Good News.... Bad News...

Bad news first... my Aunt Betty passed away today. She has struggled with cancer and was doing well, but pneumonia attacked her and she just couldn't win the fight. Some of my very earliest childhood memories of my Tennessee family include her. She opened her home to us when we had just moved from California to Tennessee and allowed us to have Samantha's 3rd birthday party in her backyard pool. It was a great day. I leave tomorrow morning to drive to Tennesse (its an 8 hour drive) to help my cousins, Kathy & Sammy, get ready for the funeral. Services will be on Saturday. Please say prayers for my family and for safe travel for me. I'll be back on Sunday.

Good News... Glenn has applied for a new position. Actually he and 73 other people have applied! 26 of the applicants received a telephone interview 2 weeks ago... 5 were given a face-to-face interview last week... and they have now narrowed it down to TWO! And Glenn is one of those two! He got the call today to come back for a final interview... he will meet with several key players in the new facility and be given a tour AND will interview with the president of the hospital system. Normally, we would be very hush hush about something like this for fear of 'jinxing' it. But, we have decided to put it in God's hands and we are asking EVERYONE for prayers. Please pray for God's will and guidance. We are excited about this position for many reasons and would LOVE for Glenn to get it, but we want it to be the right thing too!
{UPDATE: Glenn got the job!! Woohoo! Praise God!}

Bad News... Cris (my daughter's fiance) arrived in Anchorage, Alaska on Monday safely. He is inprocessing at Fort Richardson and found out yesterday that he will indeed be deploying to IRAQ with his detachment in February 2009. They had planned to marry in August 2009, but that is now going to be impossible because his deployment will probably be the standard 15 months. So...

Good News... Cris & Samantha will wed this December 21st! We will be planning a wedding for the Sunday before Christmas. That gives us less than 3 months to throw this thing together! The most important part happened today, Cris got his leave approved for the wedding. Thank you Mr. Army!

Let me end on another bit of good news... the October Spooky Christmas Retreat has officially SOLD OUT!! I am so excited! I have been working on the make-n-takes in my new studio all week! I had planned to send an email out with pictures this weekend, but will do that next week. I have updated the website to reflect the SOLD OUT status and to list the details for the December retreat. It's gonna be a Death-by-Chocolate Christmas retreat. Two, not one, but two chocolate fountains will be going. Everyone will go home with tons of already made gift tags to use on their christmas presents and I will have Christmas card stations set up to make it easy to finish your Christmas cards. Postage stamps will also be available so that all you have to do is slap a stamp on your card and drop it off in the mail first thing Monday morning!

Well, gotta run... I've gotta finish packing. Take care everyone... and don't forget to hug the ones you love today!

Tammy