For Good...

For the past 12 years I have worked for the most amazing company. I found them when I was newly married and Aaron had been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome. We were both working at the time but I felt an urgency to look for a second job. I didn't know why at the time but Aaron ended up being so sick that summer that he was unable to work at all and my second income would become a huge blessing. Through my job search, I found Career Step. The owner was Andrea, a single mother with a beautiful 5-year-old daughter who was often in the office with us. Sometimes I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to play with the boss' daughter or "work." I quickly came to understand the vision she had for her business and that was to help women take care of their families by offering them the training to become medical transcriptionists like she was. Her skills as an MT allowed her to provide for her daughter and be there for the crossroads in her daughter's life. Not only was she committed to helping the students of her program lead a better life, she wanted that for her employees too. As her employee, I always felt valued and appreciated. When my first child was born, I was able to continue working from home. She encouraged me to put my family first and as I did I was able to have the time to accomplish all my work responsibilities as well. I felt so blessed and lucky to have such a rewarding job. I felt comfortable bringing my children any time I needed to go into the office--in fact it was expected that they would be by my side. Andrea created a team of loyal and hard-working employees. When the company would reach milestones she would throw huge appreciation parties. When we were small and there were a handful of employees, I remember our first appreciation bonus being a $50 gift card to a local upscale restaurant. As the company grew so did her parties-- The last party she threw for her employees involved flying them all out to Los Angeles, putting everyone up in a hotel, paying for admission to the Disneyland Resort and enough Disney Dollars to cover food expenses for the day. I believe there were close to 100 employees. Her generosity inspired us to work harder and be better and we believed in her and her vision.

Her daughter has just recently graduated from high school. Andrea is remarried and has 3 little ones at home and she has been ready to spend even more time with her family. She was looking to find the right people to carry on her vision. Thinking she had found them she sold the majority share of her company earlier this year and we all had high hopes of the company continuing to progress while upholding the Andrea's vision. However, it quickly became evident that these new owners and management were only concerned with one thing--the bottom line. Morale within the company was low as employees started to feel unappreciated. Every summer that I have worked for Career Step I have known that I could put my children's needs first and still get my work done, but not this summer. This summer I had the feeling that I was not allowed to put my family first and even though no one ever came out and said that, it was certainly the "vibe" that emmanated from our new management--who seemed to have their own families on the bottom of their list of priorities. I woke up every morning praying that I would do what I knew to be right. If I stayed true to the vision I could be at peace with myself no matter what the outcome.

Last week I was abrubtly "let go" from the company and the only reason I can think of is we had philosophical differences. I believed in what the company used to stand for but now they seem to be on a different trajectory. I was told that they no longer needed my position, but I was over social media and web 2.0 marketing, work that they will continue pursuing. I feel so sad, like everything Andrea worked so hard for over the years has been destroyed in a matter of months. I feel hesitant about sending people to her amazing product afraid that they will not receive the same quality students once received. My heart breaks because of the direction I see the company going and I feel that it does not fit the vision of helping students or employees. In my eyes, it is only money driven. I wish the company the best. I truly hope that it does succeed and that Andrea's vision will resurface. I hope that they will continue to offer the quality training they have in the past. But all I can do now is hope...

I have always felt that if you do good for others good will come back to you. When Andrea was at the head of the company, I felt like so much good was coming back to Career Step. I can't complain about my time at Career Step. I am so happy that I was a part of it. I can't even number how many times my association with this company has blessed our family. I will always be grateful for the time I worked there, but now I am grateful to move on.

Kindergarten Graduation

Yes, I know I am abyssmaly behind in family events seeing as Kindergarten Graduation was May 21st. We are done with Kindergarten. This is somewhat bittersweet for me because I am really excited to have the whole day to accomplish things. Kindergarten kind of cuts your days in half. There isn't enough time to run all the errands I wanted to in either the morning before kindergarten or in the afternoon during. So now if I want to go to SLC during the school day I can. But I really enjoyed the time I got to spend with Tessa while the rest of the kids were at school and I will really miss that. I guess I will just have to start taking my kids on "mommy-child dates" so we get out one on one time that way.

I love these cute little graduation caps they made out of bowls and paper:
And Tessa had the Greatest Kindergarten Teacher: Mrs. George! We loved her so much and were so glad that she was Ryan & Tessa's Kindergarten Teacher! We will miss her for sure!

Bat Girl

No, this is NOT the Bat Girl I am Talking about, THIS is the Bat Girl I am Talking about:


Tonight, Kielle got to be the Honorary Bat Girl at the Orem Owlz game! She got to watch the whole game from the dugout and was great at getting those bats and bringing balls to the umpire. She had such a great time! We had a lot of fun watching her and were very grateful for our first time ever non lawn seats that kept us dry from the rain! Kielle has wanted to be the honorary Bat Girl for a while so we asked a friend in our ward about the process to get her in to be one and all it took was a phone call. I'm so glad she had the opportunity to do this. She's ready to do it again!

Catching Up...

I have so much to catch up with over the last month or so..especially Disneyland! So expect to see a few more posts here this week....

WICKED!

From 2009-05-02 (by Eye-Fi)

On Friday, Aaron & I celebrated our anniversary with a romantic weekend! we started in the afternoon on Friday when a student who works for Aaron at BYU came over to watch the kids overnight for us.

We went up to SLC and checked into the Grand America Hotel. We had stayed there a few years ago as a gift from Aaron's brother and loved it! Aaron got me this amazing bouquet of roses that we kept in our hotel room. They were so beautiful to look at! For dinner we went to Spencer's. It was right around the corner from the Capitol Theatre which was perfect since the weather was rainy.

I can't even begin to tell you how amazing Wicked was. The actresses who played Elphaba and Galinda were phenomenal. It was funny and touching and had a wonderful underlying message. Aaron & I had a great time. I left my camera in the car so I didn't get any pictures of us outside the theatre, but that's okay. I hope that maybe we will have the opportunity to take our kids one day, because I know they would have loved it. This afternoon we watched YouTube clips of the original Broadway cast while I answered all the kids questions and gave them all the spoilers. It was wonderful!

I loved that Aaron decided to get a hotel. It was nice to be able to just head over a few blocks to crash instead of having an hours drive ahead of us to get home. On Saturday Morning we had breakfast at The Original Pancake House, which I highly recommend. The food was delicious! We shopped at the gateway and then stopped by Bruges for a snack on the way back home. It was a great weekend getaway which the two of us really needed! Thanks Aaron for such an AMAZING anniversary gift! xoxo

Eye-fi

From 2009-04-27 (by Eye-Fi)

I just got my trial eye-fi today! So Tessa and I were messing around with the camera and taking some fun pictures to see how well they uploaded wirelessly. I took these photos outside and by the time I came in most of them had already uploaded to both my computer and picasa. pretty nifty. Can't wait to give it a try over the next 3 weeks.

From 2009-04-27 (by Eye-Fi)

Trees are Terrific!

Ada came home from school today with a cute little baby tree! In her class, they had a poster contest for Arbor Day to make posters about trees and they chose something like 5 kids from all the entries to receive a tree for their posters. I think we know the perfect location to put this little guy too... Way to go Ada!