A couple months ago Scott and I both got hit with a pay cut and were taken down to 4 day work weeks.  The short weeks have been nice, but unfortunately the bills don’t change.  It’s been tough, and we have been forced to reevaluate everything.  It has cast a cloud over a lot of other things going on, and I let the blog slip.  I didn’t want to bum everyone out with bad news.

For Scott’s company they set a date they think all will be back to normal.  But at BNP we all go to work each day not knowing when, or if, we will ever get our pay back.  It was a kick in the butt for me, and I took a step back to really think about what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to work.

About that same time Joe, a good friend who I have worked with and have great respect for, put a post on Twitter that he has friends that are hiring.  I jokingly responded asking him if they were cool enough.  By the time I got home he and Mike, the guy hiring, had both emailed me.  After talking to Mike I realized Joe was right.  Mike was cool, and the opportunity sounded great!

The company is based out of Columbus, so the next week a road trip was in order. The company is a start-up, and I’m pretty sure the guys tried to scare me away… well, they wanted me to know the goods and the bads.  Honestly, it sounded like something right up my alley.  On the way home I had decided that whether it works out with them or not, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to do.

When I got the offer from them it wasn’t a question of if I wanted to accept it, it was… “when do I start??”

I have been at BNP almost 5 years.  I have always enjoyed working there, and have made lots of friends.  But, the time has come for me to move on, and July 2nd will be my last day at BNP.  I will be traveling to Columbus a couple times a month, and the others days be working out of my home office (which Scott has been bustin his butt on for me).

To all my BNP peeps… you know I got love for ya, and we’ll stay in touch.  I wish you guys all the best, and I truly hope things at BNP get better and you can all get back to living again and being happy there.

To my good buddy Joe… many thanks!  We’ll get our celebration on when I get down to Columbus.  And thanks for planting the seed in my head about all the possibilities out there for me.

This will start a new chapter of my life… and I can’t wait!

Yesterday morning I hear B wake up and saw, “Uhh… wow!  The Easter Bunny was here!!”  Now you may think this is no huge surprise that a kid wakes up on Easter morning and says this, but for our B it was huge!  If you remember last year she adamant that the Easter Bunny could not come in the house.  We had to tell her the Bunny left the baskets in the garage and Daddy brought them in before she woke up.  We heard the same thing again this year.  It took us the past 2 weeks to convince here it was okay to let the Easter Bunny come into the house.

So, this year the bunny could hide eggs, and bring the baskets in the house himself.  B ran around finding eggs. She tried to help Hunter, but really… he could have really cared less.  He saw Gerber Graduates fruit snacks and Matchbox cars in his basket, so he was all set.

Later in the day we went to Uncle Paul and Aunt Sally’s house.  They had an Easter egg hunt for the 3 kids (B, Hunter and Finn), dinner and dessert.  We had a great time with the fam!  And I think all the eggs were found.

It seems like when I was growing up and would dye eggs for Easter there was 6 colors:  blue, green, red, orange, purple, yellow.  This year was the first year we dyed eggs with B.  I picked up the standard Dudley dye package… and it had 10 colors!  The same standard 6 plus, teal, pink, strawberry, and even brown!  Who wants to dye an egg brown?

I boiled a dozen eggs for B to dye.  There was stickers, a crayon, and egg wraps too.  She loved it!  Lesson learned for B… the counter is no match for an eggs, hard boiled or not.

Brooklynn seems like she has been growing leaps and bounds lately.  Not noticeable like Hunter growing, but just how much she is learning.  It is amazing!  She loves to read, write, draw pictures.  She can get through “Hop on Pop”, “Go Dog Go”, and “Whacky Wednesday” by herself with little help.  This past weekend she was drawing as she ate breakfast. She grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil, then proceeds to draw a picture of her playing soccer.  Under it she writes “I lov to play sockr like my mommy.”

As I was sitting on the couch with her later that day I looked down at here in her blue jeans, new blue shirt she picked out, and how they made her eyes look extra blue.  I grabbed the camera to capture what an independent, smart, little girl she is developing into.