During the holiday season everyone is always talking about "giving". Donate you money here and make a contribution there. Especially in these tough financial times, it can be difficult to give to charities and to your family.

However, one thing that many people forget is that they can give something much more valuable and more needed than money: their time. Organizations such as My Possibilities, The SPCA of Texas, and Meals On Wheels are always in need of volunteers especially during the holiday season.

One Thanksgiving several years ago our family spent the holiday in Branson, Missouri. I called the city offices and the chamber of commerce to see if they knew of any volunteer opportunities while we were in town. They told us about a restaurant which served Thanksgiving dinner to anyone that showed up and accepted whatever payment they could make even if it was nothing.

So we loaded the family in the car and went down to see if they could use our help. Jan and I scrubbed pots and pans while Meredith and Carson waited on tables. We did that for a few hours and then got together with Jan's parents for our own dinner. It made for a memorable Thanksgiving.

This holiday think about giving the gift of your time. You will find that you receive so much more than you give.

God Bless Y'all this Christmas!

We recently downloaded the free 30-day trial of a program called Snagit. It has changed the way we do business.

 
It allows you to capture anything from the web, a pdf, or almost any other file and then save it in many file formats - jpg, pdf, etc. You can capture portions of pages and assemble portions of several files or webpages into a new single document.

So, for example, if you want a client's logo to put into a presentation, but their website doesn't allow you to save their logo as a picture, Snagit will do it for you. It's so easy and fast.

We use Snagit all the time and even bought it when the trial ran out.

Click here to learn more.

Reata is growing and we need to hire new advisors. If you know someone with a business-to-business sales background, please send them our way. They don't have to have real estate experience. We'll train them.

Just have them them send us their resumes.

Thanks so much.