vacation update

I ended up having 3 phone interviews almost 2 weeks ago now. I enjoyed them and one of them turned out to be promising for a few days. It was a job working on the new space shuttle, Orion, in Minneapolis with ATK. I have since found out that I am not qualified enough for the position they want to hire. I am just happy to have heard now that Honeywell and ATK in Minneapolis have a few people working on Orion. I am just hoping to get a job with them sometime in the next six months. That would make me the happiest.

I had a lot of fun in Chicago with my family and Bryan's parents. We saw the museum with the dinosaurs, for Jaden, (don't remember its name--maybe nature museum) and we saw the planetarium. We went to Willow Creek Community (mega) Church, which was fun and eye-opening. We had Lou Malnati's pizza and went to the top of the Sears Tower and had some of the greatest cheese and carmel (separate) popcorn from Garrett's. It was a great trip but just wish that Bryan's mom, Vicki, wouldn't have been so sick on the trip, but she says she still enjoyed it. The boys did surprisingly well and slept pretty well in the hotel even though I had to get up a few times with them.

Then I was off to LA! I had so much fun there driving around the city by myself and I also had fun at the interview with Boeing astrodynamics. I am so glad I went. I think the job is really something I would be interested in the future. I didn't get any connections to Minneapolis from the interview but I met some great people. I really enjoyed talking about aerospace with people interested in the same things that I am. It was almost a little retreat for me there without my kids and husband. I have never traveled without them before. I read a lot and I drove around a lot. I went downtown and saw the setup for the Oscars that were on Sunday. I saw the Jet Propulsion Lab, Cal Tech, the stars on Hollywood Ave, the beach at night and a lot of Oscars billboards. I heard a lot of plastic surgery commercials on the radio and drove by a lot of health food stores. It was nice to experience the spring weather there in the 50's and 60's because it was -11 when I left Minneapolis, brrr.

Then this last weekend, Bryan and I, went to the Family Life Weekend to Remember conference in Rochester. We had our babysitter, Christen, and our friends, the Kingsleys, take care of our kids. We had a good time working on our marriage. We stayed in a local hotel on Saturday night but the sad thing is that I got food poisoning that night and suffered for awhile. We are glad we went and will continue to reap the benefits. It was also nice to volunteer there and help out wherever we could and get the reduced rate to do so.

Today I am off to the scrapbooking retreat till Wednesday and I am really looking forward to it. I have about $40 of pictures to scrapbook and am hoping to get a year of scrapbooking done in 3 days. I think that might only happen with some late nights and lots of caffeine so we will see. I know it is a lofty goal but I am going to try anyway.

It will be about a week that I have been away from the kids once I return and that is hard on them. I have seen them a little in between trips but it has not been enough for Jaden. Clay is doing incredibly well not seeing his mama but Jaden is cranky and whiny because of it. I am sure they will be fine once they get back into a routine.

We still need to get a few things done this week, like plan our trips to San Diego (Mayo paid family trip) and Paris (Mayo paid couple trip) in April. We also need to meet with our financial adviser that we have been delaying a month and meet with some realtors since we want to have our house on the market by 3/3 but that might get delayed if we don't decide on Friday.

Hope you enjoy the update of my fabulous vacation. I am enjoying it and not looking forward to Bryan going back to work and being at the hospital overnight every fourth night.

I will get pictures posted after the vacation...too much to do right now.