Hello Again

I'm on hold with McCormick's Shareowner Services because I cannot figure out how to fill out a Stock Power Form. And yes, I am aware of how pathetic that sounds. I've been on hold for fifteen minutes, with no end in sight, so I figured I should update the blog. We'll see how far I get...
Not long after my last blog post everyone in our house came down with a stomach bug.

This poor little guy insisted on sleeping on the floor in the bathroom

Then we went on vacation to spread our germs to Ryan's family and mine. Sorry, everyone. We had a nice early Christmas at the "other Reynolds'" home. Ryan's grandma has moved back to Colorado from Arkansas, so she was able to join us this year. (ooh, a human being answered!) (okay, that was fast)
The biggest news, however, is that my reign of terror as Undefeated Pickle Champion is over. My sister found the Christmas Pickle this year. She was so excited to find it that she ripped it off the Christmas tree, leaving the hook behind. (obvs. not a professional, but she hasn't found the pickle in like, 6 years, so what do you expect?) The funniest part (in my opinion) was that the Pickle Present my mom chose was a gigantic Twix bar. Twix are my absolute favorite, it was like Mom was just expecting that I would win. And when I saw the size of that Twix bar, I wished I had. C'est la vie. Enjoy your crown, Cassi, because next year that pickle is MINE.
If you click back to my November posts, you'll see some excerpts from the novel I worked on for National Novel Writing Month. Last night I finally finished the first draft! That's very exciting for me because I HATE drafting. I much prefer editing to drafting, so now I get to go back and revise and make it all nice and smooth and pretty. I'm going to let it sit for a while and work on some of my other projects in the meantime. I'm looking forward to that because I'm a bit burned out on Boldly Go at the moment.
Ryan has started his second semester of grad school. So he's busy and stressy. (I made that word up.) He works so hard to balance work, school, his calling, and family time. Last semester he got an A in his class--we were thrilled! Hopefully his hard work will pay off again this semester.
Sammy has started randomly quoting movies at us. We frequently hear him yelling "You. Are. A. TOY!" when he's playing in his room. He is obvs just like me, I talk to myself in movie quotes all the time.
Benjy is in love with Lightning McQueen. I swear, the words he says most frequently are "McQueen!" and "Kachow!"He has a matchbox-car version of LMQ that he takes everywhere. It's his best friend. If I hear him screaming, it's usually because he's realized that LMQ is not in his hand.
And that's the latest with the Reynolds Tribe. See you next month! (ha ha)