You can see that Darla has been at work with her Christmas hats forcing everyone to put on the hats and be jolly. There is also a picture of the boys with their new Olympic shirts from Dad. Darla told them to pose for a picture and Daniel went and grabbed the US Flag from the front of our house. I guess he wanted to make sure that Dad knew which country has their allegiance. We spent Christmas Eve up in Paradise with Darla's parents, Earl and Frances. We had a mid afternoon meal of ham and then went to their 6 PM Christmas Eve service at Paradise Alliance Church. We returned home, visited and had a nice dessert before heading back the 90 minutes to Roseville. I talked to Jennifer on the drive home from work and she had just put Samantha down for a nap and they were going to open presents when she woke up. Jen had taken Samantha to a "Build-A-Bear" shop and Samantha picked out Alvin (from the Chipmunks) and they built an Alvin teddy bear and also bought his sweater with the "A" on the front. She had taken her that day to see the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, Samantha's first movie in a theater. She said she did really well and enjoyed the movie, but kept wanting to get up and dance to the music like she does with her DVDs at home. Jennifer ended up standing along the side of the theater with other parents of toddlers who couldn't sit still in the theater.
On Friday, Christmas Day we awoke at the crack of 9 AM and Darla fixed a ham, mushroom and cheese quiche and David made me some decaf coffee in his new coffee press. We opened gifts and the boys were off to see their Dad by 11AM. I bought Darla a new Wii as well as a dual charger fro her i-phone and a 4 hour housecleaning certificate for the house. We are having a gang over on New Years' Day and we want the house detailed before they arrive. We may sign up to have the housecleaning service come in and do the heavy duty cleaning once a month (baseboards, fans, oil the cabinets, dust the blinds and windowsills, scrub the toilets and sinks, showers, etc.) The cleaning crew will be in on Wednesday to clean the house.
We left the house about noon and headed over to my work to pick up a book that I'd left in my office and then headed over to Don and Alicia's house. Don was fixing a turkey and I prefer turkey on Christmas, so it was a slam dunk. Don is from the mid-west and wanted to see snow on Christmas day, so we packed up the car with coats, scarves, hats and gloves and drove 50 minutes up Highway 50 above Placerville and Myers to a campground that is closed for the Winter. We drove in and hiked back to the river and up above the campground. You can see that I put on my ear covering in the picture by the moss covered trees as the temperatures were dropping. You can also see by the pictures of Darla and I and Alicia and Darla that it was a beautiful day on Christmas.
The title of this blog is in reference to the temperatures that dipped today into the mid forties as I went out and played golf. We endured a one hour frost delay in the early morning and finally tee off a little after 9 AM. I've been struggling with the colder temps and the fact that the ball doesn't travel in below fifty temperatures. It all came back together today and I shot 41+42=83 at Cherry Island in Elverta. It was cold and I kept having to put on my ear covering and then I'd get hot and take it off and then get cold again. It was a bit of a nuisance really. I plan to take Don out golfing next weekend as Alicia has a shower at our house on Saturday afternoon and we will head up into the foothills above Lodi to Valley Springs and play La Contenta.
It will be nice to put the holidays behind us and move on to the new year as our business has fallen off over the end of December as so many people are off work and on holiday. Darla and I will be in Mexico from January 6th -10th and I look forward to getting some nice hot sun on my cold skin for a few days before we return back to reality. The following weekend is Alicia and Don's wedding and I will be in Napa at the Silverado Resort on that Friday into Saturday morning with Darla.
In looking back over 2009, it has been a fantastic year for me professionally as our office has grown substantially in 2009 and made a very nice profit for the company. I'm sad that the team in Modesto had to be terminated and that office will close on December 31st. (Pete and I will be there on December 31st to move some items to our assistant underwriter's home and to bring some of the office equipment back to Sacramento). We had several great vacations in 2009 starting with the Bahamas in January, including Almanor with Samantha and Jennifer in July , Colorado with Darryl and Cheryl in September, and culminating in the trip to Nuevo Vallarta with Dad and Shirley and Darryl and Cheryl and our friends, Neil and Lilly, in November. The boys got a year closer to being out of college which warms my heart. We missed Buddy, our dog, who was put down at the end of 2008. It was a good year in many ways and we will lift a glass of sparkling apple cider to the year that was on December 31st.
Well, this is the final blog for 2009 and I want to wish each of you a Happy New Year and God's richest blessings in 2010. Ciao.
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