I spent 4 days in Elkhart, Indiana on a work trip.  Felt amazement at the vast expanse of corn fields along the interstate.  And partook of an almost live pig while there.

Went on a “stay-cation” in Pigeon Forge with Erin & Eli in early August for 4 days.

Took a 2 day golfing trip to Richmond, Kentucky with a great friend of mine who I had not seen in three years.

Saw Eli off to his first days of Kindergarten.  He’s doing rather well, I think.  Most days, his favorite part of the day is getting to choose what he wants to eat for lunch.  The choice is the key.  When I was growing up, they served what they served.  But he gets to choose between two main dishes, and can pick 3 of 5 side items.  Heaven for a 5 year old who loves eating.

Began shaving my head again.  I can’t help it.  It’s who I am.  I like it this way.

Saw our first ever sunflowers grow to be 6 – 12 feet tall.  Soon after, they got too top heavy for their own good and began to fall over.

Went tubing down the Pigeon River twice, once with 3 guys from small group, and once with Erin and our great friends Reid and Sarah.  I nearly broke my finger swinging from an old rickety rope swing on the side of the river.

Joined my first ever fantasy sports league of any kind.  And won my first matchup.

Celebrated my 5-year anniversary with Threds (today, in fact).  The longest I’ve ever been at one job in my life.

Saw my guys small group nearly double to at least 16 guys, maybe 18.  Sadly – and happily – we’ll soon be “reproducing” into two separate groups.

Heard the loudest singing from our community at Crossings that I’ve ever heard in my over-2 years of being there.  Tear jerking.

Rearranged my office at work.  Come visit me sometime.  You can see.

Spent 3 days in Charlotte, NC at the annual Salsarita’s franchisee convention.

Went camping for 2 1/2 days in Cades Cove with my good friend Chris.  My first time camping in about 10 years.  We saw 4 deer walking through the campground, saw 3 bears while driving the Cades Cove loop, did a 5 mile round trip hike to Abrams Falls, ate 4 fire roasted hot dogs each, and went through an entire bag of marshmallows.

Helped a new friend from small group move to a new apartment just days after he had a terrible motorcycle accident, broke his pelvis, busted his hip, and tore his leg up pretty good.  I’m so grateful to be in community with guys who are ready and willing to help.

Was thrilled to see my wife, Erin, be awarded the Golden BVD award at the last Crossings Leadership Community.  Congrats, honey!

Have thought often about the future direction of this blog.  I’ll get into that more at another time.  For now, please enjoy a sampling of pictures that help encapsulate some things I’ve just mentioned in this post.

Two weekends ago, for our anniversary, Erin & I spent a 2 day weekend in Abingdon & Damascus, Virginia for a visit to the Creeper Trail.  The Creeper is a 34 mile hiking / biking trails that runs through some amazing nature scenery and is VERY easy to ride.  The most popular section (which we did) is a 17 mile ride that runs down a mountain side.  You literally coast about 3/4 of the the time, and only have to pedal for about 3-4 miles or so.  And the majority of the trail runs alongside an awesome, rushing, mountain creek with great places to stop, small waterfall drops, and several bridges that take you over the creek.  Really spectacular to see.

We drove up on a Saturday morning, rented bikes and a shuttle ride from a local service, did the trail, stayed at a local Inn, chilled, ate dinner out, and drove back to Knoxville on Sunday.  Can’t say I’d necessarily recommend staying the night there to anyone, since there’s little to do or see other than the trail.  It’s probably much easier to make a day trip out of it.

Threds recently partnered with HGTV to do a promotion for their “Change the World” campaign. We designed some t-shirts with different “green” themes, opened up a voting site  that was linked to HGTV’s website, and then changed the site over to an ordering site for the shirt with the most votes. Here’s the shirt that won:

It’s an Anvil organic tee, available in both men’s and women’s sizing.  You can order this shirt by going to www.hgtvchangetheworldstore.com.  It’s $18.95 with free UPS Ground shipping, and a portion of the proceeds goes to support national HGTV partners.  Also, if you enter the code HGTV in the coupon box at checkout, you’ll also get a free HGTV Flower & Gardening book.

A little over a week ago, we headed to Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains for a relaxing Saturday afternoon.  Eli and I love throwing rocks in the creeks, climbing on fallen trees, and we all like the relaxing drive, the old cabins, and the nature in general. 

During our 3 hour trip through the cove, we saw a minimum of 25 deer.  Yes, 25.  At one stop, we were able to close enough – about 20 feet away – to two of them, that Erin was able to take the following picture:

Pretty amazing.

This is an exciting post for me…mainly because on Monday of this week, Knoxville received the most snow that I can remember seeing in the last 6-7 years.  So I wanted to share some fun stuffthat Eli (and I) have done lately, highlighted by a couple of incredible snow days.

First, Eli loves to jump from the ottoman to the couch.  Slowly but surely, he pushes the ottoman farther and farther back to test his (and our) limits.  Recently, he had me take a bunch of pictures of him jumping…here’s one of the better ones:

Next, our family recently went bowling for the very first time.  Our friend Chris joined us, and Eli muscled his way through two complete games.  It’s not easy to roll an 8 pound ball when you can’t hold it with your fingers. 

Saving the best for last….SNOW.  I’m so pumped we got snow this week.  Last winter, we received not one single snowfall that was enough to break the sled out.  But on Monday, all hell broke loose.  It snowed heavily all morning.  Threds (where I work) actually anounced at 12:30pm that anyone who felt the need to go home for safety reasons was free to go.  Needless to say, I took advantage.  I already had Tuesday off anyway, so it was perfect.  Picked Eli up from school, went home, and proceeded to get in about 3 hours of sledding time over the next day and a half.  On Monday, we used the yard across the street from our townhouse.  Eli kindly rang the doorbell and asked the lady who lives there if we could sled in her yard.  We sledded for about an hour, took a warm up break, waited for mom to get home, then went for another hour.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, I actually took Eli to a much larger hill at the outskirts of our subdivision for some serious riding.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of this one.  The hill ranges from 20 yards to 50 yards long, depending on where you go down, and also varies in steepness.  The snow was hard packed and icy from the overnight low temps, so it was fast, furious, and quite bumpy.  Some other kids that were there let Eli borrow their much cooler sled, which went faster and farther than ours.  It was great.  Eli typically doesn’t have a large threshold for pain or adventure, but he was unstoppable on this day.  Forwards, backwards, on his rear end or stomach, small and big slopes, it was great.  So many times I would stand on top of the hill laughing as I heard him go down, yelling, “ouch, ouch, that hurt, ahh, watch the fence, woo hoo!”   I just can’t describe how happy I am that it actually snowed and I got to take my son sledding…when we went a couple of years ago, he was still a little timid with it and mainly rode in my lap.  Now he’s loving it completely on his own, more daring than I expected, and is already asking about when we can do it again.  Thanks God for the snow!!

Who among anyone living picked the Tennessee Titans to win 10 or more games this year?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Chad Pennington and the Dolphins (1-15 last season) are actually battling Brett Favre (retired, unretired, took Pennington’s job) and the New York Jets for the division lead/title.  I love it.

Misty May Treanor is the best volleyball player maybe ever.  Indoor or outdoor.  Incredible instincts, fast, smart, soft touch, good placement.  Plays many dozens of beach volleyballs matches a year.  Fought through the Olympics with her playing partner and won the gold medal…..then goes on a freaking dancing show and tears her achillis tendon.  That’s just not fair, man.  Not fair at all.

I enjoy keeping up with NASCAR.  There’s a lot of good intrigue, some fights, arguments, great characters, funny advertising.  I appreciate what they do and the risk they take.  But I swear I cannot watch more than 7 laps of action without just lapsing (pun intended) into complete boredom. 

I love it when new people join the Saturday Night Live cast.  Literally, just last week, two new women were introduced as “featured” players on the show.  And in the entire episode I think they garnered 8 seconds of screen time and spoke 9 words.  How funny is that?!  It’s fun to watch the newbies because you know they’re nervous, fighting for a job, hoping to be the next Will Ferrell or Molly Shannon.  I’ve seen some newbies I thought would be the next big thing and turned out to be disappointing (aka Fred Armisen).  I’ve seen other newbies who I didn’t care much for who’ve ended up being great (aka Seth Meyers, but only because of Weekend Update).  And…who’s with me here…how in the world is Keenan Thompson still on SNL?  This is his FIFTH season.  AAAHHHH.  Please, please, please, get a new black guy.  I’m begging you.

Greg Oden needs a good nickname.  I have some suggestion.  “Limpy”, “Crow Mag Num Man”, “Papaw”, “Greg the Leg Oden”, “The Tortoise”, “Needacane?”, “Sam Bowie, Jr”

A guy more diminutive than me just won the NL Cy Young Award.  Mr. Tim Lincecum ladies and gentleman, all 5′11″ and 170 lbs of him.  Unfortunately, because he plays for San Franciso, it’s possible you’ve never watched him pitch.  You’re loss.  It’s amazing.  It’s sort of like when you wind a pencil around and around a rubber band until you can’t wind it anymore, and then let ‘er fly. 

We’ve been into watching TV series that are out of DVD for about 4 months.  First it was Weeds.  Then Dexter.  Now we’re in the middle of both Six Feet Under and Madmen.  Man, this is the way to watch a tv series.  The waiting a week crap stinks.  Two Sundays ago, Erin and I watched FIVE episodes of Six Feet Under in one afternoon/evening.  It was incredible.  Up for future consideration, once we’re done with these….Flight of the Conchords, The Closer, The Shield, Entourage, and Arrested Development.

The last 3-4 weeks of fall have been the most beautiful I think I’ve ever seen.  And now it’s gone.  The orange, auburn, red, and yellow have pretty much all turned to brown.  The trees are beginning to look bare.  Low 60’s have been replaced by mid 40’s to lower 50’s.  Every year, I have to remind myself to really breathe in the beauty of fall.  It’s so amazing, but goes by so fast.  Luckily, now we’ve entered another 3-4 period of time in the year….the period in which I eat enough pumpkin pie to last until next year.  Loaded with Cool Whip.  Oh man, I’m so pumped.

it’s 1:17pm on Thursday afternoon.  We’re driving through the mountains just about 20 miles to the south east of Asheville, NC.  The trees are as bright and as colorful as you could possibly ever imagine them being.  Red, auburn, orange, brown, green, yellow, sienna…absolutely, wonderfully, amazing.  It is in a setting like this that I am most often reminded of the glorious greatness of God.  Of how spectacular, creative, and wonderous He is, and how fortunate I am to be able to live a tiny bit of a life in the earth He created.  For the last 20 minutes (my boss Keith is driving right now) all I can do is crane my neck around to see all the views…and it will be another hour or so before we finally get through it all, so I’ve much more to see and take in.  I absolutely have to find a way to get to the mountains with Erin and Eli this weekend to take this all in before the leaves fall and winter ensues.  It’s just too beautiful to miss.

Okay, I figured it out. WordPress does not support Shockwave embed files. Some kind of security thing. Which means I can’t post video from NBC.com and I can’t post slideshows from Picture Trail, Flickr, Picasa, etc. I guess it’s a burden I’ll have to live with. And I’ll just have to keep asking you to actually click on a link to see these types of things.

So, for a brief look at some Edelen Family Farm pics from this past weekend….

CLICK HERE FOR EDELEN FAMILY FARM PICS

Tomorrow after work, Erin/Eli and I will be heading to Kentucky.  It’s a pretty special, exciting, and sad weekend.  On Saturday, the Edelen family will be having a get together at my grandparents farm for the very last time.  It’s been about 15 years since we gathered there together, which makes it even more special. 

My grandparents – my dad’s parents - bought a 270 acre farm in Springfield, Ky sometime back in 1955, when my dad was just a baby.  My dad is the 4th of 8 kids – 3 girls, 4 boys – who all pretty much spent their entire lives growing up on, and working on this farm.  I’ve taken a Google satellite image – it’s as close as I could zoom in before the image was lost – and cirlced the plot of land that makes up this farm.  See the letter “A” designating a road?  That’s Edelen Lane….the 1 mile long driveway that leads to and dead ends at the farm.  Across the road from Edelen Lane is a very very old Catholic chuch that my dad has attended his whole life.  He went to school there as a child.  So when my dad talks about getting up at 5am, milking the cows, and then walking a mile to school up and down hills in the cold, the snow, and the rain….well, he actually means it. 

Most of my greatest childhood memories are from this farm.  I have two cousins, Todd & Matt, who are pretty much the same age as me.  Every year at family get togethers for Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, we would make this 270 acre yard into our personal playhouse.  4 barns, 4 ponds, an awesome creek that dissects and borders the outside of the farm, open fields, forested area, hay bail forts, jumping into corn bins, playing basketball in the upper level of one barn, shooting bb guns, swinging from ropes, skipping rocks, finding old animal bones and using them as swords, chasing after pigs, you name it.  If there is any fun to be had on a farm, we had it. 

Back around 1992 or 1993, after all the 8 children had finally grown up, left home, and started lives of their own, my grandparents decided to build a home closer to town, to semi-retire in.  The farmhouse was getting old, they had NEVER had air conditioning and relied only on wood burning stove heat, had no washer/dryer, and utilized a pretty old plumbing system.  (yes, there is an outhouse, and i’ve used it many times)  They didn’t sell the farm, because my papaw is a lifetime farmer and needed to continue to do the work, but it ended the era of family get togethers at the farm.  I actually have felt sorry for my younger siblings since then, knowing they did not really have the same opportunity as I did to enjoy our get togethers out there, to know the farm, to explore it, to love it.

My papaw – now 83 if I remember correctly - had continued to run the farm up until this year.  Mowing, hay, raising cattle, all of it.  I know my dad and his brothers have helped him out with stuff here and there as needed, but for the last 20 years it’s pretty much been papaw’s farm to work.  In the last 8 years, I’ve only visited the farm on 2 occassions, both pretty short visits, just to see how things looked. 

Then, just a couple of months ago, our entire family received an email from my dad.  The first line of the email simply read, “The farm has been sold.”  I think I speak for most of the family when I say it was like a punch in the gut.  For as long I can remember, the farm has been bordered on one side by a local rock quarry.  Apparently, they’ve been interested in buying the land for years, and finally made an offer that was too good to pass up.  Combined with the my grandparents age, and the future difficulty of selling the land had they passed away and left it to 8 children, it was definitely the right thing to do. 

So, in two days, the entire Edelen family – roughly 45-50 of us including the grandparents, 8 children, all the grandchildren, the grandchildren’s wives or husbands, and the great grandchildren – will gather together at the farm one last time.  The weather is forecasted to be sunny and in the lower 60’s, which is perfect.  I am INCREDIBLY excited at the opportunity to take Eli there for his first and only time, to explore the farm with him, go in the barns, ride the tractor, walk through the fields, and stroll along the creek.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy it more than he will, but that’s okay. 

I feel sad and happy at the same time.  I know on Saturday I’ll do a lot of smiling, and probably even shed a few tears.  It feels sort of like I’m losing a friend.  But the memories will live on…memories of popsicles, outhouses, good cooking, a warm stove, lots of family, endless adventures, and knowing that a family worked hard just to have food to eat and a place to sleep.  And these memories will always be good.