Update on work, house, family...

Tabaitha just mentioned to me that it's been about 3 weeks since I've posted any new blogs, so here goes. I really have no idea what I'm going to write, so this may take a while. It's a good thing you won't be reading this until it's a finished product!

So I just got back from an overnight business trip to the California coast. I stayed in Santa Barbara and I must say, that part of California is incredible. As I was cruising down the 101 (insert "The OC" joke here) I had mountains directly across the freeway lanes from me, and the ocean on my side of the road. It was amazing. I rolled the windows down and could hear the waves crashing into the coastline. In my opinion, it's the closest thing to being in Hawaii.

So far, I've been "in the field" for Nalco for 9 business days, and I've already met so many great people. I've also been exposed to so much information and so much lingo that I know I'm not fully retaining. Good thing my co-workers know I can't possibly take it all in this quickly.

I've already got two big events set up to participate in in February. The first one is on the 5th and 6th, and involves everyone on my southern California team. Fortunately, it's in Bakersfield, so I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to travel and gets to sleep in my own bed. The second meeting is a sales meeting for our entire division, and is being held toward the end of February in Cancun, Mexico! I haven't been there since Spring Break of my senior year of college, so I'm really looking forward to going. Of course, this trip will be SLIGHTLY different than my Spring Break trip, with the days being full of meetings and presentations, instead of drinks and basketball in the pool. I'm sure it will still be a fun time though.

Anyway, enough of the boring work stuff. On to the exciting stuff: our house! We'll be moving in the first weekend of February and we couldn't be more excited. I know Tabaitha mentioned the house in detail on her blog site, so feel free to check it out too. I'm really looking forward to being able to enjoy a bigger space than our apartment or this extended stay suite we've been living in the past 2 weeks. We'll post some pics of the place (aside from the one already on Tab's site) as soon as we can, but the house definitely has everything we were looking for. I'm also really happy with the owner of the property. He seems like a really nice guy and I think we'll enjoy dealing with him much more than with a property management company.

Things seem to finally be falling into place for us out here. I know it's only been 12 days since we got here, but not knowing where we would be living was stressful. We're very fortunate that we found a place so quickly. If Tabaitha hadn't been on top of things and hadn't contacted the owner of the house within minutes of him posting the ad, I think we'd still be looking for a place to live. It's definitely nice to have her staying home with Mason full-time. It's allowed her to really focus on helping Mason stay ahead of schedule in his development and have consistency in his days, which is vital to his growth at this age. I'm so glad we both wanted her to stay home and not work once we started a family.

Alright, time to wrap things up. I hope everyone is doing well. We miss all of our family and friends so much, and I know that while we're all sad that we're so far away, your support has meant the world to us, and has made all of these changes we've chosen to bring into our lives much easier to deal with. Until next time!