A Trio of Potential Job Opportunities

I have three realistic job opportunities at this point.  One is with an older company for a very stable, albeit not likely very exciting, job.  That's the one I interviewed for in St. Louis a couple weeks ago, which I posted about.  I went back the following week for another interview with a guy further up the chain, and I nailed that one too.  They really like me and are in the process of making me an offer, though there are still some hurdles on their side, so nothing is official. Another probable option is to go back to OpenText, but in a new role.  There's not an official opening there, but it sounds like they'll be able to make one for me, as they would love to have me back.  The third potential opportunity is the reason I'm in Utah today.  I'm not going to mention the two companies that aren't my old one, at least until I have a job.  But this third opportunity is an exciting one.  It's with a new-ish company that is technically still a start-up, though they are pretty established.  It's a young, fun company that sells a modern product.  I'm pretty excited about it, although there would be some risk, as they are banking on a new strategy of selling to enterprise companies, which is the reason they are looking to grow their sales force, and why there is an opening that I'm being considered for.  If that plan falls flat, then things might not go well for the company or my job.  But all other aspects of it are very appealing.  So I had an interview today near Salt Lake City, and it went really well.  I'm hoping for an ideal scenario of me getting three offers, one from each company, and then I get to pick the best one.  But it's also possible none of these will pan out, though I think that's unlikely.  They all have a decent chance of turning into a job offer, so I'm just hopeful at least one of them actually will.  I don't want to have to go back to the drawing board, as I don't have much else in the pipeline.  Still, I'm optimistic, especially after how today's interview went.

Sunday Outfits

The kids looked cute and their outfits somewhat matched for church this morning, so I asked them if I could take a picture.  Naturally that meant I took like 50 pictures and still didn't end up with a great one, but these two were pretty decent.  The girls wanted to hold Chicken Baby and Cuddles, but I made them wait until I'd taken some without them.

After we were done, they asked me to take pictures of just the two inanimate friends, so here are they are, by request.

Apron Time

Meghan was cooking with the girls today, and Hannah was excited to wear the new apron she got from Dad and Deb.  She wears it all the time just walking around the house, but this was the first time she's actually used her apron for its actual apron purpose.

Theme Days

So far this school year, there have been a lot of theme days, particularly for Joshua.  They have been almost all color-related, which made me realize how few colors he has in his wardrobe.  Since I'm dressing the kids each day, as Meghan has already left for work at that point, it's up to me to make this happen.  Today was Yellow Day, which wasn't too hard, as he has several bright yellow shirts, and conveniently he also has these awesome mostly-yellow socks.  His orange shoes aren't yellow, obviously, but they fit nicely with the color scheme, as does his orange and gray backpack.

The girls also had a theme today, as it was pajama day at their school.  Baby Stella is always in pajamas, as that's that outfit that's sewn onto her, and Chicken Baby has a pair of pajamas, so all four girls, so to speak, were wearing their jammies.  The human girls were in a great mood this morning, so they were being silly, which I tried to capture in the pictures.

This evening I went out to the car to get something, and the girls wanted to go with me (all the kids are always excited to go outside with me whenever I'm going out, even if they have no idea what I might be doing).  While I had the passenger door open, Clara climbed in, and they suddenly got the idea that they should pretend to be grown-ups driving and riding in the car.  So I let them do it briefly, and here is a preview of what our life will be like in 12 years.

Rio 2016

I've really enjoyed watching the Olympics again this year.  Held in Brazil, the story lines leading up to the Games were the high crime rate and the financial and infrastructure instability in Rio.  All the facilities were barely completed in time (as seems to be the case with every Olympics), and there have been no significant issues with security or crime, so that's good.  The events themselves have been pretty great, as we saw Usain Bolt dominate again and win gold in his three events, and Michael Phelps won more medals including more golds, as both those athletes concluded their Olympic careers (Phelps said that last time, but it's probably true this time).  Simone Biles had more hype than maybe any gymnast ever, and she backed it up by showing that she might be the greatest gymnast ever, easily winning the floor exercise, vault, and the all-around, as the "Final Five" US women cruised to the team gold. Katie Ledecky also did her thing in the medium and long distance swim events, destroying her competition and setting more records.  Mostly it was me watching as many events as I could, which was really helped this year because of Google Fiber, because I now have access to the second and third tier channels (NBC Sports, for example), on which a lot of the interesting events are held.  For example, the other day the main NBC channel was showing a really long bicycle road race.  They were on like Kilometer 8 out of 30.  Boring.  But on one of the other NBC family channels, they were showing handball, which is the coolest sport I'd never seen before.  I loved it!  And I love watching archery or the short course kayaking or anything else that I don't normally get to see that's interesting.  I love learning about the rules and the scoring and then rooting for my team (USA) in this case to win.  So from that standpoint it was a much more satisfying Olympics than in years past.  But that passion is mostly limited to me.  Meghan watched a few events and the kids would watch some if it were a short race and I could tell them whom to root for.  Here you can see all three kids intently watching a swimming race.  So it happened, but not often.  But overall it's been a great Olympics, but now it'll be another four years until we get to see these events again.

Family Fun, Olympics Style!

In it what is now somewhat of an unofficial tradition, Dad and Deb came down for a late-summer visit so we could all get together and have fun and eat good food together.  After Joshua and I went fishing this morning, our family met everyone else over at Julie and Andrew's.  We had lunch first thing, as it was already a little past lunchtime when we arrived.  The kids enjoyed their hot dogs on the back deck and had a great time laughing with each other.

This was Dad and Deb's first time to meet little Daniel, so they made sure to get some time with their newest grandchild.

We played some yard games.  Andrew, Kirk, and I did our usual ones, and the kids then wanted to play, so we modified the beanbag/washer game for them so they could play against each other.

Because the Olympics are going on right now, Julie and Joanna thought it would be fun to have a family Olympics in our backyard.  Andrew, Kirk, and I are basically experts in creating games out of random items, so we engineered an obstacle course out of the odd collection of things I brought (just in case something like this came up) and the things in Julie and Andrew's house.  The kids went through it, including Hannah who insisted on wearing her new apron that Dad and Deb gave her.  Afterward the kids were done, Andrew, Kirk, and I were too competitive to pass up the opportunity to do it ourselves, even though the course was designed for kids.  But with only a few slight modifications, we were ready, and we each went through it a couple times, with the girls in the chairs timing us.  We got grass stains and bloody elbows, but it was totally worth it.

We sat down for dinner and enjoyed some fresh Iowa sweet corn and yummy steaks.  As you can see, Andrew approved.

After dinner, it was pretty late, so Meghan and the kids went home, while the rest of us stayed up late to play games.  Dad and Deb got a chance to say good-bye to our kids before they went home.  It was another fun family event!

First Father/Son Fishing

After Joshua's successful fishing effort at the Lenexa event in June, I decided I needed to find a time for us to go fishing by ourselves.  We had time this morning, so today was designated as our first ever father/son fishing trip!  I bought him a fishing rod and a pre-loaded tackle box.  I also went to Walmart and bought a one-day fishing license for me (he doesn't need one) as well as some night-crawlers.  I chose Kill Creek Lake as our locale, based on recommendations from others.  We didn't exactly leave at the crack of dawn like fisherman tend to do, because I'm not a crack-of-dawn kind of guy.  So here we are, as two fisherman about to embark on our adventure.

There's a dock that juts out into the lake, so we started there.  We were only going to fish with his pole so I could focus on helping him.  It wasn't a very chilly morning, but the breeze from over the lake was quite cold, so we added some extra layers.  As you can see, Joshua was very pumped about the whole thing.  In an effort to set his expectations, I had to warn him that sometimes you have to sit for a long period of time while you wait for the fish to bite.  But we did get a couple bites pretty early on, though nothing that got hooked.  The jerks did manage to take some of my worms.  Perhaps I need to improve my technique.  I then decided to move to a narrow grassy area
that was essentially a bridge, as I'd hoped the narrowing of the waterway would mean more fish would be going through it.

And I was right!  Almost immediately we had some activity, and very quickly Joshua hooked a fish.  You can see it on the end of the line near the water.  He was elated.

It was a redear sunfish, so named because of the red spot by its ear.  We are only doing catch-and-release today, so we put him on a stringer (the one we won by winning the fishing derby; and in fact most of the equipment used was from that) and fished a little more, though we were almost out of time, so that was the only fish we caught.  But it was a total success, because he had a ton of fun, and he caught a fish, and it was really special to me to be able to have that time with just him for our first father/son fishing trip.

First Day of School 2017

(From 8/17/16)

Today was the girls' first day of school at their new school (well, day care, but essentially their preschool), and today was also Joshua's first day of kindergarten, although it was only a half day.  His first full day is tomorrow.  Here the kids pose (some more than others) for a picture before we walked Joshua to school first.  He was excited and took off, so we had to reign him in a bit.

He is officially a Ravenwood Tiger.  This is exciting to me, because by sheer coincidence, my elementary school was also Ravenwood Elementary.

They apparently sit at big tables like this.  I haven't seen a kindergarten classroom in decades, so maybe this is what they all do now.  He's in Mrs. Haun's class to start.  But they do a weird thing here (or, again, maybe not weird, as I am out of the loop on current educational practices) of having tentative classes for the first week as they do some sort of evaluation and matching before deciding on their actual teacher.

We said good-bye to Joshua and the four of us then walked back home.  We then got in the car and drive to Goddard.  It's not walking distance like Joshua's school is, but it is only a short drive away.

Clara met her teachers, Miss Cynthia and Miss Michelle.  The crabby-looking girl next to her is actually not Hannah, but is a girl who looks kind of like her who has the same dress.

Hannah wasn't so sure about leaving us.  She clung to Mom for a bit, not wanting to be left alone in her class.

But after a little coaxing and convincing, she was okay with it.  Miss Ashley helped too, and soon Hannah was ready to wave good-bye to us from the other side of the glass.

I went to pick Joshua up at the end of his half day, and we got a picture by the rock.  There were too many people there in the morning, but it was fully available at the end of the day.  We officially have a kindergartner!

The Unofficial Last Day of Summer

The girls finished their time at NaturePlay today, and tomorrow is their first day at their new school, and tomorrow is Joshua's first day (albeit a half day) at kindergarten.  So today is pretty much the last day of summer, at least from a school perspective.  So what do you do in summer?  You go swimming.  So I took them to the pool today, again leveraging my inconveniently convenient unemployment.  As I have mentioned in the past, my HTC M9 phone is not water resistant like my previous one (Galaxy S5), so I don't really have a lot of pictures of us in the pool.  But I did manage to catch a quick pic of Chicken Baby lounging by the pool, soaking up the late summer rays.

On the last day of summer before the first day of school, we have a tradition of having s'mores.  So tonight the kids enjoyed s'mores on the deck, though Meghan and I certainly partook in them as well.

At night, Joshua somewhat unexpectedly lost his third tooth!  I think he's been working on it a lot, as it wasn't that loose very long ago.  So he'll have a cute gap in his mouth on his first day of kindergarten tomorrow.

Final Day at NaturePlay

Last week we had the last day with all three kids at NaturePlay, but today was the last day with any kids at all, as Joshua has already had his last day, but Hannah and Clara finished up today.  But Joshua hasn't started kindergarten yet, so I had him with me, so I was able to get a picture of all three kids with Miss Rosanna and Miss Katherine.

The Olympics are going on right now, so they are having themed days.  Even though today is the last day for our girls, it's a year-round school year, so it's just another day for the school.  Last week they did a shot put, and you could send any round item with your kid.  I chose a ball to send with Joshua knowing that arm strength has always been a, uh, strength of his even since he was a little baby, so I felt pretty confident that if I provided him with a dense ball, he would win.  And sure enough, he did.  Today was a biking day, so I brought the girls' bikes for them so they could participate in the biking time outside in the parking lot.

Hannah was slow to socialize when she first started there.  For the longest time she just followed Miss Katherine around like a shadow.  But over the course of the year she opened up, and in particular she bonded with classmate Alex A.  Incidentally, Clara's best non-sibling friend was a different Alex in the class, "Boy Alex".  He was actually Alex P., but I guess the fact that he was not a girl like Alex A. gave him that moniker.  Anyway, here is Hannah and her BFF Alex A. on their last day together.

As we left, I snapped a couple pictures of the back of the Mill Creek Activity Center where the school is held.  They spent so much time outside, some almost every single day, as per the core mission of the school, that I wanted to get a picture of it.  With the gardens, mud kitchen, and all the fun and interactive nature elements back there, our kids spent a lot of time back there, some getting dirtier (Joshua and Clara) than others (Hannah).  But they loved it, and we loved that they had that opportunity.  We'll miss NaturePlay, but it's on to new schools!