Our Halloween

Well, my least favorite holiday of the year has once again come and gone and now we can look forward to my favorite holiday...Christmas. I really wish I could be more excited about Halloween and be the kind of mom that dresses up with my kids and guys a lot of decorations to make our house look REALLY spooky like some of our neighbors do but I'm just not that into it. But, I allow my kids to get really excited about it and we made plenty of Halloween cupcakes to take to friends and eat on family night, we decorated the house and put up the pumpkin Halloween lights and of course, we decorated the pumpkins.

I am so impressed with myself that I did one of the pumpkins entirely by myself! We got an electric pumpkin carving knife and it was much easier. Also, I'm glad Kaden FINALLY got to be Darth Vadar for Halloween...he's been waiting for 2 years now so he could finally fit into the costume. Enjoy the pictures of our Halloween adventure for 2009!

We started with this...compliments of Debbie at daycare:

Kaden's Halloween graham cracker house

Jackson's Halloween graham cracker house

The Sunday before Halloween we did this for family night:

Love the look on his face (but he still wouldn't touch the goo!)

He did a great job scraping all by himself

A few days before Halloween we did this:

Kaden's pumpkin (didn't turn out like it was supposed to so we improvised)

Jackson's pumpkin

And after much waiting and anticipation, the kids finally got to do this:

Welcome to Adobe!

Well, it's been a pretty stressful fall for us. Let me give you a run-down of the last couple of months and we'll see if you agree.

I went back to work after a 3 1/2 month maternity leave. This same week, Kaden started Kindergarten and Evan started daycare. Even though I've taken 2 other kids to daycare, it still stresses me out. My timing of going back to work couldn't have been any worse...2 weeks before our largest deadline...the 9/15 tax return filing deadline for corporations. By the way, if Evan had stayed in my stomach until he was supposed to, I would have returned to work on 9/16...but he obviously had other plans!

The day of the 9/15 filing deadline, I was at home and feeling good because I completed the few projects I had for the deadline (I begged my bosses to take it easy on me when I returned) and I got a text message from Ray saying that he was sitting in a company meeting where they announced that Adobe Systems Inc. (yes, as in Adobe Acrobat) was buying his company, Omniture. Needless to say, we were both shocked and he didn't know what that meant for his job. He'd had suspicions that something was going on because he was getting information requests that are usually related to an acquisition but he thought Omniture was buying some other company...boy, was he ever wrong! If you want more details, you can read the article below.

http://www.omniture.com/press/777

For the next 3 weeks, we had no idea whether he was going to keep his job or not and we talked about alternatives...the last one being him staying at home and me going to work full-time. It's not the best economy for trying to find a job right now so we knew that him trying to find a new job would be difficult. But, I have to say that we weren't ever really "freaked out" about the situation, which is surprising considering my tendency to worry about things and not deal well with uncertainty. Our prayers were answered when he found out the last week of October that his job was being retained. Whew! What a load off our shoulders and we're so grateful that he was able to stay, as a lot of his co-workers were let go. I think his department went from 23 people to 8 people so we feel extremely blessed. The decision as to whether he would stay or not was based on feedback from those he works with and I'm proud that he's done such a great job that people were able to provide positive feedback...enough to convince Adobe to keep him.

So, now Ray officially works for Adobe rather than Omniture and Omniture is no more. He's really excited about this opportunity and they do have an office in Seattle so we hope he can transfer to that office in the future. They have great benefits like tuition reimbursement, an employee stock purchase plan, health savings account benefits, daycare contributions, and others that I think will provide a lot of benefit for our family. The tuition reimbursement will be great so that Ray can get his Master's degree and we won't have to pay for it. They also got rid of their accrued vacation policy and employees just take vacation (with the approval of their manager) when they need it and it's not tracked. The company also has a mandatory shut down of business the week of the 4th of July and the week between Christmas and New Year's! I think he gets pretty good discounts on Adobe software products so if anyone is interested, let me know and I'll see what he can do for you.

So, now you can see why the last couple of months have been a bit hectic but now that it's over, we feel very blessed and are able to breathe a bit easier these days and are excited to get ready for the holidays and upcoming vacation time to spend together.

Sweet Baby Evan

It's been a while since I updated our blog so keep checking back this week because I have a few posts ready to go. Evan is already 5 months (technically 5 1/2 months) old and while I'd love to say that he's growing up to fast...he's not but I do enjoy each day with him and his smile just melts my heart and is the best thing to see first thing in the morning, even at 5 or 6 a.m. He's so calm and sweet...we're noticing that he looks and acts a lot like Kaden. He just LOVES his brothers and smiles whenever he sees them. Kaden and Jackson just love him so much and it's so cute to hear Jackson say "How ya doin boy?" and pat him on the head...like he's a dog or something.

Evan is 20 lbs. right now (yes, I know...huge) and LOVES his bottles. We've started on some baby oatmeal but he's not really into it. My pediatrician told me that I can feed him whatever I want and that the old way of introducing rice/oatmeal, followed by vegetables, then fruits, and to feed the same flavor for 2-3 days in a row is no longer the case and studies have shown that kids actually have less food allergies when they get a variety and they don't tend to hate vegetables if they're not fed those first. So, we'll see how it goes but so far...Evan's not so excited about the baby food. He's a pretty good sleeper...a 1-1.5 hour nap in the morning, 2-2.5 hour nap in the afternoon, and goes to bed around 6:30 p.m. and wakes up anywhere between 5:30 and 7 a.m.

He recently had a VERY BAD case of eczema so he's lubed up with hydrocortisone all day, every day and it's finally getting under control. Before we got it under control, he was constantly scrathing at himself, especially his face, and would have new scratches on his face every morning. Hopefully, he'll outgrow it and very soon! He finally rolled from his back to his stomach last night but doesn't do it often. He has the cutest giggle and Kaden was so excited that he was able to make Evan giggle and laugh the other day...it was so cute!

Well, enjoy the pictures!

So happy but he doesn't know what's coming...

Yeah, not sure if I like that.

Happy, as usual


Sitting up in his Bumboo...Kaden & Jackson love sitting in it more than Evan!