It's been a really wonderful beginning of the year for our family. We had a great Christmas at home, just the three of us. I took the week off of work and we hung with friends, celebrated and went skiing for a few days at Copper. It was very low key, which we all enjoyed. Things had been (and continue to be) so busy between school, work and just life, we needed some down time. AJ's big gift from Santa was a new Samsung Tablet. He was in heaven! He had an iPad before which he loved, but it was time to replace it.
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Oh! I know another thing that was keeping us so busy... we had our basement finished! What an exciting thing. When Jason and I moved into this house in 2006 (I cannot believe it'll be 9 years in August!) we dreamt of finishing the basement and how we would do it, but I wasn't really ever sure we would. Quite honestly, we have almost 3000 square feet above ground and we don't use all of it, so I wasn't sure why we would need it. But once in a while we talked about what we would do if/when we had the money to do it. Any funny enough, the basement is almost exactly like we had originally discussed way back when. Our wonderful contractor, Don, helped create an amazing media room, bar, workout area and bathroom down there. We considered putting in a bedroom for resale, but we've got 4 bedrooms and an office upstairs, so it wasn't necessary. I was a little worried about how messy this process was going to be and how long it would take- you hear a lot of horror stories when you start telling people what you're going to do- but it wasn't bad at all! Since it was in the basement, it didn't affect our daily life, or mess up the part of the house we were living in. And it only took 8 weeks!
Here are some pictures of the finished basement:
Our lives have been really busy on the job front too. I have been loving my job but it has been INCREDIBLY busy the last few months. Of course, that is a good thing, but there are days when it feels like it's too much. I feel like I've become the Jack of all Trades at work. Again, this is good. In January, we had our annual Kickoff which means executives fly in and the entire center shuts down for a big 5 hour rah-rah meeting to discuss the previous years results and pump people up for the coming year. I was asked to work on it for the first time and let me tell you.. the PRESSURE. I realized it wasn't curing cancer, but I felt so much pressure to make sure the music was right, loud enough, played at the exact correct moments, the slideshow was perfect, the awards were set up, tables and chairs and balloons set up, and so much more. Thankfully it went very well and my boss was pleased. And then less than a week later, we had 10 new hires start. Which meant, preparing training materials and HR documents, rearranging desks, cleaning the training room, ensuring computers work, ordering supplies, making name tags, ordering badges and so much more. ALL this little stuff that really added up. Often times I felt like housekeeping, IT, training and HR at the same time. I complain, but I actually love it. I love that my boss believes in me and knows I'll get it done.
Back in August Jason left Dell after 5 years and went to a company called VM Ware. It's a great company and could have eventually been a good thing, but it didn't work out. He was told he was going to get a bunch of good accounts and that turned out not to be true. And he had some less than qualified inside resources which made it more difficult to sell. He did enjoy the company and some of the people he worked with, but we could tell pretty quickly it wasn't going to last too long. Strangely enough, before he went to VM Ware, he got a call from a recruiter to interview for a job at Sales Force. He went to the interview and it went great, but he was told the job was put on hold. Well, once he was ready to leave VM Ware, he got a call from Sales Force again and was asked to interview with the hiring manager that week and within 5 days, he had the job! He's been there about a month and loves it! It's an amazing company that is doing really well. He has 7 large accounts and great resources. I'm so happy to see him loving his job again.
And then there's AJ :) Can you even believe he's going to be SEVEN in a few months. Ugh. It kills me. He is doing really really good. We have been skiing 5-6 times this year and it amazes me how much better he gets each year. And talk about fearless! The kid is faster than I am and totally in control. I find myself yelling at him as he passes me down the mountain "TURN!!" or "Slow down!" because he freaks me out! But he knows what he's doing. Uncle Matt came out last week and they skied thru the trees which was super fun for both of them. AJ always likes to find little jumps. I'm really trying to talk him into getting on a ski team next year- I think age 7 is when you can start. Stay tuned.
Here's a video of AJ skiing the trees:
AJ is doing pretty well in school too. He's an awesome reader, and really good at math, but we're finding he's rushing too much in his writing. I've had many talks with his teacher about how she can't read his writing, but she could read it last year. I t think he's become lazy and is trying to just get it done as quickly as he can. So, now I'm adding more homework each night and he has to work on writing better. He doesn't always love it, but I keep telling him that once he writes better, we don't have to do this! Kids!
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