A Thanksgiving Surprise

Virginia and I did a little surprise vacation this last week. The Friday before Thanksgiving I arrived at work and found that my schedule would unexpectedly grant me a four day weekend. So V and I quickly plotted to use that time to make surprise visit home to see the fam's. I managed to switch to an earlier shift on Wed. and we left from the Lowe's parking lot at 3pm. We drove through the night, only stopping for gas and a short one hour break at Deadman's Pass (see blanket pic). We didn't want to arrive too early...but the pass had snow and after about 45 min the car was so cold we had to start moving again.
We arrived around 6 at the Glasmann's and asked if we were early for breakfast. After some confusion from the old parents in bed (brain matter is foggy) the confirmed excitment to see us and a few hours later we enjoyed a hearty Glasmann breakfast of bacon, sausage, cheese eggs, and coffee cake. Delicious. We then made our way over to

V's place and managed so surprise her mother too. Isn't that a classic face? The morning was beautiful.
We got to see my sprouting nephews, Kay2 was sick but still amusing. Keegan is the cutest thing.

We did the Family dinner in Salem, then spent the next day with V's Mom and Mike and Ross, played some fun card games too. Munchkin will be the family favorite before long. Saturday we headed up to V's Dad's and enjoyed an amazing lunch in a little cafe. The food was great. We'll be back for that again! We enjoyed some card games in Astoria and then had a tasty warm dinner with the fam. Sara showed up an brought Cadence and Ethan...My how they have grown. Sunday we drove back to Utah so I could open the next morning and V could get back to teaching. 2200 miles and a lot of fun! We were so glad to get back...since we are missing Christmas this just really helped us take a break and not miss everyone so much! Thanks for the great time...feel free to visit us on short notice too:)

Inventory!

So this week my Lowe's store has been doing a storewide inventory. We got five days (Sunday though Thursday) to count and recount every item in the store and then resolve discrepancies. For a large part of the actual selling floor, we had an outside inventory service come in to count things. We just didn't want to count bulk hardware and repair plumbing pieces. We had 18 people on the inventory crew and we were all scheduled for 6am-3pm shifts for the five days. Needless to say that was optimistic. Sunday I started at 6 and finished around 6:30. Quickly went home to eat and then crashed. Monday was a repeat- 6 to 6. Eat and crash. Tuesday was more 6 to 6:30, picked up Virginia and voted, ate, and crashed. But I got Wed off because we were supposed to avoid overtime and I already had 33.5 hours in three days. Enter thursday. We had to finish today- no questions about overtime. I started at 6am again...and left the store at 9:45 pm. having only had one lunch break and one 15min break. I was tired. And my legs and back were stiff as a board this morning. But I got almot 8 hours of overtime!!! yea. Virginia is just glad that I will be home and we can eat normal meals again. Anyway...there was my fun update of the week. I'll relax today and return to 4 closing shifts starting saturday.