It's official....Christi and I are done with training as of last Friday! Starting Monday I will be working the Denver office on my own and Christi will be working the Philly office with one of her team members (the Philly office submits several more quotes each day than the Denver office). All our quotes will be checked before we submit them to our respective office or broker until we get released from checking. We found out that when we were told we needed to have 15 quotes at 97%+ to start the release process we thought 15 individual quotes with a score of 97% or better - nope. It's an average score of our last 15 quotes. So......that's kind of good for us. Both our managers may start looking at quotes say Wednesday and go back 15 live quotes to see our average to determine if the average is 97% or better. If it is, then they will look at the different parts of the quote to see what we can be released from - maybe we won't need to be checked on our Life or Dental quoting but we need to be checked on Disability quoting and reviewing booklets.
Yesterday on my way walking in to Riverwoods Elementary to help with LWF's 4th Annual Shooting Stars Basketball Camp I read an email that a friend of mine had passed on Friday. It was a total shock. She and I were both members of the local P. Buckley Moss Chapter but she had not been attending for several years. Somehow - I don't remember how - Bonnie started following my posts on Mike's CaringBridge site and then transitioned to my blog. Bonnie befriended me and then unfortunately on 9/27/11 her husband passed so we grew even closer because she could confide in me how she was doing. Bonnie is the one that had me go to a few estate sales with her. Friday was six months to the day her husband passed. I'm not sure what caused her passing - we had talked a couple of weeks ago and as far as I knew she was fine healthwise. But it was still a shock to read. One of the coaches is a small group leader at church and he prayed with me/for me, while I shed some tears, but then I was able to stay to help with the camp.
Below are some pix of the camp. It was a free-will donation for I think K-3rd grade (maybe older). We had two sessions with the first session for the younger kids. They had three breakouts to go to with different coaches to help them with different basketball skills - then all of them (in groups of fives) got to play basketbal with five of the coaches. What a riot! We had free doughnuts and juice for the first group after their camp and then free hot dogs and some drink for the second group. They took serious group pictures but of course I didn't want those - I had to take pictures of the funny faces.
Second session of the older kids - group pic.
Group pic of the first bunch - the younger kidlets.
My lawn mower had been in the shop to see if a guy could figure out why it wouldn't start when I'd go from my front yard to my back yard to mow. I'd probably go 15 minutes with the mower off between yards while I'd weed eat, spray for weeds, and do some clean up in the front yard and then head to the back yard. I picked the mower up Friday after work and got it unloaded out of my trunk ... by myself I might add ... and was ready to mow after the basketball camp and I'd run my errands. Well....the mower didn't want to start in the back yard. So while I was trying to kill some time to let it set even longer the neighbor guy to the south was talking to me and pointed out the black squirrel. I wondered if the little guy had survived our mild winter. Evidently the squirrel has moved back across the street from the park and is living in the trees in my neighbor to the north's yard. Check out the picture of him below. And the guy also said he's seen bats at dusk in our yards this year - cool.
This is kind of a heavy week for me. It started out with one of my friends going to the ER this morning with possibly having a heart attack but it was just (just) a blood clot in her lung. She is home now and is starting to take Cumadin - she'll see her doctor tomorrow. Tuesday is the one year anniversary (I really don't think that's the appropriate word for this) of the passing of a friend of mine's husband and her daughter is also my friend. My small group leader's grandfather passed away late Friday night so he and his brothers (three of the four brothers attend my church) will have visitation tomorrow night and the funeral Tuesday morning. Actually all these people I've mentioned are in my small group that meets on Wed nights.
And then this coming Friday (4/6) would have been Mike's and my 28th wedding anniversary - it's my second one without him - doesn't seem possible.
I posted on Facebook that I was moving to Vegas - it's fun to read the comments. My pastor actually texted me and called me to make sure I was April foolin'. I called him back and told him I was. I said I would go back out to FB later tonight and tell everyone it was an April Fool's joke.
The other night I took this picture of Butler as we were getting ready to go to bed - what a goofball.
