Wednesday, March 6, 2013

We have good news and bad news.  The good news is that Jared will be gainfully employed by next week!  The bad news is that daddy will not be home all day.  The kids are already saying that they miss daddy and that they are going to give him "big hugs" when he gets home from work each day :)
 Jared accepted a job as a senior drilling engineer with PetroMax, a small company in Garland, TX.  We were praying for a good career opportunity with good people....and this company exceeded our expectations!  The company has been around for 20 + years and has had a lot of success.  They are looking for someone to come in and help the owner out with technical skills and eventually take the company further along with a core group of other young co-workers.  Jared was surprised to spend time having spiritual conversations during his first interview and the owner saying that he is more concerned about "kingdom purposes" than making money (although he has had a lot of financial success).  The company has started a non-for-profit mission agency, which supports missionaries all around the world.  They also invited the whole family to join them for lunch for a second interview, which we decided to find a sitter to make it a bit less crazy!
The negative part of the job is that it is a good 50 minutes away without any traffic, which could easily make it a 3 hour round trip commute with traffic.  Jared plans on leaving early to beat the traffic each day and see how it goes.  We may have to consider selling our house and moving closer to Garland.
We did have hopes (or at least I did!) that God would open up opportunities in Colorado, which would be closer to our families or even back to Tulsa, which will always be close to our hearts.  Jared did have interviews and leads that continued to come his way the past few weeks, but PetroMax wanted an answer by March 1st.  After much prayer, we knew that God had answered so many details in our prayers about the PetroMax job and that we would follow Him there.  It has taken me a while to adjust to living in Dallas, but we are so blessed by good friends, great church, amazing doctors and therapists for Kai, and warm weather :)  It would have been very hard to leave our friends here also.


Kai dancing w/ Rapunzel (Julia is constantly tying belts, boas, etc to her hair!)

Silly boy

A few more moves

Baby Isaac

Camera shy

Princess Jules
    While Jared has been busy working on house projects the past month (remodeled master bathroom, replaced damaged siding, patio,....), I have not gotten as much done as I would have liked.  The following pictures speak for themselves!

Naps?  Who needs a nap?!

Yes that is hand soap in their hair.  One hour after I finished bathing them :(


I'll finish with a couple of funny stories.  A few weeks ago I took Kai to see his neurosurgeon downtown for a follow up visit.  As we were walking in the parking lot a lady passed us and winked at Kai and said, "Hey handsome boy!"  Kai kept looking back at her and gigglying.  He then said, "Mom, she like me!"  Then after a radiologist was taking x-rays of his head/shunt, she kept calling Kai, "Baby" as a term of endearment.  Kai finally got tired of it and said, "I'm not Baby!  I Ty (Kai)!"
Julia is continuing to have adult conversations with us and surprises us with the things that she remembers and says.  Lately she is very concerned about Mommy and Daddy going to jail because she thinks we are driving too fast.  While she is constantly pretending to be a princess, she still needs some lessons on manners.  When our friends from church come over on Sundays for our home group meeting and talk to her she gets goofy and makes crazy faces at them and sticks out her tongue.  Jared claims that she learned that from me, but it's not true!
Isaac has been daddy's little helper at home.  He has even gone to the grocery store and to bed with daddy's leather work gloves on.  I think he will suffer the most once Daddy goes back to work!  He loves to push Kai and Julia's buttons.  When they get mad at him and end up yelling or hitting him, he immediately puckers up and holds his hands out for a hug since he knows mom will make them give him a hug and kiss after apologizing (and getting disciplined).  What a guy does for a little bit of affection!