well, we tried anyway – we were all really tired.  We got up the next morning and headed to the Cincinnati area.  Our main intent was to go see the Reds play, but we did a little bit of shopping before game time.  At the game, we started out in the very top of the nosebleed section behind home plate.  I’m serious – when we looked behind us, we were looking at the outside of the stadium.  After a few innings, we headed down to the right field corner where they had a mostly empty ‘family’ section where alcohol wasn’t allowed.

The entire trip was a lot of fun, but there was a lot of driving involved so that was a bit tiresome.  We really enjoyed getting away, but we were glad to get back home at the same time.  Now it’s back to the daily grind of the job, and taking care of things around the house.