Fall Family Photos - The Field

Fall Family Photos - The Barn

Cub Scout Campfire (and Selling Popcorn)

This year in an effort to maximize our limited time at home, we pre-ordered our Cub Scout popcorn, filled the wagon and went door-to-door on our street with the inventory to sell versus the traditional order form/deliver a month later method.  This cute little Cub Scout sold more than half of his wagon load that way.  His operations manager (mom) needs to order more lower priced items next year; the $25 bag of caramel chocolate and the $60 Blackhawks tin didn't sell as well as the $10 and $20 items.   Hence, me now being the owners of a Blackhawks tin of popcorn (and the other multi-packs).  Totally worth it though.  We only did a few hours of work and he earned his coveted Kylo Ren light saber "free gift."   And my teams at work have enjoyed the assorted popcorn snacks!  Hope my Indiana family knows that Blackhawks tin is coming to the holidays! 

The guys had to miss the fall campout since we had family pictures scheduled for that evening.  But no one minded.  We finished pictures at sunset and headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for family dinner.  The theme of our fall has been travel, and we were happy to have a mostly "home" weekend.

We did join the Wolf Den for a backyard campfire - complete with a smoky fire pit - of games, silly songs and skits, and snacks with the boys and their families.  Our den is such a great group of people; we really enjoy hanging out with them.   Everyone bought delicious fall treats - mostly sweets - but I brought a sunchoke spinach dip.  The sunchoke (aka Jerusalem artichoke) was from my CSA box, and the recipe from a friend.  This week was my first experience with that veggie (I think it's a vegetable at least. . . ) but it looks a lot like ginger root and cooked up like a boiled potato.  In the dip it tasted like artichoke but smooth with none of the strings of a traditional artichoke.  

 

 

 

 

Global New Partner Seminar

With my admission to the partnership this year, I've had summer and fall full of internal meetings.  August was the female tax partner/director celebration; September was the U.S. new partner/director celebration; and October was the global new partner seminar.  The global meeting rotates between Asia, Europe and Americas as host, and this was the Americas.  We met at Terranea Resort outside LA.  Ironically it was my first time to ever fly into LAX.   Internationally there were 600 new partners (125 women) from over 100 countries.  The "roll call" was one of my favorites.  Each country's flag was flashed on the screen and all of the new partners from that country stood up.   There were the countries represented by a lot of people (U.S., Canada, England, Mexico, China) and then there were places that had one.   The singletons received a lot of applause!  It was also a lot of fun to spend time with the fellow women in my new partner class.  The U.S. group got to know each other really well throughout the year, and it's great to have a network to rely upon.

 

 

 

 

Six Flags

As part of my plan to gift "experiences" instead of "stuff," I bought our family Six Flags annual passes for Christmas.  In order for them to include free parking, we had to activate them during the 2016 season, and then they will be good for the rest of 2016 and all of 2017.   We went on a drizzly October day.  We drove separately so John could head straight to the airport afterwards.   I was feeling generous and made William a hot chocolate to drink in the car on our hour drive.   Bad move Mom.   The travel mug didn't fit in his car seat cup holder very well and it spilled on the floor.  That was an expensive cup of cocoa after the car had to be detailed to attempt to get rid of the rotten milk smell (attempt, because it didn't really work. . . )    This was the first time we had been to Six Flags on our own rather than for Deloitte Day.  The lines were quite a bit longer, so I'm glad we have the passes to go several times.  We loved the new Justice League ride; very Disney's Buzz Lightyear meets LEGOLAND's Lost Kingdom Adventure.   Looking forward to trying out the water park next summer, too!