April 8, 2012--Alex and myself were part of the Boy Scout/Cub Scout flag ceremony team for the Indy Car race on April 1st at the Barber Motor Sport Race Way. All pics have been posted on Alex's page. We actually got to watch 3 races. The Indy Car Lights, Indy Car and then the Grand Am race since it got rained out the Friday before. Spent 7 hours at the track and we got a little crispy. March 10, 2012--All of Alex's pics through this month have been updated. Man I'm glad that's over with. I think that now gets every single page updated. I still need to go back and verify all my links on my mac page and now I get to rummage through every random pic on several drives to make sure everything that needs to get posted is found, reviewed, sorted, converted and uploaded. If you see something wrong anywhere don't hesitate to click my mailbox below and drop me a line. February 27, 2012--Boy my fingers are tired. Christmas has been updated again and ALL of Abby's pics through this month have been updated and all her pages are now online. Now I just need to get all of Alex's coded and I might actually have the website completely updated. February 24, 2012--We just got back from the Smoky Mountains where we went for our 10th anniversary. I have updated all the vacation pages as well as Mrs. C's cake pages. All pics of Abby and Alex have been converted and once I get the pages built I'll upload the 2010-2012 pics. The mac page has been updated and the Halloween page has been fixed. January 24, 2012--I have no excuse. My punishment is the thousands of pics I have to sort through getting everything updated. Six months ago my trusty ibook had a kernal panic and I was relegated to using a pc netbook for a while. All the apps I use for the website were Mac only and had no easy replacement on a pc. Recently I was able to acquire a Mac Book Pro and have all my apps back. I have updated the mac page (still need to check all the links again), updated the Christmas page and finished adding all the pics for Abby through 2009. I'm currently converting all the pics for Abby and Alex for 2010 and should have them uploaded shortly. It's so nice to be back on a real laptop aain. November 9, 2009--All pictures up through the soccer game tonight have been added. November 7, 2009--What do they say about good intentions? lol. I've been able to work on my "to-do" list a little but it seems when I complete 1 thing 3 more get added. I should have all pictures of Alex, Abby and Halloween added by the end of tonight. On a sad note the huge airblown haunted house is now out of action. Mrs C called me at work and said one of the lines ripped a seam and the haunted house was completely down. She said I must've had too much tension on the lines and it finally gave out. After a little investigating I discovered a slightly frayed section of rope that matched perfectly to the roof rack on the mini van if she had parked way too close and underneath the guy line. When I asked her what it sounded like when she ripped the haunted house down her silence gave her away. She didn't just rip a seam (that would've been easy to fix). She ripped a corner with a metal hook sewn in to attach a line to as well as a 6" wide and 6' tall strip all the way down to the bottom. Basically, take some silk bed sheets, cust a 6" strip out of the middle from top to bottom and then figure out how to sew it all back up so it's airtight and can be pulled very taught. This is going to take a very long time to fix if it can be fixed. Replacements on ebay go for around $400. October 20, 2009--I haven't gotten picture posted yet but I do have them all transferred to the laptop and on my "to-do" list. I have some good excuses though including working on my new 10'x14' storage shed, trying to get Halloween put out as well as Alex and myself going on the Cub Haunted overnight camp out to Camp Comer last weekend where it got down to 32 degrees. It was his first actual camp out and he can't wait to go to another one. Soccer is thankfully (for me) almost over. Just two more weeks and playoffs will be finished. I did not get any pictures at the Cub Haunted camp out because I didn't want to take our good Nikon out to the woods after a full week of torrential down pours. It was very muddy and cold but thankfully the rain stopped the day before and only drizzled a little bit on our way up there Saturday. October 5, 2009--I have been reminded today that I'm a slacker. My "to-do" list this summer has been outrageous. I don't even remember much if any of July and Alex started Tiger Cubs in August and somehow I am now a Tiger Cub Den Leader. Basically that means I have added another 10 days a month to my schedule of events. I don't have a free weekend until the 31st. My current free days include Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:30pm until dark so let me know what days you need me to do something...lol. Thankfully soccer will be over in another 3 weeks, The bad thing is it's already October 5th and I still don't have Halloween put out yet. If I can get my new storage shed finished by Wednesday (if it'll stop raining) and get Halloween out Friday night then I have 8am-1pm on Sunday available for decorating. If I cannot get this done Friday night or Sunday morning then my next free time will be a week from Tuesday. I'm working on it people. I've gotten a few things done to the backend which most people will never see. I will plan on working on pictures tonight during the football game and see if I can get the last couple months updated. June 18, 2009--I finally got all the pictures from May posted for Alex and Abby. I also got all the pictures from the Huntsville Depot posted as well. It wasn't a vacation but I have nowhere to really put those pictures so we'll call it technically a "trip" and I added them to the vacation page. I made some minor coding changes as well to all the cake pages. Pictures for June are uploaded but I still have to code the pages to add them. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. June 16, 2009--I have added pictures of the Thomas the Train cake. The cake was 3' long and a foot high and weighed about 25lbs. The party at the Huntsville historic train depot was inside a real "air conditioned" caboose. The "air conditioned" part was a window unit in the top of the cupola and it cooled about 5 square feet up in the cupola and nowhere else. The rest of the caboose was around 100 degrees. If you look at the caboose close you can see how hot it was because the cake was literally melting. June 2, 2009--We have a bunch of pictures from May but they are on my "to-do" list along with everything else and just coming in behind house work and yard work. Then there's sleep that I always have to contend with. If only I didn't have to sleep I could get so much done. Alex finished Spring soccer and will be starting his soccer camp in a couple of weeks. He also just finished his first year of Kindergarten. Kindergarten is a funny word. Usually words get morphed over time from their original language but I guess it just rolls off the tongue so well it never changed. Mrs C also made another cake. This time it was for her twin nephew's second birthday at the Huntsville historic train depot. It's a 3' long Thomas the Train cake with the Thomas the engine, a flat car and the Sodor caboose. The flat car held mini fondant sculptures of the twins and various toys and other items including a 1" long replica of Thomas the engine hand made from colored fondant. Sir Topham hat stands next to Thomas as well. I'll get all the pictures posted very soon on the cakes page. April 30, 2009--All pictures up through this week have been added to the site. I can easily guarantee there will be even more taken this weekend. Mrs C is working on a new banner she wants to put up. We'll see what she comes up with. Next I need to start taking pictures of all the bows, hair bands and tutus she's been making so I can get the store updated with actual stuff. If you look at Abby's birthday pictures from last week she's actually wearing one of the tutus at the park. April 29, 2009--Where to even begin. Been a month since my last post but so many things I've been working on behind the scenes. For some reason with our new Nikon D60 camera we went from a hundred or so pictures a month to around 1000 a month. Abby turned 1 a week ago and we had her party at the local park last Saturday. Beth made a big Winnie the Pooh cake and I have the cake pictures added. I've added some pictures from the last few weeks but like I said, we've been taking around 1000 a month and I have to sort, review, convert, upload and code the ones that make it onto the site. I'm hoping to have everything for April so far up by tomorrow. March 31, 2009--All pictures for March have been added. More soccer plus a bunch of pictures from the Disney Mickey's Playhouse show we went to see. Got a few hundred pictures from April already that I have to go through including almost 300 just from Easter. It never ends. Mrs C is making hair bows and tutus for little girls and decided she wants to sell them so I've also added a store to our site. No one can see it yet but it's there. I'm working on it behind the scenes right now. March 6, 2009--Finally finished redoing all the pages for Alex and Abby and everything is uploaded. Ended up combining around 30 pages or so down to a nice and tidy 9 pages. I need a vacation after all that. Of course now we've already got pictures from this month so I better get going again before I get behind. Maybe now I can finally design our hobbies page that's been on the to-do list since the beginning. March 5, 2009--After another week of very late nights and non-stop work I have almost got Abby and Alex's pages completely redone. I can't even begin to say how many pictures I've gone through, created a small web size picture and also created a thumbnail, coded and uploaded all the way back through 2003. Rough guess is over 8000. Double that with the thumbnails. Abby's page has been changed already so you can see the idea behind the change if you compare it to the way Alex's pages are currently setup. This will reduce a tremendous amount of pages when viewing their pictures as well as a major reduction in buttons in the menu. I am hoping to have all the remaining pictures up through last month for both of them coded tomorrow. I've coded up to about April 2008 so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and finally have hope I'm almost caught up. We already have some pictures from this month and will get to them very soon. We got an inch of snow (WOOHOO) last weekend and have some good pictures of both of them having fun outside that will be up soon. March 4, 2009--Found another cake I had completely forgotten about. Added the "Fire Truck" cake to the cakes page. It's actually more of a University of Georgia fraternity house with a small fire truck and UGA the bulldog but calling it the 65 candles cake sounded lame. We actually lit all the candles and it produced so much smoke it set off the smoke alarms in my parents house. That night still gets many laughs. February 26, 2009--I've added 10 new vacation pages. The main page and 9 sub pages for each vacation. I like the cake page layout I just made so went with it for the vacation page too. From 9 vacations over the last 5 years we had around 1800 pictures for me to go through. I've gone through every single one over the last week and everything is finished. February 19, 2009--I've added a Vacation page. Nothing on it yet so now I've got to go through all our vacation photos from the last several years and get them posted since I have somewhere to put them now. I've also broken Halloween and Christmas into their own pages since we have so many pics from each. February 18, 2009--Last weekend we went to Atlanta for our anniversary and for Alex's 6th birthday. Took several hundred pictures from the aquarium, the zoo, the natural history museum and the children's hands on museum. Should have them up as soon as I go through them all. I think I need to add a new page just for vacation photos. There are that many. I also updated the cakes page to a different idea I had. I think it looks a whole lot better now. February 11, 2009--The last 2 months have been all about Christmas. Added a bunch of new stuff. Got a big see saw and carnival swing when Lowes had their sale. Found a hot air balloon dirt cheap at Kmart also. After Christmas I hit the mother lode between Kmart and Hobby Lobby both being 90% off. Ended up with 5000 roof clips and 1675 yard stakes from Hobby Lobby. Went to 4 different Kmart's and bought all the net lights they had. Ended up with 40 boxes and 7 boxes of led net lights. Found 40 of the 10" lighted candy canes I like (and the ones Alex likes to kick). Picked up a big light and sound show for the yard and also a light and sound led show for the ceramic Christmas village for peanuts. Got 10,000 spare lights from Wal-mart as well. I need a lot more rubbermaid containers for storage. I did get to add the breakers like I wanted to. Added 4-20 amp breakers and installed 4 grounded outlets on each corner of the house with weatherproof enclosures. Of course I picked one of the coldest nights to do this but it had to be done. Started on a Friday night after work around 6pm. At 4am I was finished and walked in the house to get a shower. Yes, I said 4am!!! It was so cold my short work ladder had a layer of ice all over. I now have 100 amps I can dedicate just for Christmas. Hopefully I'll never use that much. This year we only pulled about 65 amps. I think the roof pulled close to 15 amps all by itself with around 5000 lights covering the entire roof. It was VERY bright. Pictures have been added to the Christmas page and here's a rough list of what we had this year: ~25,000 lights 30 mini christmas trees 27 large yard/roof items (wire frames, blow molds, runway lights, airblowns, etc...) 40 color changing led peppermints 8 digital timer power spikes 10 dumb power spikes 5 light show power spikes (for christmas trees and arches) A little over 1 mile of extension cords November 26, 2008--Abby's pages have been updated and a bunch of her pics have been posted. I'll start working on getting Alex's pages updated here soon as well. Christmas decorations are coming along nicely. Spent another full day and night in the yard and except for a few minor things to fix the yard and trees are 95% done. Alex helped a good bit as well. Tomorrow will be mostly spent on the roof getting it prepped for when I add the new breakers next weekend. It will be quite a sight to see when it gets powered up. November 25, 2008--Busy, busy, busy outside now. Halloween pics have been posted and Christmas decorations are close to being done. The biggest thing this year is that 5 days before the lights have to come on; which is Thursday night, Mrs C dropped a bombshell on me and finally agreed we need more breakers. I wanted to do this back during the summer but that would've been too practical. I won't be able to do anything about the breakers until National Championship weekend (aka:Florida-Alabama game). I'll have to turn off the power, drill through the wall, run 220' of underground rated Romex wire from the breaker box to a distribution box, install 4 new 20 amp breakers and then to 4 different GFI outdoor outlets and install weatherproof enclosures for them. I need to do all this before the game starts. No pressure. October 13, 2008--Long time no update. Been an extremely busy year again. Spent the majority of my waking moments since June outside doing yardwork when I wasn't at work. Still not finished. Once holiday decorations are put away in January I've got to hopefully get back to it depending on the weather. Big news for this year is a new addition. New baby girl born in April. Going on 6 months now and she's just growing and giggling and smiling at everything and everybody. She's so ready to start crawling. Alex said we need to get a baby gate for his room. ROFL. Yes, we have a whole slew of pics of her but I have yet to decide if I'm going to redo the whole website menu system or not. At this point I'm so busy I might just stick with the current archaic menu I setup originally and not bother with it for now. Of course I still have to make new buttons for her so there's even more time I need to find. Got a ton of halloween pics ready to be posted. They're already on here I just have to code them so they show up. December 29, 2007--Statistics for this year are close to last year. I can't find my tally sheet but from memory we had: ~21,000 lights 30 mini christmas trees 19 large yard/roof items (wire frames, blow molds, runway lights, airblowns, etc...) 6 digital timer power spikes 10 yard power spikes Tad over 1 mile of extension cords I will post the exact tally for lights and extension cords soon but this is real close. December 18, 2007--Even more Christmas pics posted including some wide shots from about 100 yards away showing the side view of our yard. We wanted lighted christmas boxes but instead of buying some cheap (ly made) ones that would fall apart I decided to build our own out of 1/2" pvc pipe. Made an 18" size and a 24" size box. With lights and everything it worked out to $19 per box which is cheaper than you could buy these. Very sturdy and I can stack the bigger ones on top of the smaller ones to conserve space as well. Rope lights would look a lot better but that might wait until next year. December 10, 2007--More Christmas pics posted including some close up shots of the driveway arches. I also completely re-did the white/gold tree finally. (It's next to the big red oak tree in the pictures with rudolf between them) It sustained tremendous storm damage year before last and is huge pain to work on. It's 4' in diameter with no limbs the first 20'. Removed all lights and it's now lit up to 30' high again. December 4, 2007--Posted a few more Christmas pics. November 26, 2007--Christmas was turned on Thanksgiving night. I have posted several pics already with more to come. November 1, 2007--Halloween pictures have been added. Included are pictures of the fog enshrouded grim reaper the night before thieves hit our cemetery, stole the grim reaper and damaged various parts of our display on Halloween morning of all times. Luckily I was able to repair all the damage before the kids came last night. April 19, 2007--Pictures of the Nascar Tony Stewart #20 race car cake have been added. April 15, 2007--Pictures of the pea pod baby shower cake have been added. April 14, 2007--Mrs C is making another baby shower cake. This one is the Pea Pod theme. The Pea Pod page has been created and pictures will be added tomorrow. I've also added pictures of Alex to numerous pages. Months 23, 24, 47, 48, 49 and 50 have all beed updated. April 12, 2007--I've added a new album to the KLF page. "Chill Out" is now posted for your enjoyment. April 7, 2007--Mrs C made a 3d easter bunny cake. Pictures have been uploaded to the cakes page. Alex had an easter egg hunt today and we have lots of pictures that have been added. March 26, 2007--Yep, that's a button for the forums you see up there. Finally. March 22, 2007--We've added a few more categories to the forums as well as many new avatars to choose from. I'm going through more smilies to get those uploaded as well. I also did a forums upgrade tonight that went off without a hitch. March 19, 2007--Fixed the banner and added new buttons to the forums over the weekend. Also have done several updates to all the pages on the site as well. Organized some more pictures of Alex so I should get those posted soon too and start getting close to being caught up. March 15, 2007--The site has been moved from a Windows box to a Linux box. The old forums (if you want to call 4 days old) have been deleted and I am setting up the new forums. Shouldn't be too long before they are up and running. March 14, 2007--I'm about to switch us from a windows box to a linux box. I like the options and forums available on the linux box better. This will cause some downtime but I'm not sure how long. It could be 30 minutes it could be several hours. I'm looking at making the switch sometime this week. This will also mean the forums I just setup will be completely deleted and I'll start a diff forums from scratch. I've been thinking about making the switch for some time now and figured I'd go ahead and do it before I really created much on the forums. March 13, 2007--Finally found the scooby cake pics and they are posted. Also found what I can only describe as a VW Bug cake and it's posted as well. Still haven't found the elusive Hello Kitty cake pics she said she made. March 12, 2007--Our new forums (if you want to call it that right now) has been up and running for 24 hours now. It's basically just me playing around with it but you can register and there are a few forums setup for posting if anyone so desires. I've got to make a new button in photoshop but for now just click here for now to get there. Buttons have already been added to the forums menu for the entire site. March 11, 2007--All cake images have been uploaded except for the Scooby Doo cake. I think it's on an external drive somewhere but just have to find them. Mrs C also thinks she made a Hello Kitty cake and I'm looking for those pictures as well. March 10, 2007--The majority of the cake images have been uploaded. Only 4 more sets to go through. Just have to find them first. March 9, 2007--Mrs C officially has a cakes page now. I have created the basic layout and am in the process of going through all the pictures to get them uploaded. As soon as I finish this I will most likely start the hobbies page next as I've already drawn up the initial layout for that page as well. March 2, 2007--Much to Mrs C's chagrin, I have updated the KLF page with a more appropriate background, added another CD I found in my stash and fixed the links that were broken. Enjoy December 21, 2006--Here are some statistics on our Christmas display. ~20,000 lights 30 mini christmas trees 16 large yard/roof items (wire frames, blow molds, runway lights, etc...) 7 timers 8 yard power spikes ~4100' of extension cords (yes, that's .75 miles) December 20, 2006--I had a question today about our Christmas lights. If you notice in the pictures the big oak tree in the front corner of the yard next to the roadrunner seems to be only half lit. This is true; the entire center section is out. There is a large raccoon who decided to call the tree home a couple years ago. I kept replacing bulbs and entire strands as well but the raccoon seems to use the lights strands as a ladder. I'd replace something and the next day they'd be out again because the raccoon would climb up and down the tree at night. After doing this over and over I gave up. As long as he stays off the limbs I'll leave the center trunk section alone. I prefer to think of the tree as my very own massive Charlie Brown tree. LOL December 19, 2006--At last our digital camera decided to take some halfway decent pictures of mini lights at night. I've added a lot of new yard items and roof items this year. We're extremely excited we found a wire frame roadrunner. Now we're looking for a wile coyote and a cactus to make a scene in the yard. If you look close you can see an animated santa coming out of the chimney and yes, I put him on top of our chimney. I thought it was funny. Mrs C just rolled her eyes. If you notice the Santa Land Here sign you'll see runway lights above it on the roof. These run down the roof in sequence just like a real airstrip. I'm very proud of the palm tree on the front porch as well. Found that dirt cheap after Christmas last year. 80% off is great anytime. Finally got the Halloween posted as well. Little C went crazy this year and couldn't stop talking about his "spooky house". The airblown haunted house is 12 1/2' tall and about 20' long. It has 3 rooms and is open at the top of the main chamber. Very nice item and once again; I found it 60% off 2 weeks BEFORE Halloween. Go figure. You can't really tell from the pictures but the lights on the ground in front of the haunted house are in the shape of a coffin with a body inside. And yes, Mrs C once again rolled her eyes at me. The hanging ghost is motion activated and "floats" back and forth on a guide wire. It also makes moaning ghostly sounds. We had 2 fog machines going this year; a 400 watt and a 1000 watt. Next year I plan on getting a professional fogger that is continuous. All the kids and even adults really enjoyed the haunted house and fog. Mrs C found a humongous spider that's on the front porch which we placed on black light webs and placed a strobe underneath. The spider is 6' wide. Needless to say Halloween was a big hit with everyone that came by. September 3, 2006--What's that you say? A banner? I know it only took me 4 years but at least I finally made one. August 18, 2006--As you can clearly see I've been somewhat of a slacker in the updates department. I literally have 1000 pictures to go through of Alex and get uploaded which I am working on. We have recent pictures of our trip to the Tennessee Aquarium I'll be adding first. Bear with me and I will have things back on track shortly. The home page, Apple page and the Christmas page have all been updated. December 28, 2004--I've added more pics to the Christmas page and changed the home page for New Years. I have also added about 180 pictures of Alex tonight in months 16, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22. December 23, 2004--I've updated the Christmas page with some pictures of the lights this year. Final count puts the amount of lights a little over 18K+ so far. I do not expect to add any more this year. I will take more pictures of the lights once it gets back up into double digits and I decide to brave the wind. December 13, 2004--Updated the home page for Christmas. We also have some pictures of Alex and we will have pictures of the 16K+ lights we have in the yard and around the house hopefully by this weekend. I just have to get out in the yard with the digital camera and not freeze. November 20, 2004--I've added Halloween pictures to month 20. Now before you get overwhelmed with the three whole pictures there let me just say you can thank the lady in the Walmart portrait studio for having a mental breakdown and screaming at the top of her lungs about having to please everybody. Needless to say we only got Alex in one costume and only had three pictures taken. Fun was had by all. November 17, 2004--Now it looks like I'm waiting on Mrs C for more pictures. I have added all the birthday pictures for month 12 tonight. Most everyone is on a broadband connection but if it seems to take forever to load the 10-12 month page send us an email by clicking below and let me know. The christmas and birthday page is quite large with around 160 thumbnails. I know I need to host this site somewhere else beside one of the computers here since Alex is taking up a lot of bandwidth but that probably won't happen until I have time after the first of the year.