How Things Have Progressed...

...with work, family, and life.

Work

I had 2 people move to a different department, and was able to fill their spots with 2 more excellent people from other departments.  A lot of people applied, and all were qualified for the positions.  I had the luxury of balancing technical ability, personality, accomplishments and potential all at once.  In the end, I wished I'd had 6 spots.  I would have been very happy to take my top 6 candidates.  

It was a true gut check.  I had known several candidates since I was a newbie to my company.  Some I'd worked together with projects, and some had mentored me.  Some I'd taught Japanese to a few years ago.  In the end, I realized that my company pays me to manage its money wisely.  And the best investment of its money was to invest in the 2 people I chose.  1 of them I'd known for a while but had never been directly involved with, and the other I had never heard of.  Not being able to tell some friends whom I think the world of that I'd be able to offer them a position was difficult.  But as a manager, it was the best decision for me to make.

Family

The kids are getting older (as they tend to do), and each is entering a different age bracket.  Aria is becoming a tween.  She speaks intelligently, can reason, deal with disappointment well, and likes to explore.  There are still too many times when she clings to a preconceived notion and won't listen to a new one.  But she's getting better at it.  The biggest struggle we have now (thank goodness this is our biggest one!) is that when she gets a redically new type of homework assignment (like her first book report) she is so decided that she doesn't get it that she won't listen and engage as we try to help her understand it.

Christian is getting better and better at reading - you can't quite see his face light up with it yet, but he's very very close.  If we don't push him, I think some day soon he'll come to us and say, "I read this whole book!"  

Libby is finally leaving the toddler stage and becoming a little girl.  She wants someone to play with, and enjoys playing house.  

Jakers is, probably because of how unavailable Katrina and I have been, a holy tornado.  He can talk really well, but the boy will grab anything he can find, open it, and eat it.  Tonight, we found that he had opened (and eaten!) a new stick of deodorant.  It wasn't on his breath, though.  He says he ate it.  We haven't found it anywhere else.  

Life

With interest rates low and a family that is getting bigger (if not more numerous), it seemed like the right time to take advantage of the opportunity to do an addition.  So we're looking at adding 1300sf.  The drawings are in progress, and if the financier thinks the new work will appraise high enough, we'll be in business.  2 weeks for the drawings, 2 weeks for the financing, 4 weeks for the permits, and 3 months until project completion.  Assuming there aren't big problems with the first 3 steps.  

The Morning Stars is still a blast.  We're at 6 members now, and watching our capabilities grow has been lots of fun.  They're great guys to sing with.  We warm up with the hymnal each week, and it seems that more and more often we're at performance quality on our first run through.  Which is cool, especially when we're reading something new.  

Piano lessons are fun as well.  It's a little humbling to go back to beginner level.  I was secretly hoping that I would get something more difficult and work on it longer to improve my skills.  Turns out that it's best to do it from the beginning as a beginner.  But I'm getting better.  And now Aria and I have some duets to play, and our skills are improving quickly.  Yay!  Soon I'll be 2-handed at the piano.

One more thing: I've had a few plastic bags of old family photos (of my uncles in the military in the 50s) and I scanned them all recently.  Really cool.  I'm getting the scanned and printed versions ready to pass around at this year's family reunion so my uncles and aunts can comment on them.