I’ve got a lot to be thankful for and I try to remember that daily and not just because the pilgrims told me to.

On this day of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for:

• My beautiful, loving, talented wife. She’s my best friend and the first person I want to talk to in the morning and the last one I want to talk to at night.
• My awesome family. All of them, immediate and extended. My family is fantastic.
• My great friends. I’m blessed with a large group of great friends who are a lot of fun to be around. I’m looking forward to our Gardner-Olathe football game this Saturday.
• And so much more…

I hope that this day finds you healthy, thankful, and blessed. Thanks especially to those who serve our country overseas and cannot be with their families on this day.

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So I’m back from Jamaica.

Alli and I and the rest of the family have been at Beaches Negril since last Saturday. While we were there, my brother and his lovely significant other Kelly got hitched on the beach on Tuesday afternoon. Both families were there as were a bunch of Jake’s friends and we had a great time. After an all-day journey yesterday, we’re back in Kansas City, away from the island humidity.

It looks as though the internet didn’t break while I was gone, although I  did win a contest and my biography was posted on Brad’s site. It looks like everything else is as it was. 

I read two books while I was gone, finally finishing Wild at Heart by John Eldridge and quickly consuming Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. I’ll post reviews soon.

As far as the rest of the week…I’m taking the rest of the week off from work. I may tackle a redesign of my own site if I can do it quickly. We’ll see.

How are you?

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It’s a fitting close to this weekend.

Saturday turned out to be awesome. I woke up at 5 with the rain and lightning and was convinced we wouldn’t be able to golf. However, with some prayers, the weather cleared and by 10:00, the only thing we had to worry about at Royal Meadows was the wind.

Golfing was a lot of fun and then we joined some others for an 18-person poker tournament. But in order to give myself a challenge, I grilled 40+ cheeseburgers so Jake’s Man Day attendants would have something to nosh on.

The rest of Man Day was a blast. I finally had to call it a night at 12:30 shortly after I got everyone to the Brooksider. I hope everyone had fun.

Yesterday was a little more relaxed. We went to church, made lunch and I took a nice long nap. Last night, we spent some time at a friends’ house in their recently redone backyard, which made me insanely jealous to redo our backyard. We lazed around, watched the pilot of Iron Chef America from a few years ago, then turned in early.

It is, after all, Red Meat Day.

We’re going over to my parents’ house today. My dad returned from Dubai on Friday in time to ask me what I wanted to have for lunch today. He went and picked up my requested steak - a ribeye from McGonigals. So I’ll finally get to have what I missed for Jake’s birthday.

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Happy Birthday Dad! Looking forward to dinner with the fam tonight!

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I am now an Uncle.

It is a foreign concept to me, for sure, but one that I’m excited to embrace. The little bundle was born early this morning (about 12:30 a.m.), weighed 6 lbs. 6 oz., measured 19 in. long and is just about the cutest thing ever. (No bias!)

Meet Ireland.

Mom, baby and dad are doing great!

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Alli’s grandma passed away this weekend so I am in Ohio with her family. I likely will not be posting this week.

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Thanks for the talk last night. You guys are awesome and I love you.

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While I realize that my personal experience on September 11, 2001 pales in comparison to those of anyone who lived in New York City or Washington, DC, I can’t help but ruminate on the morning 5 years ago that changed everything.

I was on my way to work and Alli and I were driving together as we did back then. Just before I dropped her off, we heard some news on the radio: something had happened in New York City - a missile or something had hit one of the two towers at the World Trade Center. We were safe and sound back in Kansas City, but my dad was working for a New York-based company at the time and his office was in Chelsea, a mere 20-some blocks from the World Trade Center.

I immediately called my dad and this is about what our conversation went like:

Me: “What’s going on?” (in a panicked voice)

Dad: “Not much. How are you?”

Me: “Can you see the World Trade Center from where you are at?”

Dad: “I can see it from the balcony. Why?”

Me: “They’ve said that it got hit by something, maybe a plane or a missile. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it.”

Dad: “I’ll go outside and check it out.”

…

Dad: “Oh my…it’s like something out of a movie. The top floors are all smoking.”

Me: “I heard it on the radio and had to call to make sure you were OK.”

Dad: “I’m fine. I’m fine, but…HOLY SH!T…something just hit the other one.”

Me: “What? Something hit the other one?”

Dad: “Yeah. I think it was a plane. I need to let you go.”

Me: “Are you OK? I’m worried.”

Dad: “I’m fine. I’ll call to let you know what is going on. I need to go now.”

Me: “I love you, Dad. Be safe.”

Dad: “I love you too. Tell Mom and Jake that everything is OK.”

Me: “I will. Love you. Bye.”

Dad: “Bye.”

It was the weirdest day. I went into work, but I watched TV in our training room for most of the day. I was the only one in the office who had family in New York. It was surreal. I remember watching the towers come down and I don’t remember thinking about terrorists or patriotism or anything like that at the time. I just remember thinking: I want my dad home. Right now.

It was several days before he could get on a flight and come home. I think that he was on one of the very first flights that left LaGuardia when planes started flying again. I was so happy to see him when he returned. So glad that he was safe. The following days were a blur. That morning, I remember thinking that we would be lucky if there were less than 20,000 people that died that morning. If it was about luck, then we were more than lucky. A much lower number lost their lives that day, but the effects continue to resonate through our daily lives today.

I don’t know if our lives will ever be the same. We’ve been at war seemingly since that day and there isn’t an easy end in sight. The chain reaction of events has been felt around the world as the United States’ war on terror travels around the world. Thinking back to that day, I can’t believe that it was only 5 years ago. It’s amazing to think how much time has passed, yet we still haven’t found any semblance of normalcy. I hope that it is in our future, but my fear is that it may not be.

Today, I just wanted to remember - to remind myself of the amazing strength that the city of New York showed in a time of adversity. It made everyone proud to call themselves American and it made everyone admire the city’s resilience. Most of all, for me, it make me remember how much I love my dad and how glad I was to hear his voice on the other end of that line and how glad I was to see him return home.

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Alli and I started new journals last night. She went to her parents house on Sunday night to help them faux paint their dining room and while she was there, she found some journals that were about 25 years old, written by her parents.

Her parents gave her permission to read through them and she brought them home with her. I picked her up at the half-way point in Mound City and she read from them to me as we drove home. It was such a cool insight into the lives of her parents when they were only just a bit older than us. They talked about their girls (Ashley was 2 and Alli was 4 when the journals begin), their church beliefs, their feelings about their friends and such. It was really cool because they journalled on the same days and it was interesting to read what they talked about individually on the days that they experienced the same things.

Their voices really came through in their writing and it was really neat to see that.

So Alli and I have decided to do it. Before we got home from Mound City last night, we stopped at Borders and picked up journals to write in (mine’s red, Alli’s is black) and we put our first entries in last night. I’m excited for us to do this together. I think that it will be a great thing for us to look back on in 10 or 20 years and remember our thoughts and feelings when we were still in our 20’s (not much longer for me…grrrrrr…).

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