Indepence Day was a Party

We had a houseful on July 4th as we had a cookout, swim party and get together with friends from the Golf club. For Darryl and Cheryl and Dad and Shirley, the last picture is of Neil and Lilly who will join us in Nuevo Vallarta in November. We decided to have the party late in the week and I think Darla made phone calls on Thursday night. We called four couples and got a positive response from everyone. Amazing, either our friends have no life or they enjoy our company. I'm hoping the latter applies. We got together about four pm and enjoyed a few hours of pool time with beverages and good conversation and a lot of laughs. I cooked hamburgers and chicken breasts for sandwiches and everyone brought something to share. We had margaritas, beer and soda, bean dip, chips and salsa, some roll up finger sandwiches, pasta salad, potato salad, sloughouse white corn on the cob, fruit salad, cut watermelon as well as two kinds of dessert for later in the evening. Darla had an impromptu jewelry show and we all poured outside at 9:15 PM to watch the fireworks from the park across the street. It was a great time with great friends and we enjoyed ourselves completely.

I did, of course, manage to get in two games of golf this week. I will go into shock next week as we head up to Lake Alamanor and I take a two week sabbatical from golf. I played Friday morning with Boyd, Bob, Phamas, Neil, Rick, Matt, and Mel. Boyd had arranged the tee times at Woodcreek and we put eight balls in a hat and shook out four to determine the teams. Boyd, Phamas, Matt and Rick managed a cool 16 under par between them and my team managed a paltry two under par. Bob shot 78 and I shot 80, but Mel and Neil both shot 100 and killed our chances. Boyd and Matt shot 76, Phamas shot 79 and Rick shot 88. It was fun, but we lost $5 a man. I'd set up a second round at Woodcreek for Saturday and played with Bob Hand, Darren and Gary. I again shot an 80 with three birdies and a 25 foot eagle putt on number 16 that curled out of the hole. My game is pretty strong right now and I am shooting consistently in the low eighties and high 70's.

The weather was nice after the brutality of last week and we enjoyed mid nineties over the weekend and bit cooler day today at 90 degrees. It is supposed to stay in the mid eighties this weekend before jumping back into the nineties next weekend.

We leave for Almanor on Saturday and pick Jennifer and Samantha up from the airport Friday night. Jen and Sam will be with us until Monday night and I will drive back and deliver Jennifer to her Mom. They will spend Tuesday together before Jennifer flies home Tuesday night at 5:00 PM. Jennifer has been working hard latelylately and needs a vacation. We want to spend time with her and Samantha and our family vacation to lake Almanor is a good excuse. We are flying them to California and looking forward to a few days at the lake as an extended family. I ordered a life vest for Samantha from Overtons this weekend that will arrive on Wednesday. She will be able to go on the boat with us and be water safe as we hang out on the water and on the dock. Both boys will be with us as neither has a job this Summer and they are both looking forward to seeing Samantha and spending time with her. I'll have plenty of pictures, but the blog will be late next week. I hope to work on it Tuesday night as I will be at work on Tuesday and Wednesday. I have my assistant leaving after three years with BW and want to see him off. I'm also hoping to have our new employee hired that week and beginning to train.

We've made some wholesale changes at work and shuffled up the underwriting teams. Mel's wife, Cora, will be working with me and all of the other assistants will be juggled from one underwriter to the other. The office is doing well now and I'm trying to find the right mix to take us to the next level. Hopefully, change is not just change, but a significant improvement and a catalyst for higher earnings. We'll see.

Darla and I were both exhausted this morning and slept in missing church. Our pastor is still on vacation and we had a guest speaker, a Christian attorney that Darla and I both know. I'm sure it would have been a good sermon, but we needed our rest after a busy couple of days. Well, that's it for now. i hope to have some pictures of Miss Samantha and Jennifer next week. I hope you are all well and enjoying your independence. It's a great country that we live in. Ciao.