The Albin Family

And here is our little family in our Christmas PJ's. By this time Maddie had had enough and was not in the picture posing mood as you can see.

After we got into our PJ's, it was time for Maddie to go to night night land. Then it was time for us all to bring down all the presents and place them under the tree. And Daddy still had to assemble the Toy Box for Maddie.

Here is the final picture of our Tree after Santa's Visit. I actually had to get on the staircase to get everything in the picture.

Here is the Toy Box all set up and of course the Cats were curious as always.

Here is a shot of our stockings hung over the fireplace. Notice Maddie's being the fullest and the little red bag on the fireplace is full of stocking stuffers too.

After we set everything up Rick, Grandma, and I opened up our stockings. Then off to bed!!!

I will post about Christmas Day tomorrow... I just looked and there are lots of photo's to share!!! :) We had a great day and that little girl grinned all day long!!!

Good night to all! Tomorrow will come much to early.

So Maddie has come down with her first little "bug". She woke up on Tuesday morning with what we call "The Snootzies" (Nasal Congestion). We think she may have a low grade fever. I called the Dr. yesterday and spoke with a nurse. WOW, she gave me so much info that my head spun. So last night, per the Nurse's suggestion, Maddie slept with a Humidifier in her room so it was cool and humid and we elevated her mattress so that the Snootzies could drain. We gave her some Tylenol and "sucked her brains out through her nose" with that little bulb syringey thing (she loved that....NOT). Surprisingly she did sleep through the night.

Today was about the same. She was a bit of a terror and very fussy. She has sort of lost her appetite... which is a little unusual for that kid. When I spoke to the nurse she said to look out for ear infections with tugging at her ears or not wanting the bottle/juice. Right now we are okay. I think she just has the little bug that has to pass. We are keeping a close eye out for wheezing or chest conjestion. She is still playful, just conjested. We just feel sorry for her because we can't do anything. You know how miserable you are when you have a cold... and she can't even communicate that with us.

Hopefully she makes a speedy recovery for Christmas. I would hate for her to be under the weather on her first Christmas. We have 2 Christmas parties to go to in the next few days... the first being on Friday for the Hotel.. so I hope she is well enough to attend.

Tomorrow brings another day of work. I have to get up early because we are to do some sales calls. Then more shopping for the Employee Christmas party, then home to cook for the party. Busy Busy Busy. Hopefully we won't be making a trip to the Pediatrician tomorrow. I think she should be okay... just conjested and miserable. We are trying to keep fluids in her but it is hard for her to take the bottle/sippy cup with her nose all stopped up. So also per the nurse's instruction I bought some popsicles to give her. The nurse said that the cold she would like if she was feverish. She still has no teeth so it is hard for her to take the popsicle, so she said to make is slushy and feed it to her through a spoon. Stupid me, gave her a Red Popsicle after we just had a bath... next time we will do that in the exact opposite order. ;)

She is asleep now so hopefully she will stay that way until morning. Daddy is asleep also... so I guess it it my turn to turn into a Pumpkin too.

P.S. to those Moms of babies out there..Do not be tempted to buy the little thermometers that are stickers that you stick under thier arm. If you don't know what I am talking about they come in a pack of 5 or so and you just stick the sticker under thier arm and it continually takes their temperature through little green dots that turn black. You can leave it on them for 48 hours, even through a bath as it advertises. Well it sounds like a superb idea to have a continual thermometer on them and not have to shove anything up the butt...Right??? Well, not so much for us. Do you know how hard it is to read a little sticker the size of a Half Dollar that is under the arm of a sick, fussy, squirmy, and now cold baby since you have to undress her to read it? Plus the stupid thing came off in the bath. So it is back to the Rectal Thermometer for us. I think it may be time to invest in an ear thermometer.....

So not much is happening here. We are just gearing up for the Jolly Ol' Fat Man as my Dad would say. We haven't a present under the tree, but a closet full of them. Between the Cats and Maddie being able to crawl and get into things we decided to keep them all out of reach until Christmas Eve. So the closet is busting at it's seams with presents for the whole family and we still have more to wrap and put in there. Oh Christmas is going to be wonderful.

So speaking of Maddie Crawling.. she is no longer doing the Army Crawl scoot on the floor thing. She is doing the full blown crawling. And when there is food involved she can get to her destination in a Heartbeat! That girl loves to eat. She is getting to the point were she does not want to have anything to do with her bottle... she wants the food! For dinner she had a jar of Lasagna baby food and then she had cooked diced carrots. She was doing a half way decent job of picking them up and feeding herself with the carrots. Anyone that knows me knows that I can't stand Carrots, so she did not get her taste for carrots from me. After Maddie ate it was time for the "grown ups" to eat. We were eating Borscht (sp?) which is Beet Soup. It is actually quite delicious if you like beets. Well Maddie was watching us eat and getting very upset that she could not have any.... as she usually does. Well, we decided to let her taste the soup. Since it was a clear liquid I didn't think it would hurt to give her a little taste. Well she made the funniest faces and she would lift her eyebrows.. it was hilarious. She would act like she wasn't sure if she liked it but then would open wide for another taste. I tell you she is her Father's Daughter when it comes to food!!!

Well that is about all I have to share today. Nothing much new with us, but just want to keep the blog going so no one thinks I dropped off the face of the planet again. :)

So I decided I wanted to take Maddie to sit on Santas lap. I have been looking forward to this for ever. We took her to go sit on the Easter Bunny's lap when she was just a few months old and she slept through the whole experience. So I was very concerned about the Santa looking very natural. Back home at the mall the Santa would not always be the best looking Santa in the world. Many times I don't think the Santa was much older than 28 or weighed much more than 150. So needless to say I wanted a good looking Santa.

Ahhhh now Thursday.

I got to see Maddie's trick first thing. When she wakes up early while I am still getting ready I will get her and put her outside the bathroom door to watch me dry my hair and do my makeup. she loves to watch me do my hair. I think she likes it so much because she gets to see Mommy upside down and I turn the dryer on low and dry her hair too. Well yesterday I am doing my hair and she is sitting in the hallway occupying herself then I look over and she is sitting there clapping. TOO CUTE!!! My little girl is getting big.

Well Thursday brought no QA inspector. :( But that is okay it gave us a little more time to clean up and beautify.

So Thursday was the day that the Radio Station I listen too decided to kick off the Christmas Music. I was so excited all morning. It was sort of an overcast day... it kind of reminded me of being back home. We had the Fireplace in the lobby lit and Christmas music on... It was great!!!! Then I guess it got on a few peoples nerves and it was turned off. :( But that is okay... today I have off and am listening to it.

I actually played one of my favorite childhood christmas songs for Maddie the otherday. It was Alvin and the Chipmunks "All I want for Christmas is my two Front Teeth". I used to love that song when I was a kid. We had it on Record.... how about that. She seemed to enjoy watching the Green Bars on Windows Media Player on the Computer go up and down in sync with the music.

Well next week is Maddie's First Thanksgiving. I am pretty excited to give her mashed potatoes and maybe a green bean to play with. The Dr. said to try experimenting with table foods. We gave her a cooked carrot last week and she tried to pick it up and put it in her mouth... but they kept sticking to her fingers so she would motion to put in her mouth but it stayed on her hands. So I ended up feeding her and she actually made like she was chewing them. I can't believe she is 9 months already.

Well I spent the evening downloading Christmas Music. I love this time of year. I actually found something called the Trans-Siberian Orchestra that is awesome. If you have never heard their version of Carol on the Bells, you MUST hear it. It is so powerful and energetic. I would love to see them in concert. I actually heard about them last year and forgot all about it until I heard them make mention of TSO on the Radio.... I just had to come home and have Rick hear it.

Anyway that is about all for Thursday.

Oh my. So I am going to play a little catch up now. We have been working so hard at the hotel that I was just too exhausted to blog when I got home.

On Wednesday we spent the better part of the day preparing for our QA inspector. We painted the walkway up to the hotel. That was back breaking work. But it looked awesome when we finished. It is amazing how people just freakout when they see wet paint signs and they still manage to walk through it when you specifically tell them where and where not to step. But we made it thorough.

After we painted the GM hands me a WD-40 pen and says "Come with Me". So he showed me a little Martha Stewart trick. If you have scuff marks on the Wall Vinyl you can remove them with a WD-40 pen with little effort. It also does not take the print off of the Vinyl. So we walked the entire hotel and removed the scuff marks from Wall Vinyl. VERY COOL!!

So in addition to those two things we spent our day doing things like... picking up cigarette butts and trash, dusting, testing smoke alarms.. etc. OYE

So when I got home I heard that little miss Maddie had learned a new trick...she can clap her hands. She was too tired to show me though. :(

Well that was about all that Wednesday brought my way.

Okay so here is a little clip that I have wanted to share with everyone for a while now and hopefully this is an easy way without having to burn it to CD and mail it out. I hope you enjoy... make sure your volume is turned up. It is sort of long... just hang in there. I could watch it over and over and it never get old. She is about 7 months old here.

So as I have said I am the Assistant General Manager for a Residence Inn which is a Marriott Hotel. I really enjoy the Hotel business because you have the opportunity to meet so many people. And I really enjoy the property I am at because... well not to gloat... but we are really really good. We are one of the better properties in our area.

As a Marriott property we receive what we call "GSS Scores" every Friday. This is the results of Surveys that Marriott will send to guests via email once they have checked out of the hotel. This is pretty random.. not everyone will get one... and again not everyone who receives them will fill them out. But every Friday we get our GSS Scores that rates us from the Guest's point of view as to how well we are doing. Anyway, our property as a whole gets pretty good scores. Since I have been there the scores have gone up.... I would like to believe that me being there had something to do with that... but it could just be coincidence. The AGM that I replaced was evidentally "not so motivated" and did not always follow through on things. But I try to make it a habit to follow up and take care of loose ends on a daily basis. Anyway point to telling you this is recently we have started a few different "Best Practices" that hopefully will increase our scores even more. So I cannot wait until Fridays to get the GSS scores to see how we are doing. If we keep this up we will be in line for an Award through Marriott. Yippee!!

So to any of you travelers.. if you stay at a Marriott property and you get a Survey once you have checked out, please take a moment to seriously complete them... they give the hotel so much information and feedback that you would not believe. Also, if you ever do have a problem at a hotel...or anywhere else... let someone know about it so it can be corrected. A big hurdle that we see is that a guest will have a problem and never notify anyone while at the hotel... then they leave and complain about it. A little something to remember "We can't fix it if we don't know it is broken". You don't know how many times at past properties a guest will say upon check out... or later "Oh, I didn't get any sleep last night.. the people next door were being so loud" then when we ask "Oh, did you call down to the desk?" They reply with "No". That kills me!!! The Front Desk cannot stand outside of every door and keep the noise down. If someone is being loud, we need to know.. it is a simple phone call to the Front Desk. Then the Front Desk can investigate and call the room and ask them to keep the noise down. Many times it is just that easy... and they quite down. It just kills me when a guest does not notify anyone that they are having an issue until it is too late.

So anyway another thing that Marriott does to keep all properties consistent and make sure that all hotels are good enough to keep the Marriott name (if you will) is conduct what is called "QA Inspections". These inspections are done every 4-6 months and are to be taken very seriously. I have yet to go through a Marriott QA but have been through them with Choice Hotels. What generally happens is an inspector through Marriott will come to the property (many times unannounced) and sit incognito in the Breakfast Room to make sure everything is flowing correctly and the attendants are doing what they are suppose to and that all the proper foods are out. Then they will announce themselves to the Front Desk and ask to Inspect 10% of the hotel rooms. They go through the rooms with Management and inspect for cleanliness and Maintenance. Then there is certain paperwork to be inspected (certifications, food temperatures, fire extinguisher inspections, etc, etc.) and then they will ask the staff questions. Anyway, the last inspection that our property received was just before I started and we received a 96% which is Superb. Actually it is quite uncommon, so uncommon in fact, that we got special recognition from Mr. Marriott himself... he sent us a very nice letter in the mail. Something to really be proud of.

With that said, we just got information today that our inspection could very well be later this week. The inspector was in town today, "QA-ing" some of our sister properties. So tomorrow will prove to be a long day. Paul, my General Manager, and I have agreed to come in early tomorrow and bring knock around clothes as we have some tidying to do. And we even discussed the possibility of repainting the exterior walkway leading up to the hotel. So it will be a come in early and leave late kind of day. But if it means getting even more recognition from Mr. Marriott then I am more than willing.

So anyway Ready or Not it could happen later on this week... we are thinking Thursday. Well that is about all today. Sorry if I rambled but I am really proud of my hotel and want us to really exceed the competition.

In other news.... we won $11 in the Powerball. And yes we did spend it all in the same place... MORE Powerball tickets.

That's all for tonight kids.

So as I have said, we moved to Phoenix in May of this year. My wonderful husband, Rick, and I had just had our baby girl, Madison, in February. With our new bundle of joy in our arms we decided we wanted an exciting new adventure and to move to a new place where we could raise our family. Rick's parents live in Phoenix and offered for us to stay with them for a while until we were settled. So we took the plunge.

The plan was easy really... well, easy for Maddie and I. Rick's Dad flew out to WV and Rick and Dad drove the moving truck and vehicles across the country... that was a several day adventure. In the mean time Maddie and I flew to Huntsville, to visit what Rick and I refer to as "The Alabama Crew". The Alabama Crew consist of my Dad and Stepmother (Miss Mary), my brother and his wife... my stepbrother, his wife and their 2 sons... and my other stepbrother. I could name names... but it would get too confusing. So anyway like I said Maddie and I had the easy part... we got to visit for a week!!! Maddie got to meet her aunts and uncles an cousins for the first time, and she got to see Nana and Papa again. So after a week of visiting Maddie and I hopped on another plane and flew 4 hours to Phoenix, where she got to see her Grandma and Grandpa for the first time.

We now live with Rick's parents (Mom and Dad). We all seem to get along well. For the first 6 weeks after we got to AZ, I was looking for Employment so was on a little second maternity leave with Maddie. But I also got to hang out with Mom and had a lot of fun. We enjoy each other's company and are just too silly around each other. We make fun of each other and tease one another... I guess that is why we get along so well. In June she had to go to Las Vegas for 3 weeks due to a death in the family and I had no one to play with. I really missed her then.. I think she felt the same because when she came back... we all as a family agreed that she should never be gone for that long again. Truthfully Maddie, Mom and I are very close and I don't know what will happen when we do get our own place... all three of us might go through some separation anxiety.

As for Jobs, Rick works at 84 Lumber about 45 minutes from home. Out here when you say "My husband works for 84 Lumber" I usually get the response "What is that?" I just want to say to them "It's a Jewlery Store... what do you think!!!!" Back home you see 84 Lumbers everywhere... everyone knows what they are. Even if you have not been to one, you can figure out what it is.

I work as the Assistant General Manager for an extended stay Hotel, Residence Inn by Marriott. I enjoy it very much and work with alot of fun and interesting people. Right now we are gearing up for the SuperBowl which will be here in February 2008 and only 8 miles from the Hotel. We just got through a Nascar weekend and now are getting into our busy season. Everyday brings something new in the Hotel business and it can be alot of fun. I will tell you about the people I work with another time.

So that is just a little brief cross-section of our lives at this point.

Okay so we will try this again. When we found out we were going to be moving to Phoenix last May I decided to start a blog so that all of our friends and family back home could keep up with us. Well that lasted about 4 days. I had so much I wanted to put in the blog with pictures and all that it became overwhelming for me to try and catch up. So what did I do? What I often do when I find something overwhelming... Avoid it! So with that said, the blog went untouched for months. Then in the last week or so I found out that someone really close to me had a blog and I became adicted to reading it. That started the itch again. So when I decided to go back to my blog I could not remember how to get into it... I had forgotten the login and password. Rick and I tried for 2 days to get into that and we could not. So I am starting over Fresh!!! A new go at this blogging thing. I am not sure if anyone will be interested... and I will go ahead and let you know that I am in no way a creative writer... but maybe someone will find it amusing.