I'm on Eastern Time

So I am back in Atlanta again - Roswell to be exact. (And it's about 60 degrees here!) I have a lot of work to do, but the beauty of being out of town is that I actually have time to check my email, post on my blog, and work on personal things in the evenings after work. I swear I never seem to have time to do these things when I am at home.

I had a really great seafood platter for dinner - Grilled Tilapia, Scallops, Shrimp, and Creamy Risoto - I am not sure what Risoto is or if I am speling it right, but it was kind of a mix between rice and pasta and it had this creamy lemon sauce on it and it was like little bites of heaven!

My husband says its snowing at home. If you look below at my previous post you can see some pictures of our little guys (and girl) out in the snow. They seem to have a lot of fun out there.

Good night everyone!

Aren't my dogs so cute???

I am sure you are just dying to see Rusty and BamBam and Belfry playing in the snow and modeling their winter-wear...so here you go!

Happy BirthdayTo ME!!!

So it has been nearly a month since I have posted anything at all... I know I know...I have been sooo busy though. Finally this weekend I have a chance to sit back and relax. Sitting here in our hotel room waiting for our musical to begin I am catching up on email and watching Taladega Nights with my husband..

So what's been going on with me???

First of all, as of January 1 my company has changed it's name from Wilson-Gray to Canton Street Inc. In doing this, we have created an entirely new website which I was largely involved in. Please check it out at www.canton-street.com

We also started doing our monthly newsletters as PDF files. Here is the one I put together for January: http://www.canton-street.com/Newsletter.htm

Work has been incredibly busy. We are nearing having 100+ job orders to work on. I can't believe the number of clients that are coming out of the woodwork looking for help. I have been very pleased to see how many of my ex-clients from my ex-employer have reached out to contact me. I of course asked each of them if they had contacted my ex-employer first for help on their jobs, but they have insisted on working with me....so that has made me feel good.

In other news, Dennis and I have been checking out paint colors and met with a painter. It looks like the whole house (minus the 3 spare bedrooms) will be painted by the end of February. The other three rooms will be painted accordingly whenever we have kids...no not yet... :) I am pretty happy about this because if you know me, you know that "white" is not my color when it comes to interior decorating. It will be nice to get rid of this "sterile" look!

Dennis has installed a new TV in the basement (with surround sound) right above my treadmill so that has helped in my efforts to work out a little more. I need to start hitting it hard now so I am ready for Orlando and Key West in May! and wherever we go for Den's 30th bday in June. (He still hasn't chosen his birthday destination)

My birthday is going great already. Den and I took Friday off and headed to the Pheasant Run in St Charles, IL. Thursday, Dennis sent me a bouquet of a dozen mini-cala lillies with a bottle of perfume. Friday morning I got my official gift which is a matching light pink set CHI hair straightener flat iron and CHI haridryer. I was psyched!!! I have wanted them forever! Then we headed to Pheasant Run. We saw Hal Sparks at Zanies Comedy Club last night, had an awesome steak and lobster dinner, and a few cocktails. Today we had massages at the Mario Triccoci Spa here, went swimming for an hour or so and tonight we are attending Flannagin's wake and The Musical of Musicals, The Musical. Both should be great!

Of course we are psyched for the Superbowl. I know my husband wishes he was in FL, but it should be just as fun watching the game on our awesome TV. His entire family is coming to watch the game with us in HD on the Sony LCD and we have ordered beef, chicken, and italian sausage from a local caterer.

In other news, sir Rusty Noodleman celebrated his 4th birthday on January 12th. Oh and the YORKIE was named the 2nd most popular dog in the US for 2006. You can send Russ's fan mail to our attention. My sister Lisa has earned her bachelor's degree and I am planning a party for her with my parents. Way to go Lisa!!!! My best friend Christen is busy busy busy with her wedding plans. We had an awesome bridesmaid's get together just last weekend. Next weekend my sister and I are going to pick up our bridesmaid dresses for the big day (Sept 15th). and I have been working with Christen's future sister-in-law to plan the shower.

So yes, I have been a BIT busy lately. I must say it's all been fun though. We have had a chance to spend our weekends with our friends and we are so fortunate to have them in our lives. Doug and Amy (and Liam and Ahren) moved back to Chicago from Arkansas on January 3rd and we have had the chance to see them a couple of times recently. Adam and Logan have been the best movie watching buddies. Nic and Rachele (our game-playing buddies) and Jen and Nathan have made the time to go out to dinner with us a couple of times. I've seen my good friend Donna a couple times recently. She's been by to critique my "new" house and I have had the chance to see her totaly remodeled place - which is awesome. My friend Stephanie has been up from Champaign (where she lives and works) a few times so I have been able to stay in better touch with her too! And as for my faraway friends, Kristin and Kim, luckily we have e-mail to keep us in touch! Soon our friends Joe and Teresa will be celebrating their baby girl Payton's first birthday! My how time flies.

As I celebrate being alive for 26 years, I take a moment to thank God for everything He has blessed me with - love, life, family, friends, happiness, and a great career. I am thankful for all the people I have met in my life who have helped to make me who I am. I am thankful for all of the good things and the "bad" things I have gone through that have brought me to the place that I am at now. Everything happens for a reason and I am grateful for being able to realize that. For now, I will get back to my spectacular husband and continue to enjoy life and enjoy the day!

Dreams

Every night I have the most vivid dreams, and I always have for as long as I can remember. My dreams are always super complex and usually exciting and weird. Most mornings I can remember at least 2 of the dreams that I had the night before and in pretty good detail. My husband thinks my dreams are crazy and can't believe that I remember so much of them. Does anyone else experience this or am I the only one?

For instance, last night I had a dream that I was flying around in a hot air balloon with one of my ex co-workers. She and I were navigating this balloon through all sorts of obstacles. We would have to stop at different "stations" in the sky which were made entirely out of ice, to get a ticket. We had to collect thest tickets until the end of the course to prove that we completed everything. When we got to each station we would park our balloon and slide down a chute made of bubble wrap to a warm sunny place where we would complete an obstacle like burning a rope until we could go on to the next station.
This was preceeded by a dream in which it was Saturday morning and we were getting ready to help our friends move into their new place (which is actually what we are doing today), but on the way there we ran into my mom who convinced us to go to Great America. We agreed because we wanted to see what Great America was like in the winter. We went on a few rides when we ran into my grandparents who asked us to take them to a Best Western hotel. When we got there, it was a really really nice hotel and for being the 500th person through the door I won a free nights stay in this spectacular room. We decided to take them up on it right then and when they lead us to this giant room, we walked in and my dog rusty was there. At the end of that dream I remember swimming in a giant bath tub with my husband and my dog, answering a cell phone call from one of my husbands friends and laughing about a joke he told me.
One last dream I remember from last night was that I was getting ready to go somewhere fancy but my hair was wet and I didn't think I could dry it fast enough. My sister gave me this magic-like hair gel that I scrunched in my hair. Not only did my hair dry instantly but it became about a foot longer and very wavy. When I woke up I was kind of sad that it was just a dream and that no such real product existed.

Every night I have some new adventure in my dreams. Sometimes I run into people I haven't seen since I was 5. I usually remember my dreams in reverse order too. When I wake up I remember the thing I was just dreaming, but that triggers me to remember what it was I was dreaming about before that, etc. Sometimes I wish I could turn all of my dreams into a movie or something because they really are very entertaining and just so outlandish - definitely works of fiction. I was writing them down for a while, maybe I will go back to doing that again sometime.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

December seemed to fly by incredibly fast for me. Spending a full week in GA and serving as the host of Christmas Eve this year, I didn't have a minute to spare! Everything went off without a hitch though.

This year I truly had more fun in giving than in receiving. We definitely splurged on gifts this year but it was really worth it to see all of the smiling faces as our loved ones opened their gifts.

We did the usual running around. We saw my mom's side of the family on Saturday night, had my dad's side over here for Christmas Eve and spent Christmas day with my in-laws.

My husband surprised me on Christmas morning with an authentic 1985 Ozzie Guillen White Sox jersey.

(For those of you who don't know, Ozzie was always my favorite. When he was playing shortstop for the Sox I got to meet him in person. I was about 10 years old and got to go on the field before a game at the new park. I had been collecting Ozzie's cards forever. When he approached me and my dad, my dad said "Hey Ozzie - here's your biggest fan." Ozzie said "Hey sweetie I'm your biggest fan too. And then I got my first kiss (on the cheek of course), a Polaroid picture, and Ozzie gave me his wristband - which I still have. I also have every Ozzie card ever printed thanks to my Godfather who put the book together for me.)

Anyway, I got the jersey, some amethyst earrings and some ornaments for the tree. It was a good Christmas!

Of course no Christmas would be complete without another trip to the vet. Upon arriving home from GA on the 18th, Bam Bam went back in for a cough/collapsing trachea problem. He is now on antibiotics, prednazone, and anti-cough pill, and a bronchial dilator pill. The Friday before Christmas (just 4 days later) we were back in with Belfry who is apparently suffering from Colitis - Now at mealtime we have the pleasure of putting together the doggy drug cocktails. Wow - I really need to look into that insurance!

Here are some pictures from this Christmas. Enjoy them! And have a great New Year!

How's work going?

Well I am glad you asked. I spent a whole week in Georgia working on both some end of the year business as well as some plans for the new year. If you know me you know I am a bit of a "work-a-holic" and that I love my job. You may also know that Wilson-Gray Inc. has been in the process of changing our name since the Gray half of the business left earlier this year. We decided to change the name of the company to Canton Street Inc. While we will continue to recruit in the moving & storage industry, 2007 will become a spectacular year in terms of growth. Not long ago we added a business brokerage division. With this service we confidentially list moving companies for sale and find buyers for those listings. It has become such a success that we are now adding other divisions. I myself will continue to specialize in the recruiting division. Additionally I will be working on making some significant changes to our company website and newsletter. We've added the domain www.canton-street.com but still need to edit all of the content. (We are working on that as I type.) It was great to see everyone and I enjoyed my time in Georgia. I even looked at a house while I was there. The weather was beautiful too. Here you can see the Recruiting Division at Canton Street Inc. :)



While in GA one of my favorite clients invited me to their Christmas breakfast. It was wonderful to meet everyone in person.



This time of year I am reminded once again how Thankful I am to be working for such a class-act company where I have plenty of room to grow personally and professionaly. I am continually reminded of how lucky I am to be where I am.

If you have a chance, check out www.canton-street.com and especially check out the newsletter section!

Greetings from Roswell, GA

Hey everyone. I am in GA for work this week. I actually had a plane ticket but I decided to cancel it and drive here. It wasn't a bad drive. Since my office is in Roswell, I didn't actually have to go all the way down through Atlanta. Roswell is about a half hour north of Atlanta. I left on Sunday morning at about 5am and I arrived here at about 4pm that same day. Considering the time change, it was about a 10 hour drive. It was a really nice relaxing drive though. The scenery was beautiful. There was absolutely no traffic and I didn't get lost at all. My super fuel-efficient car, required only 20 gallons of gas for the trip, so it was a pretty cheap venture. I stopped for gas in Austin, IN and in Murfreesboro, TN. Other than that, I just kept the pedal to the medal...hehe.

As usual, it is beautiful here in Roswell. We recently moved into a bigger office and I just love that too. We are in this old log cabin from the 1800s and now have the main floor with basically 4-5 rooms in it. There are 3 fireplaces in our office! It is so unique. I love being here. The temperature is in the mid 60s so that is a nice change from the freezing Chicago weather we have been getting. There is a lot of work going on this week. Today I was in the office for 13 hours. But, that's the whole point of us all getting together in one place - to get things done. I have a s-l-o-w internet connection at the hotel, so that's enough positing for now. I will post more later when I have a better connection.
Bye!

Deck the halls....and the walls, the roof, the trees, and the yard!

We started decorating during the long Thanksgiving weekend. It ended up taking us a LOT longer than we thought because we had some MAJOR issues with the pre-lit tree. We bought this giant tree at the end of the year last year since we thought we were getting an awesome deal. Unfortunately when we plugged it in this year, only half the lights were working. After spending about 6 hours testing each light, replacing burnt out bulbs, testing the circuits - we had gotten no where. We had to tear off the pre-it lights and put on our own. Here you can see pictures of the final product- the tree all decorated, the manger scene that my granpa made by hand before I was born, a little Christmas village, the lights and decorations outside our house and some of our favorite ornaments. Some of the ornaments are new this year and some I have had for the past few years. And then there are those that have been in my family since before I was born. It was a treat to put each one up and remember where it came from. We love the way the whole tree looks all lit up at night. We hope to keep adding to our ornament collection over the years. Maybe some day we will be one of the houses on the house walk!

Beecher's Holiday Housewalk

This year I went on Beecher's Third Annual holiday Housewalk with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. It was REALLY fun. I had such a great time. There was a mixture of older houses and newer houses and it was really nice to look at all of the Christmas decorations. There were 7 houses on the walk this year. You can see some of the pictures from the housewalk below. Every house had several trees plus other decorations all over the place. I loved the ceiling fan with the branches of ornaments coming out of it, the collection of santas, the trees covered in collections of ornaments, and the garland hanging from all the light fixtures. One of the older homes had beautiful stained glass transom windows and a huge beautiful dining room. Here is just a handful of some of the beautiful things we saw on the housewalk. We will definitely be going again next year!