the unlikely orange

yesterday we started the christmas decorating process.  and wow is it daunting.  box after box after box to open up and see what lies within, freeing ghosts of christmases past from crumpled up newspaper.  all the current decorations have to be taken down and put away and things cleaned before the Christmas decorations go up.  we spent a great deal of time on this yesterday afternoon, and didn't finish.  there are still boxes to be opened.  there is still a space for a christmas tree.  there are still cards to be sent and things to be bought and packages to wrap and so on.  daunting. in church yesterday we read from luke 1 when the angel gabriel is talking to mary and he tells her that she is going to be pregnant and have this child.  and its not just that (as if that wasn't enough), but he tells her in verses 32 and 33 that the child "will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  The Lord God will give him the thr...

here's to you having a great day, and not just one in which you fill yourself to the gills with food and fat and blessings of every kind, but also one in which you find a way in your spirit to sing out to the giver of every good gift a song of thanksgiving.  here's to a little time of reflection for each of us today, an opportunity to carve out some space for reflecting on the amazingness of this life of ours.  make up a song.  write a poem.  talk to your creator.  just do something to say 'thank you.'  and have a blessed thanksgiving. grace|peace, greg.

just an aisle over from the turkey decorations you can find the stockings and christmas wreaths. it seems that stores continue to start the “holiday” season earlier and earlier each year. and it’s not just the stores:  last tuesday night my kids watched a christmas special on tv!  as much as i don’t like the commercialization, there is one thing i actually enjoy about the early start to the christmas season: it gives us more time to anticipate. we don’t normally think of anticipation as a good thing, but as advent begins on sunday, i need to remind myself that anticipation is a great thing during this season. advent is a time to eagerly wait for the coming of Jesus into my heart once again. but i don’t particularly like waiting and anticipating. it doesn’t fit well with my “everything now” lifestyle. i remember when shannon and i were engaged for 14 months, but living 6 hours apart from one another while...

well, monday morning has arrived, and so has my lovely wife from her weekend in atlanta.  beyond the happy reunion of seeing someone you miss, this is significant for another reason as well:  both of my children and (perhaps more significantly) myself survived the weekend.  and by that i mean that we were all alive right now.  maybe a little worse for the wear.  but still living.  i call it success.  it was close as we almost had at least one case of general tso's overload, but we survived that one.  i even got them dressed and to church early yesterday, which was quite the accomplishment!  i thought they looked pretty cute, too!  evidence: but seriously, this weekend i gave great thanks for shannon and for the man-to-man defense that we normally employ in parenting.  this zone defense was exhausting.  i have all the respect in the world for single parents.  i'm not sure i could do it fulltime.  have...

its currently naptime here in the milinovich house.  which means i finally have a chance to look at my blog.  its been a crazy day.  my wife left early this morning for hotlanta (i will spare you the "real housewife in atlanta" jokes), and so it is just us guys here this weekend.  which is awesome.  we've been building puzzles and playing with legos and doing all the cool guy stuff.  but it also presents a problem:  what do you cook for such a testerone-fueled crowd, especially when the "chef" has difficulty cooking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  answer: exhibit a... i just need to give a huge shout out to general tso right now, whoever you are, if you even are a general.  i don't know what you ever conquered, but i can tell you something right now, you will soon be conquered in my house, because we will all be consuming you in all your mystery meat goodness, with a side of fried rice and egg rolls.  that's right....

even though the ABC network broadcast a christmas special last night, we still have another major holiday to get to first: thanksgiving.  i love thanksgiving, not so much for the decor (turkeys sort of scare me), but for the actual meaning of the season, i.e., giving thanks for the tremendous array of blessings i enjoy in my life, from the huge ones like my family, to the mundane ones like large-handled coffee mugs.  and everything in between.  so, to get things started off... a regular reader of the blog, dlm, recently asked us if we would like a plasma tv.  we have been watching tv on the same sanyo television for our entire marriage and, while it worked just fine, it was a heavy, large beast that no longer showed us the whole picture.  while we were content with it, this gift of a new television was wonderful.  but not only that, in order to receive this gift, our whole entertainment center had to be reconfigured in order to house the plasma tv....

so its tuesday, and i think i'm ready to talk about it.  but i might not be.  so bear with me. yes, i went to pittsburgh (awesome) on sunday, and got to see my sister Mary(awesome).   we went to heinz field (awesome) and enjoyed an incredibly warm and beautiful day (awesome).  we got to the stadium early enough to see the team warming up (awesome):  i'm thinking that they should have stopped right there.  because that was the best they looked all day.  however, the game began and i was screaming my face off.  at one point i looked at Mary and whispered to her that my voice was shot.  this was only 5 minutes into the first quarter.  i'm not joking.  i was worried about not having anything left in the tank for supporting my steelers, but it turned out not to matter because they didn't give me many more opportunities to yell (not awesome).  it was an ugly football game with both teams just trying to grind it...

see that yellow temple of steeler-y goodness?  that's where i'll be tomorrow.  screaming my throat into oblivion as hines and the steelers hopefully rock the faces off the bengals.  like this...

hello readers.  happy friday the 13th, whatever that means.  it is supposed to be dark and rainy all day here in the dirty jerz, so that will at least be appropriate.  although its not the nicest weather, we can't complain really because last weekend we had some of the best november weather ever.  and we enjoyed it by spending a bunch of time outside.  here are a few pics of the kids enjoying the leaves.  here's hoping you enjoy the rest of the fall as much as these guys. 

ARRGGHHHHH!!!!  i feel like everything is a week behind in my life right now.  so, sorry about the delay, but here are a few pics from halloween.  hope you're all enjoying the week.  steelers joy all around. 

it has been an incredible year for me.  at least as far as sports are concerned.  actually, somewhat unbelievable, to be honest.  let's recap... on january 8th of this year, my favorite football team, the florida gators, beat the oklahoma sooners 24-14 to win the bcs championship.  the year was off to a really good start.  but it got better... less than a month later, the steelers wrapped up in an incredible season by winning super bowl 43 and raising the trophy for a sixth time.  a dramatic game that came right down to the wire, this superbowl made me feel so blessed to be a fan of a great franchise.  i even remember saying to shannon that this just might be my year.... and this week completed the hat trick for me as the yankees won the world series of the philadelphia phillies.  as i refleced on what an amazing sports year its been for me, and how rarely the planets must align for this kind of thing to happen, it occured to me th...

i have a bunch of thoughts about my year as a sports fan, but for now let it suffice to say: congratulations to the most storied franchise in the history of sports.  the new york yankees won their 27th world championship last night, bringing it back to the bronx after a nine year hiatus.  i'm exhausted after staying up late watching all the post game stuff, so i don't have a great deal to add right now.  just, this:  tttthhhhhheeeee  yyyyyaaaannnnnkkeeeeeeeess   wwwwwwiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!!!!!!

yesterday was a gorgeous fall day here in north western new jersey, so i decided to take an hour before it got dark (so stinkin' early now!) to rake up some of our leaves.  if you've never been to our house, then you probably don't realize that our house is nestled into a little valley, with a few trees in our front yard, and about 250 of them in the back.  if we don't start raking in mid-october and then keep it up, we often have trouble finding our front door.  i kid, i kid.  but seriously:  lots.of.leaves.  so, i thought i would rake some of them yesterday, thinking that every little bit helps.  so jack came out with me and we worked pretty hard at raking up large piles and putting them on tarps to take up to the road, where they will sit until some leaf-sucking truck comes and carries them to leaf heaven (hell:?).  we were mostly working in the front yard, right along the sidewalk.  after about 45 minutes we had it looking pretty good, a...

as you know, i <3 my ipod.  since i had to have it replaced (hard drive crashed), i've been putting music on it again.  i'm up to about 2,500 songs right now.  which got me thinking about what everyone's most precious songs would be.  so i'm asking you to help me out here:  what ONE SONG should i make sure gets on my ipod?  it doesn't have to be your favorite all time song - it could just be something you're really into right now.  but you can only tell me one song.  c'mon people.  what's it going to be?  what's your one song right now?

so, i'm tired this morning.  it is the classic monday morning here at the milinovich house.  it feels less like just another day on the calendar and more like an alex rodriguez swing to the face.  so, if you're going to read this, please have very low expectations.  had a very good, yet busy weekend.  unfortunately, however, i didn't get much in the way of pictures to demonstrate it.  my parents were here from pittsburgh for a short visit, and so we spent a good bit of time just hanging out with meemaw and pappy.  friday jackson had a little mini-parade and halloween production at school, so we all went to see that.  then i had a wedding rehearsal that evening, before we all went to cracker barrel for dinner (mmm...chicken fried chicken).   saturday included the wedding (the bride nearly passed out - at a halloween wedding! ), and trick-or-treating.  luckily the rain mostly held off and the boys seemed to have a great time in thei...