Jocelyn and Scott: February 2014

So, I was supposed to post this a little bit ago, but forgot about it.

It’s been a while since I did a blog update of our life, other than a race update. There is actually a lot to update since having little Emi.

Scott was able to go on the high adventure with the young men this year. They went up to Michigan and did a canoe/fishing trip for a week. The all had a lot of fun and had some pretty neat experiences that I’ll let him fill in. He also went to Las Vegas for a Tucon conference (the company that makes Spotfire- a data visualization tool that Scott has made popular at Nielsen). Just recently he also went to Canada to do some trainings to those folks on spotfire.

This summer besides my 3 races I ended up doing, I had a pretty relaxing time. I stayed at home with Emmers and worked on various projects around the house. I finally got my crafts organized so now I can’t find anything;). I also found an extremely cheap place to buy discounted bulk produce. I got 152 organic mango (9/$1)!!!! We canned some, dried some, and blended and froze some. I also bought 80lbs of tomatoes, 20lbs of onions, and 10lbs of bell peppers and made some diced tomatoes, salsa, and tomato paste (yes homemade does ALWAYS taste better). I unfortunately missed the peach/pear season so I didn’t get any of those canned. We also made a ton of pickles too! It was a fun adventure, but took a TON of time. Hopefully we will enjoy the “fruits” of our labors.

Emi has been such a happy pleasant little girl to be the parents of. She is tiny (5^th percentile for weight) but still growing. She is 8 months now and still wears 3 month clothing. She has been super strong since she was born. She had good head control just a couple days old and could stand holding our hands at just under two months. She started crawling at 6 months and decided that that wasn’t good enough so this week she decided to start taking a couple of steps along furniture… we’re doomed. It’s so funny to see her little figure standing and moving as well as she does, it just doesn’t look right. We were able to visit Scott’s family this last week so she finally met all her cousins, aunts and uncles on his side. It was tons of fun to introduce her and have her have 23 other playmates.

So, the update on Scott and my life is extensive but can be summarized by two new jobs and a car! I started my job at The Christ Hospital in September. I was in a residency program for 8 weeks and now I am orienting on my floor (CVICU-cadiovascular intesive care unit). I LOVE IT. I love the people I get to work with and for. The pts are very high acuity which makes everyday different and challenging.

Scott was contacted through Linked in by a company in Cincinnati called Sogeti. They are an IT consulting firm. They contacted him because of his experience in Spotfire and visualization tools. After talking back a forth a little he stopped hearing from them for two months. We just moved on and didn’t think anything more about them. His current company, Nielsen, finally made the position for him that he has been telling them they need to make for years. Right at the same time Nielsen was formulating this new offer, Sogeti came back with an offer for the same type of work with them. It was offer heaven, Scott counted up 10 different offers he had that month with out looking. After much thought, prayer, and fasting we finally decided to go with Sogeti. Because of the new jobs, we need a second car. Scott used to take the bus to work, or I would occasionally or run home. We had to get pretty inventive sometimes when it came to transportation to and from childcare and both workplaces with one car. I’m proud that we were able to make it happen as long as we did (6.5 years, and 7 months with a babe!). We would have been able to continue to make it work but Scott’s job isn’t on the bus route it’s so far north.

So the Saturday after thanksgiving we went car shopping! We went out thinking we were going to buy a used car with a few miles on it. After a VERY long day we ended up with a new Hyundai Elantra. The sales guy was pretty desperate to make a sale so we actually got the car for cheaper than we were going to buy the used one for and it had the same amenities but the used one had 39,000 miles and was a model older. We felt very blessed but also very annoyed at how long everything took! I spotted a Uswirl yogurt place during the day so we went and got some as a celebration on the way home. Uswirl is my favorite froyo place out west and I guess they are expanding out here now! It’s too bad that its 40 minutes from our place though! For those in the Austin, TX area Froyoyo is still my number one favorite frozen yogurt place out there!

I think that concludes the MAJOR changes in our lives! I’ll have to do another update after Christmas and the new year when I become a REAL nurse aka not an orientee anymore (SCARY SCARY!) and Scott will have a little bit of the new job under his belt!