Quiet Christmas

Christmas at our house is always a quiet event. With no family here in Texas, except for the four of us.....it usually is just another typical day. The dinner was great, the weather was cold, and it was sure nice to have two days off and not have to worry that our customers were being taken care of!



Christmas was also alot more fun when these guys were little! Guess I'll just have to wait until those grandchildren come along! :)

A Tribute to Tacos

I'm not much of a sweet eater, but when it comes to tacos -- I can eat them every single day and never get tired of them! As funny as it sounds, I have many fond memories of tacos.

Our family first started eating tacos when I was around ten years old. My mom made some of the best tacos. We moved to New York from Arizona when I was in 7th grade and tacos weren't available there and neither were the shells that my mom used to make the tacos. Being the great mother that she was, mom found a recipe and home made our taco shells from scratch so that we could still enjoy our favorite meal. They weren't the greatest shells in the world, but we were very grateful for her efforts and glad to have our tacos.

Taco memories also consist of our favorite Friday night when we'd go to El Taco and get 20 tacos for 10 cents each and that was our family dinner. Of course that was in the "good old days". I can remember walking home from high school and stopping at El Taco and getting a taco and a Coke for 25 cents.....wow what a deal!

It seems that most of my fondest memories all revolve around tacos. My sister and I used to meet for lunch when I lived in Tucson and usually it consisted of someplace where we could get tacos! So here's a salute to my all time favorite.....THE TACO!

I'm Special!

Well today is my birthday and I feel special.

Now some of you might think that having your birthday on Christmas Eve is bad -- but I'm here to tell you differently. Rumor has it that I wasn't supposed to be a December baby, but apparently I had other plans. I popped into this world at 11:58 pm on December 24th (the year shall remain a secret). Not sure how my mother felt about having to spend Christmas in the hospital, but hopefully she was delighted with the outcome! Now some people also believe that you get "ripped off" having your birthday the day before Christmas. This is another myth. My mother decided that first year that Christmas Eve would be my birthday and we would not mix the two celebrations together. So while I didn't get a day in the middle of the year to open gifts and get a cake, I was the ONLY one in the house who got to open presents the day before Christmas.

To this day I still feel special every time I have to show my driver's license or put my birthdate down and someone says "wow your birthday is on Christmas Eve. I'll bet you got gipped" (this happens almost on a daily basis). Thank you mom for giving me such a special birthday!

Now Hiring: Magic Elves

Dear Elves:

Lately my life is just too out of control and I have too much to do and I'm not getting to enjoy the fun things in life anymore. So tonight when I go to bed you will find a list on the table of the things that need to be accomplished when I wake up in the morning.

1. Please get all my filing done that is almost a year behind
2. Finish all the financial things for PZ that need to be done before the end of the year (I'm only 6 months behind on that one)
3. Get my house nice and clean (no comment on this one)
4. Get the house decorated for Christmas. I'm afraid if you don't do it -- it's not going to get done!
5. Get the rooms painted that need them, clean out the closets, drawers, cupboards, and have that big yard sale that I've been saving stuff for a year to have.

In return, I promise:
1. That I will once again get to do the fun things that I'm missing.
2. Spend quality time with my husband again instead of always having to be doing business stuff 24/7.
3. Hire someone this next year to help me get things done because, no matter what I think, I just can't do it all by myself.

Busy Days and Busy Nights

Wow....I'm almost embarrassed at the last date of my post. While the thoughts have been swirling in my head.....the time hasn't been there to stop and put them here. But on this nice quiet Sunday morning before I begin another busy day -- I'll get some random stuff here so you don't think I've deserted my rambling ways.

First of all.....Thanksgiving! What a fabulous day that was! I've been delaying posting about it because I wanted to get all the pictures edited and downloaded so that I could put some here. But I'm confessing to all of you that the camera is still sitting on my desk and I haven't touched it since we've been home (not enough time). So -- I'll post those later. The best part of Thanksgiving was flying in that morning and surprising my family -- some who had NO IDEA of the plan that my sister and I had hatched. It was great spending time with everyone and it had been a VERY LONG time since the Taggart clan had been together. My sister and her husband were awesome hosts and took such good care of all of us! I also had the opportunity to reunite with one of my bestest friends ever from high school - Carol (Dowers) Chamberlain. We had a great time talking over some of the "good ole days" and meeting each other's husbands. Have to have more times like that. The trip was way too short and we had to fly back home early Saturday morning because duty called! Thank you family and friends for such a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving -- that is what the holiday is all about!

Okay...I'm cheating -- Carol had her pictures posted the very next day so I'm gonna copy hers so that we can have some photos here:




Okay.....time to get back to my real world now!

And the award went to......

Not us! We had a fabulous night anyways! We were a little disappointed, but then we stopped and thought about the great year we've had and how we have been truly blessed. While other businesses and people were struggling, we were able to open a second location (what the heck were we thinking???)

For the banquet we were able to set up a table and spotlight our business. We talked to lots of potential new customers and heard from several people that they heard we had great pizza and were going to try us out! Here's a picture of our table at the dinner.



We had a wonderful dinner, met lots of people, and enjoyed dressing up and spending a romantic night out with my husband. We also were honored to receive a Commendation from the U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of our Congressman Kevin Brady. They took pictures of us receiving the award and I'll post them once they send them to us. I think they are possibly voting in the House and Senate on which day would be a good one for Pizza Zone Day, but no decisions have been made as of yet. Now I just need to find more places to wear those fancy clothes......but someone around here has promised me another cruise and another reason to wear that new dress!



Now all I have left to figure out is who took the young Debbie and Paul and put these "old" people in their place!

Not the Academy Awards....but close

Well the big awards banquet is tomorrow night. Of course, being the typical "last minute" people that we are, I waited until this week to get a new dress and shoes and my husband went and got a new suit. This journey has not been an easy one, but after spending 2 days, looking at a minimum of 300 dresses, 2 malls, 10 misc. women's shops......I found the dress. Hope the picture does it justice. It is a nice satiny dress, simple and I feel elegant in it. Dressing up is a big deal for us. Our typical wardrobe is shorts, Pizza Zone t-shirts, and tennis shoes.



Of course you can't buy a new dress without having a new pair of shoes to go with it. So here's the shoes. After wearing nothing but tennis shoes for the last 10 years, should be interesting to see how I do in a pair of "grown up" shoes!



And then there's this next purchase. This was essential for my transformation of "pizza boss" to "award winning business owner" (LOL). I'm not even going to bother commenting on this last item -- it will speak for itself!



Lastly, I was excited to find exactly the perfect decorations we needed to decorate a table for the dinner tomorrow night. We are able to decorate a table to showcase our business -- and hopefully our table will be grand! We plan on displaying our employees working and pictures of our pizzas on the digital frame.



Now everything is in place and we're all set for fun evening!