Still here....

Yup, I'm still alive. Just haven't had much time to visit Blog Land lately. If you read Sarah's posts you know we have been hyper-busy. Today is pretty quiet though so why not bust out a quick blog right?

Jaden and I finally got our hair cut last night. HALLELUJAH!!!! We are no longer shaggy wolfman beasts. I was to the point where I was ready to take the clippers and just buzz both our hairy noggins....but my wife, being the wise woman she is, put a stop to that right quick.

We took the kids out and finished up their Christmas shopping last night too. They had fun picking stuff out for each other and for Sarah and I. They are quite the avid shoppers! So now we are "officially" done with all our shopping. Just a few more things to wrap and then "that's a wrap", HAHAHA!

I had my performance review at work this week and got great marks and a high rating. Always more to improve on so of course I have some goals to work towards next year also. Looks like they want me to start heading into more project management/transition work so I'll probably be heading in that direction too. The great news is the company approved bonuses this year! Its been a rough year and we weren't really expecting a lot, but I was actually very surprised at what we got. Unfortunately its pretty much all spoken for since we need new tires on the car and some maintenance, but thank God for providing the means!

In other news, sort of related, my vacation starts on Friday!! WOO HOO!!!!!!!! Man do I need a break. I'll be off until Jan. 5th and I am so flippin' excited I could explode. Its pretty much the only real vacation I've been able to take this year where I can completely disconnect from anything even remotely work related. That is a truly great thing! No cell phone, no laptop, no being on-call....ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. I'll be kicking things off on Friday night with Ashley's TBQ Christmas party. I have somehow been convinced to participate in the talent show portion where we have to perform to an assigned solo and group song. Its gonna be fun though. Then on Saturday, I'm meeting my buddy Jason for breakfast in the morning. We're going to some place downtown called Goldy's that is supposed to be amazing. After that we're catching Avatar at the IMAX in 3-D which should be totally awesome! Super stoked for that. And finally, on Saturday night we have the annual Christmas party at the Scott's house. Always a good time filled with friends and family, food and fun. Not a bad way to kick off a vacation if you ask me.

Next week will be pretty busy but still fun. We're going to my cousin's house on Wednesday to make the tamales for Christmas Eve, then back there again on Christmas Eve night for our celebration with my dad's side of the family. We're staying the night at Sarah's parent's house on Christmas Eve and spending Christmas day over there. Then the day after Christmas we're going to my grandparent's house to have Christmas with my mom's side of the family. Busy times but it will be great to hang out and visit with everyone. Then its on to my birthday....not totally sure yet what we're doing for that with the family, but I think I'm gonna have a dude's party over here the following weekend. Should be good times, even though I'll be a year older...boo.

Other than that (yeah right, will there be any time left? lol) we're just planning on relaxing and spending time together enjoying our vacation. I'm hoping I get some time to finish my book too. I've been reading the new Stephen King novel "Under the Dome"....great book so far but its LOOOOOOOOOONG! 1000+ pages! I'm a busy dude and the Kuna library only checks out for 2 weeks at a time so even reading as much as I could I was just a little over halfway finished when it came due. I tried to renew it but there were like 5 people with it on reserve so they wouldn't. I didn't really want to wait over a month to finish it so I was bad and decided to keep it and just pay the late fees. Now I'm under the gun to finish though so I gots to be speedy! Only got about 300 more pages to go though so I should be done soon.

Well, that's it for now. In the words of Tiny Tim, "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!". See ya'll around blog-ville!