Starting a New Adventure

So some of you know that I left Flowserve in May; for personal reasons, it was best for me to move on. I put together a resume, which quickly got torn apart by my mother and a recruiter that had found me a few weeks before I left Flowserve. The end product really was amazing! I started sending out resumes - 5 or 6 a day for two weeks. The phone interviews started soon after that and then in person. For the month of May I had 4 - 5 interviews every week for 3 weeks. I was truly surprised by the job market but also a little discouraged because it felt like I wasn't going to find something that truly challenged me.

In late May I applied to ATK. They are located in Northern Utah and manufacture rocket boosters for space and satelite launches. They asked me to come up to their Promontory location for an interview a few days later. It was two hours from our house in Springville but I decided to try it out. The interview was short...only about 45 minutes and that included the 15 minutes I spent asking question. I was a little disappointed but still really interested in the position since it was a step up from what I was doing with Flowserve. About a week later they called and asked me to come out to Magna the next day.

Magna is only about 45 minutes from our house. I first met with the VP of Operations and we had a really good chat about the business and key initiatives he was working on. Then I had lunch with the hiring manager and we just talked about where I grew up, my family, and my interests. I realized at this point that something was going on. This didn't feel like a formal second interview at all. My final interview was with the other HR Business Partners, who would be my peers, the HR Intern, and the HR Director. It turned out not to be an interview at all. I had asked a lot of deep questions during my first interview so for this interview they wanted me to just ask them questions. We talked for over an hour! It felt great!

However, I had an experience that has never happened to me before. I asked a question about the passion for the business and how the business cares for its employees. Everyone gave a very powerful answer and talked about how much they loved the work they were doing. It was at that moment that I was completely overwhelmed by the Spirit. I knew instantly that this was where I was supposed to be. I even teared up a little bit, but so did everyone else in the room. After the interview, the hiring manager took me back to her office and we talked about an offer.

After that everything else just started moving super quickly. We would have to move because a two hour commute just isn't appealing to me. So here's the crazy timeline over the next two weeks. Accepted the offer on Friday, listed our house on Monday, sold the house on Tuesday, went house hunting Saturday, made an offer on a house Tuesday, under contract Thursday.

This whole process really is a testament to me that Heavenly Father is watching out for us. Even when we don't deserve it, he is always working to get us to where we need to be.

Aria's First Birthday

Ok so I'm only like 45 days late in posting this but as some of you know my life has been a mess for the past couple months. I'll post on that later.

Aria's 1st Birthday was a blast. We threw a big party for her here at the house with as many friends and family as we could pack in. I am so grateful to everyone who came. She really did enjoy her big day. Here are some pics from the Big 1!

On her actual birthday, Wednesday, she had cupcakes at daycare and all of the little kids sang to her. She kept squealing because she was so happy but they also told me she was giving everyone dirty looks because she thought they were going to steal her cupcake. We had a cupcake for her at home and got both sets of grandparents on the phone so everyone could sing to her at once. As you can tell she enjoyed the chocolate frosting more than the cupcake.

 I decked out the house with all things yellow, pink and teal. It took forever to decide on colors, but once I found her invitation I just pulled all of the colors off of that. Aria got a pinwheel for Easter and she wouldn't put it down so I decided to decorate her party with all-things-pinwheel. I ended up making about 55 pinwheels by hand...and I'm a little sad I didn't take more pictures of them.

 The cake for the guests was a giant 12in round cake from Sweet Tooth Fairy. They frosted it and we took care of the rest of the decorations.

Aria's cake was perfect. I couldn't have asked for anything better. The cake was pretty big tho so she just had a slice to dive in to. It took about 10 minutes for her to realize I wasn't going to freak out when she got dirty (always makes me jump a little when she rubs food in her hair during dinner).

 She had a blast opening all of her presents...especially the ones with paper in them. She would rip it out and throw it backwards over her shoulder. SOOO CUTE!!

Luckily her favorite present was from her mommy and daddy. We got her a miniature play set with a baby swing and a slide. To say she loves it would be an understatement. She is always pointing/screaming for me to take her outside and sit on it. She is just now starting to figure out how to climb up by herself but once she gets up....its smiles and squeals non-stop.

Birthday stats:
8 teeth - 4 on top and 4 on bottom.
Favorite Food: hot dogs
Favorite Color: red
Favorite Activity: dancing
She rocks her stunner shades at night and during the day
She calls EVERYTHING "mama" but yells it at me :D

Jeff Turns 27!!

Jeff's birthday was Saturday and we wanted to get out and do something fun. I put a lot of ideas in front of him to choose from but, in typical fashion, he couldn't decide. Thursday I decided to invite all of his friends to the Provo Beach Resort for some time on the FlowRider.

BEST IDEA EVER!!!

Steve, Logan, and Cami joined us for the joint celebration - Cami and Jeff share a birthday! (Jeff is proudly just over an hour older than her).

Everyone suited up for the FlowRider except me. 1. I'm not ready for a bathing suit and 2. the two babies needed some supervision. Aria and I got to hang out with this cutie pie. Cami and Logan's 6 month old Troy. He has the best baby eyebrows I've ever seen!

 Jeff and Steve had ridden one of these before on their Caribbean cruise about 4 years ago. Logan and Cami had never done this before but they all looked like pro's within about 20 minutes.

 I wish I had taken more pictures but Steve and Logan got some pretty good video that I'm hoping to post later. After we went and played miniature croquet and the boys did a ropes course. This place is pretty freaking cool.

Aria was super excited to help her dad open his presents.

After all of the fun, we went to dinner at Malawi's Pizza. Just as we finished eating we thought we heard gunshots outside. Turns out the Riverwoods was having their annual Fire & Ice night. There were tons of cool ice carving and a HUGE fireworks show. It was great end to the night.

Superbowl

Jeff and I hosted our annual Superbowl Party again this year and it was a BIG success. I can't believe I've been doing this for 7 years now! This year I went all out...since last year I was cranky and uber prego. I ordered decorations - football flag banners, team napkins, a field table cloth, and superbowl rings for cupcake toppers.

The food this year was also SOOOOOO good. It took a few weeks, but I finally decided on queso (a D&J superbowl classic), hot wings, and meatball sliders. Desserts included team themed cupcakes and chocolate dipped oreos. I made everything from scratch except the hot wings because the smell always makes me gag.

Here are some pics of the event.

And here is my little helper. She just woke up when we were starting the oreos.

Kitchen Pt 1

The room focus of the Home Organization Diet for January is the kitchen. I knew that I had a lot of work to do because there are so many spots that I don't have any love for. I decided to first focus on the drawers and under the sink. Everything is just thrown in their and it makes me sad when I open them. Here are the before pics:

Baking supplies

 Standard Kitchen Tools

 Under the Sink (Disaster Zone)

I decided only a heavy duty lifter would work so I went to the Container Store website (dumb Utah doesn't have an actual store that I can envelop myself in for organization comfort). Well I found a basic drawer separator...its pretty cool - just springs into place. I separated the tools by size (although I wanted to go further and organize by color but had to remember...baby steps). This is the end result for the drawers.

 Note to the readers: the colorful peelers you see are Williams Sonoma and they are magical...get some.

For under the sink I went back to the Container store and found a sliding basket that I could secure to the cabinet and pull out when I went looking for things in the back. This is now housing all of the kitchen cleaning supplies, bottle cleaners, dog shampoo and sponges. I <3 it="" p="">

Tomorrow I will be tackling a deep clean of the oven, microwave, dishwasher, sink, and refrigerator. I've found lots of good scrubbing fixes on Pintrest!!!

Challenge Accepted: The Household Organization Diet

This year, as Jeff and I set out what goals we would like to work on together, I thought about how cluttered (and not decorated to my liking) our house feels. This house is big and we seemed to have filled it very quickly. Well On Jan 2 I was reviewing my favorite design blogs and came across this on Clean and Sensible:

The challenge is to get your house organized from top to bottom and plan for ways to keep it that way. Every month this blog will focus on one room in your house to clean out and organize the space. I've decided to jump on this and will be blogging about the experience throughout the year.

The diet officially starts Monday but there were some pre-challenge projects to complete first. Step 1 - The Organization Binder. I went a little out on my own for this one. First, supplies: binder (adorable from Target), 5 dividers, and some page protectors (to keep inspiration in magazines).
 

 I found some really cute templates over at I Heart Organizing and started from there. I bought the calendar template to keep track of my month activities (something about my phone calendar just doesn't do it for me), a cleaning checklist, a party planning activities sheet, and some other miscellaneous items.

 

The binder is ready to start and the first room is the kitchen. I'm looking forward to decluttering and buying some stuff from the Container Store this week (LOVE my Christmas gift cards!!!)

On another note...Aria got her bouncer this morning and she was over the moon excited. I probably got three good squeals of excitement. Made my day!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Christmas seems to have snuck up on me this year. I guess with life being so incredibly crazy, my usual planning went out the window. Its December 9 and I have yet to do any Christmas shopping.

Do you know how FREAKING hard it is to shop with a baby? SOOOOO much work!

Anywho, we have done some preparation around here. Aria had a photo shoot one night in her Christmas outfit so we could get just the right picture for the Christmas card. It was soo fun and she was cracking me up.

We also got all of the decorating done on December 1st. We still haven't compromised on trees so we have a fake one for me that gets decorated all fancy and a real one for Jeff that gets decorated with all of our ornaments from when we were growing up. We took a leap this year in selecting our real tree. On the word of my boss that the trees were good we went to Costco. The tree was $42 and we had to go pick it up out of a semi in the parking lot. This is what we found:

 I was really nervous and then we cut all of the strings off. And it was perfect.

Now here's my to do list over the next 10 days so we can be ready to head home for California:
1. Christmas Shopping
2. Prepare Neighbor Gifts
3. Mail Christmas Cards
4. Get Aria her first Christmas Dress
5. Pack up the Fam
6. Drive home for a WEEK with the inlaws and the BFF!!!!!