Santa vs. Jesus

Well, Christmas is over and I am happy about that. Overall it was pretty good. Here is a quick rundown of what we did. We hung out with friends on Friday night at John’s house in honor of the Tokar’s being in town. On Saturday, we picked up Annie and Walt at the airport and drove them down to Mena and stayed until Sunday. This was a lot of fun. We love hanging out with Walt and Annie and some of my favorite people to visit are her parents. You just feel good and when you are at their house and hanging out with them. It is like you don’t have a care in the world and you are just happy. I hope someday that people will feel like that when they come to our house. On Sunday night we went to Margo’s grandmother’s house and hung out with her family and then to her parent’s house to open presents. On Monday, all of my family came to our house and we cooked a big meal and opened presents. It was a very busy weekend and overall it went pretty good.
I do have some issues with Christmas. It is getting to be a little to much with the Santa Clause and all the presents. It seems like there is so much pressure on getting presents and getting the right one. And kids these days just want more and more and bigger and more expensive. I find it ridiculous that people go in debt over buying presents for their kids. I wish we would concentrate more on Jesus (of course) but also more on family. I like getting presents for people and receiving presents but there has got to be a better way. Maybe we should only be allowed to give each person one gift and that gift has to be something you make yourself. I told Margo the other day that we really need to come up with how we are going to treat Christmas once we have kids because I don’t want it to be like it is for a lot of families. One thing is for sure, my kids will not be taught that Santa Clause is real. I don’t want them to believe that if they are good all year than this jolly guy comes down in a sleigh with his flying reindeer and brings them presents. I would much rather teach them Jesus and make them excited about him.

Merry Christmas

For any of you who did not get a Christmas card from us, here is our picture that was on our Christmas card this year. I think it is our best one yet.




We tried to make it as much like the painting as possible, even the solemn looks.

Terrorists Attack the Farm!!!!!

Not really terrorists. But that is the thought that went through my head when I got home today. Let me start from the beginning. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Maybe not that beginning, because that might take a while. So when we bought the farm, there was a "barn" on the property. Although, originally it was not a barn. As I mentioned in my post about the chicken coop, hippies used to own this property and what we call the barn was their house. It is really scary but I am sure it was glorious to the hippies in its hayday. I thought I could turn this structure into a barn for the animals but finally decided it was not possible and it must go. My neighbor Mark had mentioned he might like to tear it down so he could use the wood from it to build a structure of some sort on his property. As hard as it was to give up the idea of making a huge fire of it, I agreed that he could tear it down. This was a couple of days ago that I told him he could tear it down. Well, when I got home today, he and his buddy had almost completely dismantled the entire thing, there was only one wall still standing. This is the point that the thought went through my head..."it looks like terrorists flew planes into my barn". Let me just say right here that I am not trying to make light of 9/11 but I saw ground zero two months after 9/11 and that is what it kind of reminded me of (except smaller). Anyway, I am very happy that this eyesore on my property is almost gone. Seriously though, it does look like a tornado came through.

Before Terrorists (and winter)


After Terrorists (today)