Christy and I use twitter fairly frequently during our lives and overall we really like it. It keeps us up to date with what friends are doing, what is going on and in some cases give us inspiration. About 3 weeks ago I started doing searches based on location, meaning that it pulls our whoever tweeted within 5 or 10 miles of me. Mostly what was returned was young high school  kids complaining about something or other… which is def not want I want to waste my life following!

But, the flip side is that I’ve picked up several people I follow that are fairly interesting and even had lunch with a guy that runs another design firm down here in Sugar Land. For the first time in a long time I feel like I’m beginning to break a few barriers, here in suburbia, when it comes to meeting people and finding people of similar interests (or even dissimilar interests).

Hoping to maybe keep meeting new folks and even put together a local meetup (or Tweetup for all the Geeks reading). So take some time and do some local searches for people tweeting around you!

P.S. if you are from Sugar Land be sure to follow @SLTownSquare as they seem to be the unofficial voice for our great city.

(Photo by friend and local Sugar Land photographer @mikehaskew)

In short… We went to steamboat for MusicFest, I’m now in the beardless part of the year, Christy is a redhead, Luke is 5, Crossbridge has moved into a building, it’s getting hot in Texas, we’re still traveling alot and have a river trip in our near future!

There… you’re all caught up. LOL

We spent this NYE over at our friends Brian and Angela’s. We watched motorcycle jumps, had pizza, drank Apple Martini’s, saw the ball drop and made fun of musicians that we had no idea who they were. It was sort of a last minute decision to head over and it was one of the best NYE’s we’ve had in a long time. Happy New Years everybody!

The Texas Snow Globe

And so begins the game. We’ve given all kinds of truckstop gifts back and forth, including a glass unicorn on a mirror, an eagle, snowglobes and most recently… a frog serving dish. Given as an anniversary “present” to us with the assumption that we would indeed use it during a nice dinner we are left with the following picture which was taken immediately following the question “Is that a frog?”

The bar was just raised friends. And just FYI, they do sell clothes at these truckstops too…

About a month ago Chrsty and I took a Saturday and went out and helped repaint a womens shelter down in Richmond. This was part of an effort of our local church, Crossbridge, to show the city.. the community… the people… that the church is part of more things than just looking at themselves. Every year, they shut down services and spend the weekend being the church to whoever needs help. This year it was a Saturday only, but included repainting a womens shelter, fixing several other buildings and structures for various non-profits and spending some time with the elderly at a local nursing home.

We had a great time getting out with others and really making a difference around where we live. Hopefully this targeted weekend reminds everyone that “Showing The Love” isn’t just a one weekend per year thing, but rather a constant day-to-day part of our lives. Here’s a video of some of the stuff that went on.

Every year we get together with a bunch of friends and throw a big front yard party for Halloween at the Nilsson’s. We go all out with a bounce house, free hotdogs, free cokes, games for the kids, music, candy, candy and more candy! It’s a great time to meet neighbors and show kids and families that we care about our city and them.

You definitely learn a lot about yourself when you have to rely on others.. and that is not something we do very well. But coming out of it we’re a better family and closer to our friends, and that is irreplaceable. So overall, things are going well… We have no pictures to post or report over the last few weeks as our battery charger was stolen a few weeks ago and we just got the new in the mail 2 days ago. Blah.

We have been fairly busy though. We made a trip down to Austin to see Mom, Terry and Debra for Mom’s birthday and the fact that we celebrated at a Ryan Bingham show was even cooler. It was nice to get away from the stress of no power and take in some family, friends and music. And we even met Uncle Rico at the festival (Damn you camera charger thief).

We spent the next week, after getting power restored, cleaning up the yard, doing housework and replacing groceries. Nothing too exciting. I took Luke with me on a trip to Mom’s house in Mexia and spent the weekend with her, doing some hunting and hanging with friends. Meanwhile Christy enjoyed the peace and quiet and a little Spa action I surprised her with.

Hope that catches everyone up on things with us. This weekend we’re staying at home and going out with our church to help paint houses, repair properties and just generally love on the community. Should be fun!

oops I lied… here’s video of all of us out last year showing the love. Luke is in there and I’m painting a house somewhere in there. Enjoy.