2009 goals.

I can only hope that 2009 will be better than 2008. The outlook is grim but I have set some goals to hopefully make my 2009 the greatest year yet.

1. Help Kristina get Plan Four Started.
2. Cut my debt in at least half.
3. Lose another 15 pounds.
4. Become closer to my 3 girls.

2008

This was a hard year for many and I was not exempt from this. My debt has dramatically increased and my assets have dramatically decreased in value.

But with all this doom and gloom, I still make all my bills every month and have a beautiful family that loves me. I'm thankful that I have made it through 2008 with all that I love. I just hope 2009 is more positive than 2008 was.

Football day.

Yesterday I was able to enjoy the last Sunday of the regular football season. With all the holiday party's and craziness going on I have not been able to enjoy my Sunday football for weeks. Yesterday I popped popcorn and just enjoyed a day of the game I love.

Toys galore

My kids are very luck to have an excessive amount of grandparents to spoil them. My girls have 3 sets of grandparents, and 4 sets of great-grandparents. Jenna had her birthday party at the beginning of the month and now Christmas has littered my home with lots of new toys. This week we will be spending a lot of time getting ride of old toys and finding a home for the new ones.

Taking care of yourself.

Times are hard and people are putting their health at risk. Last night my grandfather endded up in the hospital with pneumonia and severe dehydration. He chose to not take care of his cold and play golf in the rain. It formed into something much worse than a cold. 

Don't ignore your body. If it says slow down you need to do it, or the body will make you sorry.

Odd Christmas.

This Christmas was very odd. I'm not sure what was wrong. I really had a hard time getting into it. I thought I was alone but I talked to some other people and they felt the same way. I never got the holiday excitement I usually get. I'm not sure if it was all the doom and gloom of the economy or what. I just hope the holidays are better next year. But ready for 2009 to be here.

Merry Christmas Sleep???

I was expecting a very early morning today. I have a hard time sleeping in past 7am and so do my darling children. So last night when I fell asleep at around midnight I was dreading this morning. Much to my surprise Christmas morning with a 5 year old I woke up at almost 9am. Jenna was already up and going through her stalking. I got up and we to gifts. It was the nicest morning I have had in sometime.

Merry Christmas everybody.

HO HO HO!!!! Merry Christmas.

This will be the first year that I will be doing the big Santa set up for Jenna. I'm very excited about the cookies she is making for Santa (wink wink) as I write this blog. Santa is going to be lazy this year and put the gift together this weekend. This year we bought the girls one big combo gift. It is a 15ft trampoline. My little helper uncle steve and I will be tackling that fun this weekend.

Cold pain!!!

Running nose, headache and a cough.  I have a cold and it just sucks. I'm fine during the middle of the day but I wake up a mess and I have a hard time falling asleep without medication. This is not helping with my lack of holiday spirit this year. Merry Christmas, hack hack, sniff sniff. 

The 2 week storm has arrived.

Starting today until January 2nd is called the storm at my work. We will deliver more then normal amounts of beer in 8 days instead of 10. It will create a storm of trucks and people to work long hours and very hard to try and enjoy 2,  4 day work weeks. Blogging will become complicated during this dash to the end of the year, but I will do my best to keep all 3 off you informed.

Recovery!!!

Last night was a blast. But today I'm reminded that I'm almost 30 and getting to old to party like a rock star. I had an amazing time with all my friends last night, but it will be some time before I need to be reminded that I'm a dad not a rock star.

Tis the season to party!!!

Tonight is the party I look forward to all year. I have friends in town and it is time for a great time. The day will kick off with lunch at our old high school hang out, Napoli. We will be leaving there to head out to total wine for Cigars and johnny walker.  Then we will head to my buddy Rob's house and get the party started. Good friends, good times, good booze, and good cigars will be the highlights of the evening.

Blah blah Holiday.

I have come to the conclusion that the holidays suck. Especially when you work in the service industry. I have been at my current job for almost 9 years. Before this job I worked in retail. I have not enjoyed the holiday season since I started working. The crap that comes with the holiday season makes me like it a little less every year. I enjoy thanksgiving but after that day I can't wait for January to be here. I don't like being a scrooge but the ugliness of people in December really turns me by Christmas eve. It's seems that people just become rude and nasty and care about nobody but themselves. 

It really ruins the season of giving when everybody is so rude.

Cough relief with a punch in the face!!!

I have found a product that is amazing for getting ride of cough and congestion. I recently suggested it to a friend online. He said it worked. He was happy with the results, but not the product. See the product taste very very very bad. To quote Drewbenz " I don't think one could properly prepare for how horrific this medicine is".  I warned him that it tasted bad and the box points out that it tastes horrible. I laughed at him that day because it had been at least a year or so since I had used it. I guess I had forgotten how bad the Buckley's tastes.

Last night after 3 hours of coughing and hacking. I decided the time had come when I would once again drink the Buckley's. As I took a teaspoonful of the medicine I was quickly paralyzed, my throat was burning, I was having a hard time breathing, I had the worst thing I had ever tasted in my mouth, and I was getting dizzy.  After about a minute or so my everything was normal except, I was left with the most horrific taste ever in my mouth. But my throat felt much better. 

20 minutes later I was fast asleep until my alarm clock went off the next morning. This is one of the greatest products I have ever used for a cough, but it comes at a cost.

I need vitamin D.

I have lived in Phoenix my entire life and I love the sun. I love it so much and I get to see it about 350 days a year. The past couple of days my sun has been hiding and I'm already starting to have withdrawals. Please come back my sun I need to bask in your glow.  I could never live in a place like Washington where it rains all the time. I would definitely become a very angry and bitter person. 

Wet idiots!!!!

Today was a rainy day in Phoenix and people drive like idiots every time the roads get wet. Since it only rains 5- 10 days a year I think we should have rain days like other states have snow days. Today I watch 3 people that should not be on the road when it is wet. The first one was a lady in an SUV that when approaching a yellow light hit her brakes to stop and then realized because the road was wet she was going to fast to stop. Her car slide into the middle of the intersection sideways then she just sat there without a clue that maybe she should get the hell out of the intersection. The second was a women in a small sports car that had spun out in to the landscaping on the side of the freeway. She was facing the wrong way, in the gravel, with a small bush on her hood. The third had gone head on into a light pole at an intersection. I'm not sure how it happened but it was a single car accident. 

If you can't drive please call a cab, take the bus, or just call in sick, on rainy days.

Stupid Yoga.

I went to a couple of Yoga classes about 3 months ago and I really enjoyed them. It had a lot of stretching and meditation. It was a very nice way to start my weekend and just let the week melt away.

This weekend I went back to the yoga class looking forward to some relaxation. I was pushed into turning myself into a pretzel and looking like a complete idiot. Some stupid pose called the twisted child was the worst. I might be a dough boy, but I can't stretch and twist like pretzel dough. I will give it another try, but I will be skipping the advanced poses.

Whisky, Cigars, and Fire. This is man time!!!

Last night the family and I went over to a friends house to just hang out. My good friend Rob and I had a very nice evening. I had brought over some cigars that I thought would be nice for us to have around his new fire pit. He provided some Johnny Walker gold that was a perfect compliment to the cigar. It was a very nice evening and I plan to repeat it next Saturday night when our good friend Brian comes to town. I love to indulge during the holidays.

The 3 week dash to the finish

I'm going to make sure that I enjoy this weekend because come Monday I will hit the door running at 1:45am. As you can imagine the next 3 weeks will be very busy for the beer man. I really consider myself to be the adult Santa. You know, driving around my 18 wheeled sleigh full of presents, of happiness and joy. Enjoy a beer this holiday season and don't forget to leave me out some milk and cookies.

Happy Birthday MOM

Today is my Mom,  Laura Steins Birthday. If you see her wish her a Happy Birthday.

A fat view from above.

Driving in a Semi-Truck I can look down into the cars of everybody around me. I'm not spying or anything like that but when I'm sitting in traffic I look around. Today I was listening to the radio and news story about how fat Americans are getting. So from my view above I decided to take a survey.  I found that out of 60 cars on the road at around 7am 33 people are fat, 14 are chubby, and only 13 looked to be a healthy weight. I found this to be sad and has motivated me to look at my diet and hopefully lose some pounds. I would like to become apart of the minority.

Is big business differnt from big goverment.

So many big businesses have shown us that they are very greedy and only wanted to become filthy rich and powerful. They didn't care how much they've ripped off their customers. 

Now every time I turn around there is a politician that doesn't care about the people he represents,  just about becoming filthy rich and powerful. 

I know it has been going on forever, and there is nothing I can do about.  It is just sad to admit it.

Planning for Plan Four.

The wife and I are finally setting our plan to get our business started. We plan to start our business buy the end of March. I didn't realize that when we got our business license this summer that it would take so long to actually get it start. But we also didn't want to make the mistake of starting before we were ready to go forward with this. Everything is coming together and we are very excited to start this new adventure. 

Great party!!!!

Last night I went to the Arizona Charter Academy Christmas party. I helped coach the high school football team so I was invited. The wife and I don't get much adult time with other adults.  It's nice to be with my wife without little hands in between us. Melissa knows how to throw a great party and I think fun was had by most. I made a 1st grade teacher very mad, but I think she will get over it. She liked the gift exchange game until, I took her gift, that she had taken from somebody else.  I didn't make the rules, I was just able to benefit from them. 

Thank you for letting me be apart of the school and the amazing impact it has in so many lives. I learned that the students impact the teachers just as much as the teachers impact the children.

The X-box push

I think I finally have the wife convinced that we need a X-box 360. I have found a great deal on the 60GB at Target in this weeks add and I plan to go and buy it this week. We recently dropped our direct TV service because I have decided it is stupid to pay for TV when it is available for free.  One big sale on the X-box is the ability to download movies from Netflix for $8.99 a month. Does anybody know how much it cost for X-Box live? I know I will also need this for my gaming system to get Netflix. The wife is afraid she will be regreting the purchase. Please help me sell her on it. 

Loving my town.

I truly love my city. It is not a small town by any means but they do what they can to have small town atmosphere with big city amenities. This weekend they had their annual Surprise party.  Me and my girls had 2 days of great outdoor entertainment for nothing more than the cost of the food we eat. It had typical fair food at the typical fair food price. On Saturday for 4 dollars my daughter got to ride on a train and made beautiful party hats. But for free was so many exhibits and things for the kids to do. It is hard to keep children entertained for 4 hours on a Saturday for 4 dollars but my city made it possible. Not to mention for 2 hours on Friday night with the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, a live band, skydivers, hot air balloons and fireworks for the low cost of $0. During these hard times my city makes me remember why I love to be a proud resident of Surprise.

Holy crap she is 5!!!!

Today my daughter Jenna turned 5 years old. This day has come much faster then I ever expected. We will be giving her the royal treatment tonight with Olive Garden (her favorite restaurant), the lighting of a large Christmas tree that they will keep in town square for her, and a fireworks display in her honer.  So we mite be cheating a little but she will love it. 

I met Jenna for lunch at her school today and it was quiet the adventure. 5 year old kids are a little crazy but hilarious at the same time. I don't know how her teacher deals with that many little animals. 

Pain in the leg.

Yesturday was day 2 back at the gym and I'm very sorry. We did a very intense leg work out and it is very uncomfortable to walk. So I think I will be easing back into the gym and not picking up where I left off 2 months ago. 

Count down to local TV

I have decided to cancel are Direct TV service. December 4Th, tomorrow our billing cycle will end and so will our service. I have found we spend too much time in front of the TV just like most Americans do. My hope is with less TV time we will spend more time as a family and work on getting our business started. I will miss our DVR and watching all my favorite shows, but how did I get so involved in the life of fictional characters anyway? My goal is less TV and a better life for me and my family. 

Not to mention the 50 dollar a month I will save.

Back in the gym.

Me and the wife were going to the gym 2 - 3 times a week for about 2 months until I started football. Then it became much harder to get to the gym.  Yesterday was are first day back in about 2 months. The first day back was a hard one, but this morning I woke feeling better then I had in months and I remembered why the gym is so addicting. The more you work out the better you feel, and the better you feel better your life is. I'm glad to be back in the swing of things.

Another month of me.

I did it For November and have already signed up for December. Another month in the Brain of Stephen Mitchell. Enjoy!!!