Christmas 2012 Draw

It’s that time of year again, to announce the results of the 2012 Christmas gift draw amongst the siblings and spouses. An overwhelming majority of you said they wanted to keep spouses included in the draw, so here are the results of this year’s draw. I’ll also email this list out to you all. (If you get this email from a different email address than your preferred email, please let me know what your preferred email address is. Or if you don’t get the email, please let me know as well.)

So without further ado, here’s the list:
Jere has Josh
Becky has Tianna
Melissa has Andrea
Joe has Jere
Justin has Chris
Laurie has Trish
Will has Lindsey
Trish has Becky
Catherine has Will
Chris has Catherine
Leah has Amy
Josh has Justin
Andrea has Stephen
Stephen has Laurie
Amy has Matt
Matt has Melissa
Lindsey has Joe
Tianna has Leah

I made sure no one drew the same name as the last two years, but if I missed something, please let me know. (Welcome to the Christmas draw Lindsey!) And if anyone needs to pull out of the draw please let me know and I’ll re-shuffle names.

Please remember the limit is $20, and please try and put some thought into the gift (which MAY eliminate gift cards). And if anyone has a wish list already on a website, please feel free to share (I’ve got a wish list going on Amazon I’m happy to give details for). Happy shopping – only 134 days until Christmas!

Milayna’s blessing

We know we have told at least some of you, but we know that probably not all of you have heard. . .

We will be blessing Milayna this Sunday, August 5th here in Camp Verde. You are all invited to come, and if anyone can come, we’d be thrilled to have you along. But we also do understand how difficult it can be to get to everything and we know that most of you won’t be able to be here–and that is okay, too.

My parents will be in town to visit with us for about 10 days and that is why we are doing the blessing so soon. It was the only time they could come, and since I don’t get to see them very often, we wanted to cater to their schedule. My dad has been able to come for all our kids’ blessings before, but my mom has never been able to be at any of her grandkids’ blessings ever, so this is a pretty big deal for my parents to both be able to be in attendance.

If you can come and are planning to attend, let us know–we’d love to include you.

We hope all of you are doing well and that your ceilings have not collapsed recently!

Love and blessings to you and your families,
Andrea

Amazing!

OK, so I know that Tianna will agree with me on this one. But we went to see The Amazing Spider-Man yesterday and it was really, really good. I would’ve turned right back around and watched it again.

It was at the very least on par with the first and second Spider-Man movies (3 was a mess). I think it’s actually better, but that might be just me being a Spidey geek and riding the euphoria of the new film. It was most everything a Spider-Man geek would want.

Andrew Garfield did a great job making Peter Parker a more modern day geek. Nick had mentioned to me that he did a good job of displaying how some situations made Peter uncomfortable and hard to get his point across, sometimes very unsure of what to say. And while his confidence grew in a lot of situations as he became Spider-Man, there were still occasions where he portrayed Peter having a hard time. There was more emotion in dealing with the whole Uncle Ben story as well.

Emma Stone was great as Gwen Stacy. Everything I think I remembered about that character from the comics she portrayed. She was not afraid to stand up for anyone or to do her part in difficult situations. She was Peter’s peer academically. And Emma Stone did a great job of showing Gwen’s understanding of who Peter was, what he had become, and what she was getting into. Her Gwen was able to help and encourage Peter, a trait that I remember from the comics. Doesn’t make too much sense now but if you watch the show you’ll see what I mean.

Was it direct canon from the comics? Not all of it. But did those deviations detract from the movie? I don’t think so at all. And as many times as I’ve read or watched Uncle Ben dying scenes, they still seemed to be able to pull off a very emotional part of the movie superbly. They did a great job of showing Spidey’s “way” of fighting bad guys, and his often witty banter he’d take part in with them. The web-swinging scene near the end of the movie was pretty cool. Even the resolution of the movie had me going from, “You can’t end it like that!,” to, “I really like how what they did there.” Finally, every scene that has both Captain Stacy and Peter/Spidey in it was awesome.

The secret scene half-way through the credits… well, I won’t spoil it, but it does set things up nicely, if not for movie 2, then at least the 3rd one. There wasn’t a secret scene at the very end of the credits like a lot of Marvel movies. I am interested to see if they eventually stick to the comic stories pertaining to Gwen. If you don’t remember, she was eventually killed by the Green Goblin and I’d like to see if the movie studio is brave enough to allow someone to tell that story on the big screen.

Bottom line, if you get the chance, go and see this movie!

Suturing and Knot Tying Breakout Session

NATA Office (@nata1950) tweeted this picture about 3 hours ago:

Here’s the link to the picture since the tweet is missing a space after “2012” http://lockerz.com/s/220231407

It’s all my fellow MedSport workers, Jamie, Jake, Melissa, and Me.

EDIT:

Ok I tracked down the picture if you don’t want to click through.

Have you seen this boy?

Just a little reminder for us so we can all see what Nick’s smile used to look like. Why do we need to remember? Well, in about 30 minutes he is going in to get his braces. Last week he went in and had 8 spacers inserted between some of his teeth. And today is the big day, when the braces go. Stay strong Nick! And remember, ultimately it’s for the ladies.

Don’t Skip This One

Do to the recent events that occurred on CA, I’ve put together a couple of links that Becky found that at the very least, each of you should browse through.

FTC What To Do If Your Personal Information Has Been Compromised

Identity Theft And Your Social Security Number

Identity theft, fraud or misuse of my Social Security card

These are all links to government websites concerning identity theft. After reading through these, if you haven’t already, please call one of the credit agencies and put a fraud alert on your credit. This makes it so that they will call you anytime any type of credit is being applied for in your name. You only need to call one, and whichever you call passes the the information on to the other two.

I called Equifax and entered some information. Then a real person got on the line to verify the information, find out the reason for the alert, give me some information, then try to sell a fraud protection package (the person I talked to wasn’t pushy or anything).

I also read that you should wait to order your credit report, somewhere around a month after you suspect you’ve been compromised. That way any unauthorized activity will show up on it.

So make the call, then order your free credit report in a few weeks.