The Weekly Catch-Up (2011, Week 18)

Home: This week we spent alot of time grieving the loss of Katie-I miss her so much. On Sunday, it was clear to us that she was "trapped in her own body" and just wanted to be put out of her misery. So as hard as it was for us, we obliged and took her to the TLC emergency pet clinic in South Pasadena. It was the hardest thing either of us had ever had to do and alot of tears were shed and still are being shed. That day after telling Sydney that Katie went to heaven we put up a new picture of her in the family room next to the girls pictures-something we should have done a long time ago. I have noticed that Brooke keeps walking to Katie's normal spots and I know she is looking for her-makes me so sad.

David spent three days this week up on the Central Coast getting acclimated to work up there. The girls and I didn't do too much although we did go out to dinner to Steer-N-Ale with Grandma on Wednesday (all of the guys, James, Andrew, David) all hate it so sometimes when just the girls are around we go there.

On Friday, we went to Jumpin Jammin at the Santa Anita mall with Becca, Mom and kids and they all had a good time playing around. For dinner we went to Chilis to see our favorite waiter (James) and David went out with his friend Joe who had a layover in Burbank. (He is a SWA pilot)

Sydney has really started enjoying to read the last week or so, typically she doesn't have the patience for my reading her a story but she seems to have turned a corner and now really likes it so I have been reading her a story every night.

Saturday, the girls and I went to Joshua's last baseball game in the morning and had a good time watching him play. In the afternoon I decided to do a craft with Sydney so we made some home-made soap that I had read about for all of the moms for mothers day-she had fun, there will be another blog on this soon.

I also had the pleasure of having lunch on Tuesday with Lu. I grabbed some Clearmans bread and blue cheese salad on my way back from Dr Klausers office. It was great! By the way, last week David got the Thunderbolt and I got the Incredible 2-we both love our new phones. And if anyone is judging, we had the Incredible since last May.

Work: There was alot of follow-up done this last week on customer satisfaction and that will continue throughout the foreseeable future. During the week I reflected on values that the team leads had identified at the last all leads offsite (in 2006). Mine were Integrity, Family and Passion (in that order), I decided that if I had to do it over Family would likely move to first. I am also not sure I would leave Passion there, it may swap with honesty. I'll need to give that more thought.

The Sacramento team finished a huge refresh project this week-I am so proud of the work they have done as it was not only great, it was widely recognized. We also closed a couple of really difficult audit items this week-Larry did a great job of spearheading that for me.