I STUCK!!!

Flu Shots

Holiday Market Set Up

Thanks to Marilyn Arny, I had a pretty nice set up at the Holiday Market. The appointments came flooding in afterward. It was well worth my time!

Halloween Pics

We made it through Thanksgiving!

I realize I'm late in reporting our Thanksgiving happenings. We had an enjoyable holiday. Cade still thinks we should have gone to the beach this year for Thanksgiving. (FYI... in case some of you are wondering why he wanted this. It's because we rented a cabin in the Asheville, NC mountains last year. Both sets of grandparents spent the week there with us. We also went to the Polar Express last year. So to Cade, dinner at home just didn't top last year's Thanksgiving. Oh well, he has to learn that we don't get it all all of the time!) We did have a great day though. This year, Nola really split up the cooking list, which was nice. I enjoyed adding some of my family’s Thanksgiving tradition dishes. My family always makes 7-up salad. It's a jello salad. I thought most Mormons would have at least heard about this salad. Nope, my family must had made it up. Most that tried it said it was good. Matt and Tia Jolley decide to come down and spend the holiday with us. I was glad that Nola's house was kinda of crowded, because that meant that Matt and Tia stayed with us. It was fun for Trae to play with the boys, and of course, Analise loved to watch and play with their new baby, Kira. We don't ever have company. It got me to really clean out our office. We bought a pretty good sized air mattress to go camping last spring- so we set it up in the office for the them. I hope it wasn't terrible for them. But it did work well, in the sense, that they had their own space. One of these days, we'll have a room for guests. We just haven't a had a huge need for it yet. That afternoon we kept up the Christensen Tradition Craft. Wednesday, Cade comes up to me and asks, "Mom, so what are we doing for our craft this year?" I thought, craft... OH CRAP!!!! I had forgotten. I'm so glad he remembered! (that's why we have kids!) Cheeto came home early from work and we made a mad dash to Micheal's to get the necessary supplies! We made ornaments. They turned out really cute, btw. I bought clear glass craft ornaments, fun christmas paper, and some ribbon. We cut the paper into short strips and rolled them up to fit in the top of the ornaments. We, I, then wrote everyone's name on the front of the ornaments. They really were cute. It was nice because there was no gluing or painting involved. The mess was very minimal. That night, Tia highlighted my and Lettie's hair. Lettie wasn’t sure about it. But it turned our really cute. I had decided I was going to wait to Christmas shop until I looked through the Black Friday adds. Cheeto got me interested in a WiFi printer, since I have a laptop now, printing has been a problem. I found the one we were looking at at Circuit City. I was so excited. It was only $20 off in the add. I thought, $20 is still $20. They opened at 9pm the night of Thanksgiving. Lettie wanted to look at a laptop they had. So Cheeto, Lettie, and I went to Circuit City. The line was ridiculous. I had no idea Thanksgiving shopping lines were so crazy. We decided to try it. Lettie, didn't get her laptop, but we found the printer. I was about 5th in checkout line and it still took forever. I thought, "this is for $20 bucks!" Well, I get up to the checkout and he hands me a $50 rebate receipt. I was stoked! I got the printer for $60. It was normally $130. That made the wait worth while. We got home about 10:30ish. Tia was debating whether to get up early and shop the next morning. We really didn't see anything in the adds to get us to a store bright and early. We did decide to try Target. They had a deal on $4 DVD's. We got there and was home in less than 30 minutes. We then got ready to go the Craftsman Classic out at the colisium. Lettie got strep throat and felt pretty crummy the rest of the weekend. Marcos brought home his Wii and bought a new game called "Guitar Hero." I got home from the colisium and the rest of my family was engulfed in this game. Of course, I got sucked into it! I had to break for a couple of impression appointments that afternoon and an MRI. Who schedules MRI's on Saturday evenings? That's another story. I came home from the MRI, ate dinner with Cheeto and went right back to rockin' the guitar. We are so lame! It is fun though! We decorated our Christmas tree Sunday evening. I had to think of DeDe when I was unpacking it all. Last year, DeDe came by and insisted on helping me get it all packed and put away. I had gallbladder surgery problems for about a month, and she was an awesome friend and helped me get Christmas packed up! I had to smile as I was unpacking it.
I went to my MRI follow-up Monday. The results were good news in the sense that no surgery is required, yet. I have Burcitis. It's just a collection of fluid in the Burca sack. Dr. Supple injected another cortizone shot, against my will. I really don't enjoy them. Cheeto was giving me the look, "we're not leaving until you get the shot!" I was in a lot of pain last night, but feeling much better today. I'm getting much better rotation tonight. My biggest problem is sleeping. I fall asleep and get my arm over my head and then it wakes me up because it's throbbing and doesn't want to go back down. They gave me a sling to sleep in that basically ties my arm to my body. It seemed to work some. I'll probably wake up fighting my arm one of these nights.
Today, was fine. I had another impression appointment. I like that I'm finally getting some work. I think I'm starting to get more optimistic about the whole thing. I don't think I could keep up with this load all of the time, but if it's seasonal I can deal with it. Cheeto is studying like a mad-man to get ready for his test on the 21st. Cade is still enjoying school, Kelson wishes he was in school, and Analise just rules the roost. They all have us laughing and crying constantly! :)

Shhh....I'm Studying

Work & Play
As my final words to the world..."I love you all." As soon as Shena reads this post she is going to kill me. I'm at the office and I'm supposed to be studying for a "CLU" test. And it upsets her when I spend more time here than I should (that's about every day). But my eyes were getting droopy and I needed to do something else for a bit. I made a quick check of our blog and realized that it's almost been a month. I don't want to upset our fan (Lenny: Hey, wasn't that our fan?). You know who you are.

I won't get into details. Here's the long and short, in run-on sentence, poor punctuation and total disregard for uppercase style...ignore all punctuation from this point on...wait this point...ahh...how can I get you to look past the part where I type "this point" to the end of the last three dots...yeah, do that...from this point on...surgery? no luck, doc didn't find squanto - shena recovered, but still having pain when it rains mainly on the plains in spain - a handful of memories is rolling along purdy good, had a holiday market booth a couple weeks, cheeto says it was a smashing success, shena pessimistic, but has no time to blog - introduced ornament hands to the repertoire just for holiday market and sold a bunch of those, very popular - will have done about 100 hands as direct result of holiday market before christmas is here - cheeto working like his family depends on it, right, they do - working hard to build a client base (since you are reading this, who do you know that was recently married? recently divorced? recently had/adopted a child? recently won the lottery? recently won a large cash settlement from the doctor who performed the lobotomy? was recently maimed by an exploding duck?...here's my card, I'd like to talk to them) - boys both played soccer this fall, it was a weekly competition to see who would score more goals between the two of them - analise is learning how to get away with as much as possible by flashing (her smile) - spent time traveling...one weekend in atlanta, another in buena vista, va (home of southern virginia university, the fighting mormons (i think) & headquarters of east coast operations for pinnacle security - if you need a good summer job, let me know, I know a guy) - looking forward to vacation...one week in orlando, fl with the christensen side of the family, sans posterity, (can you say "hello pleasure island"?)...i'm going to show them what i've learned from 'dancing with the stars' - shena and i are still addicted to some of our shows...house, heroes, lost, the office, dancing with the stars, biggest loser, cops, the first 48, i'll let you figure out who watches what show - happy to see my steelers winning games, if you ignore last week vs. the ny jets, and having my heart broken as i watch my panthers get worse as the year goes on (hey vinny, shady acres called, they want their walker back) - enjoying all the new blogs from friends that have recently sprung up... ed & dede plummer, matt & tia jolley, nathan lindsay, aaron & lauren johnston, jimmy & becky adams - what else? now you remember why you liked it better when shena posted...she doesn't ramble and is much less self-centered.

Llano Update (Cheeto's Brood)
I think I've done a good enough job up there for now.

I know most of you hate that I do this, but I'm going to keep doing it...because I like to read it myself. This is MY journal, after all. I glanced back at a posting or two from a while back and saw what I ate. Very interesting. When I think about it, I will be posting my meals. Not to gross you out, but because I like to see the kind of crap I eat. Someday I'll be able to look back and say, "you know what? I think my colon was JUST FINE, until [insert date here]. That was the day I ate [completely disgusting, carb filled, trans filled, whateverelseisbadforyou filled] for dinner. That was what did it. "

So...

Breakfast - more like brunch today...10:00 or so - mini almond joy bar, mini baby ruth (all courtesy of Coit Slack, my little buddy. He went through his Halloween candy and essentially said "one for me, one for mommy's friends at the office (mfato), one for me, one for mfato").

Lunch - corn tortillas with melted shredded cheese (about six of them)...good for the heart I hear, A&W root beer

Dinner - straight mexican, baby....pintos with cheese, on flour tortillas, chicken guiso (meat cooked with vegetables for you whiteys out there), caffeine free coke.

Treats tonight - hmmm...haven't gotten there yet. But I think I hear some hostess cupcakes calling my name, along with the obligatory glass of milk.