The Brooks Family: It's been way too long!

Hello! Sorry it's been so long....things here are busy! I was in Dallas Saturday morning through Tuesday night for our National Sales meeting at work and then I got back, worked my tail off yesterday, Justin had his surgery this morning and we close on our new house tomorrow!

Summaries -

Dallas: It was a nice time. Our meetings started on Sunday, but I went a day early because flights were cheaper and the bosses paid for it! It was a really nice resort - the Gaylord Texan. It was huge! As far as the sales meeting, I was discourged at the start. The company that I am a manufacturer's rep for is McQuay International. We were recently bought out by Daikin - a Japanese company. This year at the meeting everything is now being referred to "Daikin - McQuay". I have a feeling that the McQuay will be dropped before too long. The first 3 speakers at our meeting spoke extremely broken english and I felt like I was back in college. After going through all of the meetings though, I think that this is a positive change and they are looking to put a lot of money into making McQuay better, not eliminating it or taking over. They are putting in a new R&D facility in Minneapolis which will be a big bonus. The whole meeting had a baseball theme and at the opening session Johnny Bench was our guest speaker and we all got to meet him. I didn't even know who he was, but apparently quite a few people did! Out of the probably 400 people there, I was one of about 15 women and one of the youngest. They had a party on Monday night and they had games where you win tickets for a raffle. One way to win them was playing Nintendo Wii the Bigs game doing the homerun derby. Rob and I always play homerun derby on the sports game that comes with the game, so I won 17 times in a row. I didn't win a prize though :( Then a guy challenged me to another homerun derby and bet the mlb.com gift card he won - of course I said sure and I beat him. He was so humiliated in front of his friends, so I didnt' take his card. Then a while later (and a few drinks for him - he was NOT sober!), he challenged me again. My boss told him that if I win the gift card is mine and he agreed....so I beat him again! We didn't even know how much the gift card was worth, but it turned out to be $100!!! Yeah :)

Surgery:
Went well. Justin is such a trooper! Everyone at the hospital loved him and he was a little ham for everyone. In the little holding cells that we were in before they took him back he kept making faces at the guy in the one across from us - they were mimicking the face that eachother would make :) He is sleeping right now and I hope he wakes up happy...he's been pretty crabby this morning.

Closing:
We are SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! More pictures to come on that one soon!!!!