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.