Happy New Year!!!

Hello. I am Mr. Beckett Schreiber, your host. Welcome to 2009!

Wow, I guess I do kind of miss Fantasy Island.

Anyway, the new year has begun and I'm going to try to give a few items reviewing the past year and things coming this year. And I will not try and do it all in one post.

Hopefully, everyone had a fantastic New Year's Eve and a nice, relaxing New Year's Day. We had a nice evening with Sasha's friend Holly coming by and we put together a small spread of food to enjoy.

The kids went to bed nicely after a little food and we snacked on meatballs in General Tso's sauce, buffalo chicken bits, sweet potato fries, and a taco dip. First was a game of Catch Phrase, which Sasha had tracked down that day after my unsuccessful attempt the previous day.

Then we moved on to some dominoes, which Holly kicked major keister without going out! Sasha and I just kept getting stuck with the big point bones, but still a lot of fun.

Finally we wrapped up with Time's Up. Kinda. See we were in the final round of the game, when at 10:30, Alya let out a little cry and then another stronger cry. Sasha went upstairs and then I heard over the monitor, "Jon, come up here right away." [which made me think of Alexander Graham Bell]

My turn to run upstairs to find that Alya had emptied the contents of her stomach all over her bed! My poor little squirrel had lost dinner, but did not lose her cool. While we cleaned her up along with the mess, Alya didn't cry at all. She talked (and shook a little) and allowed herself to be rinsed off and wrapped in blankets. Then after a little rocking with daddy, she returned to a peaceful slumber.

I've got a tough little daughter and I'm very proud of her.

***

January of 2008 found Sasha and I in very different working roles. I was still at Northwestern Mutual and she was working for Jefferson Wells. Her maternity leave with Marcus had just wrapped up and she moved into the new Manpower building downtown.

In the new building, Sasha ran into Angie who had a position open at Manpower and was wondering if I was interested. This was the start of the big change of the year when I sent over my resume to become a Business Analyst at Manpower.

Oh, and Sasha and came in second in our Fantasy Football league, so we had a nice post-holiday ka-ching!

Be seeing you,

Jon