Simple.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Messing With Cassidy.

I spent most of my Christmas messing with my niece Cassidy...she is a quick-tongued teenager now and I enjoyed my time with her and Carson. Here was one of our moments where she wanted to wash out my mouth with soap.

Merry Christmas from the boys.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas all you loyal LOL readers.

The presents have been opened and the boys are playing with the 4 year old PlayStation2 and the Wii sits here, brand new games and all, with no friends to play with him...irony.

The weather down South is warm...I'm wearing shorts today...might even run outside after the main event this afternoon. Celtics vs. Lakers! I have a few side bets with co-workers on my Celtics.

We spent yesterday walking around Branson's Landing...it reminded Steph and I of Phoenix...very upscale and cool shopping area with things for the kids to do. We ate at my favorite restaurant last night, Joe's Crab Shack. B-rad, Cassidy and I made a mess with some crab and Brecken only spilled one drink, so the meal was successful.

It has been nice just hanging out with my sister's family, Cassidy is 6' tall and weighs about 50lbs., Carson, Maxim and Brecken have already earned us a phone call from the Guest Services about our noise level.

We are going to eat some shrimp and grab a movie tonight...then maybe some time in the pool and hot tub.

From our family, Merry Christmas and hope you have a peaceful holiday season...mine has been super...my phone only rang 2 times for work related reasons in the last 48 hours. I did get 145 e-mails in the last 3 days.

Blogging from the road...

We are almost to Branson, MO to spend Christmas with Brad and Sally...about 30 miles ago I finally let my dad drive...we went through every sort of cruddy weather in the first 10 hours of the trip and the rain/snow/ice/wind finally let up enough that I thought Bob could drive.

Funny how your roles change through out life...it's not like he's not a bad driver, I just feel more in control if I am driving and I don't want him to have to be stressed out about bad weather.

The boys are doing fine on their first real long trip in a while...but why wouldn't they? The Expedition is like a rolling living room...they have a DVD player, a PlayStation2 all the books you could want. If Sally and I would have traveled like that we would have not gotten into as many fights.

It is better traveling like this than it was as a kid...I like having a laptop with Internet access in a car and a MP3 player with 10,000 songs loaded up. Makes life easier and more entertaining, than seeing how many times you could smack your sister in the arm before your dad would threaten to "pull this car over and start smacking bottoms!"

Well the GPS is telling us there is only 38 miles left to get to our destination...another one of my favorite little tech tools...I haven't looked at a map in about 2 years! We will post a Christmas Picture of the family in Branson.

Enjoy your Christmas.

Show Cancelled.

So we didn't go to prison last night...weather was bad down South.

I'm sure there was a prison riot after they heard we weren't playing...like straight out of the old Sean Penn flick Bad Boys. It actually didn't break my heart, because I am super busy, and I got to spend the night with family.

I'm going to prison tonight.

Tonight I'll be doing hard time at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield...then about 3 hours later I get set free. The band I play in is doing a concert for a prison ministry. We will play about 13 songs for the inmates.

Should be pretty cool, although I'm not sure if this is a good sign of our band's future success. Our first show was a hit, about 200 people were forced to listen to us as they attended an event to benefit a local family...we had twenty-five 8-year-olds dancing in front of the stage and about the same number of 80-year-olds covering their ears in the back of the room.

I think Johnny Cash played Folsom Prison at the height of his first round of popularity...I don't want to say we have peaked, but I'll keep you posted on our next gig...if it's a birthday party, I'll know we are failing.

NHL Players Are Real People

Joe Sakic is a popular name among folks who even somewhat follow the National Hockey League. The Colorado Avalanche team Captain jacked up 3 of his fingers while running a snow blower.

You might find that funny, and anybody who runs a snow blower probably knows exactly what he did to hurt his hand. (Can you say wet, heavy snow and a blocked chute?) What I find amazing about this, is that Joe Sakic is a multi-millionaire professional athlete...and he clears his own driveway of snow. Find a guy in the NFL/NBA or MLB that does that? There might be a handful of Midwesterners in those leagues that do their own "chores", but it would be a small contingency.

So while NFLers are out there shooting themselves in the leg at nightclubs...the NHL guys are running snow blowers and mowing their own yards...another reason why I love hockey.

Read the Joe Sakic Story HERE...

Gopher Killers

Leave it to a handful of South Dakota farm girls to wreak havoc on some Gophers...Great win for State!

Read the story here...SDSU women knock off Gophers

Cowboy Brecken.

Big Sky

I went in church this morning...on the mountain...Big Sky, Montana.

If you ski or snowboard, rock climb, mountain bike or hike you know what I am talking about. It is a feeling of being keenly alive, into the wild, in the awesome creation of God. I think God made mountains to remind men how little they are and to give us a place to open our spirits to his awesomeness.

As far as the snowboarding, it was a blast for the first runs of the year. The snow wasn't deep, and all the runs are not open, but it is early season Big Sky beauty.

I got done and headed straight to the hotel hot tub...I have a feeling I will be a little tired on Monday. Well worth the pain.

Drumming Workout

A few of my musically-inclined friends and I have put together a band and we are playing a couple "shows" in December. One is at the Denalli Voss Benefit next weekend, we are looking at that as kind of our warm-up for our big show at Mike Durfee Prison. That's right just like Johnny Cash...we are playing a prison to start our career as a band! Hey, it took Johnny years to make it to the Folsom Prison.

My dad has organized a ministry at the prison for a few years and I went down one other time to play my congas for a "praise band" type of thing. Very grassroots, inmates right in front of you singing along to some popular old churchy songs.

This time my dad asked my buddy Jeremy to put together a band and play for their Christmas-time meeting. So he put together about 13 or 14 songs that we all kind of know and so far we think we have a nice little 5 piece band. Jeremy is amazing on vocals and guitar and his wife plays the keys and sings as well. Joe, a buddy of ours, plays bass like the way I wish I could play bass...and Jim, another guy that plays at church is going to join in the fun with the acoustic...Travis W. is our sound guy and we will make him help carry gear.

Last night we had our first practice...we played for about 3 hours pretty intensely. I have been playing the drums quite a bit in the last 3 years, but mostly just tame, church music that I play as loud and fast as the music leader and sound guy will let me. This new project is way harder than anything you would find in the halls of our church...still not really that hard. We play music by Kutless, Sanctus Real, Natalie Grant and Tree63 if you are familiar with them. So it is intense music and strong fast drumming...so I did that for 3 hours last night...I am sad to say...I AM SORE THIS MORNING. My shoulders and arms feel like I chopped wood for 3 days. It was a blast though, as I haven't had that much playing the drums since the time I sat in with a high school band during the girl's basketball tournament...and that was like 6 years ago!

It will be fun to see if the inmates enjoy the music and the message...I might video tape some songs and post them to the blog...or I might not...depending on how good we sound!

Denalli Voss Benefit

I made this for an up-coming benefit for a local couple who's child has a very rare disease. Her story was in the Plainsman over the Holiday weekend...read it here. (I actually hesitated posting the link to give the Plainsman credit for the story since I know who wrote it, who took the picture...they did do a nice job on the layout though!)

Please consider coming to the benefit or donating items to be auctioned.

Uncle Outsmarts Nephew in Ongoing Battle of the Pranks.

Uncle Skipper was in the 605 area code this weekend, and that means all of us nephews are on our toes watching our backs for any pranks, jokes or snuggies.

We basically mess with each other trying to play practical jokes and good verbal jabbing back and forth. It keeps us on our toes.

He showed up on Friday afternoon when I was reffing hockey, and he didn't do his usual, wait for a real quiet point during a lull in the game and then yell, "COME ON, GLANZER...GET IN THE GAME!" I waited, but it wasn't there.

The only trick I was going to play on him was one that didn't work the last time, because he caught it...so vindication would be to play the same trick and get away with it.

Alarm clocks are easy targets, and Skipper travels with one of those old analog dial clocks...glow in the dark hands and everything. (He can't tell time on a digital clock) The last time they were in town I reset their alarm for 3 AM, but he figured it out before he went to bed. So this time I set the other alarm clock that my mom has in the room all the time, thinking that he wouldn't check that one...I also sprayed a couple hits of cologne on each pillow for him to enjoy. I think that one gave away the pranks as Juanita noticed it right away, then checked the other clock in the room too.

Sometimes I feel sorry for Juanita as she is always collateral damage in the whole pranking of Skipper things that we try to pull on him. Like at the James Valley charity auction when Scotty F. buys useless things and then puts them on Skipper's number, and she ends up paying for them, I feel kind of bad about that...but then it goes away when we get Skipper to admit we pulled one on him.

The best story of the weekend came from my dad, Skipper's own brother. Mom and dad and Skip and Juanita went out to eat on Friday night and someone noticed Skipper's new glasses, and Juanita said, "yeah, I think they make him look younger!" My dad comes back right away with a classic, "Yeah, about 30 minutes younger."

That line will forever be in my quiver of insults...thanks for driving up here to make Thanksgiving interesting Uncle Skip, it was worth your expense in gas money for us.