Family Update

Here's what I sent to my family (we do round-robin email updates on how we're all doing) but I thought I'd share with you too:

It's Saturday and we're trying to get chores done: Joel's at the vet with Oliver for him to get his shots and I'll be taking Faith to a class birthday party later this afternoon. Faith's been battling a cold and I've had a touch of the flu bug this week and so we're trying to play "catch-up" while also trying not to push too hard. Know what I mean?

For our household: Elijah is in wrestling and tends to get frustrated -- he's lost all his matches but Joel reminds him that he had lost all his matches his first year too and then went to State the next year. However, it's nice to see Elijah making improvements at each match :>) Joel's tried to make it to a few of his practices to help out and I think it's nice for them to spend that special time together. Still, we have two hormonal teenage boys with Elijah making comments on TV shows about wanting to see cleavage (lovely.) and Isaac trying not to blush by Elijah's comments. It's an experience and we're just at the beginning! They're both getting acne, they've got pit hair, and we've all got some mood swings. . . . But, we also have our special moments where the boys and I have just sat together and talked about what's going on -- you know, those impromptu conversations :>) And, when I had a really bad headache with the flu bug this week, Isaac brought me up some dinner & juice to bed and then cuddled with me to watch movies. That was special too. :>)

Faith, on the flip side, continues to grow and try to assert her independence. She's a handful as she challenges us, gets in trouble then cries, and flips between wanting to cuddle and wanting her space. I try to remind myself that this is normal for a 6 year-old who is on the verge of being a "kid" and still not quite there yet. This week's delight was seeing her lose one of her top middle teeth and so now she's got that really cute, toothless smile :>) (We noted that you could see the tooth underneath coming in already and so it was definitely time to lose that one!!) Today's fun is that she got a "My-nebo" (or something like that) for a late Christmas present and she played it non-stop (a video-game type toy) and when she's cared for the pet on the game long enough the top of the toy flips open and delivers a little stuffed animal-type thing. She was very excited :>)

Needless to say, with all the horomones in the house we're trying to buy organic food whenever possible. This includes us trying to switch our dogs to more of a "raw" diet: I have a friend who is a dog trainer and she recommended the diet for our dogs because she says that people don't realize that sometimes their dog's food can contribute to behavior (think Elijah on caffeine and sugar). So, we're trying out cooking for the dogs: stew meat, spinach, apples, oatmeal, etc. all mushed together. Last night was day 1 (we'll see how long this lasts) and the dogs LOVED it!

As for Joel & I: We continue to work on our relationship and are trying to incorporate more date nights and time together (grocery shopping?). For me, work is really busy: I successfully built my first SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Integration Services 2005 packages to make those "OLAP cube" interfaces for people to drill around in our data (similar to a webpage). . . This is part of a big initiative for the Executive team where they want more dashboard (glance at our corporate data) to see how we're doing. It's a high-pressure project with two OLAP developers and three dashboard developers all trying to learn brand-new software we've never used to get about 30 measures out by March 15th. It's chaotic and crazy because there aren't any "teachers" to help us out and answer questions so it's been a lot of self-taught learning. I guess the good part about it is that we build a real sense of comraderie on this team AND there is a real sense of accomplishment when we get something built. Hence the "Woo-hoo!" about building my first cube; it's also the first one completed for the project. Yesterday I started my second. . . Crazy! Just think of me whenever you hear about the major reform for the health industry being about making "smarter decisions" -- interpretation? Work for me!

Joel, on the flip side, got more stressful news: HP just announced that they'll be going through a second round of layoffs in the second quarter. Joel's wanting to volunteer since the atmosphere at HP has really been bad and there hasn't been much work going on for the past couple of months as the company tries to assess what projects to continue and which to toss. Joel's thinking that this may be his opportunity to go back to school to pursue being a high-school science teacher . . . Agreed that this would be a better fit for his personality, we're both stressed about the financial changes, AND change is change -- it's difficult.

Anyhow, that's a pretty long update -- you know me and writing ;>) Hugs to everyone. . . . life keeps steam-rolling along!