We're #1!

Some of you may know that besides my full-time job of being Mom to Scott, Charlotte and Trevor, I work part-time for a company called SAS. The brief description of SAS is that it is data analytic software. Any industry you can imagine uses SAS to work with data, including creating reports, extracting information, and complex analytics. My specific job is that I write and teach classes for SAS. For more details about what I do, look at this post from a few years ago.

Today is a big day for our company because SAS was voted #1 as the best company to work for in Fortune magazine. Click here for the full article. And I would totally agree with this assessment. SAS has been an amazing company to work for during the past 9 years. The benefits are terrific and I do feel like they understand that family comes before work. My manager in particular is wonderful and has been willing to accommodate me and all my major life changes, including marriage, moving and 3 kids. Oh, and I also truly believe in the quality of our product, as do the rest of our employees and customers. I feel pretty lucky to work for SAS!

Christmas Wrap-up, Part 1

We did lots of fun things this year to get ready for Christmas.We went to a couple of Christmas parties and saw Santa TWICE!





We decorated (and quickly ate) the gingerbread house.

We decorated the Christmas tree. With the tree on a table and Scott and Charlotte hanging most of the ornaments, 90% of them were on the very bottom branches. Good thing Trevor can't reach them yet!

We went to see the Christmas lights in Rocklin (great job decorating, Biggs!). We watched lots of Christmas shows, including our new favorite: Disney's Prep and Landing. If you didn't see it this year, definitely look out for it next year! Here's a preview and introduction to two new very important elves in our house named Wayne and Lanny. They are responsible for going into homes ahead of Santa, scoping out the place to make sure it is ready, and then setting up a landing strip on the roof for the reindeer.



Scott and Charlotte were probably more excited this year that Wayne and Lanny were coming than Santa. And even though we had an early Christmas with 13168 Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Michael before we headed to St. George, somehow Wayne, Lanny AND Santa managed to find us! Scott got a green razor scooter and Charlotte got a "purple Sleeping Beauty princess bike" - just what they both wanted! Although for a moment Charlotte was more excited about the bottle that came with the bike... Check out the video to see the reaction.

Stay tuned for the next post about our Christmas in Utah...

Snow in Roseville!

Since we live pretty far down in the foothills of the Sierras, we do not get snow. Growing up, I remember it snowing just a few times, with one HUGE storm in particular that knocked out our power for 3 days. So it was a pretty big deal when we woke up to this:


After our exciting Tahoe trip last February, Scott and Charlotte were especially excited to see snow. We just got a dusting in Roseville, but up the road a bit further and Grandma and Grandpa's house it was a Winter Wonderland! So we bundled up and went up for a visit so Scott and Charlotte could make snowmen, snowgirls and snow angels. Can you tell they loved it? Even Trevor enjoyed it - although all he was interested in was eating the snow.

If we have another child...

...our fourth baby would look like this. Meet Drew's new love:



Yes, that is a Tesla -- a battery-powered sports card. Drew is drooling in the picture.

By the way, I jsut arrived in North Carolina for a week of work. Guess what I did during the long flight? Lots of blog posts! So stay tuned for the next few days for several posts about all our December adventures.