Holiday Preparations

A little less than one week until Christmas and so much needs to be done! (Isn't that true of all of us, though?) Kristen is taking all of Christmas week off to play with her family, specifically, Mom, Dad, Jenny, and Alex. Unfortunately, Marty has to work at his seasonal job, but we're sure he'll be there in spirit.

The Board held there last big class for the year, so Thursday and Friday were slow, which makes for a nice change. Thursday was the Board Staff Holiday Party. They shut down the board office for a few hours and treated the staff to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. After lunch, they all headed over to the mall right next door and were each given money for a one-hour shopping spree. The stipulations were: 1) the money had to be spent on the staff person, not on gifts for anybody else and, 2) whatever was left over had to be returned. Kristen made out pretty well, she had her money spent within the first 10 minutes when she started walking down the mall, look into windows and came across the Verizon kiosk. She remembered that she was in need of a replacement blue tooth headset for her phone and purchased one along with a phone charger for the car. The remaining money was pooled in with her friend Jen and they each got a Godiva chocolate, strawberry truffle was the one Kristen selected. Scott also had his company holiday party in Salt Lake where they were treated to lunch and participated in drawings for prizes: Scott won a gift card to Home Depot. He also got to take home a Christmas ham that we can all enjoy on Christmas Eve.

Friday, northern Utah was hit with a huge snow storm. The Board closed early in order to give the staff extra time to get home safely. It took Kristen almost an hour and a half (and not even during rush-hour traffic) to get home whereas it would have normally taken about 30 minutes leaving earlier in the day. Scott's commute was much more tedious as he had to drive back from Park City. It took Scott almost three hours to get home! We're both glad that we were able to make it home safely.

Saturday will be spent working on homework and clearning out spare rooms to make room for extra beds. We hope to purchase a queen size bed from my friends father in-law, either Saturday or Sunday, for my parents. We are also looking into a twin size bed or a roll-away bed for Alex or Jenny. We'll see how it all works out. They are young and agile and can probably handle sleeping on the floor with a sleeping bag and pad, LOL. Oh, we may just even get our tree up! (We know, slackers!)