Ready for Work

Here I am ready for work in my red and khaki and with my "New Team Member" badge!

Working Woman Update

No, I did not say working "girl", I said working "woman"!

My job at Target is going good but I have to say working 3, eight hour shifts the last 3 days was tough. My feet are not used to it!!! The work is not hard and I really like my co-workers but I don't know if working retail is something I want to make a career of. I have been mostly working at doing back stocks and facing-up shelves. It is a good way to learn where everything is and I am starting to get more comfortable asking guests "Can I help you find something?" and not be terrified that I won't be able to help them. I am learning how to look things up on my PDA (I'm not sure what it stands for but it is the hand-held scanning device. It is super helpful! I am off today and tomorrow and then work from 5pm to midnight on Wednesday. On thanksgiving I work from 11:30 PM to 7:00 AM---that is going to be very HARD! At least I will get to have turkey dinner with Dennis. (Rena, Nathan and boys are going to see Candace and the girls in Hanford for Thanksgiving.) After Thanksgiving I will go back to working 12:00pm to 8:30pm five days a week.

But....in the mean time, I went and took an assessment test with an employment agency today for a customer support job with IBM. I passed the test!!! Yeah! I'm not getting too excited though because I still have to go through a 3 week training period with tests at the end of each week. It is my understanding if you don't pass each week's test, you are dropped. The job will be helping people who are having problems with their Intuit Tax software. Yikes, sounds scary, I hope I can do it. SO, I go for a orientation on December 7th and start training on December 15th. The training is paid and it will be M-F from 8am to 5pm. After that you have to be willing to work any times between 6am and 10pm. I hope I get the early shift..... The job will pay only a couple of dollars more than Target but the hours will be more regular with weekends off and it is only about 20 minutes away. So, I will most likely be quiting Target soon but I think i will wait until the orientation at IBM to make sure everything is a go.

I am babysitting the boys today because Nathan is out of town and Rena had to go to work. I had a great time taking them on a "hike" on the hill behind the house. We had a picnic of banana, granola bars and mints and we discovered some deer prints, some deer poop and found a really cool place in the trees to hide from people walking by. I told them the the place could be their secret fort. It was very fun!

We had a little bit of snow last Thursday morning but since then it has just been cold. Well, actually the last two days were not very cold. I'd say about 50 during the day and a little below freezing at night. It is now VERY dry--all the stores sell tons of humidifiers!

Dennis doing good being a house husband and still looking for job and business ideas. More on that later.

New Wall-Hanging Quilt

I started this little quilt with my friend Debbie before we left Corona. Debbie found the pattern in a magazine where you used coffee filters cut into quarters to make the fan shapes. It was a very fun project and nice to have it finished.

I used it for practicing my free motion quilting. I'm still not all that good at it but I'm getting better. I especially like how the quilting in the border turned out.

Then I added some embellishments to the quilt. Fun!

And now it is hanging in our dinning room. Thank you, Debbie for your inspiration in making this quilt. Now you need to get yours finished!

Fun in Steamboat

We thought Grant looked so funny wearing his dad's bike pack and drinking water out of the tube. We told him he looked like a Ghost Buster!

We visited some of the "springs" that Steamboat Springs was named after. Rena and I rode out bikes to most of them the day before and then we took the guys the next day. I think there are 9 different springs all together and the boys were (especially Carsten) were very interested in them.

Here is a picture of the river and the trees getting ready for winter. We were lucky to be here before the weather turned.

It was pretty cold out our last day in town and the boys had to borrow beanies from Dennis and I.

I love this shot of the boys with the grass and trees in the background. Rena and I and Nathan and Dennis rode mountain bikes off to the left of this area the day before. It was pretty funny because the guys rode for a little less than 2 hours so that Rena and I would have time for a ride. So nice of them because we ended up riding almost 3 hours, got back after dark and got lost finding the condo! It was QUITE the adventure, for sure!!

Steamboat Springs

The kids bought us a night at a condo in Steamboat Springs for our anniversary and we took Rena, Nathan and the boys with us! We had a blast and the fall colors were awesome.

Here is Grant and Carsten looking at a caterpillar. The boys love bugs and animals.

Carsten riding a fake horse in front of the famous outdoor shop in town.

The condo was amazing---plenty of room for all of us. Dennis and I had a nice bedroom with a bed so high I almost fell out of it when I got up at night. The boys slept in the other bedroom in twin beds and Rena and Nathan had the pull-out bed in the living room.

We played a rousing game of Scrabble that Nathan won. Some of the word we came up with were questionable but Nathan had an app on his cell phone where he could check and see if the words were allowed or not and all of the ones you see here were allowed by the official Scrabble rules. Rena started out the game with the word "ass" in the middle of the board.

A job for me....

Well, I was hired at Target today for a seasonal "sales floor" position. I think it will be a fun job but the pay is very minimal. I am still looking for something more promising and Dennis continues to look for businesses. We are both discouraged but will NOT give up.

Jobs Update and More Snow!

Well, the job I applied for and interviewed for at e-quilter did not work out. I was not really surprised and not that disappointed although I would have accepted it if they had offered it to me. It turns out someone at the company is being put in the position. Besides that I don't think they were convinced I would be happy only getting one week vacation a year. They are right about that!

So, I am back to putting in applications and trying to improve my resume. I am also helping Dennis look at business opportunities. Right now he is looking at a tax preparation business, a carpet cleaning business, an Aamco dealership, a re-usable box business and a drug testing franchise. It is all very time consuming and stressful but we are continuing to go to mass most mornings to pray for guidance and to the gym most days to stay in shape and deal with the stress.

The snow had all melted and the golfers were back out on the course but we got another blast last night. It sure is beautiful and as Ed Farnum says it is a good time to not be working. Ha! Here are a few pictures.