Where did this year go?

This year is almost over. Can you believe that Christmas is around the corner. With the birth of Malachi in April a big part of the year is a blur. This has been a big year for our family with a lot of changes. We went through the roller coaster ride of the adoption process, some major first time opportunities at work, God gave us Malachi, sleepless nights, learning to be parents, a phase of wanting to be a body builder (haha), first time being away from my wife and son at Bigstuff, our real estate and management company getting jump started off the ground, dreading work each day, interview after interview with no result, opportunity at a new job that stretches my brain to the max, and the everyday opportunity to juggle life.

That sounds like 10 years worth of activities crammed into less than 12 months. Wow how quickly life changes. How has your 2010 year gone? Have you taken the time to reflect on the past year? What about the past 5 or 10 years? How have you approached hard times? I can say with so many highs and lows this year, 5 years, and 10 years...... I have sucked at handling it all. I have avoided the situation, snapped when I should have listened, jumped to conclusion, and treated those close to me in a rude manor. Wow........that was ruff but it has happened.

I need to remember I can't fix it all, I cant do it alone, I have great people along side of me, and our God is amazing. If I get caught up in all the "stuff" life will just be a blur. Another year will pass and I will be caught trying to reflect on what happened. We are surrounded by love which is contagious if you allow your heart to absorb it all in.

Bottom line don't sweat the small stuff that want make a difference 100 years from now. Don't let "stuff" consume your heart!

Random thoughts

Ok I have a list of random thoughts to share.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to be thankful and an awesome time to eat great food. The side note to all the food is that I am thankful for the $10 a month gym membership I have signed up for. Yes I am going to need it after this Thanksgiving season. A couple of us will be making the late night guys workout at PF starting the 6th. We have a great goal of 10k run and to push a lot of weight. If anyone wants to try hanging with a late night workout let me know.

Ok next random fact.......people are crazy at the holiday season. In the past week traffic has picked up and the stores are getting crazy.

My little man is cutting teeth and it is taking it out of him. I think he is falling to sleep earlier every night.

Tomorrow we are heading to Sparta to pick out a tree. Very exciting times since these are "1st" for everything we do with Malachi!

December 5th we will be hitting up the Kernersville Christmas parade with Malachi and I am excited to see how he likes the parade.

Good time

We had a good time tonight hanging out with a few guys playing Xbox and eating pizza. Ok I have to say I am so far removed from the game world. It has been so long since I have pulled up a controller. It was fun watching the guys go head to head combat in black ops.

We had a good group tonight and have enjoyed hanging out with the group but we will be taking sometime off to get through the Thanksgiving holiday!

See you guys this weekend!

Leaders

Yes my wife states that if I had my choice I would be a full time student. I love to learn and study. Yes, most would think I am crazy, but I love this! I have taken classes on management, leadership, and ethics through different schools but none of them touch real life.

Leaders will be forced to make tuff decisions in hard times that ultimately impact others on all different levels. So what makes them more capable of making the right decision over the rest of us? Were they born with a crystal ball or a direct phone line to God? How do they do it?

Here is what I see. I see confident leaders make decisions based on not what they want but what is best. They look at past history, circumstances, impact on others, and lean on others for their input. Seeking wise council can be tricky. Not everyone in your phonebook should be considered wise council. Those you trust the most and those you believe will provide you the highest level of council should be your wise council. The highest level of council will not always be what you want to hear but what you need to hear.

The second thing I see from confident leaders is the ability to own their decision, right or wrong. This is not easy because we are human and we want to always be right. Making tuff decisions means at some point we will be wrong and others may be impacted. Stand tall take ownership and do everything to learn from that opportunity. Maxwell has a book called Failing Forward. It is going to happen and don't allow the wrong decision to set you back.

Dreams

Have you ever had something you just could not remember? If you know me well you know that there is no retaining for me. I would forget my name if people didn't constantly tell me what my name is. Well the other day my wife told me that she had asked me to do something.......a year ago and wanted to no if I did it. Ok.......first I don't recall what I did yesterday and I sure don't recall what happened a year ago. But it puzzled me the rest of the night wondering what I did or didn't do. I even went to bed thinking about it.

Ok during the night I had a very detail dream outlining exactly what happened one year ago. Crazy yes, but when I woke I was like did it really go down like that. So after taking my shower and I went downstairs and opened up the random spot that I had not opened in over a year and bam there was the missing book.

Ok no moral to this story but that was crazy.

Football weekend

Wow I was not ready for the release of Moss, but who knows with this team. Farve is beat up and they are playing for a draft position at this point. They say Moss blew up concerning a sub par buffet and maybe being released will humble him. Ok.....really humble Moss....sorry just a good laugh.

The next major shock was the benching of McNabb. What....you can't blame him for this....he has NO supporting cast and the Redskins are so up and down. They should be jumping up and down they are now at 500.

Ok and for fantasy football I pulled of a 48 point come back on Monday night. If Foster could have caught one more catch I would have not ended in a tie.

No matter what my Colts won and baseball is over!!!!!