Work is CRAZY!!!!

I've started a new entry several times only to be interrupted, so I'm ignoring everything until I get this done. SO I sit here with cold feet because I don't have socks on this morning and my hair is still dripping wet, but I'm determined to do this.

I have gone from processing 4-5 loans a month to around 45 loans a month. I am working from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. some nights. My poor kids haven't had too many decent meals and my house is a wreck. I hired Tyrel to work a couple of hours after school. He loves the money and it helps me out. I also hired a neighbor girl to work a couple of hours 3 days a week. Hopefully when she gets trained, it will give me a little extra time although the loan officers seem to want to double their volume. At least I'm working from home, so I can at least say HI to the kids occasionally.

We have been getting lots of snow here lately. The boys built snow caves for their Young Men activity last night and thought it was great fun! Sledding at the driving range at the golf course here is the #3 spot for sledding in the State of Utah, so that is always fun too!

Basketball season has started, so the 1 free day I have each week (Saturday) is filled with games. I love watching my boys though. Travis has really done well this year. I think his coordination has finally caught up with his growth and he is doing great in all sports he tries this year. He just started a weight training class at school and thinks he is going to love it. Trevin is quite the little defender. This is his first year for Basketball and he always has his long arms out and waving to block the other teams shots.

That is all for now. Life is great and busy!

A Toilet seat????

Sorry if you are a regular reader and have missed us over the past few weeks. LOL, I don't really think we have any regular readers, but we never know.

I managed to get all of my Christmas things done, although I was hemming pajamas on Christmas Eve day and I decided to make some last minute vinyl wall football logos for my boys so I was getting ready up to the last minute.

We spent the Saturday before Christmas with the Evers family where we got the best news ever! Brett and Andrea are expecting a baby. We are so excited for them. That news made our day. We had a great dinner and enjoyed spending time with our family there. All of the boys got air soft gun gear and it was a hit!

The Sunday before Christmas we had the surprise party for Diane and LaMarr's 40th wedding anniversary. That is one of the reasons my life has been so crazy but I couldn't say anything about it earlier. I had to round up table settings, make food assignments, making place cards for the tables and had to have my house clean as well as help scan and get pictures to Jennifer for the video she did. It was great by the way. Here is a picture of the tables. Trevin said our house looked like a 5 star restaurant. Not that he has ever been to a 5 star restaurant to know, but...... We had tables decorated with candles and garland. We used red chargers with clear glass plates and had linen napkins with little name place cards for everyone. We first served a caesar salad to everyone while I started dishing up the main course of chicken parmigan, angel hair pasta, candied carrots and breadsticks. My boys served along with some help from Todd and Ken serving the sparkling cider. It was so cute to see all of the grandkids waiting their turn to give grandpa and grandma a hug.

After dinner we all retired to the theater room for 1 1/2 hours of Jen's video. It was fun to see all of the pictures and video clips. We had some great laughs.

Okay, now we are to Christmas. For Christmas Eve we made waffle cookies for Santa because dad said that is what kind of cookies Santa likes best even though they take more time to make. We read the story in Luke and Sean had each of us tell one of our favorite memories from Christmases past. Is Christmases a word? Anyway, then we opened the PJ's and the boys get to open 1 more gift because they say the PJ's don't count because they know what that is. Then we went upstairs to fill the traditional Santa plate. We give 2 cookies, a piece of string cheese (because of the national dairy association TV commercial from about 10 years ago, sorry if you don't know what I'm talking about) 8 carrots for the reindeer, and a cup of egg nog. Last year we had to make an emergency run to get egg nog because we were out and I forgot to buy more and Trevin was in tears because we couldn't very well leave hot chocolate for Santa because he likes egg nog the best as everyone knows. This year we had plenty because Sean went and bought 5 cartons of the stuff so we would be prepared.

Christmas morning the boys got up around 6:15 an we opened presents. The funniest gift this year (I thought) was the toilet seat that Sean got for Travis. The hinges broke on his old toilet seat a couple of months ago, so Sean got Travis a toilet seat with hydraulic hinges (so it doesn't slam when you close the lid, like a boy ever closes the lid). Tyrel got a flapper valve for his leaky toilet and Trevin got a 3 way lightbulb for his lamp. They all got a PSP game from dad in addition to their home improvement project. So we spent some of our time that day doing home improvement projects. I got a new wonderful heavy duty tripod for my camera that I am so excited about. Sean got gift cards to Cabelas to get a new scope for his gun and a Steelers SUperbowl leather jacket. The biggest hit was the 2 additional Guitar Hero games and an additional guitar. Even I have taken up the habit and can now play on medium. Travis and Tyrel are amazing to watch. I can't believe they can move their fingers that fast. THey are both on the "expert" level.

It was fun to get all of the Christmas cards, letters and pictures from family and friends. THanks to each of you who thought of us this year.

We had our annual New Years Eve party at our house and for some reason were up until 3:30 in the morning. We had some laggers after the fireworks at midnight and then just spent time talking and lost track of time. It was fun. That's all for now. Work has been very busy, so I guess I better get back to it.