We ran into St. Louis yesterday to do some lunch with Jodi's family at her sisters house.  The food was good and we enjoyed hanging out with Kyle, his girlfriend and others for a few hours.  We then visited Jodi's mom and step dad who were unable to attend due top an injury and took them some dinner.  We left about 8:15am and were back home at 8:30pm.  To my disappointment, all of the White Castle's along the route were closed fore the day.  Oh well, at least the employees got to spend time with family instead of working.  

Today being Black Friday, I went online and grabbed a couple deals on items we needed and that will be the extent of my shopping today.  Yesterday I ordered a Springfield Hellcat Pro OSP 9mm to be my new every day carry firearm.  It is replacing my Glock 19.  I really want a Stacatto CS but the $2500 price point is giving me pause.  

 Jodi is almost done editing her last session that she has to do until Spring and our last two ordering appointments of the year are tonight.  We are looking forward to the long break ahead which will give us more time to relax, get some other things done that we need to do and maybe get a bit of a vacation in also.  

I have a dumpster coming next week as we intend to do a purge.  Cleaning out storage rooms and getting rid of some oversize items will be the priority.  It is both hard and costly to get rid of anything that won't fit into a trash bag these days so the dumpster made the most sense.  

On January 1st, I will once again be seated as President of our club, beginning my 4th term as President.  We ended the year with 715 dues paying members and 6400 in our Facebook group.  I am looking forward to the many things we are planning for 2023.

 I have got into RC rock crawling over the last few months and have assembled a collection of about 8 vehicles.  They can be customized just like a Jeep while adding parts like high clearance links, different tires and beadlocks, upgraded motors and servos, bumpers, add a winch, etc.  It's been a lot of fun building them as well as an RC rock crawling course in my backyard.  I'm about to start building an indoor course in my storage room downstairs so me and my friends have a place to play over the winter too.

Jayson played for a new team this Fall and he is their catcher.  He really has improved over the season and is currently doing a catching clinic for the next 6 weeks.  I am pretty sure he led the team in hitting as well as doubles, possibly RBI.  He seems to be really enjoying it and wanting to get better.  The team he played for is much more talented than the one before and has far better pitching.  They won their Fall league and won their last tournament too.  He has started wearing contacts now and that seems to have helped his play as well.  We did a photo shoot with him a few months ago before he joined his new team so this isn't his current uniform but they turned out pretty cool.  

 I haven't updated the blog in quite some time.  I either forget about it or don't have the time but now that I am on a 4 month plus vacation, I will try to do better.

Jodi has about 3 more sessions to edit and once that is done, she will just have some product design and ordering work ahead which doesn't take the time that photo editing does.  We have had a great year and we are finishing with some unexpectedly strong sales.  

We have decided to get another cat so Niko has a buddy to play with.  Siberian Forrest cats are pretty needy when it comes to attention.  Niko seems to want more attention these days so we are hoping a buddy will keep him busier.  We pick our new Siberian up at Christmas just outside of St. Louis.  

Elections are taking place in our off road club right now.  I am running unopposed again for a 4th term.  We grew to a record 715 dues paying members this year which is quite impressive.  Membership and renewals for 2023 open December 1st.

We had a great trip to Hot Springs ORV earlier this month with about 50 rigs joining us.  My big tire group has an awesome first day doing a lot of 5 rated trails on Friday.  That night we had a tornado warning and hellacious thunderstorm for about an hour.  The trails were still pretty decent the next day but I wound up breaking my steering assist mounting tabs off my diff cover and that ended the hard wheeling for the day.  The trail I did that on was called "Impossible".  It was that day.  

Not a fan of these 100 degree days for my photo shoots.  Got through last night fine with a young lady and have a boy today.  Tomorrow looks to be much better as well as going forward.  We still have 22 sessions to get in and maybe more if the weather remains mild in November as it did last year.

This Saturday I'm going wheeling at Kansas Rocks, the following Saturday at Tuttle and the first weekend of November to Hot Springs, AR.  Looking forward to a great time and hopefully dry conditions.  

 The last few days has been tough as our club lost a member in an accident at a local off road park.  While coming down an obstacle, the Jeep flopped onto the driver's side and he was pinned beneath the vehicle.  Fortunately, his passing was instant.  He was my neighbor, living just a few streets over from us.  

I got the notification of the accident from his wife while at our new member meetup on Saturday.  She was not with him at the time.  I offered to go pick up the Jeep from the park the next day and she accepted.  I went down early the next morning and loaded it up on the trailer and brought it to my house. 

His wife came by the next day and it was an emotional visit to say the least.  I offered our club's support, my support, whatever was needed.  I told her I had a friend who would store the vehicle for us until a decision was made as to what was to be done with it and she was fine with that so I took it to my buddy's where I store my trailer.

Our club meeting was last night and we did a fundraiser for his family.  I donated the Powertank I won recently as a raffle prize and ticket sales for it generated over $3000.  We raffled some other items that were part of our normal monthly raffle and donated those proceeds to the family as well which generated over $900.  All told we raised over $4000 for the family.  So proud of our club for that.  Next week our club we will be escorting the family to the location chosen for a memorial gathering at an area lake. 

Jodi and I have been busy with business stuff as usual.  We still have a couple months left of busy season and then we will get a long break that we always look forward to.  We plan to hit the road for a month and  see if we like that or not.  When we retire, we will need something top occupy us.  I want to get a crawler hauler.  We shall see.

 I spent some of the weekend at SMORR.  Wound up having to haul a club member's Jeep to the dealer in Springfield on Sunday.  Due to the wet conditions, there was some carnage amongst the group, which fortunately I escaped.  

We have been busy with the business as always.  We are still keeping up well and have a couple more months left of the season before we get our winter break.

Jayson is on a new baseball team and playing more catcher now.  He seems to like that position.  The team is undefeated so far and he is enjoying it.  He is going with JD and Megan to Florida for a week starting next Sunday.  They are all looking forward to their vacation.