Happy Thanksgiving

I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. I hope your holiday is filled with good food, family, friends and all good things.

We have much for which to be thankful for.

Later today we will be hosting dinner here, our first holiday dinner in the new house.

All the best to you and yours!

Vegas... baby

Well we have been in Las Vegas since Monday and we are leaving on Thursday. Jody had to present at the e -Learn 2008 conference here and so I came along for support. So far nothing really exciting is going on. We rode the monorail to go from our hotel to the conference location. It seemed to be fine. We sat next to a guy on the plane who lived in Vegas and we asked him about the monorail. All he could say that there had been no problems with it in the last year or so, but before that wheels were falling off. That was conforting. Jody's boss took several work folks to dinner at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba and I went along too, but had to pay my way. The food was good, but portions were kinda small, but that was to be expected considering it was tapas. Kari and Matt where there as well and they joined us at dinner to. Kari works there part time and so that is why they came along.

Vegas seems really kinda quiet, I know it is November and usally it is cold here this time of year, but the casinos seem a little empty and the sidewalks are not packed. I guess the economic issues are hitting here as well.

Whew….

That was a fun party. We had about 60 people here, sometime throughout the day. It was fun to see many people we haven’t seen for a long time. Our first guests arrived around 11 am and the last left about 8 pm. I can't tell you how many tours we gave...but if you missed the party, we saved a tour just for you....so come and visit!

Here are some pics (click to see more):

Thank You!

The other day I got a nice surprise in the mail:

Cool huh? Thanks Mom and Dad DeKorte! As you see in our house pictures it goes really well next to our cake today….and then it will move into the office.

Party Day!

Today is our party and our guests will be arriving soon. I know many of you have been waiting to see pictures of the house….well here you go: (click the picture to see more)




Finally, we put pictures on the wall, things put away, and all the boxes removed! You will see that we do have Christmas Trees up….I know it is early, but it is also a Holiday Party :), but you will get the idea of how the house is laid out.

Stay tuned for more pictures of during the party…..

More Blinds

As you know we have been getting the house ready for our party and so we ordered some blinds from Dekor and More... You know that nice little blind dealer in OR that we all know and love.. Anyway other than having to actually pay for them, I'm happy with how things came out... So here are the pictures.


Click the picture to see more pictures.

Election

After reading April's post on the election I felt that I should make a couple of comments. I believe that April did a really good job of expressing herself. First of all, neither party could ever provide a candidate that would appease everyone in the US. America is in a state right now that it is to divided and to partisan. Also, it seems like neither side is willing to give an inch. It is really quite sad. Hot topics end up in arguments so no discourse can be achieved and common ground found. For many people the thought process right now is "have my view or you are wrong". With that kind of mindset we, as a country, are going nowhere fast.

As for the election results I think that the Republicans started out way behind because many people in the US would have taken 'anyone but a Republican'. John McCain has done some great service for our country, but I also believe that during the campaign his original goals got sidelined in place of what the Republican machine wanted. His concession speech was excellent and hopefully the politicians will take his advice. At least he is still in the Senate.

I hope the Democrats don't take this big win to their heads and think they have all the power now, because if they are not doing things right, the people will vote them out too. I already saw how Joe Lieberman was already going to be 'punished' for crossing party lines when he talked for McCain during the campaign. This is really unfortunate as this sets a precedent for what happens when a representative crosses party lines.

As for our new President-Elect, I hope that some of the things he has promised do happen. I don't expect all of them to occur and actually hope some of them do not. If you look at other past presidents and look at what they promised during their campaigns and then to what they accomplished I don't believe any of them accomplished 100% of them. I don't think it is possible to even do it. I think he will be lucky if he even gets started on 25% of them during this term. I do believe that Obama was the better choice for world relations. I think we have been a poor neighbor as a country in the last few years. I expect that Obama will help to ease some of those tensions.

You are invited!

To our Party!

We are having a big party on Saturday November 15th, starting at 12:00 pm.

Why? Well we really have 3 reasons:

1. We want to have an open house for the new place.
2. We always have a holiday party, but know that the time is going to be crazy in Dec, so decided to do it early.
3. For Jody's graduation

We know how busy everyone is, so we thought we would throw it all into one big celebration. That means though that if it is a holiday party....we need holiday decorations...so today we started getting out the trees and other decorations. Please watch for pictures later this week.

We hope you can come to the party, no need to bring anything, or RSVP, please just come and surprise us!