Frosted Mini-posts

Sorry, that's the most creative title I could come up with to describe what will ultimately be a hodge-podge of updates. I know I dropped off the face of the blog world and very much appreciate those of you who have emailed or commented to check up on me.

I accepted a job offer a couple of weeks ago and start on July 10th. I'll be doing software development using the C#.NET programming language. I haven't programmed in that before, but they are not considering me entry level because there are transferable skills from other languages that I have programmed in that will drastically shorten my learning curve. It is probably the best company around to get a ton of development experience with much exposure to cutting edge technology. An added bonus is that the company is 6 1/2 miles from my house. I was used to driving 30-45 minutes to work and this will be a 10-15 minute drive. Praise God!

When the company I used to work for was sold I spent some more time doing house projects than sending out resumes because the former managing partner was trolling local contacts she knew on the behalf of those of us who no longer had a job. When nobody called I realized I'd better take the reigns on the search. I had a total of 12 interviews and ended up choosing the best out of those that were offered to me. However, due to the job hunting and the interview prep I got behind on the house projects. The past couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity trying to get everything complete before my job starts (and before the baby comes). We hit a snag this past weekend with setting up the crib. We got it used from people who my wife works with (we know them and know when it was purchased), but when we went to set it up, major components of the hardware were missing. We spent eight hours yesterday driving to various specialty wood shops, hardware stores, and furniture stores trying to find the right pieces, but were unable to do so. It will take 6-8 weeks for the company to send us a replacement hardware kit, so it looks like we will have to sell it back to the previous owners and let them order the kit before they sell it to someone else. So, today we will be crib shopping (Cindy has today and tomorrow off)...with about 4 weeks to go before the expected delivery date of August 2nd. That royally stinks. The good thing is that my wife is handling it well. I am quite mad at myself for not getting out the papers and verifying the hardware was complete earlier. Cindy has seen the persistence with which I pursued a job and she has been amazed each day she arrives home from work to see what I have gotten done on the house. It has been obvious that I am not channel surfing (or blogging) and making the most out of the time that I have available.

Today we will also be interviewing some possible pediatricians. We did our homework and got several recommendations so now we just have to meet and greet them to see which we thing we will prefer. This is one of the last baby-prep tasks we have to do. We also have to pack a suitcase to have ready so we can just grab it and go once labor begins. Recently we finished over 30 hours of classes offered by the hospital where we will have the baby. We took an infant care class, breastfeeding class, and a series of classes called Lamaze Plus. The "plus" part of it means that it is tailored to those who want to go as natural (meaning drug-free) as possible. We learned SO many things from the class. She wants to avoid an epidural and I honestly believe she will be able to do it. She is a tough cookie with an impressive amount of grit and determination.

Mothers' Day was a really nice day. I wanted to write a blog related to it but we spent some time with my mom and then the rest of the day with Cindy's mom. It was also very exciting to celebrate Cindy being a mother. Fathers' Day was bitter sweet for me. It was nice to get the father-to-be cards and rejoice that I am a father, but it was sad because it was the first Fathers' Day without my dad. I traveled to my home town and spent some time at his grave. It seems much longer than 4 months since he died. It saddens me that my son and my future children will not grow up with him around but I am happy that my dad is no longer suffering. I really don't think his death has fully hit me yet. Sometimes when something happens (like accepting the new job) I think to myself, "I can't wait to tell my dad about this." It still seems like he is on a long trip somewhere and that I'll be meeting him to catch up on things.

The only other thing that I can think of right now is to describe some of the house projects I have been doing. That could end up being very long, so I'll just touch on the major items. I drastically trimmed down a bunch of shrubbery (that word always makes me laugh) in front of our house to make room for the installation of new windows. We have desperately needed them since we moved into the house but we could not afford them. We ended up getting them wholesale! I then moved all the furniture from the future nursery, the office room, and the kitchen to the basement and moved all the living room furniture to the kitchen to make room for new laminate flooring, which we also got wholesale. I steamed cleaned the old carpet to try to decrease the cloud of dander and dust created from the removal. I think some of the carpet was 20 years old and it was just nasty - certainly not healthy for a new baby to be around or crawl on. Much of our house sounded like a creaking ship due to nail squeaks so I drove deck screws through the subfloor into the joists. Now there are no squeaks, the laminate flooring looks awesome, the air smells clean, the door casings are painted, the new moldings painted and installed, and the new baseboards are painted and almost all installed. We are putting new doors in also (I would have had to paint the old ones, so we figured I might as well paint new ones), but we could only afford the slab door so tomorrow or later this week I'll be routing out space for the hinges. As soon as the living room has all the baseboards up we will move the furniture back in and will finally be able to walk freely in the kitchen again. It has been a ton of work, but between getting many items (I only mentioned the major ones) wholesale and doing the majority of the work myself, we have saved several thousand dollars that we didn't have anyway, so it has worked out well. God is so faithful to us!

The thing about all of the activity in the past couple of months is that it is a good kind of busy. I am blessed to have a better job than the previous one and the time off has allowed me to fix up the house. It has been like exam week at college where one is tunnel-visioned on the tasks (tests) at hand and everything else falls by the wayside. However, instead of the adrenaline rush lasting one week it has been 8-10. I want all of you to know that I am slowly catching up on my list o' links on the sidebar. All of you whose blogs I regularly read are very important to me and I apologize for getting so behind. Even though I've been behind I have continued to pray for you all as the Lord leads. I value all of you and appreciate the encouraging comments so many of you provide. I would appreciate your prayers for peace in my mind, efficiency in getting the rest of the projects around the house done, and for the a supernatural, complication-free labor and delivery. Thanks so much for your blog friendships and thank you for continuing to stick with me despite the lack of blog activity. God bless you!!!