No Strings Attached

Today I am so thankful for my wonderful and awesome wife!  Brenda is the love of my life and she is such a tremendous blessing to me!  Her love and support is unconditional.  No matter what, she is and has always been there for me.  She sees past my quirks and my idiosyncrasies, and still chooses to love me for who I am!  That unconditional love.  Even on my bad days!  Yes I do have them.  There are days when I get frustrated, whether it be with kids, work, or just everyday life, she is still there for me, takes me as I am and still always there to love me!  WOW!!!  What more can I ask?  We have shared this wonderful connection with each other now for over 23 years and it has been awesome and I am truly looking forward to the many more years that we have together!  My wife is the best and I would not have her any other way!  So a big THANK YOU and I am so GRATEFUL for YOU! goes out to my loving and wonderful wife Brenda Lorenzo!!!  You are truly the best!

I Blew it!

Hello Everyone!  I hope this blog note finds your day going well?  For me, now it's great, but last week it was not so great.  Yup, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky was not his usually bubly and happy self.  I had a bad day, wait let me rephrase that...I had a bad week!  Most of my friends and family know that I am just a overflowing bubly case of joy.  I usually don't let anything get to me and I am just an all around nice kind of guy.  Well, this past week, I BLEW IT!  Yup, I had a very stressful and bad week at work.  It was a particulary long week, we had some systems fail and and I am the lead on these systems.  So needless to say my hours were very long, about 12-14 hour days for the last week.  Not to mention the stress load that goes along with trouble shooting and trying to come to a resolution.  Well, I let all this stress get the best of me. 

I try never to bring the stress and issues of work home with me.  I try my best to leave them at the door when I walk out for the day.  However, that was definately not the case this past week.  I brought all that stress home!  OK, now you can see where I am going with this.  Not  a good thing!  I found myself all that week withdrawing from the family.  I found myself getting very quiet and not wanting to talk or letting little things get to me that normally I would not even bat an eye to.  That should have been the warning sirens right there.  MAYDAY MAYDAY...ALL HANDS ON DECK...but I was so consumed in my stress and the issues of the week that I did not see the forest for the trees so to speak.  Well this all came to a head on Thursday this past week.  I came home and was very quiet and not talking very much.  I was also letting all the little things get to me.  This is where my reality check came in.  THANK GOD for a spouse who loves me so much that she is willing to tell it to me straight.  My wonderful wife called me out!  Guess what, I still did not see it!  I said that I was not stressed and that I just had a very long week.  I tried to deflect and push back everything on her.  Well, needless to say once again, THANK GOD for a spouse who loves me and tells it to me like it is, she told me that she did not like this Joe that she was seeing and that I needed to change my attitude.  Well that night, I did some self-reflecting and praying, and YES I did now see exactly what she was saying.  I had let all the stresses of work come home with me and took all that baggage from work and off loaded it at home.  Not a good thing to do!  So I did apologize to my wife and told her how sorry I was for bringing the stress of work home and makeing my family take the brunt of it!

I say all this for everyone out there that may be stressing out and bringing all that junk with you to your familes or significant others.  Take stock in what they have to say to you.  Once again I am greatful that I have a loving spouse who is willing to tell it to me like it is.  She gave me a great reality check and a well needed attitude adjustment!

I sure thank God that His mercies are fresh and new every day.  I thank God that I can get up in the morning and know it's a new day.  I thank God that I can run to him and ask for forgiveness and it's there for my taking.  Because I know that I sure need it.  I also thank God for my wonderful wife that He has placed in my life.   She is a wonderful and loving spouse whom I truly appreciate.  She is so full of unconditional love and has the boldness to tell it to me straight.  Thank you Lord.  My prayer is that you have someone like that in your life.  Someone that is there for you.  Someone that can tell it to you straight and put you back on the striaght and narrrow.  Someone that can give you an attitude adjustment when needed.

Black Friday 2011 -"Why do I do it?"

Today is Friday November 25th 2011, or in the shopper's mind "Black Friday"  This year it started even earlier on Thursday!  Let me set the scene for you, it's 9:00pm on Thanksgiving day, our bellies are full from the Turkey and Pumpkin Pie, now we are sitting at the table planning our "attack" for the evening.  We are excited, this year Black Friday is starting even earlier.  We carefully plan our attack as we give one final pass through all the ads from the newspaper.  What stores will we hit first.  What do we want to get, yes, I feel the rush start to happen.  Now it is about 9:45pm, we are off to our first stop, Wal-Mart!  Oh Boy!  we are in for a big surprise!  The normally empty parking lot was completely full!  We found a parking place and into the heart of the best we went, OK, the store, but what we were in for, WOW!  The store was a mad house!  Wall to Wall people, pushing, pulling and grabbing all the deals that were available!  I quickly went to what was on my list and met my wife at the designated meeting point.  Walking into Wal-Mart that evening, quickly reminded me that we were in for some serious shopping time!  We quickly got what we wanted at Wal-Mart then it was quickly off to our next stop.  We pulled up to Kohl's where we found the line wrapped around the block!  It was still 45 minutes before the store opened.  So we waited in line and discussed what we needed to get and our battle plan for that store!  The 45 minutes flew by the line starts to move, OK, let the rush begin!  We get into the store, Success!  We find what we wanted and off to the check out lines.  Another store down.  Now off to the next store, Game Stop!   Here we find another line of course!  So off we are into the waiting line.  This is where start to hear and swap Black Friday tales past and present.  Finally to the door, we are let in the Game Stop store.  We are excited, We find what we were looking for!  Our Black Friday is looking good!  Now we are off to our next stop, but first we must refuel ourselves!  Can't run on empty. It is now approximately 2:30am.  We stop to eat at Denny's of course because it is always open!  It appears that most of our fellow Black Friday shoppers had the same thing on their minds.  OK, refueled and charged up again, it is off to the next store.  Target here we come!  Most of the crowd is gone now and it is relatively quiet in the store.  To our amazement, we still found some great deals!  Now back again to yet another Game Stop where we needed to find a game that we were looking for!  Success!  It is now approximately 5:00 am.  Off to our final stop of the day.  Family Christian Bookstore.  It does not open until 6:00 am so we have an hour to kill.  We enjoy it together in the car sitting and listening to some Christmas music as we pass the time.  Now it is 6:00am.  The doors open and we are off and running again.  We found a lot of deals for us as well as our family!    We shopped for about an hour.  It is now 7:00 am in the morning!  We are FINISHED!!!  Another Black Friday in the books!  We survived and had a blast!



Black Friday 2011 @ Wal-Mart in Buckey AZ

You say, What in the world would possess someone to go out and shop in those type of circumstances?  To subject yourself to the pushing, shoving, sleep deprivation etc.?  Well, I am not crazy, but I will tell you this, Yes I do it because of the deals of the day, but it is truly because I love spending the time shopping with my wife!  Yes, I love to shop and I love to shop with the best person I know, my wife!  This is like the ultimate date for us!  We look forward to this time of the year every year!  We do it because we love the time we get to spend with each other.  We love the running around in all the drama, we love spending the time with other people in line and swapping Black Friday tales both past and present.  Ultimately though, I do it because of the time I get to spend with my wife! 

A Time of Thankfulness -Day #3 A November Challenge

Day #3 in the November Thankfulness Challenge.  Today, I am thankful for my wife! Yes, you knew I would not leave her out of this challenge!   Proverbs 18:22 says "The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the Lord"  I must say, I definitely found a treasure!  For over eighteen years, my wife has been my confidant, my friend, my true sweetheart!  I have never met anyone who is more willing to go the extra mile.  She is someone who is always willing to put others first before herself!  She is an amazing woman!  I can't believe how truly blessed I am to have her as my wife!  She is also an amazing mother to our children!  It is so nice to know that I have someone that is so amazing to come home to!  Someone who is always there for me through it all!  I am not saying we have had the perfect marriage, we have had our share of trials, However, we have stuck with each other through the thick and the thin!  Learning to accept each other as who we are.  We have learned to find strength in each others weaknesses.  We have learned to build each other up when we are down.  We have learned to laugh and cry with each other.  My wife is truly a treasure!  As the lyrics of our wedding songs says....

"I cherish the treasure, the treasure of you!  Lifelong companion, I give myself to you!  God has enabled me, to walk with you faithfully! and I cherish the treasure, the treasure of you!" 

So YES, I am extremely thankful for my wife!  Thank you sweetheart for always being there for me, for all that you do for me and our family!  I LOVE YOU AND I AM VERY THANKFUL FOR YOU!