Blessings of Family at Christmas 2014

 

 

Halfway through the kid's visit and we have had a ball so far. Our plans for the next three days: Paradise tomorrow afternoon for dinner with Darla's parents, a snow trip on Tuesday to the Sierra's and San Francisco on Wednesday. The family will drive home on Thursday and have to return the rental car Friday. 

 

We had Neil and Lilly over on Christmas Day for some Christmas cheer, a few appetizers and some Lasagna. I had far too much Sailor Jerry rum and had a bit of a hangover on Friday. We played pool and had a blast together.

 

Friday, Jennifer, Samantha and McKenny arrived about 2:30 from Vegas after driving overnight and we celebrated Samantha's 7th birthday with presents and cake and fun. After that, we celebrated Christmas and did our family gift exchange. Daniel had my name and bought me a pair of Italian loafers that I would never have bought for myself. My first thought was to return them, but I decided to keep them and step out of my rut. They are black lace-ups and have a square face on them. I'll wear them and either look stylish or look like a fool, but I'm branching out, baby.

 

Sam made out like a bandit with Barbie dolls and a Barbie car and games and toys galore. Darla's parents came over along with Don and Alicia to help celebrate and Darla cooked a big Prime Rib dinner for the whole gang. We stayed up and played card games and Sam called her Dad and told him about her big day. The boys built Samantha a fire in our fire pit in the backyard and we made s'mores and then all went into the hot tub.

 

Saturday, we slept in a bit and Jennifer and McKenny went on a morning run with their dog and Darla went and brought Miss Samantha into our room and she watched "SpongeBob Square Pants" on TV. Jen and McKenny got back and they all went into the spa. We had a late breakfast of quiche and then McKenny and I took Sam over to the park across the street and she played on the jungle gym and swings and slides for about an hour and a half. Jen came over with the dog and we headed back to the house and had prime rib dips for lunch.

 

David came over and we packed up and headed to the outside skating rink at Folsom. Sam wore her little skating outfit and was the belle of the rink as she floated along over the ice. At one point, an older kid lost his footing and fell and caused Sam to take a hard fall and she came back crying. She got over it in a hurry and was back skating. Her step father Bill Kuhn showed up and watched her skate and then Jennifer, Samantha and McKenny went over and had dinner with them and celebrated their Christmas. Jennifer has little relationship with Diane's current husband and still gets together on a regular basis with Bill. Bill is one of my insurance agents and I had him quote the insurance for Jennifer's company and he wrote the coverage. He has a large concrete company coming up in May and needs me to help him place the coverage. It is about a $250,000 account and I promised to find him coverage this year.

 

This morning the gang slept in and Darla and I were off to church. McKenny was off to the Bay Area today and a 14 hour gig on the Stanford radio station on a DJ marathon. There are 5 deejays who are each taking one hour stints on the radio and switching off. They were playing from 4 PM this afternoon to six AM tomorrow. He will be back home about 9 tomorrow morning and beat tired.

 

We met Jennifer and Sam at the Black Bear Diner this morning after church or breakfast. We headed back tot he house and I watched the Dallas game on tape and Jennifer and Darla headed to have massages. Sam and I hung out all afternoon and went in the spa together and played games. We were going to go to the park, but Sam got interested in her games and toys and decided just to relax at home. We had a blast today.

 

The boys came over for dinner (tri tip and meatloaf) and we played games after dinner with Sam and just had a great time. We laughed and really enjoyed each other's company.

 

Jennifer is working tomorrow morning and Darla and I will bring Sam into my office and then Darla will take her over to her old office for a visit while I work on my expense account and get that filed. The company owes me over $1000 and I need to get that filed before the end of the calendar year.

 

Well, this is short and sweet and I'm sure I'll make up for it next weekend . I hope you are all doing well and we will talk to Dad and Shirley later in the week. we called over there tonight and they were in the middle of the Miller family reunion. Ciao.  

 

 



"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." John 1:14

 

 

Sammy's 7th birthday today! She had a nice time at her birthday party yesterday. Jennifer and John got together and had a birthday party for Sam at John's Mother's house in Vegas. They hired a "Mad Scientist" and she entertained the kids. Sam got a white coat from the scientist that was about three sizes too large. Sam had a ball as you can see from the pictures. She had her classmates there and some of the kids from the skating club. They had a pinata and cotton candy and birthday cake and prizes and games and a fun time was had by all. Sam is with her dad this weekend, but will be with us all next week as McKenny and Jennifer leave on Christmas night to drive to Roseville. It will be the three of them and their dog, who will travel to Northern California with them.

 

I had a busy week. Darla had her Christmas gathering on Tuesday night at Fat's restaurant in Roseville. Fat's has a Fat Tuesday special going on with 10 plates offered for $10, including a nice Dim Sum basket with pot stickers, crab wontons, shaomai, and taro dumplings. Good stuff. Darla had each of her girls put $10 in the pot and she bought the dim sum and cocktails.

 

Wednesday I was off to Fresno and the retirement of our Managing Director in the Fresno office. Ceil has been with us for over 25 years and joined BW when we bought out Rathbone, King and Seeley. Matt and I met our Assistant Underwriter in Turlock, Veronica, for lunch at 1 PM. She has been having some concerns about her Underwriting team and wanted a chance to talk to us. We met her at the Olive Garden.

 

From there we drove on to Fresno and arrived at the hotel at 3:30, just as the gang from San Francisco (Harvey, Rich, Angela, Gretchen and Gina) were driving up. We got checked in, cleaned up and were on the road to the San Joaquin Country Club by 4:45PM. Harvey had rented a Mercedes SUV and we all drove over together. They had a bar set up with hosted beer and wine and mixed drinks for sale. I had a Corona and visited with some of the agents, even seeing one of the Managers that I used to work under at The Hartford. I took orders from the gang I was hanging with and stood in a moderately long line to corral the drinks. While I was waiting, Gina cut the line and asked me to get her a water. She stayed in line with me and we visited. When we got to the front of the line she ordered a Moscow Mule which ran $12 and (of course) didn't have any money, so I had to play for her drink after she cut the line to get a water. What's up with that. The picture above is of Ceil and I. She has been a long time supporter of mine as I turned the Sacramento office around. She at one time traveled back and forth from Fresno to help run Sacramento and suggested that they close the branch.

 

Matt in my office is taking over the Fresno branch and will be an Assistant Managing Director handling the branch from Sacramento . I guess it is coming full circle. We met with the staff on Thursday morning and Matt had one on one meetings with the underwriters and Managers in the office. I met with a couple of the staff that were having issues with the change and explained Matt's philosophy and told them to hang in there and give him a chance. I was overall impressed with the staff. I had been in the office four years ago when we moved to a paperless environment. At that time, I was unimpressed with the diversity of the staff. It was mostly 30 and 40 year old women. Since that time the staff has gotten much younger and they have about six employees under thirty. The biggest problem they have is lack of production and especially lack of new business writings. In fact, the entire office has written less new business YTD than Matt himself has.

 

We had to be back in Roseville by 3 PM for our gift exchange and we got a late start as Matt had extended meetings and we finally got on the road at 12:30. Neither of us had eaten since we had the breakfast of eggs and toast at the hotel that morning. The staff was enjoying a Christmas pot luck back in the office. My car still has a broken gas gauge (It costs $800 to have it repaired) and I know how many miles I can go when I'm just driving around town. A road trip is a little different and I can generally get about 400 miles in a tank. The problem is that I had three quarters of a tank when I left. We were running late and I planned to stop in Galt for gas. I just drove through Lodi and was in the fast lane when the gas pedal went flat and i was out of gas. I was able to get over and pull off at the Frontage Road in Acampo and drift to the side of the road. Matt wondered what was going on and I told him we were out of gas. It was about 2:15 and we had a good hour drive ahead of us. I called AAA and they gave me a 60 minute estimate to arrive. We were parked across the street from a trailer park and Matt and I decided to go door to door to see if there was anyone with a gas can we could use. The place was mostly deserted, but we walked to the office and there was a very nice lady manager there that took pity on us and gave us a 5 gallon jug of gas. She refused to take any money from us and kept saying "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas". We were able to get about two gallons into the tank and took the gas can back to the park. I called AAA and cancelled the call. I was on my "hands free" and was talking to Matt about getting to a gas station to gas up, when I heard, "I'm still here." It was the AAA operator. I said, "then hang up." He said, "I can't hang up on a customer!" I almost said, "Fine, then you can listen to us for the next hour.', but instead hung up and moved on.

 

We got gas and were back to Roseville by about 3:30 for our gift exchange. I checked my messages quickly and was in the lunch room with a leftover breast of chicken and a glass of milk. We had fun at the gift exchange. I ended up with a "side sleeper" pillow and a $50 gift card to McCormick and Schmick's steakhouse. The top picture is of the gang at work.

 

You can see that Darla has been busy buying more furnishings for our bedroom with a painting for above the bed and a large plate with the colors of our room. We got quite a bit accomplished this weekend with all of the boxes cleared out of the garage and both cars washed, vacuumed and safely stored in the garage. I made a dump run and took our old vertical blinds from our room, a cd case, a desk chair and a lot of old clothes, books and papers from the boys' rooms. All of the stuff fit in the back of our Explorer. We also got a couple of stereos left behind by the boys set up in the house, one in our room and the other in Darla's new office. It was a busy weekend and I got two trips to the hot tub in on Saturday and so far one today.

 

We met with a solar electric contractor on Saturday and looked into a system for the house. The terms were fair, nothing down and the system is paid off by the usage of the system. The problem was the cost of the system which runs $37,000. Comparable systems from other contractors run about $28,000. The program is really good, but the cost of the system is prohibitive.

 

Thrilled that Dallas finished the fight today and won the NFC East. I'm sitting with a Canadian Mist and Ginger Ale and watching Seattle beating Arizona. If they go on and win and Dallas beats Washington next week, we could get a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Here's hoping.

 

Well, that's it for now. I will try to get some time to work on this next weekend (probably after Sam goes to bed). Church was wonderful today and we are looking forward to service on Christmas Eve. Let's all remember the reason for the season. Jesus, our Savior, is being celebrated this week. Ciao.

Getting CLOSER to settled.

 

I say getting closer, because we aren't there yet. I spent last night putting up hardware for curtains and changing out the vertical blinds in the Master Bedroom. I started the morning emptying boxes with the China cabinet being filled back up and Darla's blue delf collection being put in the cabinet in the family room. I tired rather quickly of that and headed out to work on the yard. The inundation of leaves from the grove in the park across the street has ended, but my flowerbeds and plants are still chocked with leaves.

 

We had the "Storm of the Decade" on Thursday or so it was promised. We had almost 2 and a half inches of rain over a 24 hour period and some high winds, but it was completely overhyped locally. This storm did bring a huge mess in San Francisco and the Bay Area, but the storm lost much of it's punch by the time it got to us. I only had seven people in the office on Thursday because of the dire predictions of Armegeddon. I sent a note out to the staff thanking the other six for risking their lives to come in. 

I got the yard done and even got up on the roof and cleared out the screens covering the gutters on the house and then put up the Christmas lights. We have a pretty abbreviated set of decorations this year with our tree up on a pedestal in the living room and only one gift awaiting Samantha from dad and Shirley. We haven't had a chance to wrap any gifts, but we are still having a small Christmas as we did a name draw with the kids this year. Darla has Jennifer and I have David. We will all buy Sam gifts (her birthday is next weekend as well), but we are trying to get Christmas to be more about Christ's birth and less about going into debt.

 

I had my office holiday party this past week and we went bowling again. We rented out the private four lane room at Strikes in Rocklin and spent two and a half hours fighting it out for the annual bowling trophy. I'm happy to say that my team cleaned up this year with a 2 game total of 1310 for the 5 bowlers. It doesn't sound great, but we had two gutter ballers playing on our team. The trophy is on parade with each of my team right now, moving from cubicle to cubicle and will end up in my office.

 

I will be out of town on Wednesday this week as I am heading to Fresno for their holiday party and Ceil, the Managing Director's, retirement. Matt, my Associate Manager, is taking over as the interim Managing Director and I will work with him to manage the office. He will be the lead in name, but I have to keep close to him and all decisions from an employment process will run through me. I plan to be down in Fresno about once a month, but I want to give Matt some rope in running the office. We will meet with the staff on Thursday morning and then drive back for our Christmas pot luck and white elephant gift exchange in the office Thursday afternoon.

 

You can see pictures from Sam's Holiday Ice Show in Vegas. Jennifer posted a video on  Facebook and it shows Sam taking a fall. I missed it the first time I watched it because she bounced up like a yoyo when she hit the ice. She had another performance today and Jen was hoping that she didn't fall. Sam is a great little skater.

 

Well, Dallas and the Eagles is getting ready to start and my attention will be diverted. I will be back at this next weekend. Be well. Ciao. 

 

Settling Back in to Home

 

 

It is a late Thanksgiving dinner tonight as our turkey is cooking away right now. I'm supposed to meet a friend for lunch tomorrow and all I can think of right now is turkey sandwiches. You can see some pictures of the new laminate in both the living room and family room. It really turned out nice. It shows the dust and dirt a lot more, but it so easy to clean with the new steam mop that Darla bought. You can see the crown molding in the living room and the high chair rail in our bedroom. Darla had to go out and buy a new rug for under the pool table, but she got away with it by clearing out my side of the garage on Thursday. They were coming to put the pool table back in and she wanted a new rug to go under it. It looks really nice.  In fact, the whole house really looks nice. It was just really stressful for me to be out of the house and I got kind of cranky. Until the boxes are all emptied and out of the garage, I'll probably still have some comfortableness issues remain. We will have the closets put in on Tuesday and it will be really nice to get our clothes back in our bedroom. We have about a third of our clothes now in the middle bedroom.

The weather this week has helped us get back to almost normal rainfall for the year. It was a really wet storm that brought us almost four inches of rain. I had some company people in on Wednesday and we went to dinner. That was the night that we had flash flood warnings and drains plugged up and water overflowing roadways all over town. We got over two inches of rain that day alone. It felt like Vancouver weather. One of the guys was flying in from Denver and his plane was delayed. He got into the Sac airport at 6:30, but it took him an hour and forty minutes to make the normal 35 minute drive to Roseville from the airport. We had already eaten and left the restaurant by the time he got there at about 8:20 PM.

Both of those guys were in town to teach the two Continuing Education classes that we hosted for our agents. We had a class on Business Interruption in the morning and a class on Inland Marine insurance in the afternoon. We followed that up with a Customer Appreciation party from 4-6 PM back in my office. I was able to show off the new addition to the office and we had one of the water restoration firms that we work with host the open bar back in the office and Jackie, the marketing rep for the company, surprised me with a bottle of Sailor Jerry rum. Shawna had told her that I liked the rum. I'd actually tried it once when we were out with a carrier at our last event and she remembered it. We poured it at the bar and she left the half empty bottle for me afterward. I went to dinner with one of the Executive VPs of Markel, the company that put on the CE courses and some of the staff stayed behind to help clean up from the party. We had a lot of giveaways and gift cards that we raffled off to the agents. it was a success and I had a couple of the agents say that they love our annual parties. The funny thing is that we had a party when we first moved into the office and then again two years later and they all think it is annual. Works for me, but I think that we will do the party annually, we just won't pair it with a CE event. That was a little much. We have our restoration companies falling all over themselves to host the liquor as they want to get in front of the retail agents as well.

I took Friday off and played golf with the Roseville Golf Club board. It was our annual in and out event where the new board and the outgoing board members meet for breakfast and then golf. We still had rain and it was supposed to rain on and off all day. Many of us had taken the day off so we decided to go ahead and play. Only two of the guys opted out of the golf, so there were 13 of us out playing golf. I shot the best round with an 83, 2hich was surprising because there were about four guys playing with better handicaps than me, but the conditions were wet and windy. The rain stayed away for the most part, but we had three separate cells that passed over and dropped rain, the last of which was a hard, drenching rain that had us all out with our umbrellas. Several of the guys were ready to call it a day, but that was early on the front nine and that was the last of the rain for the day. I just had pars and bogeys all day and ended up 11 over par.

Friday night was poker and I almost didn't go. I just didn't feel up to it and I'm enjoying being back in the house. I sucked it up and showed up and was promptly spanked out of about $82. I got there at 7 and we broke for chili and rolls at 9:10 and I had still NOT WON A HAND. I was probably down close to $80 at that point and went on a little run after dinner and kept it from getting too far out of hand. I left at 10:45, which is about an hour earlier than normal, but I was done and moving toward a foul mood and decided to get out while the getting was good.

Saturday night was our RGC Christmas party at Sierra View Country Club. We took some nice pictures at the party. I couldn't wear my Presidential blazer because it is still in storage. I also can't upload any of those pictures because the cord is packed away in one of the boxes in the garage. Our life will get back to normal at some point, but we have to get more boxes unpacked before that happens.

I also had the part for the spa come in and had the spa technician come out and put in the new blower. Darla and I are now happily hitting the spa each night before bed. They got that repaired on Wednesday. I was able to get the leaves and debris cleaned up around the house on Friday afternoon after golf and the pool and back yard cleaned up on Saturday.

Much like Neil Thomas getting married a few years ago to Lilly, who he dated for 25 years, Darla and I finally became members of our church today after being "attenders" for 18 years. We are committed to the changes that are happening at the church and we now have a new name, Hillside Church of Roseville. We have eight campuses with the seven in Texas. We listened to Tommy this morning at church and then joined him for lunch at the church this afternoon for the Membership class. Darla and I joined the church and had our pictures taken afterward.

I had an issue with my 300 about two weeks ago. One of the lifters was sticking and rattling and it sounded horrible. I talked to John Parola, one of my poker buddies and he suggested that I check the oil. I was about two quarts low and the oil wasn't reaching the upper lifters and it was sticking. luckily I caught it quickly before it did any real damage. Being out of the house for 24 days didn't help, but I should be more aware of my oil level. Again, it's fixed and I was just lucky to not cause any serious damage to the engine.

Well, that is it for this week. I will add some of the party pictures next week and be at the keyboard once again. Be well. Ciao.
 

Back Home for the Rest of the Holidays

 

You'd think there was a wedding played out this weekend. You'd be wrong. Daniel and Becky were in town and we finally got a look at the wedding photo website and downloaded a few shots. The website is: http://asiacrosonphotography.pass.us/danielbeckylierly/
Check it out at your leisure, there are a LOT of pictures.

So, yes, we are back in the house and getting back to normal. Most of our belongings are still packed away in the PODs in front of the house, but we have a bed and some furniture to sit in and relax. Somehow, the DirecTV was compromised and I'm waiting for them to come out and hook me back up on Wednesday. How it can be working when they took it down and now it has a cabling problem is beyond me. the tech will get it up and running net week. Sitting through NFL Sunday this weekend was tough without football, but I think I saw enough on Thanksgiving to have my fix. Dallas stunk and then the Forty Niners made it a little more palatable by looking even worse against the Seahawks.

Thanksgiving was not one for the books. Darla's brother in law had Thanksgiving at his house for the fifth straight year and I opted to skip. I've been stressed with all of the problems with the claim and the construction and wanted to take a day to myself. Darla went over and ate the bird and visited with her family. I stayed home and had leftover Chinese Food and watched the ballgames and slept a little bit. We were over to the house on Friday and I got the rest of the crown molding painted and Darla was up in Oroville for an event. I was able to get the family room set up, found the DirecTV problem and got the bedroom ready for sleeping.

Darla and I moved out of the hotel on Saturday morning and drove over to the house with our first load. Darla had brought pictures and calendars and coasters and other things from home trying hard to make the stay in a hotel palatable. Darla did some painting and I cleaned the bathrooms and put all of the switch plates back on the walls I was helping her take down her tape, but every time I touched the tape it was on something she had just freshly painted, so I was banished from that task.

Saturday night we invited David, Daniel, Becky, Darla's folks and Alicia, Don and Luke to go to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Roseville. Don pulled a Ken and stayed home, which was fine. We had a nice feast at the restaurant and Luke enjoyed riding up to the second floor in the old fashioned elevator with a crank handle to operate the gears. I think he took five rides up with various of our group as we kept him entertained. Darla joked that it would have been cheaper to get him an all day wristband rather than pay for each ride (it was free). Darla and I gave up our last night at the hotel to Daniel and Becky so they didn't have to stay at Dan's Dad's house. The gang all came over to the house afterward and got to see the new floors and paint work. We looked at the wedding photos on the big screen and they all pushed off to their various homes.

Darla and I took Darla's folks to church Sunday morning and met David there. We stopped for gas at the Arco up the road that has gas for $2.62 a gallon (cheap for CA) and ran into Dan and Becky. They were up early and headed back to San Jose to go to church with her parents. I commented that it was kind of out of the way for them after the night in the hotel and it turns out that Becky, who is allergic to cats, took a Benadryl before coming to our house and she fell asleep at Steve's house before they could leave for the hotel. Why they went over to Steve's at ten at night is beyond me, but it is what it is.

I didn't get the Blog done last night as I have been working on a book for Samantha for Christmas. She called me one night and asked if I could write her a Christmas story. I asked Jen if she'd rather have a book and worked up a ten chapter book called "Eddie saves Christmas." It is full of pictures and a couple for pictures of Samantha and Darla and I as well. She'll get a kick out of it. I made a 12"x12" hardcover book with both a forward and a final chapter that is a letter to Samantha. I think she'll like it. I ordered it online at lulu.com which is an online book publisher and even got 35% off for ordering it on Thanksgiving weekend.

By the way, Jennifer, Samantha and McKinney will be in California for the week after Christmas. They are even bringing the dog. If we get some snow, we may make a trip up to Lake Tahoe and another chance to play in the snow with Sam. She is a little older this year and my enjoy it even more. Darla and I are planning all sorts of fun while they are here, including a Prime Rib dinner on New Year's Eve. It will be a great family time.

In spite of my pronouncement to be off golf for awhile, I was invited out with the retired gang on Friday morning after Thanksgiving and I played with Boyd, Andy and Jay and shot a respectable 43+39=82. I also take this Friday off and will go with the board at the Roseville Golf Club for an "in and out" breakfast followed by golf . The in and out breakfast is for the incoming board and a thank you to the outgoing officers. We will play golf afterward up at Darkhorse in Auburn, a course that I like, but haven't played particularly well in the past.

Thursday is my office's Continuing Education courses in the morning and afternoon followed by a Client Appreciation event in the afternoon. We have a full bar this year hosted by one of our renovation partners. Our last CE course had appetizers and wine and beer supplied by CPR, the outfit that handled the restoration at our house following the water damage. The evening will be appetizers supplied by one of the catering houses in town and an open bar from 4-6. Right now, DirecTV is here to hook up our two TVs with satellite service so I can watch the Cowboy's-Bears game during the soiree.

Today was a really good day for me. I had the unenviable task of letting one of my employees go/ Am I a sadist and enjoy ruining lives? No. Actually as I was waiting for the overnight package with her check in it, she came into my office and gave me her two week's notice. I accepted and told her that it is our policy to walk out any producers that are going to competitors and that her two week notice was unnecessary. She will have her check in hand tomorrow paid through today which came from Home Office and arrived about an hour ago. We are overnighting it to her house tonight. I felt like running out and getting a lottery ticket or something. Good, clean living, eh?

Well, that is all the news that is fit to print. Darla has a turkey in the fridge that will be all mine next weekend, so I am celebrating next weekend with much to be thankful for. I hope you are all well and living La Vida en Cristo.