The Wizard of Oz- gymnastics style

This year, Kaitlyn's gymnastics teacher turned their show into the Wizard of Oz.  It was really cute!  Kaitlyn and her class were the munchkins.

Kaitlyn had been counting down the days all week.  It's also the only time I put makeup on her cute little face, and she just loves it.  (Seriously, I never wore makeup until my Senior year of High school.  Such a girly girl!)

Kaitlyn and her class were the munchkins.  She liked the "Lollipop Guild" dance a lot.

I really have seen improvement in her skills over the last year!

We might not have straight legs on her handstand yet, but at least she doesn't fall on her head anymore :).

Jasmine was pretty sure she could do it too.

And Tyler was just happy to huddle down with his Kindle.  I have to pry that thing out of his hands sometimes, sadly.

It was a fun night!

Frozen

A while ago, I showed the girls the youtube video of "Let it Go", the main song in Frozen (the latest Disney movie).  And they were in love almost instantly.  So we watched it a few times when I needed to calm them down right before bed.  I didn't think much of it until I heard Jasmine singing from the backseat one day.  "Ab-a-shu GOooo, ba-ga -deee GOOOooo. . . ." The rest was nonsense to her, but she was trying to sing GO with all her tiny, one-year old heart.  So I downloaded the song on iTunes for her.

And before I knew it, any screen (iPod, phone, tablet or computer) that wasn't currently playing "GO" was labeled "boke" (broken).  And she will continue to point at it and tell you "boke!  GO" until you make it play "Let it Go".  We don't always cave to those demands, but I can tell you we have listened to that song more times than I can count.

And then she discovered that on my computer, there are other videos that youtube suggests once you are done watching "Let it Go".  Now, every time I am working on my computer, she comes along and sits next to me.  I have a browser open off to the side with youtube so that we can hover over them all and pick which one we will watch next.  "This one?" "No."  "This one?" "No." "This one?" "No." "This one?" "Yup."

We have now watched every Frozen trailer and clip online at least a dozen times.

Thankfully, it looks like it will be a really cute and fun show.  And thank you, Disney, for finally making true love not about marrying someone two days later, but about loving your family that you have known your whole life!  We haven't seen it yet (movie tickets are ridiculous), but Grandma already has it on pre-order for Jasmine's birthday.

So, I figured I could contribute to the obsession the way I always do.  Make costumes.  My mom offered to buy the girls the flimsy things at Target, but where would the fun be in that?

Kaitlyn has already decreed that as the older sister, she gets to be the big sister Elsa, and Jasmine gets to be her younger sister Anna.

Anna's costume is going to take some work, and possibly an embroidery machine.  But I figured I would start with the cape, since that is easy enough.

 And then you can see the picture of how she really feels about it.  

Lessons learned:

*No matter how cute the trim would look on the cape, trim doesn't actually like turning around a circle while it lays down.  That was $3 wasted.  So much for mimicking the scalloped trim on the cape.

*Measure your child's head before cutting.  (The first one I made is gigantic on even Kaitlyn, despite going off what the internet said would fit.)  

And above all:

*Make sure Jasmine will actually like wearing that type of garment before making it.  It turns out she hates the feel of capes, for some reason.  I don't think she has figured out that she looks like Anna yet, she just know she hates it.

Given that, I skipped the collar and the second layer of the cape.  If she doesn't like the feel of it, I better not make it climb up on her neck more or give it more weight.  Hopefully I'll talk her into this one eventually . . .

In the meantime, Kaitlyn is getting a bit impatient for her costume.  All in good time, girlfriend.

Kaitlyn's lost tooth

Kaitlyn has been desperately hoping to lose a tooth for a long time now!  In fact, when she finally lost it (pulled it out at Arctic Circle), she was literally jumping up and down with glee and bragging to every single person in the restaurant play area.  When I peeked on her that night, she had taped a flashlight to her sheets to shine on her tooth so the tooth fairy couldn't possibly miss it!  I wish I could have taken a picture of that without waking her up, but she was sleeping pretty lightly that night.

So my mom sent us a new sewing kit to make.  A tooth pillow with a pocket ready for her next tooth!

She thinks it is hilarious that the tooth is a fairy, with pink wings and a crown.  "Get it?  The TOOTH fairy!!"

She got another big addition to her room this week, but this is one Mommy is the most excited about.  Ever since we got our first dress-up clothes, they have been in a plastic bin in the corner of our family room.  We outgrew the bin years ago, but we would just smash down the pile and tuck it behind a chair.  As much as I wanted to pretend the mess wasn't back there, it just kept getting worse.

Pinterest to the rescue!  A dress-up closet!

I started with the plans on Ana White (if you've never wandered through her site, it is amazing), but improvised from there.  I wanted a shelf on the bottom for bins, and a shelf on top as well.  I was too lazy to curve the top, but I did paint the shelves pink and purple.  Not that you can tell once it is filled up!  And of course, I got a mirror on one end so they can see how they look.  The bin on top is what used to contain the whole lot - and now it is filled with just the hats!  I thought I was going to put hooks on the other side for the hats, but apparently I had a lot more than I thought I did.  So the bin stays.  Not as elegant, but very functional.

I cannot tell you how happy I am about this.  Now they aren't a wrinkled pile!  Now Kaitlyn can actually see all of them to pick what she wants to wear!  Now I won't find her jeans and shirts in there weeks after she changed into a dress up and left them in the bin!  Hallelujah!  Jasmine has actually started to get into the dress ups too, which is really cute.

And this was actually the final part of the process, as well.  I now have all toys out of the first floor of my house!  There has always been a big bin in the family room, but all they ever did was spread them over the floor and leave them there.  I've just had it.  So now, all of the toys are up in their rooms.  We purged a LOT of the toys over Christmas and the new carpet and everything, so everything has a place and only stays if it has a purpose.  I feel free!

Happy birthday Kaitlyn!

First off, the bad news.  My good camera broke.  In many ways, it is due.  I have put some serious use into that entry-level camera over the last 6 years.  But with Christopher between jobs, I can't justify upgrading it right now!  We are hoping we can order a $30 part and fix it, but we aren't sure.  In the meantime, the quality of photography is going to be rather low around here.

But the good new: Kaitlyn turned 6!

In some ways, I feel like we didn't do very much for Kaitlyn's birthday.  But since we spread it out over three days, that makes up for it!  On her actual birthday, she was just thrilled to wear her birthday hat to school.  We had gymnastics and pack meeting that night (Tyler's first pack meeting!), but I told her we could do whatever she wanted for dinner in-between those two.  And she picked Chinese food.   That was a great dinner- as usual, Tyler looked a little wobbly when we were walking out.  He likes his all you can eat buffets!
Of course, opening presents is a big highlight at this age.  And my favorite part is that it doesn't have to be big or expensive to be completely awesome.  She loved her makeup mirror thingy that Grandma gave her, and I made her a butterfly skirt.

See, it looks like a regular wrap skirt.  But when you un-wrap it . . .

There are wings!

Thank you, Pinterest.  I have to say, this was actually a fairly easy project.  Make wings, make skirt, join the two.  And it is a really fun concept!  The blog I found them on just has basic instructions, but it really wasn't that bad.

The next day we had a "Birthday playdate".  I wanted to do something low key, but still have some fun with her friends.  And since that was the event where I discovered my camera no longer functions (grrr) I have no pictures of her party.  But we did have fun.  She wanted to play pirates (which got a bit rowdy with all the boys that came) and limbo, we decorated and ate cake pops, and we watched a movie.  I have  to say I enjoy cake pops a lot more now that I found the little baker at the thrift store.  Mixing frosting into cake crumbs was too . . . "soggy cake"-like.  And we made sweet potato pancake balls in it the other day, too.

And today was the main activity she wanted to do.  Ice skating!  She has actually talked about this for while, and we've been putting it off, but after seeing how well she does at roller skating we decided to give it a try.  It wouldn't make a good birthday party, though.  At the roller rink you can ride a scooter around if you aren't solid on skates, but there aren't any other options at an ice rink.  Our rink has a special time for "small and tall" - kids under 12 with their parents.  Unfortunately, that time is 10 am on Thursdays. (???)  But since it would be cheaper AND less crowded, we figured it would be worth missing one day of school.

So she tried out the "walker" for a lap.

And then she held Daddy's hand for a minute.

And then she just skated.

Sure, she fell quite a few times, but she was a champ about it.  And we just couldn't believe how good she was.  When I asked her if it was as much fun as she thought it would be, she said "No.  It was a lot more fun!"  We had prepped her over and over that she would fall a lot, so when she went 10 minutes between falls that was awesome to her.  She was going faster than me!

She asked when we left if we could come back tomorrow.  I just wish it wasn't during school hours, or we would do this again next week!  I am glad we did it today, though.  There were a dozen people there total, and a few of the kids were pretty small and going nowhere fast.

My annual snapshot:

*Kaitlyn is so smart!  She is reading really well now, and is making good strides on math as well.  She isn't always very focused, and tends to give up sometimes rather then plug away at it, but she has natural talent in a lot of things.  She has picked up piano really well, and is pretty good at her gymnastics and ballet classes, too.  I am constantly amazed at it all, actually!

*She is also a good big sister.  She loves to help me, and takes good care of both her siblings.  The poor thing got the short end of the stick with the room swap, though.  Jasmine keeps her up late and wakes her up early.  But she does her best to handle it, and I can tell that she truly loves her siblings a lot.

*She LOVES Disney Junior.  I have to constantly pry all of the kids off of TV, to be honest.  But she just loves Sophia and Doc and Minnie and would sit there all day long if I let her.

*She is constantly creating things.  She writes songs on the piano (literally writing them down in her own music notation), turns leftover boxes into beds for her stuffed animals and different things every day, and writes books with stories in them all the time.  She loved learning to sew, too, so I'll have to keep encouraging that!

*Most of all, she is my social bug.  She loves to play with friends, play with her family, and play with her cousins.  I'm rather introverted myself, but I am glad she is better than me at making friends!

Happy birthday Tyler!

Tyler turned 8 years old today!

When we asked him what kind of party he wanted to have, we gave him options (as usual).  Tyler struggles to answer open-ended questions still.  He usually still has to see the options for cereal to choose his breakfast, for example.  And when I asked him if he wanted to go bowling or skating or jumping or sledding, etc, he just looked at me strangely.  "For my birthday we go to ice skating and I ride my scooter," he told me matter-of-factly.  We've done that two years in a row, so that's just obvious, mommy.  (We've tried convincing both kids that there is a difference between ice skating and roller skating, but they've never done ice skating, so they don't believe us yet.)

So skating it is!

I wasn't too upset by his choice, since it isn't too expensive and is fun for all of my in-laws to come and join us.  We always have his party as a family party, since those are the people he actually gets excited about seeing.  He still doesn't remember his classmates very well, or the kids his age at church.  But he knows who Grandma Skarda is, along with most of his cousins.

I asked him if he wanted to try out skates and he gave me a firm "no".  When I asked him why, he said "because they are slippery!"  I think I will take him back sometime and try to teach him the skates, but for his birthday party I wasn't going to argue with that.

This girl, on the other hand, just wanted to GO.  She loved zooming around with Daddy.

I know this picture is horrible- my flash just bounces off the ceiling and the floor in there and makes odd halos as everyone zooms past.  But I love that look on her face so much!

I did make one big mistake when we got there.  I figured that while I wasn't too busy, I would walk the scooter around for Jasmine for a lap.

And then, she decided that I should be doing that non-stop the rest of the night.  This is the face of "MOM!  Push!"

She would just sit perched up there and yell at me until I did one more lap.  But then one of her cousins came with his little bike.  Since he wasn't using it, I asked if Jasmine could try it.  She screamed "no!" and continued her tantrum about how I should be pushing her scooter.  But then the cousin rode the bike for a few minutes.  Suddenly it was a wanted object.  She snagged it as soon as he got off and was very proud to ride that thing slowly around the loop over and over and over.

That girl worries me.

Back to the birthday boy.  My camera battery died, so we switched to the point and shoot level of photography.  I know he looks very bored here, but I promise he was pretty excited about the green cake he picked out with Daddy.

Jasmine was pretty excited too.

For his actual birthday, we went to his favorite place as a family: the pizza buffet.  The funny part was that Grandma gave him a Costco- sized box of donut holes and Daddy got him a candy dispenser, so despite not having lunch today, it was still by far the least he has eaten at that place.  He didn't even finish his Oreo pizza!  Tomorrow I will restrict both of those and try to point him to healthier choices, but today was his birthday, so I had to figure him exempt.
Anyway, the pizza buffet is always a favorite no matter what.  And there was a really nice lady there making balloon animals, so that was awesome.

I swear, this is the best picture in a long sequence as I frantically tried to get them all to look at me.  For the record, Kaitlyn got a pink and purple T-Rex, Jasmine has a butterfly, and Tyler asked for a green sword.

But now we get to the more interesting part of this post.  Eight is a big birthday in the LDS Church because it is the age that most children are baptized.  Some parts of this church have been things I have to pray about to see how I feel about them, and some of them are things that have just always made sense to me.  And baptizing at an older age like eight has always just made more sense to me than baptizing an infant.  We believe that younger children are not held accountable for their "sins" because they are not able to understand right from wrong yet, and therefore do not need to be cleansed yet.    To quote from one of the church manuals:

Every person who has reached the age of eight, who understands what is right and what is wrong, and who has faith in Jesus and has repented should be baptized. Children who are younger than eight years old do not need to be baptized. Our Father in Heaven doesn't judge them for what they do. Also, people who are mentally incapable of understanding what is right and what is wrong do not need to be baptized. All other people must be baptized if they want to return to live with our Father in Heaven.

It is an interesting doctrine, and a fairly unique one among Christian churches.  There are a lot of scriptures that talk about the importance of baptism in no uncertain terms: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."  Hence, most people make sure that every person is baptized as quickly after birth so they don't take any chances.  They wouldn't want to end up like Tess of D'Urbervilles.  And at the end of the day, I don't see any real harm in that method, to be honest.

Because the really important part of baptism isn't exactly that you went in the water and came back up.  The important part is the choice you make to follow the teachings of Christ.  That's a daily decision, not a "once and done" decision.  Baptism is required to start that journey, and even if baptism happens before you can truly start that daily work of remembering Him in all that we do, the important part is what we do after our baptism.  The important part is renewing that covenant weekly by taking the sacrament and repenting.

But I digress.  The part that has always resonated with me is that we don't need to have our sins wiped away if we didn't have any sins yet to begin with.  We believe that we are not accountable for Adam's transgressions, or anyone else's actions but our own.  So a newborn infant has done nothing that needs to be wiped away.  And to me, the act of joining a church - any church - should be a true decision made by the person involved.  Hence, a person should be old enough to understand at least the basics of what baptism is before they make that choice.

So for Tyler, the question lay in the fourth sentence of that blue paragraph.  Is Tyler mentally capable of understanding what is right and what is wrong?  Is he able to understand the choice to join our church?  Does he know what baptism symbolizes, and is does he have faith in Jesus Christ?

Unfortunately, after a lot of discussion between ourselves, Tyler, and our Bishop, I think the answer is not yet.  I don't think the answer is not ever, or I might just have him baptized anyway if he wanted to.  After all, Jesus did not need to be baptized.  He was baptized as an example to us, but not because he need to have his sins washed away.  But the answer for Tyler is not YET.

Tyler does not yet understand truly the difference between right and wrong.  He knows following rules, like how he shouldn't hit someone who takes his toy away, or shouldn't take things that aren't yours.  But he has never done anything wrong with the intent to do wrong.  If he does something wrong and I ask him who did it, he will say "Tyler".  He doesn't lie about it.  And when I teach him that it wasn't the right thing to do, he said "oh" sadly, and files that away in his mind.  Most of what he gets in trouble for in this house is playing rough with his sisters.  He has learned that one of Daddy's ways of showing affection for Tyler (and his sisters, too) is to tackle them and hug them and tickle them.  Tyler gets awfully confused when his sisters don't like being hugged and tackled as much as he loves being hugged and tackled.

And Tyler does not yet grasp the concept of faith in Jesus Christ, or that there are other churches out there.  Faith is quite the abstract concept, especially regarding things he has never seen, and he still can't pick out breakfast unless he sees the options with his own eyes.  But he used to not be able to make a choice even when he could see the options.  It took a lot of work for us to get him to understand that he could say words that would impact what happened to him.  And before that, it took a lot of work for him to understand how to say the words and what they referred to in the first place.  We are progressing.  Just not at the same rate as the "average" kid (who I'm not convinced exists).

That's the part I had the hardest time accepting, for a long time.  When we first started getting help for Tyler, I remember that the plan was to get him help early on so that he could "catch up".  We wanted him to have speech therapy when he was 3 so that he wouldn't be the kid pulled out of class when he was in 3rd grade.  In Kindergarten, we were talking about when we could "mainstream" him- when he could rejoin the "regular" class.  But slowly I have come to the realization that it probably isn't going to happen.  Many Autistic children just need to learn how to communicate and relate to people, and have a mind that is sharp on academics in the meantime.  So they once they figure out how to speak and function in society, they can jump right into a classroom.

But that's not Tyler.  Tyler has learning disabilities.  He has struggled to learn every single thing in life, from latching on to nurse, to walking, to talking, to how to hold a pencil or read or write.  In the progress of life, some people learn at at sprint, most of us walk and jog as we go along, and Tyler is just sauntering slowly along at his own speed.  That means that instead of getting closer to joining his peers in a classroom, he is getting further and further behind.  And as a worried Momma bear, that troubled me a lot.

Slowly, I had to let go of this idea that he would catch up.  I had to accept his journey at his own pace.  And once I did that, I was at peace with so many other aspects in his life.  So what if he can't read yet.  It might take other kids a year to learn how to sound out letters into a word, and they might accomplish that by age 5.  But that doesn't matter to Tyler and that shouldn't matter to me.  We just teach him to read.  If that takes him years to accomplish, so be it.  If he learns how to write at age 10, that's okay.  If he doesn't learn to drive until he's 30, then that's okay.

And if he isn't ready to be baptized at the first moment he is eligible for it, then we will just wait.

We've been talking to him about baptism as much as we can after each baptism that he has gone to see.  He has a much easier time with tangible concepts, after all.  And the good news is that there are a lot of kids his age in this ward, and as a member of the Primary Presidency I plan to attend every one with my family.  There are 16 scheduled for this year, as I recall.  So we will have plenty of times this year where we can go and see a baptism and talk to him about it afterward.  We aren't holding him back to penalize him, and he doesn't have to answer our quiz questions correctly to move forward.  But I want his baptism to mean something to him.

Right now he knows two things about baptism.  Up until this week, the only thing he could answer about baptism was that "you go in a pool".  And then, after we had talked to the Bishop and cancelled the baptism time that was scheduled for tomorrow morning, this week Tyler said "I am eight years old!  That means I get baptized."  I felt a pang of regret when he said that.  "Am I keeping him back from it?  If he wants to be baptized, shouldn't we just do it anyway?"  But I realized that his statement was just like when I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday party.  He didn't actually see it as a question.  He had heard time and time again in Primary that first you turn eight years old and then you get baptized.  He loves "first, then" statements.  He loves to know the sequence of events and check things off as you go.

So I don't think we will hold off very long.  But I do think we will use all of the baptisms this year to teach him what a baptism truly is and why we do it.

Well, now that I have written a long novel, on to my yearly snapshot:

*Tyler still loves the color green, and is thrilled anytime something has his name on it.  I frequently pick through Pottery Barn seconds at a local store- they send things there when they are monogrammed accidentally, so it is just random stuff with random names on it.  Sometimes we get lucky, and sure enough one night there was a suitcase with "Tyler" embroidered on it.  Daddy and I were debating about it.  He already had a suitcase, so did we really want to spend the money?  But Tyler had no intention of leaving it at the store.  It had his name on it, so clearly it belonged to him.  He didn't want to let it go at the cash register, let alone leave it behind!

*Tyler is still our loving kid who goes along with everything .  . almost.  He is starting to stick up for himself more and more!  He even gets after Jasmine sometimes, which is rare.  Usually he would laugh his head off if that girl hit him in the face.  (I wish I was kidding about that.)  But the other day she was messing up his carefully built lego creation and he told us "you get that baby out of here!"  While it is sweet that Tyler has always gone along with what life brings him, it is good for him developmentally to stick up for himself and vocalize his preferences in life.

*Tyler LOVES playing games on my old Kindle.  Right now his favorites are Candy Crush and Plants vs Zombies, because that is what he sees mommy and daddy playing.  He would play those all day long if I let him.

*And most of all, we love Tyler, and Tyler adores all of us!  He is such a sweet, happy influence in our lives, for which I am truly grateful.

A New Year

Normally, we celebrate New Year's by . . . going to bed at a normal time.  That's not entirely true- we go to bed at a normal time at the cabin as often as possible.  We try to spend as much time as possible up there over break.

Seriously, nothing is better than dozing off on the couch in front of the fire.

We should get out and play in the snow at home too, but somehow that is just what we do at the cabin.

We build snowmen, we sled in our yard, and we throw snow at each other.

I love these kids.

For Christmas, Kaitlyn got two sewing kits that she was thrilled about.  She has been really interested in learning to do what mommy does, which is sweet.  In fact, she wants me to get her a little sewing machine she saw at Joanns, but I told her she can learn to use mine when she's eight.  In the meantime, American Girl has some cute kits that really were great.  We sewed 12 buttons on to make a clock for her room, and then we made two of these little owls.

And she did great!  In fact, this is the smaller owl that I helped her with, but I didn't help her at all with the bigger one she did the next day.  They had her doing an applique stitch, running stitch, sequin stitch, and whip stitch with all the start and end knots and she did it all by herself.  What a champ!

But when little sister saw her posing with the finished product, she decided she needed to steal it and be in the picture too.  Despite refusing to put on clothes that day.

This is my real household, friends.

Sigh.

But this year we got a bonus- we got one of Christopher's brothers to come with his family for the holiday!  And it was so much fun that we're hoping to pull it off again next year.

So there was more sledding.

The snow was so perfect for sledding that you didn't even need the sled.

Christopher was excited to have teenager neices and nephews and his brother to play on the toys with.

The way up to our cabin is just that: up.  The road is a steady increase the whole way.  So when there are extra people to watch our little kids, everyone can sled or ski down the hill, and someone can use the snowmobile or four wheeler to go and pick them up and bring them back up the hill.

Christopher got these skis at DI last year, and declared them well worth the $10.

Jasmine wasn't so sure about all of this snow, but she did like getting her new snow boots on and doing what everyone else was doing.

So we had a great countdown to New Year's, just sitting around and putting together a puzzle and playing Phase 10.  Oh, and Christopher challenged his nephew to see if they could each down an entire bottle of sparkling cider.  Because that's just what my husband does.  And yet, he always seems shocked when he doesn't feel well afterward!

Out with the old

This post has actually been a long time coming.  I've even debated on posting it, because I'm not sure if anyone cares- and if they do care, they probably already know.  But it is a big change in our life that I had to document, and my primary purpose in keeping this blog is to be a record of our family for our kids someday.  So here goes.

I better start at the beginning.

Christopher applied for his job at Digicert in June of 2004 when he was almost done with his degree at BYU.  At the time, they didn't have any other employees.  It was just the guys who founded it trying to keep it afloat every day.  There wasn't an office yet- he had an interview in an empty room with the promise that they would get a computer set up for him soon.  At the time, we figured that it was a complete gamble, but one we were willing to take.  Most start-ups don't make it very far, but he only had one year-long class to take before he graduated.  As long as the job lasted a year, we could move anywhere we wanted to after that.

Christopher actually loved working during that time period.  There was no office politics - especially when he was the only one there, but even after they hired a couple of new people as the company grew.  The company Christmas party was a sit down dinner in someone's basement.  We went on double dates with the owner and his wife.  And Christopher loved that he was a truly valued employee.  I remember that the owner left on vacation for two weeks just after hiring Christopher - because he had been the only person on "24 hour support" since they started the business.  He was thrilled to finally have someone to hand those reins over to!

As it turned out, the company did very well.  They hired more and  more people, and Christopher's job description changed as we went.  It had to- he started off being the only person and doing a little of almost everything!  He was really happy to see someone else take some of the tasks, like programming or scheduling employees.  Some of his responsibilities he was more sad to lose, but as more work arrived, they needed more hands to take the load.  And the orders kept coming in.  In fact, they have doubled their sales nearly every year since Christopher joined, which is just astounding.

Christopher's boss always said that keeping his employees happy was a big key to their success.  He figured that he would lose so much money training new employees that perks like a stocked fridge in the break room were a drop in the bucket.  And he wanted everyone to feel happy to be at work, and happy to go home.  Soon he started organizing trips- some with your spouse and co-workers, so we all felt like a solid family at work, and ones with your family to Disneyland, so you could be a happy family at home too.  We have felt so blessed over the years by all of those trips! Spoiled might be a better word.  We went to Maui, St. Thomas, Cancun, Napa Valley, Midway a few times, cruised in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, took our family to San Diego, home to Ohio twice, and went to Disneyland for Christmas 5 times.  Seriously, who gets to do that?

We knew something that good could never last, so we tried to soak up every minute, and squirrel away everything we could to prepare for the future.

Eventually, the company was doing so well that the entrepreneurial spirit in his boss got restless.  He was itching to find a new project to start, so he handed over the company to other people.  By this time, the small office had grown and grown, and instead of working with a handful of close friends, it had turned into new faces every week with much of the office politics Christopher wanted to avoid.  And, as these things usually go, a few of the new people in the office didn't jive with Christopher as much as the old ones.  The company was sold, and things just weren't the same.  We saw signs that the new boss wasn't interested in keeping Christopher around a long time ago.

Now, the grand master plan has always been that Christopher wanted to start his own company one day.  We figured that he would work for other people until we had all of our kids in school, and I could go back to work and be the income and insurance while he did his own thing.  But when he saw how things were going a year ago, he saw an opportunity with a friend and went for it.

We've known Hyrum for a long time.  He's always seemed like a salesman from the first time I met him. Christopher said he probably wasn't going to run any marathons that year, but after running into Hyrum he suddenly was convinced to run 5 marathons that summer with Hyrum.  I remember when Hyrum decided to found the Utah Valley Marathon, and was just scrounging for runners.  He told us that he needed 200 people to sign up or he wouldn't break even.  It took years of work, but that marathon sells out almost every year now.

But Hyrum wasn't very happy with how the race registration systems that were available.  They took a large cut and didn't have all the features that he wanted as a race director.  So he started his own company, Race Entry, to be what he wished existed. And a year ago, Christopher came in as a partner on that company.  It was a side job for Chris.  At that point, it separated his employment into two jobs- one job that paid well but had depreciating satisfaction, and another job with growing opportunity in which he could once again work as an important and valued contributor.

Christopher figured that he would keep working at Digicert until Race Entry required his full attention, and then move on.

When he was called in to see the CEO of Digicert a couple of months ago and informed that they were letting him go, he wasn't surprised.  It was such a surreal and odd thing for us, to be honest.  We have been married for ten years, and he has worked there for nine.  It was just who we were, in some strange way.  He put his heart and soul into that company, and the work he did has saved them millions of dollars.  But at the end of the day, it isn't the same place he used to enjoy working at anymore.

Out with the old.

Christopher is now working at Race Entry full time now.  Disappointingly, I only had him home during the day for about three days before he decided to go into their office and work every single day.  I enjoyed playing hookie with him while it lasted.

On New Year's Day, I had to reflect on just how drastically Digicert has impacted our lives.  It was tough to see it go, in many ways, but the parts we miss the most were gone a while ago.  It's time to see where this new ride takes us.