I Have Been Challenged

So I have been challenged by Penny and I thought the best way to settle who has the best Santa picture was to put a poll up. So please vote, and if you vote for me I promise change and hope. I hope to be able to offer change, and by changing we can have hope. Only through hope will we have change. We cannot hope for change but change for hope. May the hope be with you.

P.S. if you vote for me I'll give you a dollar.

Another Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is having a good Christmas. I know our girls are doing well. I must admit I miss the days of my youth where the toys put themselves together. I, oops I mean Santa, was up till almost 2am putting together dollhouses and princess kitchens. What can I say, I believe in stereotypes. At any rate, the dollhouse was freakin huge and came with about 800 parts. Not to mention the instructions were incomplete, not that I would have used them anyway. But everything worked out really well and the girls are happy. We are still debating if we are going to go see Marley and Me. We may just take it easy and not do anything. I have added a few pictures to our photobucket site, so enjoy and Merry Christmas.

http://s24.photobucket.com/albums/c16/souspartacus/

Merry Christmas!!

Just in case someone is bored enough to check my blog out on Christmas Eve, I thought I could do my duty and make Santa's location known to everyone. Just follow the link.

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html

Oh yeah, and since Mom didn't like the Snowman Massacre, I thought a good ol picture of St. Nick should be better!

The Naughty/Nice Christmas Songs

As I drive I enjoy listening to Christmas music on my satellite radio. Doing so I have discovered a couple of things. First, we (meaning the population of the world, except Denmark, they don't count) really need some new Christmas songs. Honestly, how many different versions of Winter Wonderland are their? Second, some singers should never have attempted to sing Christmas songs. So below are some singers that I think should have never attempted to sing Christmas songs and some artists I think do a pretty good job.

The Naughty List:

1. Elvis
2. Harry Belafonte (and I am not joking about this, his version of the 12 days of x-mas is horrible)
3. Ray Charles
4. Perry Como
5. Anybody who has ever appeared on Lawarence Welk
6. Natalie Cole

I'm sure more will come

The Nice List:

1. Bing Crosby
2. Harry Connick Jr.
3. Dean Martin
4. Barenaked Ladies (Ironic I know)
5. Sarah Mclachlan
6. Nat King Cole
7. The Boston Pops

If you have any suggestions please let me know

My New Workout

I have heard and had always been interested in a thing called "Crossfit." (http://www.crossfit.com/) Well, I had found a crossfit gym here in Valdosta and thought that it would be a great way to get myself in better shape. Let me first explain a little more about crossfit. Crossfit is a high intensity workout focused on using exercises that can benefit you in normal activities. For example, one may be able to bench a massive amount of weight but being able to bench press does not translate well when working on a project in the yard.

I started doing the actual workouts this last Monday and the only thing I can say is Holy Crap. The warm-up is harder then most peoples workout. The warmup's vary but usually include a half-mile run, 40 push-ups, 40 sit-ups, 15 pull-ups, 30 walking lunges (per leg), 15 hand stand push-ups, 20 ball squats and 40 back extensions.

After the warm up the real workout begins. The workout in the picture involved 5 exercises. You do as many reps as you can at each workout for 1 minute. The exercise I was doing is a sumo deadlift with a high pull (start with a wide stance deadlift and lift the bar to your chin), after one minute you immediately go to the next station which was a box jump, the next station was an overhead press, then you row for a minute, the last station are called wall balls (squat holding a 20 pound medicine ball and on the way up throw the ball to the middle dot on the wall, when you catch the ball return to the squat position). We did three sets of this with one minute rest in between sets.

Needless to say, I am grateful for my down day today. Another great thing about crossfit is each workout is always different. I was talking to somebody else who has been doing crossfit since September and has not done the same workout twice. Another guy I met is a combat rescue officer (AF Pararescue, our elite special forces), he told me that he is stronger from doing crossfit then when he was going through his training.

This is a long post and this will not be the last time you hear about. I am really excited to find a non frilly gym that gives you a great workout.

Blog? What Blog?

Are you sure I have a blog? Because I haven't updated it for awhile. What is the point of blogging if one never writes anything. At any rate, I only have a minute and will try to update everyone to the best of my ability. So here goes,

I am still in the Air Force (for now), hoping to start the proces of joing the Marines next month.

Katie is still YW President and doing a great job of working with the kids.

The kids are still themselves and have discovered the excitement of throwing things out the window.

The biggest thing so far has been my new workout. I started doing a "Crossfit" (check www.crossfit.com) routine and I think I want to die. This is by far the most intense workout I have ever done. I have to go right now to work out as a matter of fact, but either later today or tomorrow I wil post more about this workout program.

Time for an Update

Where do I begin. This last week has been crazy with our girls being on a wave of destruction. Through a series of scientific experiments the girls have confirmed many theories. First, that water poured into a Sony home theater receiver will destroy the receiver. Second, that a Red Tail Shark can indeed survive a cup of milk being poured into the fish tank. And lastly, climbing up a guitar will cause the guitar to break. Being the good parent I am, we are starting a non-profit, not for tax deduction foundation to help offset the experiments of Thing one and Thing two. Donations are welcome and can be made out to Jake.