Simply Had A Wonderful Christmastime

Had a great day today with family. We exchanged presents, had a great meal, sat and talked--and though it started at a ridiculously early time--it was fun.

Lyndsay's parents gave me a terrific iPod dock/shelf stereo system called the Logitech Audiostation. It's not as small or pretty as the Bose sounddock...but it can pump some serious sound for a unit as small as it is.

I also got some shirts in my ACTUAL shirt size, a medium-tall. Lyndsay had some hilarious stories of making people put the clothes on the mannequin in the store and taking a poll to decide what would be best for me. I can just imagine how that went down...

Lyndsay got the Bowflex Select-Tech Dumbells. Have you seen these things? They're really neat. And now we can work out while we watch TV. This can only have good results...either I'll watch more TV so I can work out more...or I'll watch TV less because I don't want to work out, thus I quit wasting time. Win win!

And she also got a Palm Pilot as an early birthday present. She's very excited...it keeps her calendar, and it can hold little nursing programs like drug guides and coding charts. For her usual technology resistant self, she's pretty excited about this one.

And somehow, I got four flashlights. I'm still trying to figure it out...but in the event of a power outage, I'm totally set.

Merry Christmas!

It's 7:00 AM. And Christmas is over. Par for the course here for Christmas at Lyndsay's family. After all, we started at 5:45 AM. You can't just sit around and let the holiday go by, right?!

It makes me think back to when I was a kid and I used to force my family up at the crack of dawn...my poor uncle Joe was used to sleeping until about 11:00 or so, just because of his work schedule. This morning I felt a little bad for all those years of forcing him up 4 or 5 hours before he was used to getting up, just to watch me run around and yell and get stuff. Sorry Uncle Joe!

Alright...I can smell Christmas Breakfast cooking, so I think I'm going to go see what we've got...

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

In all of the Christmas hubbub, it's easy to get so caught up in the spirit of the season that I forget an important day...today is my dad's birthday! Yup. He's a Christmas Eve baby.

For as long as I can remember, to celebrate Dad's birthday we've had a party on Christmas eve night. It's always the same people...three families come over...between the four of us families, we have about 22 people total. And it happens every year, without fail. There were a few years where our family observed Christmas in different cities (in different states!) on different days. But you can always count Dad's Birthday Party on Christmas Eve at the Crews house in Greenville, SC.

For the last 20 years at least (that's as many years as I can remember), all of the kids have gotten together and hung out for the night. I always figured there would come a year when someone wouldn't be able to make it to the party...but each year, everyone always made it back in time. Then recently a couple of us got married and the group grew. The picture above is from last year's party.

So this year, for the first time, one of the original six of us kids will not be there. And the worst part is: it's me! It's very sad to know that everyone will be singing "Happy Birthday" and swapping gifts and catching up and that I'll miss it all.

All a part of growing up, I suppose.

I got a B!

I've been taking classes at MTSU to get my prerequisites for the CPA exam. It's been going pretty well. This past semester, though, I ended up in an accounting class I can only describe as "stinkin' hard." It was pretty apparent early on that my streak of A's would be broken by this class...the 55 I made on my first test was the initial tip-off. Luckily he curved that test 15 points (apparently I wasn't much worse than anyone else) so I ended up with a C-.

The semester went on, and it was more of the same. I had a pretty solid test average between 70 and 75. So when it came time to check my grade after I took the final, I didn't really want to since I was so sure it'd be bad news.

I've made 4 C's in my life. Each one was a traumatic experience. One was in Keyboarding in 7th grade from a lady who was possessed by a demon. And then two more were in 9th and 12th grade English. Of course...all of those "C's" were 85's, which was considered a C at my middle and high school. I went off to college to learn that an 85 was actually a very respectable B. Then my final C was in an Economics class at Samford that I had no business being in as a freshman. I was actually pretty thankful for that one.

So as you can tell by my obviously traumatic scarring, I don't handle mediocrity very well.

So I managed to avoid checking my grade for about a week. Finally Lyndsay made me check it yesterday morning...

...and...

...I GOT A B!! I'm not too sure how, but I think it has to do with homework grades, because I always did my homework though my professor never clearly explained how that figured in to my grade. Apparantly it was at least 10%...because that's what I needed to get up to a B.

So yay. Bring on another semester. I'm ready!

The Rockettes

Today we celebrated holiday cheer in a new way...Lyndsay's grandparents, parents, her and I went to see the Radio City Rockettes perform at the grand ole opry. It was quite the show. Hours of kicking legs, dancing people in animal suits, and a big finale of a live nativity, including camels, donkeys, and sheep...right there on stage! That's right folks. Living barnyard animals, right there on the stage. There was one sheep that was so still that I thought he was just a fake sheep they put on the stage to save the budget. But after holding perfectly still for a good four minutes or so...he started moving too! They spared NO expense.

It was quite the show. Merry Christmas!

Dirty Santa

This Christmas, I've had a record breaking THREE games of dirty santa. At the first one, I got the "Bourne Ultimatum" on DVD. I was pretty excited. In fact, I almost bought that movie and brought it to the party as my present for dirty santa.

Quick sidenote: I actually ended up buying and bringing the new Garth Brooks greatest hits cd/dvd set. I did this because Lyndsay said she really wanted it for Christmas. I figured I would seize the opportunity and kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, when the present was opened during the dirty santa game, she decided she was less interested in Garth Brooks...and more interested in Shrek 3. So now we have Shrek 3, too.

I played Dirty Santa again a few days later with the folks from work at the company christmas party, which was actually at our house. We had a 10 dollar limit, which makes it a lot harder to work with...but I gotta say...I was pretty impressed by the creativity. I was also pretty impressed by the UNcreativity. Three people stopped at the Starbucks in my front yard and bought giftcards. In my small office, 3 people meant about 20% of the people playing. So needless to say, Starbucks cashed in in a big way from our company Christmas party.

Anyway, back to the party. The best present for 10 bucks award went to the folks who brought the jumbo sized remote. I'm sure you've seen it...it's the remote with the huge buttons...the thing itself is so big you could just about flip it over and use it for a cookie sheet. The folks who brought it prefaced opening it with, "Don't get your hopes up...but...my grandpa does love his!"

I wasn't going to fight over the remote, so I opted instead for a wall calendar from my favorite TV show, "The Office"...it now hangs proudly in my office at work.

That was pretty much it for my dirty santa winnings. At the third dirty santa game, I ended up with a glass serving bowl with pink roses on it. I'm sure it was a nice bowl (the ladies tried to tell me it was), but I ended up giving it away after the game was over. One of my friends insisted if I wore it as a hat, it would keep the government from being able to read my mind. I thought about keeping it for that very reason, but I decided the government probably needs to be able to harness the massive processing power and intelligence capabilities of my mind...so as a service to them...I gave the bowl away.

Oh well...two out of three ain't bad. Merry Christmas!

Mixaloo

Just playing with this website called Mixaloo...thought I'd put together some of my favorite songs.

Trimming the Tree

DSC07073.JPG
Originally uploaded by ScottCrews

Today we trimmed the tree. First, we helped our neighbors the Sidells put up a GIANT tree in their back yard--a forty foot pole with thirty-something strands of lights coming down from it. After cleaning ourselves up and enjoying a dinner, we set to trimming a tree of our own.

Since Lyndsay and I already trimmed our tree weeks and weeks ago, we're basically pros at this whole tree trimming thing. Just wait until next weekend when we have the McDannald family tree trimming--I'm like a tree trimming machine.

Then my dad pulled out his super-sweet fancy camera and took some great pictures. We got one for the family christmas card, and I thought I'd share it here. Merry Christmas!!

Trimming The Tree

DSC07073.JPG,
originally uploaded by ScottCrews.

Today we trimmed the tree. First, we helped our neighbors the Sidells put up a GIANT tree in their back yard--a forty foot pole with thirty-something strands of lights coming down from it. After cleaning ourselves up and enjoying a dinner, we set to trimming a tree of our own.

Since Lyndsay and I already trimmed our tree weeks and weeks ago, we're basically pros at this whole tree trimming thing. Just wait until next weekend when we have the McDannald family tree trimming--I'm like a tree trimming machine.

Then my dad pulled out his super-sweet fancy camera and took some great pictures. We got one for the family christmas card, and I thought I'd share it here. Merry Christmas!!

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving 2007.jpg, originally uploaded by ScottCrews.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We got to have a wonderful thanksgiving in Greenville, SC with my (Scott's) mom, dad, grandmother, and sister. They INSISTED we take picture after picture to make sure we got the holiday moment captured correctly.

After a couple of takes, I decided I'd had enough and that it was about time to get on with this whole holiday thing. ...and apparently I wasn't quite fast enough, and I got caught.

Oh well. I think everyone looks great here. Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Christmas!!

The days of November have now hit double digits and for Lyndsay that can mean only one thing...we're a month overdue decorating for "...CHRISTMAS!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAY CHRISTMAS!!!!" (That's a direct quote from Lyndsay)

So today we decked the halls. It began with pulling down the tree from the attic...which was kinda like watching a 400 pound person go through a half size door. Lyndsay and I were pushing from each end...it was quite a scene. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture.

We did, however, get a picture of her light up town that she is VERY proud of. I call it Heaventown, because of the abundance of "snow"...which look more like clouds to me. So when you see Lyndsay, ask her how things are going in Heaventown. I think she's about to start naming the "citizens"...I imagine they'll have a mayor by December (Lyndsay: ...of course they will--and then I'll need a town hall!)

Merry Christmas, everybody.

St. Louis

So this weekend I'm on a business trip to St. Louis, MO. I'm at a convention for youth pastors...telling them about how Vertical Ministries can help them and their ministry.

I took this picture on my cell phone yesterday morning of the arch. Our hotel is a block away from the arch. Unfortunately, our hotel is also about a mile from the convention center...so I've been doing a good bit of walking. I had to buy those gel inserts for my shoes. Now...I'm gellin'...and life isn't too bad.

I'm ready to get home though. I've had to talk to about 750-800 new people in the last 4 days. An introvert's nightmare, to say the least. But we're on the last stretch. We'll go back in for another session from noon to 3, and then hit the road.

And I'll miss the Titans/Panthers game COMPLETELY. Which is very sad.

my nine count nugget

My coworker Shannon was blogging about someone rudely flipping out over bad service in the restaurant where she ate dinner tonight. So I posted a comment dripping in sarcasm about a story of what happened to me at dinner tonight. It was so witty I thought I'd copy my blog comment over here and post it myself, in case you don't happen to read my co-workers' blogs.

"I grabbed dinner at Chickfila on my way to class tonight.

I ordered an 8 pack nugget.

There were only seven nuggets.

So I stood at the counter and threw each nugget at the kid who gave them to me.

Then I loudly and rudely said, "How many nuggets did I just pound you with?!?!" To which he replied, "Seven". To which I replied, "YEAH! so where's my eighth nugget?!?!"

Okay...so maybe it didn't quite happen like that. Maybe I just handed it to him and he handed me a replacement box. But the replacement box had 9 nuggets in it!

I guess the correct thing to do would have been hand it back, since I ordered an 8 count nugget, and not a 9 count. But I ate them ALL. And I savored the ninth one because of all my trouble.

...mmmm....."

Ha.

The Notebook

Lyndsay borrowed "The Notebook" from a friend today. Now she's watching it. And worse...she's making me watch it.

Luckily she let me bring my computer. So I can share the experience with you. After all, misery loves company.

...yay...

Halfway Home

Lyndsay made it! I talked to her just a couple minutes ago. I think she's been there for about thirty minutes...I was kinda taking a nap when she first called.

75 miles down. Halfway home. Go Lyndsay go!

The big race

It's the big day! After months of training and practicing, Lyndsay is off on her 150 mile bike trek through middle Tennessee.

I went over this morning at the crack of dawn to see her off. There were almost 500 riders in all!

I took a couple pictures so you all could share in the morning's experience...without having to wake up at 5:15 AM to the sound of, "Could you go get a suitcase from upstairs for me? ...and can you make sure my tires have enough air in them?" "...yes dear..."

She's riding with a team of her coworkers - doctors, nurses, and drug reps. Their team name is the "Spin Doctors" (witty, huh?) They got some pretty fancy little uniforms.

They said they had an extra uniform. I was going to put it on and just grab someone's bike that walked too far away and take off on the trek...but I figured it would catch up to me sooner or later. And I hadn't stretched out. So...I passed. Maybe next year :)


Here are a couple more pictures of us.

Since I couldn't go with her, last night after Lyndsay went to bed I recorded some audio clips of me talking--saying hi, encouraging, etc, and stuck them in her ipod mix so they'll sneak up on her when she's riding. I didn't even tell her about them. I hope it doesn't freak her out and think I'm standing behind her or something when she hears my voice. Couldn't you see that happening?

Sammy the Scarecrow

Fall is almost upon us and Lyndsay has decided to decorate.

I came home from class last night to discover this monster in my house. I was so scared I ran out of the house and sat outside for a good twenty minutes. I debated calling 911 so they could remove this stranger from inside my house.

Turns out, it was just a scarecrow. No cause for alarm, folks. Just a scarecrow.

Just a FIVE FOOT TALL SCARECROW living in MY house.



Now here's the real question. So we know where he goes for two or three months of the year. Where does he go for the other nine or ten?

The return of the goatee

This blog entry is brought to you by...my chin.

Summer is over and after a unanimous vote, the goatee is coming back for the winter. It may not be cold yet...but I'm one step ahead of it.

Sorry Mom.

When growing my goatee, I prefer to not shave at all for a couple weeks so that I don't have to have the ridiculous look of trying to grow one...I can just look terrible for a while and then one day--voila!--goatee.

Unfortunately, my job and desire to be accepted by my peers doesn't really lend itself to that, so I'll have to look like Tony Robbins for a week or two. Anybody need a life coach? I've got you covered.

Happy Anniversary To Us

We've been married two full years! This whole marriage thing isn't so hard. Once you get past the self-sacrifice, humility, and complete abandonment of love of self, it's pretty much a piece of cake. So if I could sum two years of marriage up into one picture...this would be it.

Caption: Marriage makes you grow together.

'nuff said.

Go Preds!

This week I didn't have class on Thursday. Turned out to be a great thing--Lyndsay and I got an opportunity to go with our friends Craig and Jordan to the Nashville Predators opening preseason game. I had never been to a real hockey game before, so I was pretty excited about the opportunity.

I was also a little scared, though. Lyndsay and I did go to a minor league Alabama Slammers game back when we first started dating. It was a little hard to enjoy the game because the person next to me wouldn't stop yelling crazy irrelevant-to-hockey things at the top of their lungs. I tried to scoot away from her. But she kept scooting next to me. ...of course, it was Lyndsay. I was really embarrased, but we were still at that awkward stage earlier in dating when you don't just tell someone they're a public embarassment. So I made an important note to self not to take Lyndsay to a hockey game. And for about 4 years, I managed to avoid the sport completely.

But the game was fun! Lyndsay asked a bazillion hockey questions that I didn't know the answer to. But we had a great time. So I like hockey. I'm a little torn, because I've loved making fun of hockey for so many years. Can you like hockey and make fun of it at the same time?

Anybody want a job?

We're hiring a manager for our action sports ministries at Vertical. So if you know of any well-organized, business minded people who have a heart for ministry and a likeness for watching people ride skateboards and bmx bikes through the air...I need to talk to them.

Shakespeare

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to get cultured. There was a Shakespeare Festival in the park downtown. Everyone always raves about how neat it is, so we decided to go with some friends to check it out.

Honestly, I'm still not too sure what we saw. They tried to "update" the play, but they forgot to update the script...making it completely impossible to understand what was going on. Too many Thee's and Thou's. Lyndsay and I just kinda looked at each other.

It was a great reminder that as smart and well rounded as I like to think that I can be...I'd rather get kicked in the face then endure a theater production.

The First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school. For those of you who don't know, I recently went back to school at MTSU to get certified as a CPA. Apparently I can take about 8 or 9 classes and have enough credit to sit for the exam. I started over the summer and took a couple classes, but today was my first day of school during a "real" semester, where there were lots of people and bad parking and the whole deal.

I'm taking Intermediate Accounting II and Principles of Management Information Systems. I'm pretty excited about both of them actually. They help me a lot at my job--and I've found that school is much more fascinating to me when I have a direct application for what I'm learning.

Go Blue Raiders!

I'm officially jumping bandwagons

When I first moved to Nashville, I vowed that I wouldn't forget where I came from, and would remain loyal to my hometown teams. It wasn't too big of a deal. After all, everyone here likes the Braves and no one cares about Alabama or Auburn football, so that was easy enough to avoid. But for the first time, I was living in a city with a professional football team...the Tennessee Titans. After having a 4-12 season in 2005, while my Carolina Panthers almost went to the Super Bowl, there wasn't really a lot to cheer for. So when the 2006 season rolled around and ESPN predicted more of the same, I was ready to cheer my Panthers to victory.

...but then halfway through the season everybody got hurt, and Vince Young stepped in and started winning games. I was torn. After all, I'm way too fairweather to cheer for a losing team. I just don't do that. So I finished the 2006 season with mixed loyalties.

So then last night preseason football was on and I got to watch the Panthers play the Patriots and the Titans play the Bills simultaneously. It was a dream come true (and Lyndsay's worst nightmare). The Panthers lost, the Titans won. Even though the Panthers played a much harder team...the Titans played better.

So...I'm officially jumping bandwagons.

Go Titans.

Lyndsay goes to Idaho

Lyndsay has gone to Idaho with Brad, Mitch, and her parents. They flew out this morning at 6:00 AM...which meant leaving the house at 4:30 to get to the airport! (ugh...)

This is the first time in over a year that Lyndsay has traveled, leaving me at home. Because of my job, it's normally the other way around. So what do I do when Lyndsay leaves? Well, the first couple hours look like various scenes from the "Home Alone" movies. I run in circles around the house yelling and screaming, just because I can. And I slap on aftershave that burns my face just so I can yell in the mirror. After that I'm pretty tired so I usually just fall in a pile on the floor and wake up several hours later in a puddle of my own drool. Then I wander over to the fridge and pull out some old cake or candy and munch on it for a while. Then I repeat the process until Lyndsay returns.

I am living proof that regardless of his state before marriage, marriage makes a man complete waste of carbon when left to fend for himself.

And I'm proud of it!

Bike Schmike.

For some reason, our schedule in Nashville has just been such that we haven't really blogged like we did when we lived in Birmingham. I'm trying to get better at it though. So...here's a fun story.

Lyndsay is training for the "Jack-and-Back," an annual bike ride in Tennessee to raise money for MS, and more importantly-- an opportunity to ride a bike in a big circle. It's 150 miles in a weekend. 75 the first day from Franklin, TN to Lynchburg, TN...and then the next day, 75 miles right back to where they started. Lyndsay is pretty excited about it. In fact, she went to bed early tonight so she can wake up at 5 tomorrow morning at go ride her bike. I'm sure you're wondering, "Scott, how do you figure in to all this? Are you riding too?" Well, I try to be a supportive husband. But for 150 miles...I think I'll just stand on the side of the road and cheer.

Lyndsay got her bike for her birthday this past January. She had a mountain bike in Birmingham but it pretty much fell apart when we were getting ready to graduate from Samford, so when we graduated and moved out, we just left it tied up to a bike rack in front of my dorm. It stayed there until we moved away from Birmingham a year later. It could still be there now.

...so back to the story. Lyndsay decides it's her birthday and she'd like a bike. I see one on Amazon.com at a good price, so I get it for her. She loved to go mountain biking in B'ham, so she'll love it here in Nashville, right? Wrong. She gets it and about a week later signs up for this 150 mile road race.

So now we need a new bike. And for 150 miles...it better be a pretty good one. Initially, I thought that all bikes came from Wal-mart so a "nice bike" was just the expensive bike at Wal-mart. I was wrong. These things can get crazy expensive!

So now we have what I like to call "Bike Fever." It's similar to earlier this year when Lyndsay had "Dog Fever"...except getting a bike won't chew up your furniture and ruin your carpet. Well...I guess it might, if you actually let it in your house. Anyways we've been learning all about road bikes. Good ones, bad ones, and other ones. If anyone has a good tip on getting a good road bike, let us know.

...so it's been a while...

So first we wanted to write about Christmas...then New Year's...then our birthdays...then some other really stuff...and we've pretty much managed to forget about it all. We're horrible people and we know it. We'll get around to it, we promise!

Two trivial pieces of news.

First, Scott got a new computer! He's the new owner of a MacBook. Yes, it's crazy. Scott has gone to the Mac. He said he's tired of fixing computers...and that was about the end of it. How did he afford such an expensive thing, you ask? www.shopfreepay.com. It's a site where you subscribe yourself to a ton of offers, cancel them all, and then they give you free stuff. It's pretty neat. And legit. And Scott's got the MacBook to prove it. He'll take pictures of himself in Photobooth and post them someday when he's bored.

Second isn't really news at all. But it is hilarious. When moving all his pictures over to his new computer, Scott found this video. It was taken on their cruise last fall when some ridiculous dancing movie was playing on TV in their room and the dancers were saying "T-A-N-G-O" over and over as they learned their steps. Lyndsay, being the human dictionary that she is, thought about it and decided to call them out on their obvious spelling mistake...watch the video...(click the sideways triangle in the middle of the box below...and if you're in Facebook, click "View Original Post at the top of the page first to be taken to the video)