We've had snow all week long - started a bit on Monday morning and it has been VERY cold all week, with lows well below zero. The big snow was on Tuesday, with about 2-3 inches. On Friday, we warmed up a bit, even got to the upper 20's and it felt pretty good. However, I was stuck at work ALL day. The original plan for Friday was about a half day of work and then I was going to head out to the Pawnee National Grasslands for our 1st annual Pawnee Campout. However, with the very cold weather and another 2-3 inches of snow on Saturday, everyone backed out, so we postponed the campout until next weekend. It will be MUCH harder for me to attend next weekend since we get back from China right in time for me to go camping. I'm going to be VERY exhausted - but it should be really fun!
Although the campout was cancelled and I was honestly pretty bummed about it, I'm very happy with the way things turned out. Friday, insead of being an "easy" day, turned out to be a VERY tough and long day. I was supposed to meet Amy, Aubrey and Jarrett for lunch, but was held back by meetings with Frank & Greg. From that meeting, I was asked to give Francis a call and he answered, so I spent a good 30 minutes with Francis - taking tons of action items along the way. That meetings spawned more meetings and I ended up working until 7pm. Definitely the longest Friday I've had at work in a long time. But, it turned out really well. I reset the schedules for both Davos and Lacrosse and we are re-aligned with Cisco on both fronts. I even spent a bit of time on the phone with Frank and Greg to bring them up to speed with the alignment. Honestly, I should have pro-actively done this on my own ahead of time, but with the colonoscopy on Thursday, I just didn't have time through the week until Friday PM. The big challenge now will be to keep the momentum up during this next week while I'm in China. I'm going to need to force Gary to give me daily updates that I wil forward to Francis starting next week. We'll see how that turns out.
Anyway, after work, I met up with the family at the Hawk Fest at Severance Middle School. We've gone in the past as they middle school puts on a little carnival for the elementary school kids. This year, we actually have Ashtyn at the middle school, so it made it even more fun to go. With work, I was a bit late, but was there in time to see Amy spend over $300 on cakes in the auction. I'm glad she did though - it was fun for her and the money goes to the school, which is awesome. I ended up grabbing Aubrey and Jantzen and the three of us went to see "Big Hero 6" at the theater. It was a fantastic movie and we enjoyed spending time together. The "fun" part was at the end of the show. There's a scene where BAYMAX is lost and you think he's lost forever (turns out that since he's a robot, Hero just rebuilds him and everything is cool). But, during this scene, I could tell that Aubrey was getting a little sad and she was crying. So, during the credits, I cuddled with her (this is getting harder to do - she's getting pretty tall). As we were cuddling, she let me know that her head was hurting and she didn't feel good. With that, I decided to get us out of there quickly so that i could get her to bed. It was nearly 10pm, which is WAY late for these two little kids. As we were walking down the hallway to stop by the restrooms, whe puked ALL over both of us. Wild Cherry ICE flavored! Not much fell on the floor, but it was all over us. Incredibly, I don't think anyone saw it happen and the theater was slammed! So, I cleaned us up a bit in the bathroom and we headed home. Amy helped us both get cleaned up and we went to bed. It was a crazy night!
Saturday was pretty nice - snow falling for most of the day - a lazy morning before we left for shopping at around 11am. We had three goals for the day:
- Operation Christmas Child - for the first year, we've decided to join Operation Christmas Child. For our contributions, we stuffed 4 shoe-boxes full of presents - one for each of the 4 older kids. We asked each kid to shop for, pack and prepare a shoebox for a child their age. They had a ton of fun doing this and it was really neat to watch them work together on this. After packing the boxes, they each wrote a little note to go along with the boxes. I was very proud of their efforts and you could tell that they enjoyed doing it. Here's a photo of them working together to pack the boxes:
- Shopping, Jantzen birthday party & haircut - these activities all took place between 1pm - 3pm. Amy was hoping to find some clothes for Alyssa, especially since Ashtyn was able to get some shopping done with Amy a couple weeks ago. Jantzen had a great party with Ethan Sadler and I was able to get my haircut. Honestly, I think it is a little shorter than I like, but it's not bad. I had a great time speaking with the Vietnamese lady who cut my hair. It was fun.
- Dining room table shopping. We've been wanting a bigger table for a long time and we finally went out and did a little shopping. First, we stopped by Ethan Allen - very expensive and we didn't really find anything we liked. Next, after stopping by Starbuck's and picking up Jantzen from his party, we visited the Amish Showcase. I was expecting a much larger showroom - it was pretty small. But, we did learn a bunch and they have really great furniture, but you pay for it. Finally, we decided to just drop by AFW and we found a table in no time. The great news is that with shipping and delivery, the cost was right at $2000. This is less than we spend on the old table, I think. We plan to sell that one on Craig's list for about $800 - so we should come out ahead.
- Finally, before packing and hitting the sack - we had a family movie night in the basement. We enjoyed "How to Train Your Dragon 2" together. Super fun movie!
- Now - I'm sitting on a plane to Chicago, on Sunday morning, on my way to Hong Kong, where we will take a limo into Shenzen. Should be a VERY long week - we will also be heading the Shanghai on Wednesday.
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