Happy New Year - 2026🎉🥳...

We pray this New Year brings you health, happiness, love & laughter that cannot be contained.  May God overflow your life with so many blessings that it also overflows into the lives of everyone that you touch.  God Bless!  

Verse of the Year...

Happy New Year's Eve!

 

Click on this link:  The Best Is Yet To Come

Thank you for following us.  We hope that you continue to enjoy this blog for many years to come.  God Bless!

VWS1/The Arnold 2026

Tim will once again be attending The Arnold.  He is looking forward to all the experience that he is going to gain being a first year Junior competitor in the 71kg division.  This is an all around fun event because you get to see so many weightlifting and body building comps.  It's insane the vast amount of people that flock to this event.  It's an experience like none other and we look forward to coming back time and again as long as they continue putting it on.  

End of Year Weightlifting Reflection...

As this year comes to an end, Scot, Tim, and I have been reflecting on the things we are most grateful for. One of the greatest blessings has been Tim finding a coach who leads with excellence and refuses to take shortcuts.

Tim is just over two years into Olympic-style weightlifting, and it has truly been one of the best changes in his life. That growth wouldn’t be possible without such an outstanding coach guiding him along the way. Watching our son reach this point has blessed our hearts far beyond what we could have hoped for.

Becoming an elite athlete—and finding the right coach to walk that journey with you—is no easy task. We are incredibly grateful that Tim has found his place in a sport he loves, alongside a coach who brings out the very best in him.

Verse of the Day...

The Bible RECAP...

I just finished reading through the Bible using The Bible Recap plan on the Bible App. Over my lifetime, I’m sure I’ve read through the Bible many times, but never with the intentionality I had this past year. This is the first time I’ve truly followed a reading plan and completed the Bible in a year, and it feels incredibly rewarding to have accomplished this goal.

Helping Friends (who are like family)....

Helping friends recently as they move their elderly parents from NC to TN has been eye-opening. Seeing how much they accumulated over a lifetime—combined with everything we’ve been dealing with at Scot’s parents’ house—has really made Scot and me rethink our own stuff.

We’ve decided it’s time to start purging what we don’t truly need. We don’t want to leave Tim the burden of sorting through a house full of things someday. Both Scot’s parents and our friends’ parents clearly struggled with hoarding, shaped by being raised by those who lived through the Depression, when you saved anything that might be useful again one day.

Here are a few pictures of the work we've been doing and there's still a lot to do. 

Tim's Christmas 2025...

This year was a smaller Christmas for Tim.  He received clothes (compression underwear, sweatpants & a couple of t-shirts).  He also received some knee sleeves and compression pants for training.  He got new earbuds from his family in Kentucky.  They all rallied together and got him the earbuds he's been needing for when he is working out.  He also got a trimmer that he ask for to be able to trim his thick eyebrows and to be able to clean up his unibrow.  His dad and I got him the Galaxy watch that he wanted as well.   All in all he got everything he needed and wanted this Christmas.  It's unfortunate but I didn't get a picture of all the clothes he received.  

Beats earbuds that will stay in when he's working out.

Karlos Nasar t-shirt.

Karlos Nasar knee sleeves.

Why Be Normal? Weightlifting t-shirt.

Galaxy Watch and bezel protection because hey, I know my son...LOL! 

Merry Christmas🎄

We wanted to take a moment to wish you all a very Merry Christmas🎄!

This season reminds us just how much we have to be thankful for. Life gets busy and chaotic, but this time of year calls us to slow down and appreciate the people who mean the most. We never want to take our loved ones for granted. God has been so good to us, and we’re grateful for His faithfulness every single day.

Family is everything. So hug your loved ones a little tighter this Christmas, and make sure they know just how much they mean to you. Tomorrow isn’t promised, but the memories we make today can last a lifetime.

God bless you all, and may your Christmas be filled with love, peace, and joy❤️.

A Time of Reflection Video...

I made this short video to give everyone a look back at our best moments of 2025.  Most of our best moments are Tim's - of course his best moments are our best moments.  A happy kid = happy parents.  We love seeing our boy so incredibly happy with all that he's doing.  He's such an amazing young man.  We look forward to seeing all that God does in his life as he continues to grow to be his own man.  He will always have our love & support.  

Merry Christmas Eve....

It's Christmas Eve, y'all.  We are starting the day watching Tim open his Christmas gifts so we can enjoy that time as a family with just us.  Then later this afternoon we go to our churches candlelight service and we come home and have dinner.  And this year's dinner is thanks to our friends - The Allen's - because we are getting to have off the boat Italian Raviolis that I helped make at Donna's mom's house a few weeks ago.  It's something we started doing in more recent years because we want Christmas Day to be all about our Saviors birth and time with Family.  The greatest gift we will ever receive in this life is the gift of eternal life in heaven and we wouldn't have that if Jesus hadn't be born & then - many years later - died on a cross for our sins.  

He is the greatest gift of all!!! 

Verse of the Day...

Footnote from NIV Application Bible:

v1-5 The journeying of everyone "to their own town to register" appears to be a sensitive decision by the Romans that allowed the Jews to follow their own custom of going to one's ancestral home.  So Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem, a place identified as "the town of David," because of Joseph's lineage in the royal family.

V6-7  Jesus enters the world in as mundane a way as possible.  Luke tells the story with exceptional brevity.

v8-10 The testimony of Jesus' birth from the angelic host to shepherds is significant in scope.  The announcement indicates that God desires to speak to every person about the coming of Jesus, since all humanity is impacted by his coming.

v11  The titles the angel uses for the newborn child are significant.  "Savior" is rich in OT roots, especially as a figure for divine deliverance.  "Messiah" (Hebrew for "anointed one") is a rare term in the OT; Ps 2:2 is the main technical regal use.  What about "Lord"?  One could argue that the rest of this Gospel and the book of Acts serve to explain the nature of Jesus' lordship.

We are so Thankful...

We are so incredibly thankful for being given so much pebble gravel so that we could fix the low spots in our gravel driveway.  Our driveway is around 600 or so feet long so you can imagine how much it cost to get two dump truck loads of new gravel put on it.  It's something we are going to have to do but being giving this gravel buys us some time before having to do it.