Saturday, February 02, 2008

A wee little bump in the road

Had I created this post four days ago, I'm sure the tone would have been much less positive; but here we are four days calmer, four days wiser.

On Tuesday, after being with Dell for over 10 years, Mark was laid off. While the initial shock of it was a tough blow in so many ways, each day since has been better than the last. In fact, this has been one of the best weeks in a very long time. Mark is consistently happier than I've seen him in so, so long. While he is obviously concerned about what the future holds, he is coming to accept this new road before him with an open mind.

I really believe that he has been given a gift. Mark is an amazingly dedicated man, and worked hard to provide for his family despite being completely unfulfilled at the end of each day. I know that this is EXACTLY what he needed. This is the kick in the toukus he desperatley needed to seek out more...from life and from his career. What may come of it, I don't know, but I do know that this experience will be nothing but positive for our family, and I have no doubts that we will be just fine. We have ALL learned so much from his hard work and dedication, and will in turn continue learning in the weeks and months ahead.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Week in Review

This week has been a busy one. Each time I sit down to blog the happenings, another item on the "to do" list prevails. It's finally Sunday, the day when I allow myself to push that list out of my mind for a few hours in the morning and just BE.

I started the weekend off with this from my sweetie Alex (ALL by himself!):

A well balanced breakfast for mom, complete with can opener, knife AND spoon. Ok, maybe a little fruity, but healthy none the less. What a sweetheart I have.

Mark and I tag teamed and were able to get both kids to their basketball games. Ashley had a double header, and played better than I've ever seen her play AND she even scored 4 points in the second game.

Alex's allergies are doing a LOT better now that he have Alegra and Flonase. I can't believe it has taken me this long to learn that allergy medicine needs to be changed up every few months. I had no idea that the body worked up a resistance to the allergy meds. I've never had to worry about it because we only give Alex meds seasonally. This allergy season has just been an exceptionally long one.

The kids (and I!) were off on Monday thanks to MLK, Jr. We had a nice relaxing morning together, follwed by an afternoon at Mollie's house where we watched Ratatoullie with Alex's buddies.
Afterwards, we went to Targe' and bought our little mailboxes that I was SO excited about. (Thanks Renae!!!)
By the way, if you have kiddos and I haven't already talked your ear off about this precious idea.
See this post over at Planting Seeds . We bought 4 little mailboxes, decorated them with our names and have been actively sending letters (and goodies) back and forth all week. It has been so FUN!!!

School is going well for me. I'm feeling very confident that I can handle all that I have on my plate and will not have a problem tackling this class.

I was contacted by an Environmental firm (a PTA acquaintance's company) that is interested in me doing some overflow CAD work for them periodically.
They have one tech that needs to be able to take vacations and on occasion has more work than she can handle.
It is so, so hard to say no to such an offer even with the already full plate that I have.
And I didn't.
I sent them my qualifications along with details about how much time I can commit. I have to admit that because of my already hectic schedule, part of me was hoping they would make this an easy decision for me and just tell me that they need someone who can work more hours, however, after reading my requirements, they now want me to come in and talk.
We'll see.
I'm definitely going to hold my ground on the amount of time that I'm willing to commit, but I can't help but think that this might be a really good opportunity.
If I'm able to work from home, this would enable me to take the summer off of my current job, yet still keep a little money coming in.
The dynamics of me taking the summer off have been on my mind a lot lately, so this could possibly be the solution I was looking for.
And how exciting to work in an entirely new field of Geologists and Environmentalists!

Friday, Ashley attended the grand finale for Cotillion. The Ball. Good grief, the lengths that some of these parents went to, to get these girls ready is mind boggling to me. There were multiple girls that took off half the day of school to make it to hair and nail appointments. As you may guess this prompted Ashley's insistance on doing the same. Yeah RIGHT. After a LOT of not so convincing pre-pubescent conversation, I ended up rushing Ashley home from school throwing some curlers in her hair and giving her a french manicure (which I already had the supplies to do). She looked beautiful. We were in such a rush that I didn't have the time to take pictures of the "do" before the humidity got to it. I'm a little bummed about that, but she looked gorgeous and might have learned a little frugal lesson in the process. We met up with at least 10 other kiddos and their moms at Chili's, where we had dinner and piled the kids in to a handful of vehicles. Ashley had the pleasure of riding in Nicole's Hummer, major score. The ball was held way out at Austin Country Club and I was OH SO THANKFUL to Nicole for offering her chauffer services up. She ended up getting home after midnight full of chatter about the evening. Nicole took some pictures at the Ball that I will post as soon as I get ahold of them.


Last weekend Mark started his latest project: tiling window sills. He is doing a BEAUTIFUL job!


And why would he want to do that? Well, our horses dogs have little friends, or rather, friends they wouldn't mind eating (cats, squirels, armadillos etc.) that like to tantalize them from outside. Every window sill within reach looks similar to this: