Catching Up...

Okay blog, it has been like 3 weeks since my last post. Basically I went to AZ for a week to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and never posted again. I am always so bad at keeping up with this kind of thing. I am going to try harder though. Blogging is kind of fun. SO, that being the case, how about we play the catch up game? Let's do it... So, like I said we went to AZ for a week to be with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was so much fun. I just love spending time with my family. It's kind of a funny thing actually. You see, I have 5 older brothers. I really was only ever "close" to one of the five when it came to having a relationship. My 4 oldest brothers are quite a bit older than me. Basically I never was "friends" with all of them until about a year or two ago, after I got married, moved away to Utah and then moved back closer to Las Vegas. I am just starting to realize now how much fun it is to be a part of a big family. As we all get a little older and start to have so many things in common, we just really enjoy spending time together. So, while I was down in AZ here is a list of some of the fun we had:

• Went with my brother just older than me and saw the Bourne Ultimatum at the dollar theater

• Had a family bowling tournament, complete with a real bowling pin give away to the winner...it's a good thing my beautiful and talented bowler wife Nikki wasn't in town at that point b/c she would have cleaned up and walked away with the pin. We are going to make this a family tradition over the Holiday's and go every year, and pass the pin along to whoever wins.
• Thanksgiving day we of course ate our brains out. We had massive amounts of turkey, honey baked ham, and even prime rib. BUT, even better was that we had our traditional stickball game before dinner. We were short on time this year and had more players than usual, but it was a lot of fun. My team won...WHAT WHAT!!
• After dinner on Thanksgiving day we decided to have a Nintendo Wii tennis tournament...with the entire family. Nicole and I brought our Wii down and everyone got a chance to know how fun a Wii really is, so we broke the family into brackets and teams of 2. Needless to say, my brother Mike, who organized the tourney tried to rig the outcome by giving himself a very good team and very easy competition. They didn't play a team with a member over 8 until they got to the finals, which was against me and my niece Kirsten. Unfortunately, I did have to down my little wifey Nikki along the way, but it was necessary so that me and Kirsten could put the hurt on my brother Mike and cousin Mitch. And oh, WE DID! The game went the distance though, being best of 3 sets with best of 5 games per set. In the end, cheaters never prosper and in this case they don't even win as Kirsten and I reigned victorious and captured the first WimbleDeen title. BOOYA!
• On Saturday, my Dad and all brothers but one who had gone home to Utah went out golfing. This is always one of my favorite events when we go down to Phoenix. I and my brothers are all terrible at golf, but we love going out to knock it around every now and then. I usually suck the least and come out with a "W" but the last 2 times that hasn't been the case. I started off slow as usual, being down by 3 or 4 shots by the time we finished the second hole. My Dad, who was driving in my cart with me but not playing was getting noticeably worried. I kept on telling him that I always pull it together after 4 or 5 holes and then stay pretty consistent which gives me plenty of time to watch everyone else fall apart. He wasn't convinced but nonetheless, things progressed according to my evil plot. I like telling this story as though I am the Emperor from Star Wars. So, in the end, I played like I do, terribly... and everyone else played a little worse and I ended up being able to come out of the a big winner. Who cares right, I just really enjoy being with my family.

Work is busy as usual. I am doing a lot of things right now to get ready for big changes that need to be ready by the end of the year. Tell you what, trying to get people to do things on a tight time table this time of year is like pulling teeth. I traveled to Minnesota last week to enroll a company in a new 401(k) plan. All I have to say is that MN is CHILLY this time of year. Apparently everyone thought I brought the warm weather with me though b/c it was practically 20 degrees the day I was there, where as the night I left it was supposed to be 20 BELOW! I got a pic of the flight departures while in MN. My flight was the one at the very top of the list. Exciting stuff...


One last thing, we got a new car on Saturday. I took a quick photo a few days ago but there will be more to come later. We are pretty excited. It is very fun. A Cadillac CTS. Thanks to the help of family we were able to get the car for a very reasonable price.

MORE PHOTOS to come of all the festivities in AZ. We got a lot of really fun photos.

Oh, and I almost forgot, my Sis. in law Rachel who goes to school at Ole Miss found out yesterday that she did very well in all of her classes in her first semester at college. Congratulations Rachel!! We took her out for Sushi last night to celebrate. It was a lot of fun. She is great.