Today was a busy day at the Cronin's nest. If you could picture taking a hornets nest and throwing it on the ground and watching all the hornets escaping. That is what our house looked like today. Everyone had some last minute stuff to take care. Jack had basketball practice, I had to run by the office as well as some last minute stuff to do. With Kristin and Ryan, and Dororthy, Devin's mom, on top of our usual crazy activities, it was helter skelter. Devin did manage to get her daughter and her mother out for a nice manicure and pedicure. Good quality time. Once Jack was done with practice, he showered and we hit the mall for three and half hours.

My boy has the shopping gene. I was impressed with the care and concern about all aspects of the gifts. He would change his mind and we would double back through the sea of humanity finding the perfect gift. We covered a lot of territory and with a 70 degree day and light winds, I was glad we were in California and not in Utah. Don't get me wrong, I wish the basketball schedule would have allowed us the chance to get of there for the holidays, but running around an out door mall would not have been fun at 28 degrees.

We did get it all done, but we had to wait about 30 minutes to get the care out of valet. It gave me time to check out the shoppers and see how many bags were being carried and how full they were. I was truly impressed. I believe we will hear we had a dumbbell retail season this year. We had a strong black Friday weekend and I have a feeling we will have a strong finish, but rumors are it was fairly thin in between. Time will tell.

When we did get home, man child was in charge of the wrapping since I suck at it. The pile of presents surrounding the tree at this moment is grotesque. We all agreed not to get carried away this year, but I think the euphoria of having the house finished and the dismal holiday we had last year we, our families and friends may have over compensated. We truly are blessed.

Now I got some stuff from my boy last night because I did not blog. He was really upset with me. Ya see, we had a game last night and Jack was in and scored his first two points of his career. He is 100% on the season. He was very happy and we all went a little crazy.

I still made time to catch the market at the opening and at the closing. We did close out a few of our option trades at a nice profit.