Merry Christmas wishes and a Happy New Year!!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! For the first time in at least 7 years, Doyle got to be home on Christmas Day! Our schedules really worked out great together for a change. Doyle got to come home the Wednesday before Christmas. I had to work on Thursday but I got to leave early. Then I didn't have to be back to work until Tuesday and Doyle had to go back today (Wednesday). So we had a full 4 days together without either of us having to work. It was so nice! I don't think we've had that much time alone together in our own house before. It was much needed play time for the pets as well. They were still trying to get over us leaving them for a week to visit our families up north. By now though, they seem to have adjusted well.

We are looking forward to having Steve, Erica & Claudia here for New Year's Eve. We are still waiting to hear if Doyle's reserve day for the 1st will get approved for him to drop it. His January schedule had him having every weekend off, which was good, but it did have him working on January 1st. So we'll see what happens there.

The other not so good news is that we are still waiting to here what will happen with Independence Air. By law, they had to send out furlough letters to all the pilots and flight attendants. The letter just states that if the company doesn't receive the necessary financing then the company will close as of Jan. 7th. This isn't new information, but it seems more real to have it sent to the house and read it in print. We of course are still hoping for the best, whatever that may be. At this point, we are just ready to take the plunge to a new employer for Doyle if we need to. There really is only so much of the "not knowing" that one can take. It will be a very sad though if the company closes for good.

Okay, now to bring up the mood a little, at least my job is extremely secure and the company is very profitable. Let's hope it says that way for a long while to come.

We also want to thank everyone for sending us so many Christmas cards! We've got them covering the entry way into the red room, right beside the Christmas tree. That wall looks very festive!

Again, we want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope you all have a Happy New Year!!!

Christmas in Ohio

The Dossett's house... isn't it beautiful!!

After spending the beginning of the week with Doyle's family, we drove to Ohio to visit mine. Talk about snow... it snowed and snowed and snowed some more. Uncle Butch even had to plow the driveway again one day so we get to town. It was soooo cold there! We missed not having Aaron and Karen there this year. They'll come to Indiana sometime between Christmas Day and New Year's. Here are some pics...

I had to get a pic of Dad in his Santa hat

And we had a lot of fun playing Jenga... go Aunt Ila!

This is an annual picture that we always take when we go for a drive.

Misty got to spend Christmas with us too! She spent most of her time sitting under the tree.

We "tried" to teach mom how to play pool. She did hit some pretty good shots, but that may have been more luck than talent! ha!

Uncle Butch is trying to look like Santa... he's doing a pretty good job of it!

I really thought he was going to wing that snowball at me but lucky (for him) that he didn't! :)

Christmas in Chicago

Doyle and I spent Christmas with "The Coopers" at the beginning of our Christmas vacation. It snowed a little every day we were there I think. Nothing too major, but it was very cute! They were the first snow flakes I had seen of the season! Of course, not for Doyle though, as he sees it all the time flying up north. It was definitely a full house at Kelli's. We had a lot of fun... with pictures to show it too! I know, I'm going to get killed for posting these funny santa hats pics... but it was so funny!Chip wearing the hat... and I guess we know who wears the pants in this family! :)

Kelli

Keith

me

Doyle... and no, he didn't want me to take his pic!

this is the closest I could get a pic of Tyler with the hat on

Tyler and I cuddled for most of the night our last night there. He was so adorable! :)

We had a great time in Chicago. The trips are always too short though.

ACC Florida State vs Virginia Tech

Heather and I had the most fabulous time a couple of weekends ago when she was here! Saturday night we headed to the Landing thinking there would be a crowd before the big game and there was! We ended up sitting outside at Hooters to watch the game from there. A group of guys that had been standing behind us started a conversation with us. Amazingly enough, after talking for just a few minutes they bought us tickets to go to the game with them! But wait... it gets even better! Our tickets were in the Bud Zone... which meant free drinks and food! We hung out inside until half-time was over. Then we found our seats and watched the game. It was so exciting! FSU really beat the crap out of VA Tech. It was great! During the 4th quarter, Heather and I said we had to use the ladies room... then left the place! The group was really nice and all and we were so glad they bought us the tickets, but we knew they wanted to continue to hang out after the game and we weren't going to do that. So we just ditched them! Oops... sorry guys but THANKS! Here are some funs pics from that night. Enjoy!

This is the guy that bought us the tickets...

These two guys were brothers. Their sister was also with us. She is an FSU cheerleader and her boyfriend is an FSU football player.

More pics from the game

New post!

I have been SO extremely busy since Thanksgiving! My parents left town the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. My friend Heather flew into town 2 days later for the weekend. We had a blast. I'll have to put a seperate post for that. So she was here till Sunday afternoon. I've been very busy at work trying to get caught up on my work since we'll be on vacation next week. My flight leaves at 7am Saturday. I'll meet Doyle at Dulles then we'll both head to Chicago. We'll visit Doyle's family at the beginning of the week and my family at the end of the week. Then it's back home to Jacksonville. Doyle actually has Christmas weekend off! So we are going to enjoy waking up Christmas morning in our own beds and opening our presents under our tree! We finally bought an artificial tree this year. We searched high and low and finally found one at Lowe's that we absolutely loved! These aren't the best pictures, but I wanted to post them anyway. I'll get some better ones when we come back from vacation. Oh yeah, the tree is 9 feet tall! I love it! And yes, those are all blue lights. It's very soothing... Enjoy!

Thanksgiving 2005

We had a really yummy Thanksgiving and it was a treat that my parents were here for it! The night before Thanksgiving I made two desserts. One was my Aunt Cheryl's Strawberry Cheesecake and the other was a Double Layer Pumpkin pie. Both turned out really well! I also prepped the turkey the night before. I always want a large turkey but this year was by far the largest. It was 20 pounds! I used the recipe from the most recent Cooking Light magazine. It called for a mixture of seasonings with parmesan cheese and sage. I pushed that up under the skin of the turkey. I also stuffed the cavity with celery, carrots and onions.

That turkey turned out really well. I'm definitely going to repeat that recipe. The most surprising part was that the veggies in the cavity did not get mushy. When I took them out, they were still crunchy! They were sooooo good! We also had mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes that I just died over, cranberry relish and I used a new cornbread stuffing recipe that turned out really yummy too. I'm definitely going to remake that as well as the candied sweet potatoes.

I'm attaching some pictures from the day. Everyone was well relaxed after eating that dinner! I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as we did!

NYC November '05

Okay, so it's been awhile since my last post. My parents came into town a couple of days after I got back from New York and I just haven't had the chance to get online much. They are still sleeping so I figured now was a good time to catch up!

The trip got off to a rocky start. Delta cancelled our flight the night before and did not notify us. At hearing this, my boss wanted to just cancel the whole trip, but we ended up finding seats on Continental. Of course, the tickets cost just over $1K a piece, but we are apparently worth it. :)

We, meaning me, my boss and my first boss at Landstar met up with our CFO and our old KPMG partner for dinner at Ben Benson's. I had a terrible headache and it definitely showed. I had taken 3 advil as soon as we got to the hotel but it hadn't kicked in yet. As soon as we walked in to the restaurant, our CFO took one look at me and wanted to know what was wrong. So I obviously wasn't looking too good! Anyway, I think I had the headache because I hadn't drank much water at all that whole day and hadn't had much to eat. I felt nauseated from the advil on an empty stomach to boot. By the time the food arrived, it was probably around 9:30pm. Once I got some water and food in me, I felt so much better.

Thursday morning I got up and went to the conference. We broke for lunch and went to a pub nearby. Let's just say we didn't end up going back to the conference for the rest of the day! It was fun to hang out in NY. My friend Michele ended up meeting up with us at our hotel and we all hung out at the reception that followed the conference. It was so good to see her again! Only I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get any pictures of us together. Too bad we couldn't have spent more time together. We also met up with some FASB folks, including the head honcho there and we all went to dinner at Ruth's Chris. The steaks there were fabulous. So much better than at Ben Benson's. We had to hang out there waiting for a table for quite awhile. There were ten of us. So by the time we finished eating there it was around 11pm. So we literally were out from around 1pm for lunch and didn't stop until 11pm! After dinner I was a gonner. I was so tired and just wanted to head back to the hotel, so I did.

Friday morning I got up and went to the conference. My boss was the only other one to make it up that early. He decided at 10am to go take a nap and said I could as well. Well, I wasn't really that tired and I hadn't seen the usual spots I like to hit while in NY so I decided to go for a walk. It was so much colder than I was used to! I got to see the tree being set up at Rockefeller Center. That was cool. I also did some window shopping down 5th Avenue and walked through the Diamond district. I've never seen so many jewelry stores that close together before! I don't know how you would decide which one to go into, because there were too many to want to go in all of them. I also went into the NBC Experience store to warm up. It's been years since I've been in there.

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and post some pictures that I took. I do love visiting NY. I would love to get Doyle there and stay a long weekend or something. Maybe next year.

Getting ready for NYC trip

I'm heading to New York City this week for a conference for work. I'm hoping for good weather. It's definitely going to be colder than here though. I head out on Wednesday. Doyle doesn't have to leave until Thursday. I get back on Friday so Kit will only have to be at Pet Paradise Resort for one night. I really like their facilities and feel very comfortable leaving him there when I have to.

This will be my third business trip to the Big Apple. I'm attaching some pictures of my previous trips there. My first trip we stayed at the Waldorf Astoria. The building with the flag out front is that hotel. The view of the buildings during the day was taken from my room. This will be a short trip this time and I won't really have much alone time to search the city. But hopefully I'll be able to get some pics worthy to post!

Some other fun pics from NY

Friends in NY

The first picture was taken on the Brooklyn Bridge this past June. Here we are on the subway last November... exhausted after walking all over the city. Michele & Ronnie were gracious enough to show me and Shannon the city! We were even lucky enough to catch a Broadway show with Matthew Broderick... and eat all the bananas we could get our hands on... ah haha!!

Michele now works in the city. We are planning on meeting up for drinks after my conference. I can't wait!