Christmas Baking and Laren's Office

Christmas Baking

Today my kids and I spent a great deal of the day baking/cooking. We made Almond Bark with crushed Candy Canes; Pretzels swirled in White Chocolate, Nuts and Candy Canes; Gingerbread Cookies; and Caramels.

Alyssa stirring the caramels while they cooked.

Some of the goodies we made.

It was so fun to do that, but cooking is a lot of work and lots of clean-up!!!

Laren's Office

Laren working at his desk at work. That green paint really bugged me at first, but I started getting used to it.


Laren spent the better part of the day working today, mostly from home. Then this evening he needed to go in and get something "out". He finished his paperwork and we hung some pictures in his office and CLEANED it! There was so much paper clutter in there. He had all these plans on top of his desk. Some of them needed to be archived/filed, and some of them just needed put in the recycling bin.

The finished project. Look at all the desk space!!

He really needs some more filing cabinets and another bookshelf in his office. They just moved about 6 weeks ago from a different office building. This new one has taken some getting used to. At least he has his own office with a door, many of his co-workers that had offices at the last place now have "cubes"/cubicles. But on the flip side, his last office had one wall that was window and this one has no window at all unless you count the one that let's you see into the hall!

It just so happens that Laren also had a bunch of new pictures to hang in his "new" office so I put the pictures in the frame and then we hung those and his diploma's/certficates/licenses. It was a walk down memory lane to look at his PE (Professional Engineering) License. That took a lot of time, sweat and fingernail biting - but he ended up passing his first time around.

We lived in Arizona at the time. Typically you need 4 years experience to even take the PE test. But in the State of California, they will let you test with just 2 years experience. So Laren went with a buddy of his and they flew to San Diego and took the test. Laren passed and his buddy didn't (he ended up passing after re-taking the test 2 more times). I'm so glad those years are behind us now!