What a week!!!

This is a picture from the holidays when my nephew. Jesse, was home. This is the second time he's been home in one year. I was soooooooooo happy to see him. I think about him every day. He officially graduated Army Ranger school. It took him 3 attempts to graduate. I'm proud of him for sticking with it. Most of the guys that fail or get kicked out of class give up and switch their Army career, but not Jesse. The training is VERY difficult, kind of like the training for the Navy Seals. He is stationed in Savannah, GA, which has three Ranger platoons on the base. There is always one of the three platoons in Afghanistan for a 4 month deployment. Jesse's platoon doest go until August, I'm going to be a nervous wreck while he's in Afghanistan. He's a smart kid so he'll do alright.

Work has been VERY stressful the last 2 weeks. I feel like I've been thrown to the wolves. I've been interviewing clients and working at the front desk, which is what I wanted to do right? Oh man! There is so much I still dont know! I can pretty much fake it at the front desk and, I dont mind interviewing clients, but I HATE making mistakes! And I really HATE the way my trainer scowls and frowns at me all the time. She never says anything positive, and she frowns all day long. So can you imagine how much she frowns when I make a mistake?? One of the problems is that I've learned so much over the last 5 months that I cant remember all the details. I have 5 HUGE binders, one from each class on my desk. I'm sure I'll get it eventually. One good thing about my trainer frowning at me so much is that I'm never gonna make the same mistake twice.

I have plenty of friends at work now. I just avoid the people that are unfriendly and concentrate on the nice people. I even laugh out loud at work, sometimes!

I miss you all so much! I hope everyone is doing good! It's not fair, you guys get to hear all my silly stories and I dont hear anything from you!

Oh happy day...I think?

The first picture is a picture of my friends I've been working with at the Mercer St office since 11/30/09. A few of the gals have been in my earlier trainings also. Last Friday was our last day together, and now we're all going back to our own offices. I'm really gonna miss this group! We all are very different but we looked out for each other and helped each other out every day! I wont get this kind of camaraderie back in my office at White Center. The one good thing about going back to my office is now I'm fully trained! So, I can finally see clients. We have two groups of financial workers in my office and we rotate the duties each week. One week, one group sees clients and does interviews all day, and the other group works the front desk, answers phones, and works on the back log of forms that come in. I'm nervous to work the front desk cause all kinds of crazy stuff can happen up there! But I guess I'll be relying on my charm :).

The second picture is of Raymond posing with Michael Mudge's car! Cute!!! One of the many endearing things about Ray is that he likes to take his picture with everyone and everything!!!

For Christmas the little kids received some gifts and a turkey from the Highline Fire Department. I cooked the turkey yesterday and it was yummy. While I was getting the turkey ready I pulled out the neck and the giblets etc. Of course I was ready to throw those nasty things in the garbage. BUT.. Ray grabbed the neck and said he wanted to cook it. No problem....I figure he's going make a soup with it. NOPE! He decides to grill the neck on the electric burner on the stove...I was so startled when I saw him with the neck directly on the burner, I started screaming! OMG! He jumped when I screamed and was trying to figure out what the problem was. He said "It's just like cooking out doors on a fire". He had the burner turned on high and he was flipping the neck over and over and of course it was burning and smoke was filling the kitchen! I begged him to use a fry pan but he was adamant that this was how he wanted to cook it! In the meantime the smoke alarm is going off and now we have the kitchen door open for ventilation. He proceeded to cook the neck this way for about 15 minutes, it was completely blackened when he was done. My eyes were about 10 times their normal size by the end of his cooking adventure. Now the burner is forever encrusted with turkey skin even though Ray insists he thoroughly cleaned the burner. Tonight I cooked chicken, and when I used the big burner the entire kitchen filled up with lovely burnt turkey smoke! Gotta love being married!!!

Savannah's doing really good at Denny Middle School. She's made friends with a nice group of kids. Her grades are good. She's really growing up!

Guess what it's almost February..........and I dont even have to think about Partners with Youth!! It's kind of weird! I feel like something is missing but believe me.....I dont mind that it's missing!