This morning we rose early to go to Checotah, Oklahoma to visit my father in law.  We had a pretty good time there except that I was a little under the weather.  Early this morning our warm weather came to an end as a cold front came crashing through.  At 4:00 AM a line of severe thunderstorms came through bringing hail and high winds.  We lost power three or four times.  Shortly after that, the cold front came through and dropped the temperature more than 20 degrees but the sun was shining.  We left at 8:00 AM to go to Checotah and eventually caught up with the storms.  By the time we arrived, it was raining.  Around 2:00 PM, the clouds cleared away and it was not too bad.   We all enjoyed ourselves though I have had a sore throat, stopped up head, and now my ribs are hurting.  I hope this clears up before I have to go back to work on Monday.  In the above picture, we have Sunday and I standing in front of the house on the lower level kitchen.

We opened our Christmas presents and visited together for a while.  We had a wonderful meal to eat.  I was asked to help set up a home wifi system and was actually looking forward to it.  My wife, looking out for me told them that I did not feel good and could not do it.  Later I asked if they were ready to work on it and she told me no and we could do it another time since I was not feeling well.  I did not know that my wife had spoken to her until after we started home.  She is always looking out for me and helping me out.  I sat in the car sending Twitter messages on my phone all the way home while Sunday drove home.  As always it was a good time.  We enjoyed seeing family and visiting.  Unlike the portrayal in the movie Four Christmases, we actually look forward to seeing the family.  Sunday has a great dad and step mom. 

Last night our dog had two siezures and it really scared us.  She is 15 years old and was out of control for a few minutes.  That was pretty scary though she is back to normal now.  Now we are home and the house is very cold since we had the heat turned off the whole time we were gone.  I thought I would share how our day went and hope yours went just as well as ours did.

I just arrived home from visiting my dad’s house and we had a pretty good time.  We laughed so hard that I worried for him bursting a blood vessel .  In the above photo, my dad and Retha managed to pull it together enough to answer the cell phone.  My dad was talking to his mom in Wynnewood.  The call did not last very long because he could not stop laughing.  I would love to tell you what we were laughing about but it may not be appropriate to post online.  I will just tell you it was about a stunt that he did when he was a teenager.  This Christmas weekend has been very good and more than a blessing.

Even Larry got into the laughing.  We have always been told that laughter is good for your health and after tonight, we are all healthy enough to be marathon runners.  Tomorrow we are going to go to Sunday’s dad’s house and I will make a point to post online.  If tomorrow is going to be like the rest of the weekend, it will be a great time.    Today was such a good day all the way around as the temperatures approached 80.  The last time I checked it was 76 degrees on the day after Christmas.  The house was so hot that we opened the windows and let the 30 MPH wind blow through.  Our puppy dog Sandy needs some prayers though.  She is nearly 15 years old and she had two siezures this afternoon.  My wife was distraught over that for good reason.  Since we will not be near the computer all day tomorrow, I will enable Twitter notifications on my cell phone.  I will be back sometime tomorrow night though.  Again, thanks for all the well wishes for our family.

When we came out of the movie theater, we were amazed how warm and spring like it felt outside.  The ground was covered with condensation.  It was close to 70 degrees at nearly 11:00 PM.  Now we are tired and back home.  Pretty amazing day for sure and now we only have one more week until 2009.  This is hard to believe how fast this year went.

This morning both of my sons are still asleep but my wife and I have been struggling with emotion. All I can say is “Thank you God!” Thank you for not giving up on us. Thank you for taking care of my son. Thank you for my family that stayed behind. Thank you most of all for sending your son to die to pay for my sins. This day we celebrate the birth of your son, we get to celebrate the second birth of ours. God I pray that our other son will not hate his brother or us for being happy to see him. This day we celebrate the miracle of Jesus’ birth and the miracle of my son that was lost.

I just want to say thank you for the countless people that have prayed for our family. This truly is a miracle and I want everyone to know how greatful that I am. I love my family and this moment is hard to express with words. The many emotions that I feel at this moment cannot be expressed with words. I am sorry God for not trusting in your greatness and power. I feel shame for not having faith. I feel shame for lashing out at everyone. I feel gratitude for being given such a gift when I am not worthy. I feel gratitude for such a loving wife and mother Sunday. Words cannot express how much I love her. Short of Jesus himself, she is the very reason I wake up in the morning. Thank you Sunday for all that you are. Thank you Kevin for being the strong son that has been there for me and supported mom and I. Thank you for being the incredible son that anyone could ask for. Thank you Jordan for forgiving me enough to come home. I love my family and I love the God that gave them to me.

As painful as it was to lose my mom in 2005, this was even more painful. I miss my mom so much and I wish she could be here with us. I missed Jordan and just wanted to tell him that I love him but I could not because he would not speak to me. Now that he is home all I have to offer him is all the love that I can give and no lectures. He and Kevin are so important to Sunday and I and no one can put a value on that. This is honestly the first time in my life that I have been so greatful for a gift that it has brought me to tears. All I can say is thank you God. Thank you again and a million times. If I gave you all that I am, it could not be enough to repay you for the gratitude that I feel. This is truly the happiest Christmas that I have ever had.

All I can say is Thank you…

Last night my poor son went out for the first time in the car with his girlfriend and had an accident.  He received his license just last week and failed to yield at a green light on a left turn.  This is what the car looked like after a woman hit him in the side.  As disappointed as we are we are greatful he and the other woman are not injured.  This was a learning experience that I am sure will never happen again.  We felt sorry for him because he is normally a good driver.  This accident made him feel terrible as I would imagine it would anyone.  I am sure this was a very difficult phone call to make when he had to call us to tell us about the accident.  We have already taken it to a repair shop and filed a claim.  The biggest concern I have at this point is the insurance premium increase that is sure to come.  It already went  up 100% just adding him to our account.  We will be fine and we will stand behind him.  If you click on the photo above you will see the rest of the pictures that I took.

I just wanted to thank all of you for your prayers.  He is safe and the lady that hit him was very friendly.  It is like God was there watching out for him.  I am hopeful that the garage gets it back in the three weeks that was forecasted.  Other than the accident it was a nice morning with temperatures rising above freezing for the first time in nearly a week.  We had some wonderful fog all day and that was nice as well.  Sunday had a Christmas luncheon for her work to attend at the base chapel this afternoon.  At least this accident happened at a time where we could afford to take off work.  We are going to relax and enjoy the evening after I get back from visiting my dad.  I will go see him around 5:00 PM.  He has been doing well and still working hard at 71 years old.  He is a hard worker for sure.  As my great grand mother said one time… “I would rather wear out than rust out”.

We are planning on meeting with our other son to take a family picture this weekend.  That is what I wanted for Christmas.  He was gracious enough to come to take a picture for this occasion.  I think this is a great sign for those that are aware of his situation.  I usually do not enjoy the secular Christmas rituals of shopping yourself into debt.  When I hear the commercials on television refer to it as “Holiday” it ruins the mood even more.  I could go on for hours about how Christmas is ONLY about JESUS and NOTHING else but I will spare you the dissertation THIS TIME .  I see our satellite television is cutting out so I am going to have to realign it again.  Thanks for stopping by.

It is hard to find anything more pleasing than a nice morning sunrise when you do not have to go to work.  The beauty of my situation this morning is that it is the end of the year and I have some use or lose vacation time that I have to burn so I took this beautiful Friday off.  Although it is a crisp 32 degrees at this early hour it still is a pretty morning.  This time last year we were sitting in the dark for a week.  You may remember the horrible ice storm that knocked out the electricity to more than 250,000 in Oklahoma City while more than a million state wide.  You can look at the photos I took here.  The weather forecast is showing another ice storm coming in next week though most believe it will not compare to the monster we had last year. Most people sleep in on their day off but not me.  I love mornings and I always have.  I went out to breakfast at the Waffle House at 5:30 this morning as she was going to work.  She could not take the day off because in her Wing they were having a General come to their office.  She had to be involved in the protocol activities so I had to do without my beautiful wife this morning.  As a second choice I thought I would spend my morning watching the sun rise over Oklahoma City.  I took this photo among others around 7:00 AM.

Below is another photo of downtown.  As you can see the Sandridge Energy and the Chase Bank both have crosses on the buildings representing the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for us as we celebrate his birth on Christmas.  Now I sit here listening to 40 meters on ham radio while typing a blog post.  I wanted to get some pictures of the full moon but there were some clouds in the western sky.  I only have two more classes before I can graduate the University of Oklahoma.  I will start those on January 20, 2009 and I am very happy to have this journey almost complete.

This morning I found San Francisco 49′ers football star Jerry Rice and the Phoenix Suns star Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter.  That was pretty cool as well.  Now that we have the Oklahoma City Thunder I will have to temper my love for the Phoenix Suns.  As many of you know we use to live in Phoenix, Arizona while I was stationed at Luke AFB.  I also lived in Tucson, Arizona while stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB.  Those were some wonderful times of my life that I will never forget.  I lived in Phoenix during the great run of the Suns in 1993.  That is when I really became a fan of the NBA.

I had a very nice visit with my dad last night.  Many of you ham radio people may know him as W5QO, the trustee for the Del City Amateur Radio Club (DCARC).  It is hard to believe that experiment has lasted for six years.  It is hard to believe that in 2002 I was trying to kill time while my wife was spending time in the hospital visiting her mother has turned out to be a full blown ham radio club with an FCC license (W5DEL).  Though I had an amateur radio license since 1983 I was not very active because I could not afford the gear until my dad gave me a dual band mobile radio.  Now it is a whole different world where I have my own ham shack, President of the DCARC and a 70 foot tower in the back yard and all this since 2002. 

This year just does not feel much like Christmas with my 16 year old son gone.  He ran away on 26 Sep 08.  He is safe and staying with friends.  I spoke to him briefly on Yahoo Instant Messenger the other day.  We have decided to let him go and put faith in God that he will overcome and have a successful future.  Many have told me to file charges against the people that he is staying with but I think that would just make things worse.  My goal is to retain a relationship with him for the future and hope that he remains well.  Thank you for those that have offered their prayers of support.  We have decided to keep faith in God and enjoy life.  My other son got his driver’s license a couple days ago and we added him to our insurance.  Once I came too and realized that we really could afford the extra $100 per month premiums I was fine. I am happy for him as he just got a job at a local restaurant a couple weeks ago.  Despite everything I am very proud of both of my kids.  Once I graduate, I will have more time to do some hobbies that I have neglected for the last couple years.  I love taking pictures and talking on the radio.  Of course let’s not forget my big hobby of playing on the computer.  Thankfully today with amateur radio and photography joining with computers I can do all of them at the same time.

Again, it is a beautiful morning and I am off work too.  With no homework this weekend I am sure to have a nice weekend.  I only wish my wife could have taken off work.  That would have made it perfect.

I was browsing through Youtube and stumbled on the BC Clark commercial.