Birthday Trifecta

My apologies for the lack of posts. It's been a bit chaotic around here.

The Elser Family birthday trifecta is officially over. In the past 10 days we have celebrated Jackson's first birthday and Drew and my 33rd (he's older, by 3 days, in case you wondered). Of course, Jackson turning one was the main event, but Drew & I had a nice celebration as well. Our friend Jana and her daughter Jasmine graciously offered to babysit the little man so Drew & I could enjoy a "grown up" birthday dinner. We went to a favorite Italian restaurant of ours in Kansas City, Garozzo's, and had a lovely night out on Monday.

Somewhere in the middle of all the birthday celebrating, Drew & I both fought through an evil 24-hour flu bug that pretty much kicked our butts. Lucky for us we didn't have it on the same day. And luckier for us, Jackson didn't get it.

Then there's work. Additional layoffs and a company wide reorganization were all but promised by the end of 2009. It happened last week. No need to go into details here, but the good news is we now have a balanced (albeit it much smaller) budget going into 2010 and we are hopeful that we have finally gotten through the worst of it. I'm proud to say our annual National Championship & Golf Classic, which is my primary responsibility, has turned into quite a success story. After tracking absolutely dismal attendance numbers, we had a huge surge in registrants over the past 2 weeks and have now exceeded our budgeted goal. We expect roughly 425 competitors, will be using 5 golf courses and sold out our hotel room block for our February event in Palm Springs, CA. While this is fantastic news, it means I have been absolutely swamped at work.

Oh, and Christmas is Friday. Somehow that has gotten lost in the shuffle these past few days.

So long birthday trifecta. Time to wrap the last of the presents and get in the Christmas spirit!