2010...The year of Discipline

My life is fairly disciplined...but not quite where I would like it to be. I eat too much and skip workouts more than I would like. I want to regain the discipline I had when training for the half ironman a few years ago. So, the plan is this.

Spend a full day per week doing "family stuff"

Continue getting up at 5 or earlier 6 days/week.

Quiet time with God before 9am.

Blog 5 days a week just to document life.

Eat 1 "sweet" per week.

Keep daily calorie intake to 2500 clean calories or less for 51 weeks (1 week for a break)

Workout 5 days a week minimum, 6 max.

Those are 2010 goals. If I can accomplish them along with getting a new business up and running, I will have a good chance at a productive year from a personal growth standpoint.

Here we go....

A few pics from the last couple days

I've been a little inconsistent with the holiblogs. Here are a few family shots from Christmas day. It was a great day with Lisa's family. We hit the same restaurant for brunch on Christmas morning that we have gone to every year for the past 14 years, then we just hung around most of the day and the kids played with their stuff.

Good times...

Family and the bird named "Merlot" (he talks a lot)

Cabela's girl with her pink crossbow in the background

Noah can start fires anywhere

More to come later. 2010 "the year of discipline" is just about upon us...

60 seconds with Josh and Lisa

Here is a video we shot on Christmas day on the way home from the restaurant. This is a completely normal minute with us. Watching it later on, we agreed that this was a very normal segment of our lives. Then we made fun of ourselves. We interrupt each other, ignore each other, get confused by each other and love each other...all in a matter of a minute. Just a normal married couple in love in the good ol' U S of A.

You may have to watch it a time or two to take it all in.

Password: video

It's Christmas Eve!

Testing the lighting for the family photo shoot

I've had a great year. My family has been well. Summit has grown like crazy. Hunter Vision has made very real steps toward opening in 2010. I am so grateful for all God has done for us. The most of which is sending His son to be born.

Merry Christmas to all!

Mega Christmas Picture Post pt. 2

No way could yesterday's post contain all of the holiday awesomeness....here are some more.

Hunter Christmas 2009:

BOBBERS!!!!!!!

Hunter Girls

All the Hunter Ladies

All the Hunter Men

Noah has knives and loves it

Happy Mom (this is actually how she always looks)

Pop looks at the historic photos from Aunt Michele

Aunt Rhonda and Luke...the newest Hunter

Survival weekend:

Andy catches a world record

Aaron warms his hands by the fire (it was 80 outside)

**photos by Josh, Lisa and Isaac Hunter...

Mega Christmas Season Picture Post

Amazingly, these uploaded exactly backwards. So you will see what happened very recently and go further into the past as you head down the page...weird. It was an awesome last week with lots of family events. These were a few of the highlighted events: Hunter family Christmas w/Dr. Joel, Lizzy and Luke in town, Noah's school Christmas program, Ava's school Christmas program, and finally a few shots from Survival weekend...more to come tomorrow...also, Hunter Vision signed the lease at RDV yesterday!!!! Wahhhooooo!!!!

The newest family pic (Luke is an awesome add to any photo)

Noah got camo from Uncle Jan

Isaac still can't beat me up even while I install mom's new faucet.

Amazing Uncle Jan bought us guns again. Weatherby Mark V Deluxe chambered in .308 Win.

Noah rocks the trio at his program. He was awesome.

Ava and I after her program.

Grandma Becky, Ava, and Pop ***(I love this one)

Ava with "no crib for a bed"

Survival weekend Sunset

My favorite photo of the week. Big John fishes the daybreak fog of Mosquito Lagoon.

Blog Sloth

Been Christmasing it up the last few days. I am back on it tomorrow with the mega-picture post....stay tuned.

Christmas Pictures

...another year in the books. I really can't believe how dang grown-up the kids are...Lisa looks like she is 22. God blessed us with each other this year.

Here are a few...

Ava (5) and Noah (11)

Noah, Lisa and Ava

Me and Lisa

The whole family :)

Merry (early) Christmas!

Hunter Vision Update

I figure periodically I should keep everyone in the loop on Hunter Vision progress.

Here is the current status:

1. We are spending money to make things awesome.

2. We reviewed and marked up the draft lease. We are currently waiting for the attorneys for RDV to review / approve our changes to the lease. We are very close to getting this one done. I hope to have it complete in the next week.

3. We begin branding/web development initiatives starting today. (I am suggesting that our logo be a stethoscoped monkey with a round mirror with a hole in it on his forehead...not true)

4. Joel and I will meet with a design/build team next Monday morning to begin the initial stages of remodel for the RDV space. (This part costs us nothing incase the RDV stuff doesn't work out.)

5. Joel is in town all next week. It should be a great week for Hunter Vision progress.

All for now. Big stuff on the horizon. I am blessed to be able to work on it.

Pictures

I was out-paparazzi'd (photo by Ava)

I take a lot of pictures. I am not a photographer, in the same way that someone who smokes less than a pack a day doesn't consider themselves a smoker.

I like to take pictures for two reasons.

1. I always hated stopping what I was doing to get in a picture and that never happens anymore since I am now the one taking pictures.

2. I like to have a way to document life. I would love to have more pictures of my parents and grandparents as they lived through all of life's events. My hope is that someday my great-grandkids will see these pictures and be able to see what it was like in the year 2000 before everyone had an avatar.

That is all for this morning.

Survival Weekend

The "Supply Barge" pulling into the campsite

Well, we're not really going on a weekend this year...but the name stuck. Survival weekend was my brother Joel's brain-child. Joel decided that what he wanted for his birthday was not "presents", but to spend a couple nights on an island in the middle of the intracoastal waterway with some good friends. The idea was birthed from the show man vs. wild and it was to be a weekend of living off of the land and water with nothing but a tent, a fishing pole and the will to survive. A very cool idea...and almost what it turned into.

Survival weekend is now an annual event on it's 3rd or 4th year (can't remember) and it has become much less about surviving off the land and more about trying to get all the supplies for one night over to the island in less than 3 boat trips. We now take enough that we could sustain "survival semester" if we caught no fish and didn't know how to build a fire. It's fun. Sitting around a campfire in the middle of nowhere is fantastic. The scenery is amazing and the bugs aren't bad if it's under 65 at night.

I'm looking forward to survivor weekend next week when the good doctor gets into town. It will be an awesome time with great family and friends.

Act first, feel like it later

Isaac, Mom, Dr. Joel, and me (Oct. 2008)

This morning I was thinking about something my mother told me many times through the years. It has helped me on more than one occasion, likely more than a million occasions. This pearl of wisdom often came in response to my disdain for homework or not wanting to go to some sports practice that day. She always said "Just do it and you will feel like it once you get there." It was part of the reason that no matter how sick we (Isaac, Joel and I) felt when getting up for school, we had to take a shower and get dressed before we declared ourselves feeling too horrible to go to class. She knew once we got out of bed and ready to walk out of the door, we would feel more like making the day worth something. Later in life, it translated to my marriage, my family, my workouts and my job.

There are many days that I "don't feel like it". If I didn't do what I needed to every time that feeling cropped up, we would be homeless. I don't often "feel like" working rather than playing or going out of my way to help someone else. I really wish I did. I wish I was just a naturally selfless production machine and only wanted to help others all the time. The truth is...I don't.

It's a good reminder to me to post this today...because I feel like going hunting...but I need to go to work:) I know by now that I will be glad I did once I get there.

So next time you know the right thing to do, but feel like doing something else...think about what Becky Hunter said. It'll change your life.

Christmas Brunch

I look forward to all of the family traditions at Christmas. One of my favorites is the brunch we do with Lisa's mom and dad on Christmas morning. For brunch we head down to the Grand Cypress Hotel and go to the "La Coquina" restaurant. (and yes I realize I just said "the" back to back in one sentence and two different languages, but I couldn't figure out how to make it sound right)

We have been doing it for about 14 years and I don't get tired of it. The kids like it now too. The food is great and as you can see we have to get all decked out to go. It's a great tradition that my mother-in-law started for us right after we got married and it has grown into one of those things I look forward to every year.

It's Christmas season for sure...and I like it.

Stuff doesn't matter...people do

A budding photographer

Ava (5 yrs old) wanted to take pictures using a $600 camera of mine. I hesitated for one minute, then remembered this...

I learned a long time ago that "stuff" doesn't matter. The more you have of it, the more you have to worry about. We grew up in a home where we always had enough, but never felt like we could do anything we wanted. One thing stuck out in my mind though... there really wasn't anything we had that was more important than we were to our parents. There was almost nothing in the house we couldn't use because it was so "valuable". It taught me a good lesson. It taught me that people are more important than things. I watch people hoard stuff and not share all the time. It makes me feel bad for the guy who won't share. He doesn't know what he's missing. God lets us hold things for a bit SO THAT we can share them with others. Stuff simply doesn't matter...it ain't yours anyway.

Magic Game

Orlando Magic game last night. I went with 3 guys from my Summit connect group (small group). It was awesome. We talked a whole lot about nothing...like how "on fire Rashard was" and "how ginormous Dwight Howard was". We listened to the 90 year old guy behind us yell "now that's some eye candy!" everytime the Magic dancers took the floor. We cheered for team Summit (two of the Magic players go to Summit)...and we just generally did nothing but be entertained for a couple of hours. It was great. I think everyone should go to a Magic game. That is today's lesson...oh, that and "don't ever cheat on your wife", thanks to Tiger for that reminder.

Flag Football

Noah heads for the end zone...

Noah was awesome last night. Evidently, he does have it in him. I always knew he was athletically gifted enough to be competitive at any sport, but he is the sweetest kid you will ever meet...so I wasn't sure football would sit well with him. Yes, even flag.

He was all over the field last night. He was chasing kids down, tackling them on accident, intercepting a pass and running 40 yards for the score, catching balls on offense, breaking up passes on defense... it was crazy. I have never seen that kind of fearlessness from him.

It reminded me to live life fearlessly. We have nothing to be wary of in this life. God is completely in control and we just have to stay within the framework of the boundaries He created.

Luckily, there were no tigers involved or I may have had to rethink my blog post this morning.

Here is a picture of yesterday's blog tiger:

Thanking the customer

So yesterday, my cousin Aaron and I were heading out of the gym after a giant workout that nearly killed both of us. I think it was the "we really feel bad for eating all of that" workout that usually follows Thanksgiving. As we walked out of the gym and passed the front desk, the man behind the counter said, "Fellas, if you would like a free Red Bull, we have some in that bucket full of ice over there." Aaron and I jumped on it and were pretty jazzed that we could actually get something for free. Just as we were celebrating our new found free Red Bull energy drinks, the man who gave them to us said the craziest thing I had ever heard. He said, "There's a tiger in the parking lot, too...just if you want to see it on your way out." Aaron and I looked at each other as if to try verify that we both heard what we thought we heard. "What??????", I asked the man." He said, "Yeah, there is a tiger in the parking lot."

So, of course Aaron and I went to the parking lot to see what the heck...also, my car was parked there and we by default had to go to the parking lot. Well, sure as I'm sitting here...there was a giant 2 year old, 450 lb, White Tiger in a cage right outside the door. Aaron took a picture (maybe he'll post it on his blog). The guy in front of the tiger said, "We just want to thank you guys for being members here. We really appreciate your business."

So this is the new standard for thanking the customer. Summit must have wild Bald Eagles in the lobby and Hunter Vision will now have lions in the waiting area.

Quote of the week:

"Free Red Bull in the ice bucket...oh yeah, there's a tiger outside...thanks for being a customer, we really appreciate it."