Happy Holidays to all

Well, my time at Amazon came to a close on December 21 and not all to soon.  It was a good experience with lots of lessons learned along with many new friendships.  The Fernley facility hired 267 workampers and 207 made it to the end....kind of tells you it was hard work.  Amazon give us all glowing reports (its only the second year for the program at Fernley) and were really impressed by us "older workers" work ethics. By the end many were grumbling about the cold weather and could not wait to pull out and head for warmer climates.  The Sparks Marina RV park was pretty empty by Thursday morning.

With this blog, I'll try and catch up everyone on what the family is doing.  I didn't send out Christmas letters this year, so the bog will have to be it for Christmas and New Years wishes. I'm not going to include pictures this time, either.

Oldest son Craig arrived from New Mexico a week or so ago and hung out at Jeremy's house in Portola doing their favorite past time and hobby....making beer. (Jeremy plans to enter in the Reno Home Brew Contest in May) Mid-week they drove up to Chico and toured the Sierra Nevada Brewery and picked up a lot of tips.  Both are pretty experience home brewers and apparently the tour guide was a little surprised at some of the questions that were asked. Craig's girlfriend flew in on Thursday and they headed down to Pacific Grove to visit "grandma" for Christmas.  Craig plans to continue on to Sierra Vista, AZ, to work on his house and get it ready to rent.  Seems the property manager keeps adding to the "to do list".

Middle son Justin arrived from Virginia on Thursday for a few days.  He has been attending grad school in Virginia , working on a Masters  Degree in environmental policy.  He interned with a non-profit environmental policy research center last summer in DC and was recently offered a full-time job with the same group.  He was on target to finish his masters in May, but now will only take one class at a time so it may be a little longer before he completes his masters degree.  In today's economy, the job was paramount. Liz, his wife, is also working on her MBA(in addition to working full time) and taking a concentrated course over the holidays so did not make it out west this time. These are two very busy young people!!

Jason and Rhonda are still in Tennessee.  Jason is working for Lowe's Cabinet Making department near Nashville and is extremely grateful to finally be employed and have insurance benefits. . Rhonda recently started treatments for multiple myoloma ( a type of cancer of the blood) and has been doing well. Her latest tests shows the treatments are working to bring her protein levels closer to normal.  She has had quite a rough time and had to have a rod put in her arm to due to a tumor fracturing a bone and it didn't heal.   She is a survivor and fighter.

Christmas Eve, Justin, Jeremy, and I took the RV down to PG to spend Christmas Day with mom.  She was thrilled we all arrived including my brother Dale and his wife Carolann. We had a wonderful dinner in the Canterbury dinning room  on Christmas day after spending a relaxing day walking on the beach, (nice balmy weather) visiting and catching up.  I hated to leave, but Justin had to catch a flight out of Reno today.

I still haven't decided where I am going or what I am doing next.  The jello has been shaking, but can't seem to get it to settle down at all and let me know.  For the time being I'll stay a Jeremy's house at least until the snow starts to fly..the weather has been good, in fact there have been record breaking temperatures in the Tahoe basin.