Wind and Wet weather

 

The gazebo has seen better days after this last storm. I had a couple of small tears in the fabric that got just a little bigger after this last storm. I will replace the top this Spring, but not before. Yesterday was a transition day for us as far as weather goes. We had rain overnight that ended about 4 AM Saturday morning and it was a cloudy morning and a sunny afternoon.

 

I did manage to get out and play golf on Saturday with Paul. It was the first Diamond tournament of the year and the tournament had been delayed fro the week before. It was cold and wet early on and warm once the sun came out. I started out with a long sleeve shirt under a golf polo and was sweating by the time we finished the front nine. I struggled all day and shot 45+44=89, but withdrew on the 16th hole when I lost my second shot into a swamp under the trees on the right side of the fairway. It is supposed to be just grass and rough, but he rain has left the ground inundated with rain and it is a sloggy mess. If eache of my fellow competitors agreed that the ball was lost in the mud, I could have taken a drop, but one of the guys hadn't seen my shot so wouldn't agree. I was playing poorly, so decided not t walk back and replay my second shot from the drive position.

 

I have two tournaments this coming weekend, with the RGC Super Bowl event on Saturday and a Super Bowl tournament at Woodcreek on Sunday. The Sunday event is a 4 man scramble and I'm playing with Bryan, Jesse and Paul. It starts with a breakfast buffet, range balls, a bloody Mary bar, followed by appetizers and drawings after the round. Darla has an event at Cal Expo on Sunday and I decided to play both days. Right now it looks like a Sunny and warm weekend ahead. We have 94 players signed up for the Super Bowl event n Saturday at Diamond Oaks.

 

We had a tough start to the year in January and ended up down about $300,000 in premium and $40,000 in income on the month. Our expenses are down, but my budget calls for about a 12% increase this year and a bad January puts us behind the eight ball already. The good news is that Wendy will be back in the office tomorrow after 13 weeks off for her pregnancy. The baby still has some medical issues, but Wendy's mother-in-law will be in town during the week to watch Natalia. Wendy will also work from home for to days a week for the time being. She is smart in that she has a host of marketing calls set up this month and will be busy seeing her agents and letting them know she is back and ready to rock. I have to really push the other underwriters to get out and do more marketing. I've instructed the teams to come to the Wednesday staff meeting with their marketing plans for February. We need to turn this around quickly.

 

I talked to Darryl tonight about their plans to come to Vancouver in march. I found tickets R/T to Seattle on March 4th and back home on March 7th for $345. I texted Darryl and Randy to see what their plans were. I heard crickets. I followed up with Darryl and it looks tough for them with Cheryl having something at work and Darryl having the opening of the season for lawn care in March. Cheryl is looking into whether she can get off or not. I asked him to let me know. Our plan is to be there in March if Darryl or randy make it. If not, we will join Dad and Shirley for a few days up in Whistler in April. Hopefully, they can work it out as it would be nice to be together to celebrate the March birthdays.

 

We were over at Don and Alicia's place for dinner on Saturday night and the couple of pictures from Darla's phone are included above. David continues to say that his goal in 2016 is to find a new job. As a hiring manager, I say "lose the beard".  You get one chance to make a first impression and, unless you are interviewing to join the "Duck Dynasty" group, lose the beard. Don fixed a prime rib and a rack of pork ribs. He also fixed a dish of gnocchi that was awesome. The only downside to the evening was a chair leg broke on the chair I was sitting on at dinner. I felt bad and probably need to do a few more push-ups. Don said the chair and set were old and cheap, but I still felt bad.

 

We stopped on the way home and picked up a dorm refrigerator from my office. I've had it at my desk for years, but Darla would like it for our master bedroom so she can keep her insulin in it. It works for me, because just as I get comfortable in bed, invariably I get, "Hey, Ken, can you get me one of the blue insulin pens from the kitchen?'

 

Well, a short entry this week, but I got started a bit late. I hope you have a good week. Until next week, ciao.

 



Steak and Rice in the oven

Darla has dinner in the oven, the smell of steak an rice is in the air. The end of the Carolina beat down of the Cardinal is almost over. Carson Palmer is trying to throw his fifth interception as he throws the ball down field in a 49-15 route. Cam Newton has already called it a day and helped to douse his coach, Ron Rivera, with a bath of orange Gatorade. There were three quarterbacks in the conference championships over the age of 36 and only one, Peyton Manning, has emerged and will play in the Super Bowl.  Peyton isn't playing because of his abilities, but because his team has the number one defense in football and forced Tom Brady to look mortal today. I would think based on how the teams are playing right now that the Panthers will be favored in the Super Bowl. I'll guess a six point favorite. We'll see. I would not put it past Peyton and the Broncos to win won for the Sheriff.

 

This was a busy weekend with poker on Friday night and golf Saturday. Darla went out with the girls on Friday night. Their plan was to go to dinner and then out to the movie, but the ladies ended up in an epic gabfest and missed the movie. Poker was at John Parola's house here in the neighborhood. I had a poor night with the cards and would have lost big, but hit three pots at the end of the night that shaved my losses to less than $20. It was good catching up with the guys and hearing how the retire guys live their life. John and Camille are looking at buying a new house and moving out of the neighborhood. They had some new furniture in their living room and I envy him. He's retired and his wife was just promoted at PG&E to a management position. She had been in charge of a call center with over 1000 employees and now will be in charge of all of the pay centers in the Western United States. I kid. I wouldn't want to be buying a new house at 65. Darla and I are hard at work paying off bills and planning toward my retirement in about 7and a half years.

 

Darla has a great opportunity with the foster care agency that she works at to take over the agency in the next five years. The two owners now are both in their 70's and depending more on Darla every day. She works part time, but is picking up more of the management of the facility as time goes on. Our biggest concern as I move toward retirement is health coverage for Darla as she is 7 years younger than me. If she is running the agency, she can get her health care paid for by them.

 

I got out of poker a little before midnight and it was absolutely sheeting down rain. I had parked across the street from John's house and was soaked to the bone by the time I got to the car and buckled in. I was pretty sure that golf was out for Saturday. I had signed up for the first Diamond tournament of the year, which are the events that are set u and run by the golf course itself, rather than by our club. Robert from the pro shop called me Friday at work and let me know that the tournament had been delayed until next weekend. Paul and I decided to meet at the course Saturday at 9 AM and see if the rain ad let up enough to play. I got home visited with Darla and was asleep by 1 AM.

 

I woke up Saturday about 7:45 and found a text from Paul that he saw rain coming in about 11 AM and headed to the course at 7:00 AM. It had stopped raining and the current forecast was for scattered showers throughout the morning. Darla had an event at the house and I had to be out from 11 to 2. I decided to go over to the course and see if I could hook up with Paul and play the back nine and then go over to the casino until the coast was clear to head home. I was covering for our club secretary while he is back East and had about 6 new golfers to add to our club handicap system. I got that taken care of and sat and waited for Paul to come around. He came around with the second group that I waited on and I grabbed my gear and headed out to he course. They charged me $20 to play the back nine and off we went. Paul had hooked up with one of our other members, a 79 year old guy who is about a 17 handicap. Joe is a wiry guy who married for the second time at the age of 63. I played really well on the back nine shooting a 39. It started to rain on the 18th hole and we finished up. Paul wanted to play another 9, but the rain seemed to intensify and I suggested lunch and then we'd play it be ear. The rain moved out while we were eating and we decided to play another 9 holes. The course was literally empty. I checked in with the pro shop and they said. "Hey, go play, no charge."

 

I struggled on the front nine that doesn't drain as well as the back side. There were more puddles on the greens and in the fairways and the creek on number four had run over its banks and was rushing across the fairway. I ended up with a sloggy 44 on the front side for 84. I ended up in the sand on three of the holes and it was mostly mud. I have a new sand wedge that I bought specifically to help me get out of the sand. It worked brilliantly on all three holes and it's a great investment. The wedge is a Cleveland Smart Sole wedge.

 

I got back home and sent the next two hours working on the yard, cleaning up downed leaves in the back yard and blowing off the front yard of leaves and twigs from the storm. I also drained about six inches of water off the top of the water. The recent rains have filled the pool over the tile line. It took about 90 minutes to get the waterline down to the correct level. I have a water faucet on the pool pump and filter and just run a hose line to the front yard. Darla still had a few guests at the house and they slowly trickled out as I worked.

 

Today, I cleaned my car. I wanted to completely vacuum the interior and the trunk as my golf cart had let a lot of dirt and mud in the trunk. I cleaned my golf cart and clubs while I was at it. I got the car washed and cleaned and then decided to change out the metal trim on the drivers and passenger doors. I'm really enjoying the new stereo and back-up camera on the 300. I got the Bluetooth set up this week and can now listen to my music and take and make phone calls without hooking up the lightning cable to the phone. I still have to plug it in to use Siri or to use the Apple Play features, including maps and directions.

 

Darla and I went to lunch together on Friday, knowing that she was out with the girls and I had poker. I took her out to Benihana for lunch and we had a table to ourselves. It was nice to have some private time before we went our separate ways that night.

 

Work is going well. We are having an okay month, but Wendy will be back on February 1st. I'm looking forward to getting my entire crew back together and really starting to work hard to get our numbers up. Wendy's numbers are okay, but it will be important for her to get back out doing marketing and seeing her agents to get the flow of business turned back on.

 

It was a nice weekend. The rain has moved on for now and, unfortunately, it's not due back until Friday and then expected to stay throughout next weekend. We need rain, but I'd rather see it rain during the week. The forecast is always in flux, so we'll see how it goes.

 

I hope you all have a good week and enjoy all the friends and family in your life. Ciao.

 



Sleep study in the bag

 

A good, wet weekend is just about completed. The rain is expected to stick around until Tuesday and bring us another two inches of rain. We had rain Thursday, Saturday and today.

 

I got a call on Thursday night on my cell phone. Darla and I were watching TV and my phone rang and she picked it up. It was a Roseville number and a young female voice asked to speak to me. Darla handed me the phone and watched closely as I spoke to the caller. I asked her what I should wear and what time to get there. Darla was a little overly interested in the call. It was the sleep study center just checking in with me. I told Darla that they asked me what I normally slept in and if I slept with anyone in the bed. They waned to bring a surrogate in to make sure the sleep test was accurate. She wasn't amused.

 

Darla had agreed to babysit our nephew Luke overnight at his home as it was Don and Alicia's wedding anniversary. She was in Folsom Friday afternoon to pick Luke up at his day care. I have been looking at getting a backup camera installed in the 300 and to replace the stereo that I have in the 300 now. I picked out a nice Pioneer system with Apple Car Play that allows your iPhone to be mirrored on your video screen on the stereo. The cost at the top stereo shop in Roseville was $1400 and I decided to go over to the local Fry's Electronics store to see what they would charge to do the work. They had a floor model available for a $150 discount and could get the job done for $1000. I decided to pull the trigger on the deal and would drop the car off at 9:30 Saturday morning.

 

I went home, had some dinner, packed up and headed to the Sleep center in Roseville. I stopped at the Best Buy on the way over to pick up an antenna connector that was needed for the stereo shop. I checked in at 8 PM. There were two technicians working the overnight study and were concerned that my ride would be there by 6:30 the next morning as they wanted to go home. I told them my wife was tied up until mid morning and they were both a little concerned. I then asked them if I could just drive the car home that I had parked in the parking lot.

 

The room was about as pedestrian as a Motel 6, with a queen sized bed with no head board or foot board, a small chair and a table. There was also a 19 inch old RCA television with DirecTV hooked up to it. I guess I was the late sleeper as the others were all due to go down at 9 PM and I said my normal sleep pattern was about 11 PM to 6:30 AM. I worked on some paperwork I had and looked at a book from 8 to about 9:15 and then they called me into the lab and hooked me up with all of the sensors and wires. They put 16 sensors on me. They put two on each leg, four on my chest, five on my head and three on my back. They put two straps around my waist and chest to hold all of the wires and a holster around my neck that all of the leads were plugged into. I waddled back to the bathroom and had my last comfort stop before sleep. When I got in bed, they added a sensor under my nose and plugged me into the wall. They also asked that I have "lights out" and try to sleep. It was about 9:40 at that point and I just laid in bed hooked up to wires and sensors and tried to relax and sleep.

 

Then, I heard the sawmill in the room next to me. This Samoan lady was already asleep and snoring like a freight train in the next room over. I wasn't tired to begin with, was a bit uncomfortable especially with the wires that were attached to my head and trailing down my back. I actually took a picture of what I looked like, but when I reviewed it the next morning it scared me, so I'm saving you that image. It took me about 90 minutes of tossing and turning to finally fall asleep. I slept fitfully, waking about every hour or so. I guess I finally settled in after midnight and according to the technicians, I was asleep on my back and snoring consistently. I did stop breathing a couple of times and gasped back awake and then rolled over to fall asleep again. I was awakened at 2:00 AM and had a CPAP machine attached to my nose. They remove the sensor under my nose and the CPAP did it's work pumping fresh air into my nasal cavity. I took about 45 minutes to get used to the machine and fall back asleep, but according to the techs I slept comfortably on my back until 6 AM when they woke me. I didn't stir and slept well. Overall, I was exhausted when I was woken up.

 

The techs removed the sensors from me and told me to go ahead and change clothes. I told the tech I still had a sensor on my back and she said, "Yes, you slept well on your back!". I said no I still have a sensor stuck to my back. They take the sensors and quickly rip them off and leave you cringing. She got that removed. I brushed my teeth, changed, filled out a final report on how I felt I slept and was on the way home. I had a golf game set up, but it was raining and I was exhausted. I headed home and slept until almost 9 AM. I woke with a start, got showered and off to Fry's to drop off the car for the stereo install.

 

Darla and Luke met me a little after 9:30 and we drove home. I offered to buy them breakfast, but they had already eaten so we drove home and I fixed ham and eggs for myself. The phone rang about 10:30 and it was the stereo shop. The floor model that was sold to me was defective and they didn't have another in stock. He offered me a Kenwood that had all of the same features of the Pioneer, except that it had a 6.2 inch screen instead of a 7 inch and not a detachable face. It was $100 more than what I paid, but he wanted me to check it out and if I was game, he'd match the price I paid for the Pioneer. I checked it out on the net and looked at online reviews which were very positive. It was introduced in October 2015, whereas the Pioneer was being fazed out for a new model. I called him back and said "Go for it."

 

We played with Luke and hung out at the house. Two of the guys I was going to golf with showed up at the course and played in the light drizzle. I was happy to be inside and warm and really appreciated the extra sleep. Don and Alicia were irritated that Darla had come home and weren't thrilled about having to come to Roseville to pick Luke up as Don wanted to catch the Kansas City Chiefs game (They lost.) . I let Darla deal with that. They called about 1 PM and the car was ready. Darla dropped me off at Fry's and then drove Luke over to meet his folks. It turns out that the deck that I bought also has a $50 rebate on it, so I got it for $100 less than the store price and get another $50 rebate from Kenwood in the form of a debit card.

 

The system is great and I'm really happy to have the backup camera installed. With the heavy window tint that I have on the car, it's often hard to see people directly behind my car. Darla won't drive it because she thinks it's unsafe. Well, not anymore. The backup camera works good and the stereo is awesome. The fun part of the stereo is that it hooks up to my Siri system on the iPhone and if I want to listen to music, I just say something like, "Play John Mellencamp" and my entire library of music on my iPhone is available to me. The system has a one disk cd player, but it won't be used much as my music is on my phone or in the cloud. It's funny how fast things change. I remember tape decks and eight track players, now everything is digital.

 

I got the budget completed for the office and we have a goal of $28,150,000 this year after finishing 2015 at $26,440,000. We should have no problem hitting this number. I interviewed a young lady from our Woodland Hills office on Friday and will likely hire her in to my office in March. She is moving back to the valley after growing up in Lodi, California and attending the University of California Stanislaus. Harvey will also be meeting with the competitor that I talked to in December. If we hire him, all bets are off on our numbers and we should blow through them.

 

Well, I have poker next weekend and golf Saturday and a golf meeting on Thursday night, so a busy week ahead. I also offered Harvey my help with our new Manager in Fresno completing his budget. If he takes me up on it, I'll be off to Fresno tomorrow. I hope you are all well and wish you a tremendous week. Ciao.

Sleep Study this Friday

 

Yep. Friday night I check in at the Sleep lab here in Roseville and will finally be checked out for sleep apnea. Darla has suffered with my snoring, gasping and stopped breathing for 20 years and I owe it to her to after all this time. I will sleep the first half of the night hooked up to wires and sensors and they will monitor my sleep pattern. They will wake me up half way through the night and put on a CPAP machine and then monitor my sleep for that period of time. Hopefully I handle the machine well and it helps me get better and more refreshing sleep. The CPAP has changed so much over the years and is much less intrusive. With the old one, you couldn't even roll over and had wires and tubes all over the place. I have several friends that use the CPAP machine and absolutely swear by it. We'll see.

 

We have had a ton of rain this month. In fact as of the 9th, we have had more rain in January this month that the four prior Januaries combine. God bless El Nino. We are over 5.5 inches already in January and the snowpack up in Tahoe is at 128% of normal. This won't end our drought, but it will put a big dent in it.

 

I did get a break in the weather on Saturday and was able to play in our Captain and Crew event. My team was weak from the start with me as the lead player. We break our players out A-D/ We had three C's and a D on our team. It changed the last night before we played and we picked up an A player. Jim is a nice guy, about a 9 handicap, but can't hit the ball more than 230 yards off the tee. We had a good time, but ended up with a 68. We were actually 4 under after 7 holes and finished 4 under. Not great.

 

Darla and I were up early today and off to church. We got home about 10:30 and I had an urgent message on my e-mail that our golf club was out of compliance with the USGA and needed to have someone complete the 4 hour handicap seminar by January 30th or we would lose our certification and not be allowed to issue handicaps as of February 1st. I had checked with the NCGA last Fall and was told that we were fine. It turns out that Rick Rusk had taken the seminar last and his certification was good until 2017. The problem is that Rick passed away in 2014 and that doesn't count for our club anymore. Thanks for the heads up. The NCGA actually was the one to contact me. I jumped on the website this morning and spent four hours taking the seminar and ended up getting 88% on the exam and we are now back in compliance. That is four hours that I won't get back, but all hell would have broken loose if our members lost their handicap service as of February 1st. At least the football games were on to keep me from going too bonzo.

 

I took a break later in the afternoon to work on the gutters and downspouts in the backyard. We have gutters over the "L" shape of the house that fronts the pool and the corner turns along the master bedroom. We have a high ceilinged home and the trees from the front and side of the house blow leaves onto the roof and down on the back side of the house. Even with the leaf guard covers, the leaves break down and cause mud and debris to clog the downspouts. I had cleared out the downspouts twice this year, but a lot of the debris and mud were dammed up before the turn of the corner and the water was pouring down on the bay window off the kitchen. It is a bad design because I have always had problem with the gutters overflowing at that spot, to the point that I had wet rot all around the bay window that I had repaired this past Spring. I cleared it out as best as I could today without taking off all of the gutter covers which are metal screening and screwed down about every 12 inches. I got the car washed before I came in.

 

Work is really busy right now and hard to stay on top of everything I've got on my plate. I'm working on reviews that are due Friday and then have the budget due on January 20th. I have a lunch for the office on Wednesday for hitting our budget in December. I'm buying everyone lunch at Macaroni Grill. I'm still handling Wendy's desk, so I'm busy.

 

Tuesday, I'm taking the 300 in for new shocks and struts. I'm ready for the ride to get back to that pillow soft ride I bought five years ago. The shocks are over 10 years old and I'm really looking forward to getting this installation done. I'm also looking at having a new sound system installed along with a back-up camera around my birthday. I have the windows tinted pretty heavily and backing up is an issue with my car.

 

I am taking my clubs and golf clothes on Friday night. They kick me out of the clinic at 6 AM and I have the second tee time at Woodcreek on Saturday morning with Neil, Bryan and Jesse. Right now it looks like rain, so we may not play, but its a week away. We'll see.

 

Glad to see that Dad made it through his cancer surgery cancer free. He is stitched up like a major league baseball, but prognosis is good and I probably know more about his surgery than I should, but seeing the pictures and his drawings of the cancer cells and the roto-rooter of clearing out the tentacles will hopefully keep an extra layer of sunscreen and a hat on my head. Get well soon, Dad. We love you!

 

It's late, I'm tired so I will bring this to a close. Have a great week. Ciao.

 

 

 



Another Year has come and gone

 

As I have mentioned before, turning the page on 2015 did not see many tears shed on my part. It was a good year personally and a challenging year professionally. We did finish 2015 strong as Pete and his assistant worked until the 11th hour on December 31st to close a $252,000 account. We got it, then lost it, then renegotiated and finally closed the deal late in the day. It was pretty quiet after noon on New Years Eve and the staff was itching to head off to their holiday. I finally called everyone together (all 10 of the skeleton crew) about three and told them that as soon as all binders were processed and the two refrigerators in the office were cleared out and wiped down, that they could go home. I've never seen people move so fast. In fact, Shawna, my Operations Manager, had some chicken in the kitchen refrigerator that was tossed before she had a chance to grab it. It was her lunch and she was obviously planning a late lunch that day. I felt bad and gave her $5.00 to buy a hamburger. We finished with a record December and over $300,000 in income to the office. I will be buying the staff a lunch at the Macaroni Grill here in the New Year, the first of many, I hope.

 

I am working on the office budget and corporate sent the templates out really late this year. I've asked each of the teams to give me their projections for 2016 and I will then massage those numbers before sending in the final budget. It is due on January 20th, Darryl's 60th birthday. I have asked the teams to have me their numbers by this coming Friday. I'm also in the middle of reviews and have to take on a couple of extra reviews as Wendy is still out on her extended maternity leave. All of that and I'm still the lead underwriter on Wendy's book of business. I've mentioned before that it is good for me to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty doing some real underwriting again. I get involved in the larger accounts in the office, but it had been awhile since I was working on $1200 heating and air guys. I had a couple of the underwriters and assistants giving "Train the VP" sessions for awhile to get ne up to speed on some of the new rating platforms, but it all worked out. Her numbers are down, but this is a relationship business and her clients are slow to get back to their former flow of business. Hopefully that is more a sign of her relationship strength than any weakness in mine.

 

I've included some pictures from my golf trip up to Grass Valley and the scenic Alta Vista Country Club. It is about 18 miles Northeast of Roseville and up in the pines. The course was beautiful and I had a great time last Tuesday afternoon playing golf with one of my agent buddies from Rocklin. Doug also attends our church and is a Godly man. I had a blast with he and two of his good friends. I drove them all up to the course and was the youngest by about ten years. At my age, that's a good day.

 

The bottom picture is of a photo collage that Darla put together and hung in the guest bathroom in the hall leading to the garage. We are keeping our memories of the family trip to Mexico alive here in Roseville. As I look back on the trip I'm amazed that we were able to get every one's schedules to coincide. I guess a free condo in Mexico helped that cause. I know they would all be on board for doing it again. We would only need to say the word. 

 

Darla and I plan to be back in Mexico later in the year, but also plan to take a trip in August back to Hawaii. Daniel and Becky have a bunch of airline miles and have offered us a trip for our 20th wedding anniversary. We are looking at dates now, but will be back to our time share in Kauai for only the second time since we bought it in 1999. We have since bought timeshares in Mexico and the cost of living is so much less there and the ease of travel from the west coast so much better. We have traded the Kauai time share every year for other accommodations and Becky and Daniel used it for the honeymoon two years ago.

 

Darla is coming off a nasty cold that she picked up at Don and Alicia's on Christmas day. We had a 7 rib Prime Rib that was destined for our New Years Day party and we had to cancel as Darla got progressively worse during the week. She started out with sniffles, then a sore throat, chills and finally a bad cough. She is finally starting to feel better and we ventured out for dinner last night at Benihanas. I took second place in my office fantasy football league this year and used the $70 to take Darla to dinner. I also have six $10 off cards for Benihanas that I got when I bought gift cards for the staff. I was able to use 2 of those last night. We even brought home an extra large serving of the  chicken fried rice and had that today as I watched to final weekend of NFL action.

 

 

 

I had to work on the handicapping for our first golf tournament of the year today. Neil is back in as our Tournament Director, so it will be good working with him again. John Parola is our VP this year and John is a good friend of mine who I play poker with. He s the cousin of Steve, who also plays poker and is often my partner on Best ball golf events. We played in the NCGA qualifier in Santa Clara this year.

 

Darla and I bought a new pre-lit Christmas tree after the holiday this year. Our old one had a strand of lights on the pre-lit tree that didn't work anymore. I was looking at Big Lots and they had all of their trees half off. We went over on New Years and looked at them and Darla wasn't impressed. The trees were $80-$100 after the 50% off. We drove over to Home Depot and they had the perfect tree for $75 (half off from $150. We didn't realize that the half off was off the discounted price and got a new 8 foot tree for $37.50. I think that was a God thing. Darla plans to keep both trees and put one on the front window and the new one in our family room. Maybe next year we'll actually have some gifts beneath the tree, too.

 

Well, that is it for now. We are still discussing a trip to Canada in either March or April this year. It depends on whether Jennifer and McKenny can join us. Dad and Shirley have a condo up in Whistler in April that I might enjoy. It all depends on whether Jennifer, McKenny and Samantha can join us. If so, we will go to Surrey and let them see Vancouver and the surrounding area. I hope the New Year is treating everyone well. Take Care. Ciao.