Happy holidays Indeed!

Another week has gone by and another holiday party is in the books. I hosted our first Holiday Open House at work on Thursday night and it was a tremendous success. We had over 125 guests  come and enjoy the food, beverages and conversation. You can even see in the last picture that the bosses' wife even showed up and was part of the fun. I took the Executive Vice President, Ron,  of one of our largest retailers and his wife out to dinner after the party and Darla, Matt, Harvey and Pete joined us at Sammy's Rockin' Island Grill in Roseville for some dinner and conversation.

The top picture above is of my entire staff  and we are using this picture as our Holiday card this year. I enlarged the photo and used it in a photo card that I'll pick up on Tuesday at Costco. We had a great time and even met one of our company VPs for breakfast on Friday morning. Harvey stayed over Thursday night and spent a little time after breakfast with some of our newer employees. We had five of our insurance companies send Managers to our party and four of the five flew in and back on the same day, which was a tremendous honor to me. The party went really well and the food and drink were plentiful. I did not have to send anyone out to get more beer or wine and planned that well. Also, I had two of my carriers give me $250 which paid for all of the beverages.

The staff was great. I had spent time ahead of the party to coach them about making sure to meet and greet each of the guests as they came in and to offer to get them drinks . I also insisted that they remain engaged during the event and that I didn't want to see staff members visiting with each other and they were great about making people comfortable, doing tours of the office, and making sure that our guests were well taken care of.

Well, it has been a month since I was on the golf course. I didn't practice or do anything golf related in the four weeks and I let my heel heal (so to speak). After that kind of a layoff, the rest was evident this weekend. I had a golf board meeting on Saturday followed by golf at Morgan Creek Country Club. I hit a bucket of balls and chipped and putted before the round, but still managed to duck hook my first drive out of bounds. I lost four balls on the front side and shot a 45. I calmed down a little on the back side and shot a 42, but still lost two balls OB on the back. I was happy to have the Saturday round to prepare me for today's tournament, our last of the year. The Dallas-Cincinnati game was on and I sat in the restaurant and watched the first half before teeing off at 11:40 AM.  I hit four drives on the range and headed to the tee. I bogeyed the first hole and then ripped off six pars before bogeying 8 and 9 for a 39. The back side was similar with 4 straight pars followed by bogeys on 4 of the last 5 holes for a 40 and a total of 79. I was thrilled with the round, although I had numerous birdie chances that went unrewarded throughout the day. The short game is the first part of the game to suffer and although I only had one three putt on the day, I also only had four one putts. Bottom line is I took a month off, let my heal get better and then came back and took first place in my first tournament back with a net 68. Good stuff.

I got the Christmas lights up on Saturday afternoon after golf and also got a chance to wash my car. It is nice to have the lights up, the leaves gone and some really good weather after the storm last week. Today was mid sixties under a bright blue sky. The course took a beating last week with the 5 inches of rain in three days, but it is back to green and beautiful although still pretty wet. The rushing water on the course took out one of the foot bridges over the creek on number four. The water actually lifted the bridge up off it's pilings and moved it about a foot. That buckled the wood planks and they have some repairs left to do.

I have a number of Holiday lunches to attend this week and Darla and I will take Jeff and Linda out to dinner in Folsom on Tuesday night. I also have the IBA Sacramento Holiday party on Tuesday and will take another agency to lunch on Wednesday. Saturday we will get together with Neil and Lilly and enjoy a meal out again at Sammy's Bar and Grill here in Roseville.

Darla and I went out on the weekend and got her a new radio for her car that has Bluetooth capability. She got a cell phone ticket a couple of weeks ago and we needed to get her a new radio anyhow, so we combined the two and she now uses her radio to make and receive calls. Merry Christmas, Darla and Daniel gets some benefit out of it because he will take her car when we buy her a new SUV next year.

Well, that is it for this week. I hope you are all getting prepared to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ in a little over two weeks. Be well. Ciao.