The Bible-Believing, Bacon-Eating, Blog-Writing, Bald-Preacher

     While listening to the thunder and watching the rain I have been trying to remember a Christmas that was this warm or that had a thunderstorm. I can't remember a Christmas with weather like this but hey, it is Jesus' Party and it can rain if He wants it to. This has been some unusual weather but if it was cold we would be fussing it was to cold to enjoy Christmas. If it was snow instead of rain falling we would be fussing because we couldn't get all the places we wanted to go. Well, some of you would. I think being snowed in on Christmas sounds great.     Besides the weather it is a normal Christmas Eve at the Crouse House. We slept in and made a big breakfast. Abby is in her room watching Christmas movies and has tried to find and figure out what is under the tree with her name on it. Lisa is busy cleaning (as always), baking and worrying if we got everything. I am in the living room watching Sports Center witch is hard to do because Lisa keeps turning up the Christm

     So I was sitting at my desk this morning wondering why everybody was stressing about the coming of Christmas. I said to myself, "This is just the first of December. Why is everybody so stressed out?" A few minutes later as I was planning some events for the first of the year I realized Christmas is a week away. I have to admit I started stressing a little. After all I haven't even asked my wife if we are done with our Christmas shopping yet. Then I remembered how she always lets me know when we are done shopping.  She lets out a big sigh of relief and starts to tell me what we bought for who so I am not totally surprised when they open it. This usually comes right before she tells me we cannot go grocery shopping until January. So since there has been no grocery store ban I guess we are not done yet. So I assume that means another dreadful trip to Hickory to spend two hours at each store hunting an empty parking place. Then another four hours at each store trying

     I don't usually plug places in my blog but today I am. I happen to be in Hickory yesterday at lunch and decided since I had not eaten breakfast it would be a good thing to get a bite to eat. I had no idea where  I wanted to go so as I begin to think of places I decided to try someplace new. The first place I saw that I had not been was Dickey's Barbecue Pit. So I pulled in. As I walked up I could smell smoked meat so I figured I had picked a good place.      I walked in and was immediately greeted by a very nice lady carrying a sign. She welcomed me to Dickey's Barbecue Pit and showed me where to go give my order. She then put her sign at the counter where I was to order. She read the sign to me, "Thank you for your patience, we are in training." I promised I would be patient if they would be patient with me because I had never been there. The nice lady then turned where I could see her nametag and her title was owner. She thanked me for giving the restaur

     It is that time of year again. After spending Thursday being thankful for what we have we spend Friday fighting for the things we don't. We want new things so bad now we can't wait until Friday or even early Friday morning so we don't even take a full day to be thankful. We skip out just after the pumpkin pie to get in line to trade elbows with all the other grateful people. After all we are getting into the "Christmas spirit" to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. If we don't save that $40.00 on that big screen TV it just will not be Christmas. I don't think Jesus wants to take the credit for the season of shopping. He is the reason for Christmas not Black Friday. Retailers and consumers are the reason for that. After all if the consumers didn't buy the retailers wouldn't be open. On the flip side if the retailers didn't open the consumers couldn't buy so there is enough blame to go around to the greedy retailers and the blood

     I started to make the title "A MESSAGE TO ALL THSOE WHO OWN THE MOST DANGEROUS WEAPONS".  By that title you would assume I was talking about guns because they are in the news every time the news is on. Opinions about guns and gun control make an appearance on my Facebook newsfeeds daily. So I have a message for all weapon owners. But before I get to that I want to say that I am a gun owner, carrier, shooter, respecter and I like things that go BOOM! I have not always been all of these except for liking things that go BOOM! Before I became a gun owner I wanted to make sure I was at a point in my life that I could handle the responsibility. I didn't purchase one on the spur of the moment or while I was caught up in an emotional situation. Instead, I learned how to handle one, shoot one and felt comfortable with one before I purchased one. I also take all of the safety precautions I can to make sure no tragic accidents happen. Once I owned one I didn't automatically

     Every year it seems like there is less and less Christ in Christmas. This year it seems to be coming from a lot of different angles or at least the media and whistle blowers want you to believe it is. In a lot of areas of my life I go by the Duck motto (If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, smells like a duck and acts like a duck, its a duck). Even though I am not a big Christmas season person I am a big Christ in Christmas person because that is the only reason we have Christmas, sorry Santa. As I have watched the news the past couple of days and read some stuff on social media I think I am calling some so called attacks on Christmas, a platypus. You know, it kind of looks like a duck and maybe has some duck smells but doesn't sound or act like a duck. Here is what I mean.     Those mean people at Starbucks are attacking Christmas with those red cups. Huh? How can they have just plan red cups? They must hate Christmas. Even though red is a traditional Christmas color

     I think everybody has a friend that they have very little in common with. I know I have one. They like Country Music and I definitely do not. I like going to new restaurants and trying new foods especially if they are spicy. They like to go to the same restaurants to get the same food and it is never spicy. I like sports. I like to watch sports, play sports, talk sports and everything else sports. They could care less about sports. They like the beach and I am more of a mountain man. They like hanging by the pool and shopping. I would rather have a burning stick stuck in my eye than do either of those activities. I enjoy watching movies. They only watch movies on Lifetime (You know the man hating channel.) and Christmas movies. They love Christmas and decorating for Christmas. They even listen to Christmas music all year long. I suffer through Christmas. (See earlier blog.) I think making the bed is optional and a few dirty dishes in the sink never hurt anybody. They clean from su

     I have to admit I have been torn these past few days. I have been a New York Mets fan since my childhood. I used to love Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Doc Gooden but my favorite player was Gary Carter. So I am trilled that they are in the National League Championship Series. On the other hand, one of my favorite movie series is Back To The Future. If you have seen any television lately you know that today is the day our hero Marty McFly traveled to from 1985. People for years people have wondered if the things they saw in the movie would be around when 2015 arrived. Well, for the most part those things have not got here. We don't have the flying cars or hoover boards as good as Marty's was. We do have a chance to see one of the "predictions" come true though and that is the Cubs winning the World Series.      They are battling my Mets in the National League Championship Series but are one game away from being eliminated. So what do I do? Do I pull for

     This morning as I was looking over the church calendar I couldn't help to notice that Christmas was sneaking up on us like a lioness sneaks up on her prey just before she pounces on it. It will not be long until we will be like the small weak wildebeest with no way to get out of the Christmas lioness' razor sharp teeth. In a few weeks we will be driving down the road and notice that the inflatable army made up of inflatable trees, Santas, boxes, polar bears, cartoon characters and snowmen will have arrived. We will not be able to go into any store to buy anything without seeing the signs for Christmas sales. After all every wife wants tires from her husband for Christmas. Every radio station will assume all their listeners will want to hear Christmas tunes so it will take over their playlists. Frosty, Rudolph, Santa, the Elf on the Shelf and Charlie Brown will make their appearances on TV. Every other commercial will be a toy commercial and all of the children on cue will

     One of the biggest trends right now is playing fantasy sports especially fantasy football. This is where you "draft" players to form an imaginary team and you play against other imaginary teams that your friends have drafted. You get points based off of the performance of the players you drafted. The better they do the more points you get and hopefully your team will have more points than your friend's team so that you can take home the victory. I have been playing fantasy sports for many years. I have played fantasy football, basketball, baseball, NASCAR, golf and even though I don't know anything about hockey several years ago I did play hockey on Yahoo Fantasy Sports. I didn't know any of the players, what position they played or if they were any good or not so I drafted random players based on their rank numbers. I drafted the 6th rank player because that has always been my church softball number. I drafted the 22nd ranked player because that is the day I

     This past week I was on vacation at the beach. One of the things I enjoy doing while on vacation is fishing. I am far from a pro so that is why I spend a lot of time fishing and very little time catching. But each year I give it a try. So this year I made my yearly journey to the Walmart at Southport. I am standing in one of their many fishing supplies aisles when an associate turns to me and asks if he could help me. I said, "Sure, I am looking for some hooks." He then inquired what kind of hooks. I gave him a very honest answer, "Cheap ones." He smiled and asked what kind of fish I was wanting to catch. I thought for a moment and again gave him a honest answer, "Live ones." To which he chuckled and begin sharing about the types of hooks. He pointed to one and said it was for flat fish. He pointed to some others and told me they were for fish with bigger teeth. He pointed to some more and told me they were for fish that were in deep water. I honestly

I just got back from visiting the hospital and on my way I swung through Popeye's from some chicken. I was traveling down the road smelling the chicken in seat beside me, texting my daughter and enjoying the beautiful day the Lord has made. Yes, I know, I shouldn't have gotten the chicken to go but I wanted to get back to the office to get started on some things. Oh, yea, I do not usually text my daughter during school but she was in need of some serious Daddy time. Besides, I was letting Siri doing they typing. I just hold the button down and wait for the phone to beep and then I tell it what to type. Now, my phone was definitely made by a person with Northern decent but that is another blog for another day. Back to today.      I was enjoying the cool breeze blowing in the truck when a FedEx truck pulled closely in front of me. When I say close I mean close enough to scare the stinkbug that was sitting on his back bumper. He got so scared he flew all the way back to Caldwell

I had an idea 23 Easters ago for an awesome Easter Basket for the love of my life. I sat down and made a list of items I needed for my totally awesome Easter Basket and I went shopping. Soon I realized my super totally awesome Easter Basket and my not so super not so awesome back account were not on the same page. I was frustrated but not giving up. I made some changes and purchased everything I needed. I had looked for the perfect Easter Basket. The one I had envisioned earlier was huge with lots of room for gifts inside. The one I purchased was deep which was important, but not very big around so it would quickly look full which was helpful. I bought several bags of Easter Basket Grass. I personally hate the stuff but it is a good filler and makes it easier to hide things. So I stuffed the basket full of the grass. I had purchased measured all of the stuff animals that I saw to make sure they would fit in my basket and take up most of the basket. So I had a bunny with a big bottom. I

My mother has always had a creative side to her. Several years ago at Christmas she decided instead of going out and buying gifts for us kids and our spouses she would just give us cash. Now most would spend hours looking for the perfect card to put the money in and write a short sweet note. Not my mother. She spends hours trying to find something she can hide the money in. A couple of years the money was hid in different places in the house. My favorite year was when she gave us a reindeer that when you moved his tail it shot out black gumballs out of well, let's say it shot them out of the south side when it was facing the north. Mom had rolled the money up as small as she could and stuffed it up the south side the north facing reindeer. So we had to stick our fingers in the south side and pull out the money all the while my dad was making comments about how when we were little we thought he could do that anytime we wanted money. My mother cried from laughing so hard at us. She h

     When my daughter was 2 my wife's friend invited our daughter to "Bring a friend to dance class" at Debbie Huffman's Dace Academy. My wife was over joyed and our daughter loved it. So Lisa talked to Mrs. Debbie and arranged for Abby to begin dance class. They were so excited they could  not wait to buy Abby's shoes and leotard so she could get started. I on the other hand was concerned. How was this going to interfere with T-Ball? I finally comforted myself thinking this dance stuff would be good for her footwork and maybe hand-eye coordination. So for the next few years we balanced the two activities. Many times we would take our ball player straight from dance class to the field. We moved from T-Ball to Coach Pitch softball and I was getting more excited. Her last year in Coach Pitch she went on a streak toward the end of the season where she was hitting the ball super hard. She even almost took my head off during one game, but I didn't mind. Everythi