Matt’s Married!!!

July 14, 2008 by Leave a Comment

If you know my brother Matt you might have thought it would never happen.  Well, believe it or not he is married.  It all went down a couple of weeks ago.  I got to be the best man, and I had the best speech at the reception. 
View pictures here.  There are really pictures from the whole week leading up to the wedding, so there are plenty of pictures of our kids, family, and fun stuff other than the wedding.  My sister took a lot of the pictures but Skyler took several of them too.  You can tell which pictures Skyler took because they’re all from a 3ft tall point of view – but they’re actually pretty good. 
Congratulations to Matthew & Kristen Asbell.  May they be blessed with many years of happiness.
Filed Under: Family, Misc

Bringing Home The Bacon

May 16, 2008 by Leave a Comment

My job has been very rewarding lately. I’ve got steady clients giving me plenty to do (I enjoy serving my clients) and new clients bringing excitement for the future.
 The relationship with my boss is as good as it’s ever been. I think it took quite some time for us to understand each other and learn to work through the daily grind without always rubbing each other the wrong way. I think it also took some time out on the road traveling together and sharing a hotel room to get to know each other on a more personal level. It’s amazing what having a good relationship with your employer can do for your morale. I see it not only in my work but in my home life too, because when I’m in the dumps about work no matter how hard I try to prevent it my family can tell.
 It doesn’t hurt that my numbers have been really good lately (I work on straight commission – scary). It is great having the peace of mind to know that there won’t be a struggle to stay in the budget next month or the next (I know 2-3 months in advance what my pay will be). We’re no where near where I want us to be, but having a little peace of mind from month to month sure makes me feel like I’m bringing home the bacon and not just the bacon bits.
 Finances is a sensitive subject for me because I’ve been almost to hell and back learning the hard way with money, but I hope to muster up the transparency to share some of where we’ve been, where we are, and what our goals are for the future. 
Filed Under: Business, Money

Insurance

May 15, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I am so fed up with health insurance. Insurance is costing me a small fortune for our perfectly healthy family of 5 – and that’s on a high deductible plan. The monthly premium was raised over $100 when Kylee was born, and it’s going up another $35 I guess because I just turned 30. It’s extremely frustrating. We plan to go shopping for health insurance again. We might even raise our deductible even higher. What’s even more disturbing to me about insurance is all the fine print that says what is or isn’t covered. Have you ever read all that nonsense? It’s impossible to keep up with all of it to know whether or not you’re covered when something comes up. So I’d almost rather save money to bet on never needing it as opposed to paying money to bet on whether or not the insurance is going to honor a claim.

I can’t wait to see if any of the big talking presidential candidates are really going to do something about the screwed up health-care crisis in our country. It’s ridiculous. 

Filed Under: Money

Bikes

April 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Everyone in our family has a bike and it’s so exciting. I’ve been wanting to get bikes for Shawna and me for a few years but it just hasn’t been a priority in the finances until recently. I got one for me, then Shawna, and I even got a little one that might make it til Kylee is big enough.

The reason I got the little one is because Devin & Skyler went straight from big-wheels to 16″ bikes. They should have gotten 12″ bikes first so their legs could reach the ground. We’ve been trying for months to get Devin to ride without training wheels but he just wouldn’t do it. Some of our friends kids learned how at younger ages on smaller bikes, so we thought maybe Devin would succeed if we back up and get a smaller bike for him to try. It worked!!

We only had the small bike out for about 2 hours and he had already gotten it pretty much down-pat. He rode that little bike a couple of more days before it got ran over in the driveway (it was left behind the van – another lesson Devin learned – not to leave the bike behind the van). I think I salvaged it for Skyler to learn on (she doesn’t want to try yet), but we’ll see – it was broken pretty bad.

It was so exciting seeing Devin take off without training wheels. After the little bike was run over it gave me a good reason to be tough dad and make him try his big bike without the training wheels. It was no problem. He took off like a champ and is getting better every day. We ride through our little neighborhood together all the time. We have one of those little caboose things that a friend gave us and I haul Skyler in it behind my bike when she doesn’t want to ride her own. It’s a new fun family activity we can do – and I love it. 

Filed Under: Family, Relationships
April 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment
It’s about time I post something – right! Baby Kylee was born 8lbs 14oz and a head full of hair. Well you can see that for yourself here: (this picture is at about 4 weeks old)

 Isn’t she just so pretty…
We’re proud parents again, and for the last time unless God puts another one on our doorstep.

Devin & Skyler are adjusting pretty well. Skyler wants to love on her all the 

https://markasbell.com/228/

Filed Under: Family

GM Dex Cool

February 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Recently I noticed a little scent of coolant coming from my car. I got under the hood to check because usually that means a leak from any number of possible broken parts throughout the complex cooling system. It wasn’t hard to find – right on top of the plastic inlet tank there was a tiny crack letting fluid leak ever so slowly.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to fix that one myself so I called Gerald’s Radiator here in Anderson. I met Gerald on one other occasion and he seemed like a pretty professional good ole boy who knows what he’s doing, so I decided to take my repair need to him. The bill was way better than what I would have had to pay the Cadillac people, but even more valuable than that was the lesson he gave me about Dex Cool.

He showed me articles about Dex Cool clogging up and corroding cooling systems which eventually breaks critical parts all over the engine and transmission because they all depend on the cooling system working properly. I was intrigued because I drive a Cadillac Catera – which comes with Dex Cool in the system. There were pictures of broken and corroded parts all through these trade magazines he had. I was convinced – get that crap out of my car and put in regular antifreeze.

After Gerald was done working on my car he told me he had to unclog one third of my radiator because it was stopped up with sludge that Dex Cool causes. That would explain why in the summer my car would out of the blue run really hot until I turned off the a/c then it would cool back down. I was probably on the verge of major breakdown. I just hope there aren’t any corroded parts that will break later on.

I decided to just do a general google search for what’s out there on the net regarding Dex Cool. There is a ton of stuff about the problems, the lawsuits, and even the good intentions GM has for using it. The hard evidence is convincing enough to me. Good intentions or not – I think Dex Cool is a bad product. I mostly just read the consumer affairs writeup on the Dex Cool issue, and I also read some of the consumer complaints about it.

The article says not to replace Dex Cool with regular Antifreeze, but Gerald was confident it would be ok. I just hope he flushed it out good enough that they didn’t mix because it seems that is the concern with changing to regular from dex cool – they don’t mix well. But it’s a catch 22 – if you don’t change it you’re stuck with a chemical that will eventually tear up your car, and if you do change them you risk mixing the new with the old and having a bad mix in your car. I’m living on the edge I guess and going with the changed fluid that hopefully is pure enough to keep me running a lot longer. I’ll just have it flushed more often to be sure.

Thanks to Gerald for looking out for me. If anyone else has Dex Cool in your car you might have some decisions to make – or at least get that crap flushed often. Whatever you do don’t go by GM’s non-warrantied statement that Dex Cool is good for 100,000 – 150,000 miles because that just isn’t true. 

Filed Under: Misc, Money

Free Tax Filing

February 7, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I just finished filing my taxes FOR FREE!! About 4 or 5 years ago I started using TurboTax to file my taxes because I was tired of paying H&R Block hundreds of dollars to sit in a cubicle with a person who didn’t seem any smarter than me and answer questions that they were prompted to ask by a computer system. I figured I could do that myself and decided to try TurboTax. Since then I’ve gotten larger returns because their system does such a good job helping you find your maximum deductions, and I’ve paid less for it – under $100 a year.

BUT THIS YEAR IT IS ABSOLUTELY FREE!!! Since I read several blogs, some of which are money-specific content, I read more than once that you can get TurboTax service for free by going through State Farm. All you have to do is have accounts with State Farm, have online access to those State Farm accounts, and click the link to TurboTax right from the State Farm site. It was just as easy as always, and TurboTax has REALLY improved their application more and more every year to make it easier than ever. It is especially easy after the first year because they transfer all your info from year to year.

I’m just extremely thrilled that I got it for free this time. Now I can’t wait to get my return so I can pay for baby Kylee (who is due pretty much any time now). If you are a State Farm customer I highly recommend getting online access so you can take advantage of free TurboTax. And if you’ve never used TurboTax I highly recommend you do – it’s really great. 

Filed Under: Money

Snow Skiing

February 6, 2008 by Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago Perry (pastor at NewSpring) told about his terrible experience the first time he went skiing. Shawna could almost tell that story exactly the same. I took her skiing for her first time (my second time) about 8 years ago this month. She made some of the same mistakes Perry did.
She fell getting off the lift, but she managed to knock me down too so it was ugly and the lift had to be stopped. The last thing I said was “keep your poles close beside you so we don’t get tangled up”. Where did the pole closest to me go as we got off the lift? Between my legs – and we both tumbled.

Later that day we went down a hill that had some moguls. I went down first and with my superior athletic ability (and a little previous experience) I bounced back and forth down the moguls with some level of control – the way you’re supposed to do it. Then I look back and Shawna is coming straight down the moguls getting higher and higher air with each bump. When she finally fell down so she could stop I was terrified at how close she was to a small tree that was oddly right in the middle of the slope. She was laughing hysterically.

Those were great times. The best part about it was we were skiing in Colorado, not North Carolina. The difference is an intermediate slope in Colorado (no such thing as a bunny slope in Colorado) is about the equivalent of a black diamond in North Carolina – from what I hear anyway – I’ve never been mudsliding in North Carolina.

Shawna did much better the rest of that week – it just took some time and practice. I can’t wait to go skiing again one day. We loved it!
Filed Under: Faith, Relationships

Birthday Pictures

February 1, 2008 by Leave a Comment
If you didn’t read yesterday’s post scroll down and do that first so you know that these pictures took place on my birthday and then on my party day. 

IT SNOWED on my birthday (white birthday). Actually it sneeted (snow/sleeted), but in the south that is considered snow. Any time we get the white stuff of course we have to play in it, so here is Devin…

Devin played.

I worked – on a large snowman.
Devin also took great humor in throwing snowballs at me while I worked. Actually they were iceballs – so it wasn’t all that funny – especially to him when I threw one back.

Here’s Devin and I beside the snowman. That center iceball felt like about 300 lbs, but it was probably really only about 150-200.

 Here is Skyler with her own little inside snowman. She wasn’t feeling well so she had to stay inside.

Here we are with the little gifts the kids got me.

Here is the snowman probably 5 days later after all the snow was gone. I don’t know if this was snowman-inator or if it got all its indestruct qualities from the mixture of elements that was in it, whic included snow, ice, dirt, grass, and dog crap (compliements of Rascal – and I’m not joking I saw it getting rolled up in the snowball as I rolled it).

 Ok, now to the party. Lots of peeps were there.

As a matter of fact, there were peeps from near and far.
Counting children and all there were just over 40 peeps.
Here’s me still in shock and I’m pointing at people who I should have known were up to something earlier in the week.
We had good food and fun.
More fun.
You see that guy at the very end of the table in the baby blue shirt? That’s Roberto – one of the owners of Fiesta Mexican Restaurant – one of our favorite places to eat. Roberto was in on the surprise too. I’ll have to get Roberto back somehow. If you don’t already eat at Fiesta please go experience the wonderful food and service Roberto and team have to offer.
Here’s my cake. If you can’t read that it is a picture of the grim reaper saying “Relax, I’m Just Here For The Cake”. All the jokes come out for turning 30.
And for those who got to come to the party after the party here is an exciting game of Pounce. If you don’t know what that is you don’t know what you’re missing, but it can be stressful if you get too serious. I had won 3 times in a row playing on different nights one game at a time. This was the second game of this night and my partner and I came in last. I guess I just couldn’t take that much pressure in one night or something.
It was a blast. Thanks to all who came. If you couldn’t make it I understand but you sure missed a great party. Sorry if anyone was overlooked on the invite. Shawna put this together in a week and had to do it without me knowing it. I was very impressed. Unfortunately there are no pictures of my beautiful bride in all these but that is because she was working so hard making all this happen – and she is nine months pregnant. Before we know it there will be new baby pictures on this blog…

Filed Under: Family, Misc, Relationships

I’m 30 Years Old

January 31, 2008 by Leave a Comment

That’s right. I turned 30 this month. For some this is depressing but for me I’ve had enough fun to be happy about it.

First of all LSU won the National Championship – and I know it happened just to raise my spirits close to my 30th birthday.

Then Shawna, my wonderful wife, got me good with a surprise party I had no clue was going to take place.

What is funny about this is my birthday has always been probably the least hyped up of anybody other than my brother-in-law Kyle because his and mine are so soon after Christmas. So normally a couple of gifts, a cake, and some dinner is about all I’m accustomed to doing for my birthday.

Shawna celebrates her birthday the entire month of March. We eat out several times, she gets more gifts (in fact she already got some of her birthday gifts in January), she gets to relax more, and everybody knows it is Shawna’s birthday because she talks about it all month. I might be exaggerating a little but not much. Now if I was talking about how our kids birthdays are celebrated I couldn’t exaggerate it. There are not enough words to describe it. In fact I’m begging all our family to start having quarterly combined birthday parties so we can have one big huge bash instead of a bunch of small ones every 2 to 3 weeks.

The day of my birthday (which was before the surprise party) I opened a couple of gifts. I think Shawna gave me a card, and my parents sent a card with a gift card in it, and the kids had gotten me one dollar store gift each (we are tight-wads). It took like 3 minutes to open those so the kids were disappointed. They asked Shawna why I didn’t get more gifts. (My kids are so spoiled, and don’t you feel sorry for me?) I don’t have high expectations and gifts aren’t my top love language so this is no big deal to me. I told the kids “It’s ok guys – I love what I got and I’m so thankful.” I’ve been trying to teach the kids to be more thankful instead of more wantful anyway, so this was a good opportunity to show them some humility. Then I saw Shawna grinning (she had the big surprise up her sleeve for a later day).

I don’t know what I thought when I saw that grin on her face, but I’ll probably never forget what I said. With no humility and a smirk on my face I said to the kids “It’s really ok – Daddy doesn’t get to celebrate his birthday ALL MONTH like Mommy does.” On any other day that would have provoked a response, but she had a secret to keep. I should have known something was up. I thought she was just letting me get away with it because it was my birthday…

It was the best birthday I’ve had in about 30 years (when you get old like this you can start wording everything to sound like you’re ancient).

I’ll post pictures of all the birthday month events tomorrow… 

Filed Under: Family, Relationships
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