Do you still send Christmas cards?  It seems like I see fewer and fewer every year, but we send them out every year and out list keeps growing.  I mailed 49 this year.  I was lucky enough to find a way to get free cards through Shutterfly this year for a blog post about their cards.  I paid for shipping for the cards and I had to pay postage to mail them out.

Anyways, there are many of you out there who I only have electronic addresses for so I am not able to mail you a real card.  I thought I would post our card here for you to see and wish you a Merry Christmas.  I wish that I could hang out with all of you in person, but I wouldn’t know most of you if it weren’t for blogging.  So here is our Christmas card for you to enjoy.

I posted a message last week on Twitter and Facebook about how my wife’s stinky gas forced me to leave the bedroom while she was napping.  I admit this may have been pushing the TMI department, but I felt it was noteworthy because usually it is me stinking her out of our room.

I realized through some friends comments on Facebook that if I was married to other people, then this would probably get me in really big trouble.  This reinforces the best decision that I ever made, to ask Faith to be my wife forever and ever.  Because she doesn’t really care that I share weird real stuff about us.  Now I do have some limitations.  I do not share intimate things that are intended only for the two of us.  I do not spout love sonnets across the Internet because those things are for her and her alone.  I don’t share things that I think are boring.

I do promise to do my best to be as real and authentic with you as I can.  My life is far from perfect.  I am not trying to portray something online that I am not.  I try not to complain too much.  I don’t use the Internet to masquerade anything.  I just use it as a tool to share whatever it is that my life is with anyone out there who cares.

So how far is too far for you on the Internet?  How real and authentic are you willing to get with people online?

I will note that there are dangers to sharing certain information, but I don’t see anything wrong with telling your story so that the world can see it.

This is the first time I have ever been unemployed at Christmas time.  So we have been looking for ways to cut back our spending to try to save a few bucks here and there.  So this year, we are trying to save on our heating cost by setting our thermostat lower.

Right now the house is set at 66 degrees.  It feels colder in our house than I can ever remember.  We really like it hot.  We don’t turn our AC on in the summer until the house gets up to 85.  Usually our heat is set at 72, so this is a big change for us.  I want to find some fingerless gloves that will let me type on a keyboard without my hands freezing off.

Are you one of those people who try to hold back the heat in the winter to save money?  How low do you set your thermostat and how long does it last?

Confession:  As if you didn’t notice.  I haven’t been blogging much lately.

My only excuse is that things have just been really busy lately.  We are 9 days from Christmas and there are still so many things to be done.  I have been working about 20 hours a week at church, but today I am staying home with the kids on their snow day.

So I thought that maybe I should check in on the blog.  So here is a little update on life.

Job Hunt:  There is not a whole lot going on there.  I am applying for jobs that I think I would like to do, but I am not just going to apply for any job just yet.  AKA, I haven’t applied at Walmart yet.

Work:  I am working part-time as an unpaid intern at Vineyard Community Church with their Student Ministries.  Currently I am redesigning the high school side of their web site.  I am also running the weekend services on the tech side.  I make sure everything is working and fix problems on the fly during services.  I am also working on small group curriculum that will supplement the upcoming series in January.  I am still leading my small group and loving every minute of that as well.  If I could continue to do this job for free, I would.  But at some point, I will have to move onto something that can help me to pay the bills.

The Kids:  When I am not helping at church, I am busy chasing and entertaining the little ones at home.  They are both enjoying school and super excited about Christmas.  I guess that being my kids comes with a healthy dose of the Christmas spirit.

Faith will be starting her clinicals in February.  This is a half a year earlier than projected.  This is great news as she will get done with school sooner, but the chaos of life when she is working full-time and going to school almost full-time will also come sooner.

God has been so very faithful to us in the past few months.  With a tight budget and the desire to spend crazy amounts of money on people at Christmas, it has been challenging.  But God has provided for us in miraculous ways.  You know those stories where people pray to God and ask for help with a financial crisis and then money shows up from somewhere.  It really happens.  God is faithful and stays true to his promises.

I still don’t have any answers about how things are going to turn out.  My hope is that my time with The Vineyard will help me to find a similar job where I can serve God with the gifts and passions that I have.  Ideally we need to stay in Cincinnati so that Faith can finish school.  I trust that God has it all worked out and that understanding isn’t my place.  I am just doing my best to live it out and follow where God is leading me.

I am typing this on my IPod Touch. Thinking that I may be able to work on the blog while I am on the go now. I am at a Christmas party right now for church volunteers. The best part is I get to have a little date with my wife while somebody watches our kids for a bit. I love date night.

Everywhere that you go there is a system.  Some of them work and some of them not so much.  Systems that don’t work bug me a lot.  But what bugs me more is when people know the system is broken, but they don’t actually fix the problem.  We will spend time and resources to get it functional, maintaining, band aiding, and duct taping the problem.  But it won’t be long before it is broken again.

Why don’t we just bite the bullet and fix the system?  Sure it might mean some down time.  It might mean some inconvenience.  But in the end it will be better and it will actually work.  Its like road construction.  It sucks!  But when it is all completed and the additional lanes are available, it is so nice.

I am willing to withstand some inconvenience if you would just fix the system the right way the first time.

Dear businesses, churches, and governments,
Please identify the problem and do what it takes to fix it.  Ultimately this is the best thing to do for yourself and the people that you serve.  Quit bickering about time and money and figure out exactly what it will take to solve.  It might take longer than you like.  It might cost more than you want.  I don’t care.  Please just figure it out.  I am tired of systems that are held together with duct tape.  And just so you know, I really love duct tape.

photo © 2010 Dean Morley | more info (via: Wylio)

I feel lately like my life is constantly in transition.  When I transition it really messes with how I manage my time.  I went from a full time Monday through Friday job in June to no job at all.  About the time that I got my act together being home all of the time, I started my internship in Student Ministries at Vineyard Community Church.  Now I work 5 days a week, but my off days are on Monday and Friday.

It is also more difficult for me because I love working with Student Ministries and I have to force myself to use my days off as days off.  I could easily spend those free days working on things for church, but I know better.  I know that I need to use that time to spend with my family and to take care of my responsibilities at home.

I have been really good about that.  I have been doing some Christmas shopping, finished the yard work for the year, and got the Christmas lights hung on the house before it turned cold.  But I have totally been neglecting my blog.  The good thing is that I have ideas that I want to write about and it’s not normal for me to have extra content laying around to share with you.

My hope is to carve out some time today to just write so that I can get these things out there to you.  I am hoping this means more frequent updates again, but I am not going to promise too much.  I feel like things could change for me at any moment and a new transition will begin.  I do feel like something big is on the horizon, and I am just hoping that I can keep holding on until it comes.

I love hanging out with high school students.  As a HS small group leader I get to do that on a regular basis at our small group meetings.  But this weekend is special.  It is time for our Fall Retreat that is strategically named Fall Weekend.  I love that I get to live in community with them for almost two whole days.  Way better than the couple of hours I get every other week if you ask me.

It is a weekend of fun and reflection.  There will be some fun games such as navel warfare.  Yes, navel as in your belly button.  It is the roughest game in youth ministry that I have ever witnessed.  It is a no holds barred unless you are a guy where everyone plays and tries to remove a piece of duct tape from the bellies of the other teams.  I have seen some pretty crazy stuff go down during navel warfare.

We will also have a chance to step away from the distractions of the world for a while and get quiet.  I hope to make some new friends and get to know the guys in my small group on a different level.  I don’t know if I look forward to Fall Weekend more for me or for the guys in my group.  I hope to share some crazy stories when I return at the end of the weekend.

Discolosure: I am writing this post about the holiday card designs offered by Shutterfly in exchange for 50 free photo cards from Shutterfly.  The free cards has in no way influenced my opinion of Shutterfly and their services, and I will offer my honest opinion.  If you would also like to blog for free photo cards, you can do so here –> http://bit.ly/sfly2010

For the past several years at Christmas, we have always sent out a photo card of the kids or our family at Christmas time.  We have typically ordered our printed cards at Walmart, but this year I saw this offer and thought that I would take advantage of it.  I have used Shutterfly before and I have always liked the quality of their prints.  This year I am excited to select our photo Christmas card from their selection of photo cards.  They have more options than I am used to and you can do some very creative things.

They have different sizes of photo cards ranging in price from 30 cents to $1.34 per print depending on how many cards you order.  If you are working on a tight budget, make sure you sort by price so you can find the lower cost options.  They have a lot of great design options and I love that I can create a card easily with more than 1 picture.  It is simple to upload photos and insert into the card project easily.  You get a good look at exactly what will be printed so there are no questions about how it will look when you receive it.

There are over 500 card options, almost too many for me to browse them all to decide what I want.  I used the filter on the left side of the screen to decide what kinds of cards I wanted to look at before I started browsing.  I was happy to find a lot of colorful cards and especially ones that are fun for the kids.  I have a feeling that Ephriam may really like the Polar Express card.

This is the first time I have ever ordered our Christmas card prints through Shutterfly and I hope that it is a simple process.  I haven’t used them as much in the past because I always felt that they were a little pricey and then to add in shipping makes it more expensive.  But there are a lot of great choices and it is convenient to create your card and have them sent to you ready to go in the mail.  There are also some other photo gift ideas that you can create at Shutterfly including calendars and coffee mugs as well.

Right now, I am working at a job and not getting paid.  I am a glorified volunteer.  I love every minute of it.  Presently, this works out for me, but eventually I will need to actually get paid in order to pay my bills.  My hope is that this time I am spending right now will somehow pay off in finding a job that will pay me.  I don’t look forward to leaving my volunteer role to make money.  Hopefully I can find similar work that will pay me a little something.  It doesn’t have to be a lot.  It just has to be enough.

I don’t think that many people get to do what they love and get paid for it.  The ones that do are very lucky.  I hope to be one of those lucky people eventually.  Do you love what you do?