Top 9 of '09

Now that 2009 is over, here are my 9 highlights of '09 (in chronological order)

1- Probably the best highlight of the year and it started the year pretty well in January when Jr got hired permanantly at Wal-Mart. He had been freelancing there for about 6 months, but finally got hired as a full-time employee. That was an awesome news. For those of you who know what we had been going through for the past 2 years, know how much this meant to us.

2- Getting tickets of the 2010 World cup in South Africa and planning the trip. Oh yeah, we never mention that! We applied for tickets to the World cup (which was a lottery) and we actually got tickets for one game. We are trying to get more tickets, but so far so good, we are going to South Africa in June. Here is a short outlook of our 2 weeks trip this summer
3 days in Lisbon, Portugal
3 days in Johannesburg, South Africa
2 days in Krugar Park, South Africa for a safari
1 more day in Johannesburg
6 days in Paris
We are so excited to go. The actual planning of the trip was not so much of a highlight but deciding to go definetely was. As you can imagine with such a big event like the World Cup, everything gets booked up pretty quickly so it was quite a nightmare trying to book everything. But it all worked out in the end, eventhough we are paying at least three times as much as we would have paid had we gone any other time of the year!
okay that was a long highlight!

3- Signing the contract for our condo. Everything happened pretty quickly and it's hard to believe but that was already last April.

4- My promotion at Macy's, but most importantly not losing my job with the merger last May. I was promoted from an assistant planner to an associate planner, now only in Active and Young Contemporary coats.

5- The award I won at work last November for all the hard work I did all throughout the year. Everything started last January when my boss and I had to plan for the entire Missy coat world (back then, we were doing the whole thing, now the area has been split into two). So we had to plan 8 departments and build buy sheets for every programs. We planned such a great assortment for each store that all the stores are so happy with their assortment and they say it's the best it has ever been. Everybody from our manager to the chief of merchandising are very excited about coats this season. And our business was doing so good until the cold never came in November! But since the cold weather decided to show up in December we are doing great again.

6- My sister Marie-Claude visiting me in NYC for the first time in the 8 years I lived here. (see full details below)

7- My trip with my mom in November to Prague and Vienna. (details below)

8- Being picked to be part of the Affinity Resource Team at work. Affinity is a new program we use at work to do our buys and plan each store. Eventually it is supposed to customize the assortment for every single of our 800+ stores based on how well each store sells a particular attribute that has been taged to each style we own. So anyway, one person for each family of business has been picked to represent and support their team. It was pretty cool to find out that it was the GMMs (General Merchandise Manager) and GPMs (General Planning Manager) that picked everyone on the team. Then at our first meeting our CMO (chief merchandise officer) and CPO (chief planning officer) told us that we were cherry picked to be part of this team because they believe we are the future leaders of the company. I thought that was pretty cool!
Also the team is mostly buyers and planners, but very few associate planners and associate buyers.

9- Finally but not least, my Green Card got renewed for another 10 years, so I won't be going anywhere for now. When I first got my Green Card, it was a conditional Green Card for 2 years because Jr and I were married for less than 2 years when we applied, so after 2 years, they want to check up on you and make sure you're still married.