The Year of WIN!!

Well hello there blogspot...long time no type! Pretty much forgot about this guy for awhile. I'll just have to have 1 epic blog post for the last couple of months.

I just have to say that this year has been full of so much WIN. I have a great job, I've paid off all my debt, bought a new (used) car (yes debt, lol), took an epic road trip to Canada w/ my best friend Lars, saw another great friend get married (Floyd!), went to some great conventions, and am now dating the girl of my dreams.

Debt - Yes....debt, we all know about it and I'm sure we've all been there. Some probably a little more then others and for reasons they wouldn't want to talk about. I had accrued quite a bit since back around 01'-06' ... mainly computer stuff and then later on actually living off my credit cards to pay for bills and basically not going anywhere at all. PUH! Well, turned all that around and went to debt management...they put me on a 6 year plan and I told myself no way, 2 years....and accomplished that at the end of 2007!

Car - I've always wanted a 5 second card, but I could never afford it because of the little debt problem I had. Well, that all changed at the beginning of the year! I had it narrowed down between 2 cars. A MazdaSpeed 3 or a Subaru Impreza WRX. I really liked the hatchback style of the SP3 and the amount of power it put down on the 2 front tires, but it was a little pricey. My next choice, the WRX, was AWD ... which you know the kind of weather we have in NE, ya...pretty good idea. I ended up buying it off my buddy at the beginning of 2008 and it's been, pedal to the metal ever since! ;)

Epic Road Trip - 3 Years ago, Lars and I took a road trip out to OR for convention and a little getaway. We met quite a few young kids from Canada and since then we've always wanted to go. So we decided to make that happen this year and took 2 weeks off of life (1st 2 weeks in Aug) and 2 weeks on the road! I rolled out of Omaha on the 1st of August (after work) and made it up to Lars' place in Hot Springs, SD. Aug 2nd (Lars bday) we headed for Bozeman, MT and stayed the nite there and went to mtg w/ some ppl we met/knew from our OR trip. Sunday, the 3rd (my bday) we headed for Spokane, WT and stayed w/ my cousin and her husband (John and Carmen, and there 2 kids. Then on Monday the 4th we made it to Seattle and hung out there for awhile. We met up w/ Dan Farnsworth (who lives there) and Brett Barry (who was visiting) and strolled around down town for awhile and then went to a Mariner's game (they beat the Twins). I'm not a huge sports fan, but it was pretty fun seeing the crowd and having a perfect view of down town Seattle. We stayed there til Wednesday afternoon and then headed up to Canada. Going through the border was pretty easy and then we were headed for Vancouver. We checked the downtown area out and saw a lot of sweeeeeet sites. We then headed to Glen Valley 2, convention, on Thursday and got a couple days in there. Then on Saturday we decided to head off to Vancouver Island and checked out Victoria, BC! We then headed back across Canada and into Banff National Park. Rolled in there Monday, the 11th, evening and setup camp. Did some awesome camping and checked out a Glacier. We camped for a couple days then headed out across Alberta and Saskatchewan and back into the States. Customs was more of a pain getting through....getting drilled w/ questions and letting them poke around in the trunk ... lol, it went ok though and we were back headed back south in no time. There's probably more to add on this topic, but this is getting to be a little drawn out. LOL. You'll just have to ask if you want more. ;-)

Floyd and Jeanne's Wedding - AWESOME! I'm so happy for these 2. It's so amazing how things work out when God's involved. I've had some conversations w/ Floyd in the past, before he started dating Jeanne, and we were always talking about wanting to be married and have a family some day etc etc. Well, Floyd's dream has came true...at least w/ getting married! ;) Congrats Brutha! The wedding was pretty sweet. I was "lucky" enough to participate some and helped w/ the singing (does n e body have a video on this?). The wedding went great and I had some good times w/ all my friends out there. Oh ya...how could I forget to mention that Lyss was there, and after spending some time around her @ the wedding, I had been thinking about her quite a bit, but just didn't know how to handle that whole thought process that was going on...so I just waited. ;-)

York - So York convention was pretty interesting. Had a conversation w/ Ryan ... about girls (imagine that) and we somehow started talking about this sister, Lyss (imagine that!). Pretty much found out she liked me, but she wasn't sure about that either...etc etc. lol. Ok, so back to convention. We heard a lot of good things from the platform and what really spoke to me was not getting to busy w/ life and to keep God 1st place, etc.

BirdCity - And now on to Birdcity. Nick Jones (cousin of mine) asked me at Antioch, if I wanted to plan on going to Birdcity. I told him let's do it ... so I started looking for people to go. I found a few people to go with us; David Miller and Ryan and Derek Jelinek. I knew I'd be in need for another good convention and wasn't planning on going there to hook up w/ any girl...that's for sure. I then found out that Lyss was planning on going....so I started thinking how awesome it'd be if we had a chance to talk and hang out w/ her. Nick was running late because of traffic, so I called Ryan and he took off w/ Lyss, while David and I waited around for Nick to show up. We finally rolled out of Omaha bout 5pm on Friday and headed towards Kearney to pick Derek up and grab some Amigos! We decided we'd spend the night in McCook, instead of trying to find convention after dark....which is a gooooood thing, because the directions we had to the grounds, ended up taking us to a cornfield! LOL. Anyways, we made it in time for the 1st meeting and as we were trying to decide where to sit (Derek and Lyss had seats saved), it just so happened that I sat next to Lyss (imaaaagine that ;) ... WIN!!!! So, convention was once again great and much needed. I pretty much arranged it so Lyss could ride back to Kearney w/ me and we really didn't have much of a chance to talk about "us", since Nick was w/ us. He slept for a little bit, so there was some time for a little conversation, but not enough.

Ok, this is getting to be pretty looooong, sorry to bore ya! ;-)

Lyss - By far the least boring part of this blog, or at least that's what I think. ;) It's pretty much an amazing story on how it's all came together. You know when you have it all worked out in your head as to how you want something to work out, but it never seems to quite go as you had hoped or planned? Well, that's usually how it works out for me....but then again, there's a reason for why things work out aye? Hennyways....I had it all planned out as to how it'd go at Birdcity, once I found out Lyss was going to be there, and it all fell into place. Since we didn't have any time to talk on Sunday...I just laid awake til about 3am Monday morning....wishing I could have talked to her. Then Monday rolled around and I finally did and it was exactly what I needed. So much WIN. Well....more to come later. It's about time to hit the road and head towards Kearney! :D

Have a great weekend!!