Front Page News!

I got up this morning, and Tina and I went into Lexington to buy our papers. We get the Statesman, the Chronicle and the Eagle (Bryan-College Station). All over the front pages of each of these papers were images of the LATE Saddam Hussein. He has been executed two months after his conviction. Hmmm, maybe we can learn something from them.

I also noticed, on one of the following pages of the Eagle, they had listed other men who have left their mark in History for their diabolical and murderous leaderships. Among them were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Manuel Noriega and Idi Amin, all among the world's most hated people.

Shakespeare wrote, "The evil that men do lives after them." I'm not much on Shakespeare, but I suppose he was right about this particular issue. The Bible says, Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goeth before destruction, And a haughty spirit before the fall." That, I put a lot of stock in!

I remember when Saddam challenged the U.S. by refusing to allow the U.N. inspections as agreed upon when he dealt with Bush, Sr. He must have thought he was untouchable. His was a power of absoluteness and infiniteness. He could not be removed from office! I read today he fell apart when U.S. soldiers came to his cell to deliver him to his executioners. His pride got in the way of his reality, that proved to be fatal!

Thanks to all for a great Christmas!

Well, Christmas 2006 has now passed us right on by. It was a great time for me and my family. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who made it such a great family gathering. The food was great, the fellowship was bliss and memories are worth more than words can express. It was worth it just to be present when Jeremy was crowned the Gingerbread Engineer of the Year! Good job Jeremy! I really appreciated everyone, that was able to, participating in the gingerbread house building. My family really enjoyed do it, I hope that all of you did too. I thought maybe we might discuss some guidelines for next year if everyone is on board with doing it again. Please, we are not trying to run the whole thing, we want everyone to give there thoughts or if you don't want any rules then please feel free to say so. Here are some things we thought about.

1. The day after Thanksgiving is the first day in which you can began the actual construction of your gingerbread house.
2. You are allowed one non-edible item for structure support and three additional non-edible items. You can use two or three non-edible items for structure but if you do then you loose an item that can be use for decoration. If you don't use any structure items you still can only use three decorative items. I think for those who are traveling structure support is going to be an important issue. This does not include your platform or whatever you use to cover your platform.
3. The platform size we thought we would increase to 20" x 20" this year and set a maximum height of 24" as well.
4. If you use a kit, you can not spend more than $20 on the kit, but you can add as many add-ons as you would like.
5. Edible add-ons are limited to three mass-produced items. Basic cookies and candies are unlimited, of course. What I mean is, if you buy your snowmen, like we did, instead of making them, like Jeremy did, then that would count as one of your items. You will also loose points for using them. That is why the Jeremys beat us! Ha!!

If you have any other suggestions, please speak up and let us know, or if you don't like any of these ideas let us know as well. Thanks again for the great day yesterday! Love you all!

Jeff