Yeah, I’m no Mr. Fix-It, but lately, I’ve been less scared to at least try. I fixed our toilet a few weeks back with a $10 part and a couple of weeks back I took an hour or two one evening to investigate why our front-loading washer wasn’t draining, determined from noises and some research on the internet that it was the pump, ordered the part and replaced it… PRESTO… works like new.

The other day, I had a guy stop by to buy our old Green Letter’s PA system and we trouble-shot a problem where the tweeter was blown. We looked up the replacement part and knocked it off the price of the system. I took home a little less, but it just made me resolve to be more diligent about TRYING to fix things–if you screw it up, you can always call in a professional. If you get it right, you’ve saved yourself a lot of money AND you learned something valuable in the process. If you “win” 3 times out of 4, it is probably worth it, even if on that 4th time you end up screwing the pooch so much that it ends up costing a little more. Better than never trying at all.

All in all, it feels good to fix something… to determine the problem and to deliver the solution. I’m sure when my programming knowledge is far out of date and I can’t get a job anywhere, being a fix-it guy would be a great job to have later in life. Maybe I’m wrong, but hey… right now I’m just excited that broken things aren’t so broken anymore.

It’s 2010!   And we’ve got some great expectations for this next year.  What’s a January without lots of looking forward in anticipation and looking back at mistakes that were made, fun times that were had and smiling at it all.

We’ve got some great expectations in every area of our life this year.   For our church, we’re leading a new small group from February through April and we’re excited for what God will do through it.   I’ve also got some great expectations for our church as a whole–I think there is great potential for a lot of lives to be changed as a result of what people are doing.

At work, I’ve got some awesome expectations for the product I’ve been working on and the team that is coming together.   I think the product I’ve been working on for the last year will begin to really make a difference in the company and in the sustainability of the people involved.  It is a neat opportunity to be able to improve people’s ability to work.   I’m also excited about working with Chris again–he is my favorite programmer to work with and now we’re officially employees of the same company    He’s the first programmer guy that I’ve worked with that is really on my level–we push each other and encourage each other and work together well.   It is definitely going to be a fun year at work.

And we’ve got some big expectations for our family.  Timothy will officially begin kindergarten in the fall, though Andrea began homeschooling both Timothy and Bethany this year already.  They’re doing great and I expect will continue to do so.   Rachel will go from being a baby, barely able to crawl and pull up to being a walking, talking machine in the next 12 months.   But our biggest expectation is the one due August 11th.  Our next (and final!) baby will be joining us in 2010 and we’re very excited about it.

What a crazy, amazing, fun year it will be.