Happy Easter!!!

While this has become really contrived and commercialized holiday, it is actually nothing like what most people think it to be.

The most important thing to remember is that the Tomb WAS EMPTY!!! What an AMAZING God we have!!!

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Lunar New Year

Happy belated Lunar New Year everyone. I know that it was last week, but I thought I could add it in. I had last week off of work with the Lunar New Year Holiday and I was able to get some good relaxation in with family and friends. I'm back to work now and will try to keep this thing updated a lot more often. Yes I missed blogging about the Superbowl and about the Ravens and their run. I did open a facebook account so that has been taking up some of my time, but I will try to keep up with regular entries about what is going on over here.

Happy Thanksgiving All!!!

Well as most of you will be stuffing your faces full of turkey and all the good things that go with it, I will be spending my Thanksgiving and Black Friday Climbing a mountain (Yellow Moutain to be exact or Huangshan for those Chinese speakers out there).

Anyway, this adds to the posts that I still have on my agenda to do, which include a summary of the Bahamas trip, my Xian trip, and then of course there will most likely be some stories from this trip. For those of you keeping tabs, I leave for Japan next week for a 3 day trip to Tokyo and its surroundings, so yes, in addition to work, I am staying pretty busy.

Be Thankful for all that you have!!!!

Is there something wrong here?

I stumbled on this picture from the consumerist.com website. Even though I am not in the States, I do know that Christmas decorations began to come out basically after summer was over. I love that they are having a pre-holiday sale and they can include like 3 or 4 different holidays and be ambiguous about it. Actually there is a small part of me that misses the whole consumerism that Christmas has become. Don't get me wrong, being able to avoid all that chaos that comes with the Christmas Holiday is not fun, but there is something about walking around my neighbourhood with houses all decorated for Christmas and seeing the interesting Christmas commercials that come out (including the classic old ones like the Folgers commercial from the 80's where the guy surprises his family by coming home on Christmas), anyway, I am somewhat looking forward to experiencing that for the first time in a couple of years. I'm sure I will be over it quickly, but in the land of tacky Christmas-esque stuff, a little down home Americana will be good.

Happy Birthday

A big happy birthday to my wife (one day late here in China, but right on time in the US). I have no idea how my wife spent her birthday as I am away on a business trip. Anyway, to the love of my life (I couldn't think of a better cliche) a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY...LOVE YOU!!!!

Happy Easter!!!

To all, Happy Easter!!!

I couldn't find any good pictures, but just in case you think I am confused as to why we celebrate Easter, it is not for bunnies or easter eggs, it's because Jesus rose from the dead (for more on this, go to this link). So in the midst of all the non-sense in my blog, I just wanted to make sure you all knew what was really important.

Again....Happy Easter!!!

New Year's Eve

I have to admit that I don't completely understand the whole New Year's Eve celebration. I mean, I guess the turning of the New Year can be seen as a start of something new, but really, I think the whole thing is a little overrated. Actually, I understand that we can utilize that night as a time to celebrate with friends and/or family and find another excuse to have a big party, but I guess I have always used New Year's Eve to go to sleep early to prepare for the full day of college football, a much bigger holiday in my mind (although dimished because the "important" bowls don't even happen on New Year's Day anymore).

Anyway, Renee and I spent the evening watching a couple of movies, including Gone Baby Gone, which is an awesome movie, really really good if you haven't seen it yet. We listened to and watched some of the fireworks that were going on all around us, but they were nothing compared to the "real" New Year's that won't be happening until early February. Now that is a celebration. It was a nice evening and at about 12:30am I went to bed, it was a nice quiet evening, actually, the way I would prefer to spend New Years (maybe adding in a couple of friends into that group), a nice quiet evening.

Happy Belated New Year

Things have been pretty crazy with me, so sorry for the sparse postings as of late. Happy Belated New Year everyone, I hope you are enjoying 2008 thus far. The postings that will follow this one will be a slight step back in time in order to catch you all up on what is going on in our lives.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas all!!! By wishing you all a Merry Christmas, I am not as politically correct as Fox, I was watching a NFL game earlier that before every break they would flash a graphic saying Happy Holidays, I mean come on, we know what Holiday everyone is about to celebrate, just say it. I am currently watching the Ravens play Seattle live and well, its not the funnest game to watch if you are a Ravens fan (note it is about halftime as a write this).

I won't let the game bring me down, we are about to go to Sanya to stay at the Hilton for Christmas, I will update you all on our trip after we get back later this week.

Not so Black Friday

In a new tradition that we started last year, Renee and I did all of our Christmas shopping for the kids the day after Thanksgiving. Now in the States, this day is known for the hordes of people getting up early to find all the deals for their Christmas shopping. Over here, neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas are huge holidays so the Friday after Thanksgiving means absolutely nothing, thus we were able to go to the Toys R Us in the mall, without having to worry about crowds, take our time picking out the toys and still be the first and only people in line when we were checking out.

It's fun that we were able to say that we finished our Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s a tradition that we will definitely not continue when we go back to the States.

Thanksgiving Celebration

While we are on the other side of the world, we decided that we would host a Thanksgiving Dinner for some friends. What was going to be a very small get together of some close friends ended up being a pretty big party of a mish mash of 25 people (most we knew, some we didn't). It was a fun time getting to know the new people and talking with our friends and I know that everyone left very full.

Turkey runs around $6USD a pound here, so we decided against getting a turkey and decided on having some chicken and beef, which is significantly cheaper then turkey. I made homemade stuffing (note that it is actually dressing since it was not stuffed into anything, there are just a lot of people that associate dressing with salad), and for my first time making it, it was very good.

Besides the turkey, we missed out on spending time with family and of course watching football, but even though those things were missed, we still had a good time.

Happy B-Lated

All, Happy Thanksgiving, even though this is a couple of days late. We didn't end up having turkey over here in China (try it is a minimum of $6USD a pound, a little pricey), but we had fun getting together with friends.

Enjoy the next couple of weeks leading up to Christmas and the end of 2007!!!