As Memorial Day nears, I have come to the realization that I have committed the unwritten 8th deadly sin – complacency. I have become so wrapped up in the rising prices of food and gas, how many TV channels I can get, and how many carbs are in the 3 burritos and 4 soft tacos from Taco Bueno that I just ate. This makes it very easy to forget that there is still a war going on. We have been at war so long, we're starting to creep into Vietnam territory.

It has become commonplace to turn on the television, hear about the attacks and death toll, and not even be phased. Why? Because we, as a society, have become complacent. We walk through our behemoth open-air malls buying useless crap, sipping coffee in the middle of the summer, and drive our air polluting vehicles without stopping to think about all of the men and women that are overseas protecting our right to do so.

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What are YOU doing for New Year's Eve? Are you connected to the hottest NYE celebration in the U.S.? If not, you'll be missing out on one of the premiere events of 2007/2008. Check it out:

The biggest New Year's Eve Party in the country is brought to you by New Year's Nation. More than 8,000 party goers are expected to join in the nationwide festivities. This party covers eight cities in four time zones, and the venues for each city are top notch. 

Visit the website to learn about THE New York New Year's Eve Party of the year. The average person attending will be a young professional in their 20s or 30s. Participating cities include New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Follow the link provided to learn more about the New Year's Eve Party in LA. 

If you live in the Dallas area, and you're looking for THE PLACE TO BE this New Year's Eve, join New Year's Nation at the Ivy Lounge in downtown Dallas between 9pm and 2am. Hilary Kennedy from the television show "Hot on Homes" will be hosting the local event. 

No matter which city you live in, visit the website and learn more about venue, dress code, menu, and VIP options. And get ready for a party! 

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Now that Christmas has come and gone, our bellies are full of Christmas
delight, cookies, pies, turkey and so forth, family members and friends are
or will be soon making their  way back to their own homes and their regular
lives. As we prepare for the New Year what happens to the bonds that have
been re-kindled, made and established with new friends and old, family
members and loved ones a-like?

Do we? Will you maintain this attitude of generosity and appreciation,
charity and love, smiling, happiness and joy?  Helping around the house to
clean up, being nice to the kids, being tolerant of your family. Was that
just a facade? Or will you continue to be this person that you have been
over the holiday season?

The Christmas Holiday season is especially special because so many people
become selfless and do things for others rather than themselves. And so they
sort of become another person, a better person. A person that exhibits
patience, understanding and selflessness. Is there a reason why this has to
change, if not then why does it? Hmmmm?

Well the reasoning really is not important but the change is. Joy is a
wonderful thing and you can be joyous as often as you please. It is not
limited to any season or any reason. If you had fun and smiled a lot and
enjoyed friends and family, hold on to that joy, embrace it and let it
embrace you. Let the goodness that has come out of you this holiday season
remain with you always. There is something great about a person’s character
that exhibits, consideration, patience and selfless, because your actions
reflect that life is not always about you, and that….is a wonderful thing.

As the New Year approaches do not lose sight of what you have become, the
season is here now and will soon pass however your graciousness,
appreciation and respect for others does not have to pass with it.  Hold on
to who you have become, for all seasons. Do not let your humble spirit and
attitude fade as the season passes.

Your attitude is your outwardly appearance to the world. Be the best you for
all seasons and you will see how your attitude affects others in a positive
light. Let your good spirit shine from you like the sun and you will see
good things grow all around you. Seeds of joy will soon grow to flowers of
happiness and smiles.

Smiling is good we should smile as often as possible as if everyday was
Christmas. Don’t you think?

Happy Thursday!

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Seasons Greedings!

Christ, family, loved ones, friends… that is what this holiday is about, right?

It appears that we as a culture have gotten away from appreciating true love for what is and have equated that love with what and how many presents and gifts we receive. This time of year is a time to recognize the ones you love and care for in many ways. Not just with toys and clothes and money, but with time, respect, appreciation, love and adoration.

Give more, love more, hug more, and kiss more. Take this time to show the ones you care for that they are worth more than what is given… that love is not defined by what is received, but by what is felt in the heart. If communication is bad with your spouse, take this time to let him/her know that he/she is worth more to you than what he/she thinks. If you are having problems with your children, take this time to tell them that you appreciate them and that you will work harder to understand them and
establish a better relationship with them.

This is a special time. Love is the air, take advantage of it. Smile as often as possible, if not for any other reason, let it simply be because YOU FEEL LIKE IT!

This is a magical time that comes around only once a year! Don't ruin it for yourself by being GREEDY and upset because you did not get something you wanted or you felt you deserved. This season is really about giving, not
receiving. Christmas is not about YOU, it is about YOU DOING for others.

There is always something to give even if you don’t have money. Love is the
most powerful force on earth and that is one of the main ingredients that
make up this holiday season, LOVE!

So don’t sell yourself short by expecting and being greedy. Be more than that!  Give time, love and positive energy. Smile, laugh and share good tidings with friends, family, loved ones and those that are less fortunate and have no one. Sometimes time spent can be the most valuable gift you can
give. We all complain about not have enough of it, so that in itself makes
it valuable. Time that is.

This is a time to love the ones you love.

Take advantage of this special time and Holiday Season to show how much love
you have to give.

Merry Tidings and Happy Holidays,

- Anthony Neil Moss

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Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year: cold weather, Christmas lights, watching kids get excited about presents, Christmas movies, and getting together with friends and family. There is so many fun things to do and see. I thought I would write a post about it and maybe share some of my ideas for the holiday season: places to see, where to shop, where to eat, special events and family activities, movies in theaters, movies to rent, and Christmas music.

You can't have Christmas without a tree, so if you haven’t put yours up yet, you should check out Christmas in the Country in Flower Mound, even if you have a fake tree (like I do some years). This is good family fun and plenty of stuff for the kids to do including sleigh rides and both complimentary hot chocolate and cider.

Shopping 

If you can't stand going to the mall to shop, here are some alternate choices: you can find just about any thing you need at Target, especially if you're a young family with or without kids. Barnes and Noble, I've discovered, is always a good choice if you are shopping for parents, grandparents, and siblings. If you want good deals on CDs, DVDs, and video games, there is a place off of Cooper Street in South Arlington by the Parks Mall called Entertainmart - really good prices. If you are looking for something really special for your wife, you should try Diamond Wholesale Exchange in Addison.

Now this is going to sound really strange: if you want to buy perfume or cologne, a really smart place to shop is Albertsons (the grocery store). They usually carry all the name brands for about half the price. Another good place to shop that has a lot of everything including a wide selection on name brand clothes and isn’t in the mall is Kohl’s.

If you’re a big fan of coffee (which I am not but my wife is), you should try Starbucks Christmas Blend. Starbucks is also an ideal place to buy small gifts for friends and family.

Activities and Events 

If you have kids between toddler and teenage, you should try Six Flags Holiday in the Park. I did this when I was a kid and it was a blast! My brother took my kids to Holiday in the Park recently and they had a great time. Tickets are $29.99. Parking is extra. If you want something a little more sophisticated, Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth will have several performances including "The Nutcracker" and "A Christmas Carol". Prices and schedule vary. Casa Manana will also have some exciting shows, including "Frosty the Snowman" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Handel’s "Messiah" will be at the Meyerson Symphony Center December 2nd at 7pm.

Something I am definitely going to do this year is pack up the family, put some hot chocolate in spill-proof containers, get in the truck, listen to 103.7fm (Christmas music) and check out some Christmas lights. For the best Christmas lights communities, visit Grand Prairie, Dallas, and Arlington.

Movies

In theaters this holiday season: Fred Clause, starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti; Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium, starring Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman; Enchanted by Walt Disney, starring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey; Thomas Kinkade's The Christmas Cottage, starring Peter O' Toole, opens November 30th; Alvin and the Chimpmunks, starring Jason Lee, opens December 15th; The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman, is now showing - I was originally excited when I saw the trailer for this film, but am not sure if it's something I want to endorse. Please be careful if you plan on taking your children to see this, or even if you are seeing it as an adult. Click here to find out more. 

Restaurants 

Before or after your movie, here's a list of cozy places I like to visit during the holiday season.

Le Madeline – French Bakery with a fireplace. Great for a date night and a place where you can pick up some small unique gifts. Cracker Barrel – Notthing upscale, of course, but some good 'ol country cooking. Family environment and another place where you can pick up some unique gifts
Carrabbas- Italian grill. Great food, great ambiance, nice place to eat in December. Perfect for a date night
Simply Fondue - Although time consuming, it makes for a nice dinner in December.

Around the house

Spending time with the family is one of the things I enjoy most about Christmas. Red wine is something I really enjoy while watching Christmas movies and snacking on my favorite foods. Every year I order summer sausage and cheeses from Hickory Farms. If you’re burnt out on the same old Christmas movies (It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story), here are some movies that have become tradition at my hous: Home Alone, starring Mcullay Culkin and Joe Pesci; Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis; Step Mom, starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon; The Family Man, starring Nicolas Cage; The Polar Express, starring Tom Hanks; Narnia; The Nativity Story; Planes Trains and Automobiles, Steve Martin.

Music 

Here are some fresh options on Christmas Music:

"Sounds of the Season" by Enya
"Winter Song" by Sara Mclachlan
"Christmas Songs" by Jars of Clay
"A Christmas Celebration" by Celtic Woman

That covers it for now. If you have any other ideas I forgot to mention, feel free to chime in. Part of the fun is sharing our favorite things. Happy Holidays!!!!!!!!

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It’s Christmas Day, and we’ve already celebrated with one set of family. Heather, my mother-in-law, and I visited my family for an early Christmas celebration. We had a wonderful time in the Oklahoma City area. There is something so different about OKC and Edmond. The air is so calm and peaceful in comparison to Dallas / Fort Worth. The entire region’s atmosphere is simply more calm. It’s like going to the DFW suburbs and vacuuming the frenzy right out of everyone’s lives. I sometimes wonder if the people in Edmond even have real problems.

I am destined to smell good this year. Common gifts I received from family members this years were colognes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. Apparently I need to both groom and educate myself better.

We enjoyed some good eats while we were there. The main holiday dish this year was beef brisket, and it was good! We also hit up a sandwich shop called McAllisters (not sure about spelling) near UCO that makes a killer reuben sandwich. Last night we tried The Cheesecake Factory for the first time. Wow. It was awesome. I’m not a huge cheesecake fan, but the Tiramisu was slammin’.

Perhaps the best parts of the time we spent with the family were the personal and homemade gifts a few people gave. My wife made an excellent gift for my grandparents. Needless to say, I don’t think a single female in the house made it through the gift giving process without shedding at least a few tears. It was one of our best Christmases ever.

We’re getting ready right now to go visit Heather’s sister. I am beginning to love the holidays more and more.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year. That is what they say, right? Yesterday, the Christmas cards started piling in. It’s a shame, really, that we all don’t find excuses to communicate more often. Still, it’s heartwarming to receive them, and probably more so because of the Christmas season.

A few couples including my grandparents (Howard and Judy Dessinger), David and Caroline Shorter, and Russ and Christy Hemati have gone a step further by writing a Christmas letter. I love the Christmas letter. A year-end summary tells me what I’ve missed, and reminds me why even great distances cannot keep me from caring.

In light of the heartwarming effect Christmas letters have on me, I am inspired to write my own. Most of our friends and family don’t spend much time on the Internet, much less reading blogs like this. In order to keep in touch with most of the people we love, emails and/or conventional letters are still more successful.

So this year, we will send out our first family Christmas letter. It’s exciting to begin traditions, especially if you can recognize them as such from the beginning. It is a husband’s privilege to feel he has contributed to the formation of traditions within his family.

I am grateful, and pleased to know that many years from now, we will have a tradition in place which will be treasured for years to come by friends, family, and our children.

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The holiday shopping season is on. Black Friday was a productive day for retailers this year. The day after Thanksgiving is dubbed Black Friday because it is traditionally known as the day of the year that most businesses make it into the black (profit). How ridiculous is that? Store owners actually work for 46 weeks of the year before ever getting out of the red. If that’s not a reason to find a different vocation, I don’t know what is. This year’s Cyber Monday is expected to be the most significant ever.

Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving when internet retailers do their best to woo businessmen and women into purchasing big ticket items with special discounts and sales. Cyber Monday has been a disappointment to Internet retailers until now. The online shopping industry has matured to the degree that a good portion of Americans are now comfortable buying most anything online. It took years to build this sense of stability in the general public, but repetition has finally paid off.

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It’s November 12th, 2006. Thanksgiving Day is right around the corner, and Christmas is right on its heels. It is the happiest time of year and the time of greatest suffering. Holidays are like Jedi Knights: they are intensely powerful, whether for the good or the dark side. Indifference implies callousness. Unless, of course, you come from a third-world country with no familial holidays. I love this time of year. I have never been the guy most geared toward family. I rejected family as a teenager (go figure) and refused to identify myself with “those people.” A successful holiday used to mean a bottle of liquor, a mixed cd, and a trip to the movie theater… alone. I still wonder what the holiday means to my family as we get together. Do they care if the conversation is just idle nonsense, or do they really have things they want to know and say? If so, why do they never bridge the gap between us and share their feelings? I guess I live in a very private family on some levels. We get along, and we are very kind to each other (I was the last one to participate there), yet we know very little about each other on so many levels. Despite the unknowns, holidays are still a chance to appreciate those you love, despit the fact that you may not be able to explain why you love them or what you get out of it. Even with so many unanswered questions about the mysteries of familial bonds, it’s nice to know you can always come home to people who know who you were before you got hurt and started faking it. It’s nice to be accepted. I realize that this does not speak to everyone, and many would rebuke me for generalizing everyone into a quasi-successful family role. I know that there are far too many out there who don’t have anyone to turn to. I know that there are many who would rather die than come home. I know that there are some who can’t remember if home even exists. If you fit into one of those categories, I do not apologize for my generalizations. I do appreciate your patience with me as I express different memories, for I can only communicate what is my own. I hope and pray each one of you finds a new family rising out of the ashes which are your memories. I pray that God will surround you with people who possess the god-given capacity to know you, love you, and appreciate you, so that you will live a life worth living. I pray that you will each know what it means to sit around a table with those you love and share moments of joy and satisfaction. Happy Holidays.

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Those of us who grew up in a conservative religious background know what I’m talking about when I say that Halloween has caused a fair share of confusion. Everything involving magic or witches or werewolves was evil (look for another post to come on magic). Everything that wasn’t obviously biblical was condemned. Some of us didn’t even listen to secular music until we gained some level of teenage independence.

I don’t agree with the blind avoidance and condemnation of all things non-biblical. Blind, unquestioned doctrine is what causes religious splintering and cults to grow. God gave us minds to use, not to waste. I cannot blanketly label some acts sin unless they are called such in Scripture. At the same time, I do not give myself free license to do all the hundreds and thousands of things not mentioned as sin in Scripture strictly because they are not listed. For one, technology is not what it once was, so there are infinitely more choices each person must face on a daily basis. Halloween is not one of those things I feel 100% concerned about.

Honestly, I don’t celebrate it. I also don’t have kids, which my best friend insists will completely transform my opinion of the holiday. Maybe. Or maybe he just means that it’s hard to say no to one’s children when all the other kids are dressing up in cool costumes and getting free candy. Even so, I doubt I will celebrate Halloween simply because of the fact that it is at least partly a celebration of horror, death, and fear. Honestly, I’m not a big holiday person. I hate the commercialism driving our society’s famous celebrations.

Whoever chose the Valentine’s Day colors has no sense of taste, and did not understand or care that the popularization of such a holiday would reduce gift giving to a shame-based obligation (i.e. only bad boyfriends/husbands don’t give gifts on this day). Christmas is little better. Santa Claus is a famous figure because he instills gift-lust in all children, young and old. Persistent begging leads to parental resignation, thus equalling increased spending. Not only is the time of greatest annual greed, someone thought it was worth lying to children about the existence of this mythical character just to induce them to be good (i.e. capitalizing on poor parenting skills). Thanksgiving should be renamed Gluttons Day (or Dallas Cowboys Day). This holiday at least centers around giving thanks, so I must commend it for being the least self-centered (at least originally).

Then there’s Halloween. All Saints Day (November 1st) is historically the day where Roman Catholics Episcopalians, and Lutherans used to honor all saints, whether known or unknown. The Irish, Scotts, Welsh, and others celebrated the eve of All Saints and called it Samhain, Calan Gaeaf, Allantide, or Hop-tu-Naa. This was a druidic celebration, thought to be a time of year when spirits could make contact with the physical world. Magic was also considered the most potent on this day. Those are the roots of Halloween.

True, you don’t hear so much about these roots in our commercialized American Halloween celebrations. But you still see the influence. It is still the day where people celebrate misery, death, disfigurement, decay, horror, darkness and fear. Some dress up in nice pretty costumes or something more artistic, but it is, in a sense, the day of Horror film celebration. Do I condemn little children for wanting to wear cool costumes and get free candy? Not in the least. Do I consider it a waste of a holiday? Absolutely. I plan on creating family holidays for my children whereby they learn to appreciate and celebrate life. Costumes included.

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The first annual Shrub Day was a smashing, though a bit prolonged, success! Two and a half days of labor and deliberation wrought a beauty our little house never thought possible. Grinning from chimney to gables, our little house was delighted at its extreme makeover. For two years, my wife and I have lived in a house that looks much better on the inside.

The outside wasn’t hideous, mind you. No, it was just plain, bare, and altogether uninteresting. I had not realized how uninteresting until I noticed how many neighbors were suddenly waving as they passed by. Apparently we were doing something to our yard which they highly approved of. I took the glass half full point of view and took it as a compliment to our choice of shrubs and plants. Rainy weather couldn’t stop us!

We were green machines. We stared down severe thunderstorms without flinching a muscle or twitching an eyelid. We were fearless. We were courageous. We were fierce. We were really stinkin’ tired. I mean TIRED!!! Have you ever taken an axe and tried to hack thick tree roots out of your way? Luckily, I only broke one shovel and cut two fingers throughout the process. Considering the conditions and strength of our opponent, those were acceptable casualties.

Nah… It wasn’t a battle. Well, it was in a way. But it was more like an adventure. I discovered Calloway’s, a paradise of flowers, shrubs, trees, and vines. I wanted to buy everything - well, everything that suits my taste (i.e., not girly looking flowers or your traditional boring perennial greenery). I would have spent much more had my wife not been present and ready to smite me with a spade. Who knew that I, the guy who rarely even cares to go outside, would find a nursery to be so delightful? I will discuss some of our new plants when I have photos to post.

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