Decisions, Decisions

So, before we left for North Carolina, I got a job offer over the phone for a new company, with the understanding that I would get an official offer by email the next day. I didn’t want to mention anything to my manager about it, until that offer came. Of course, I left work early to get to the airport, before the email ever arrived. I didn’t get the offer until we got to the airport, and I didn’t want to deal with it during the chaos of travel. That night, I emailed my manager and told him I got another job offer, and asked if Symantec would try countering this soon after my last offer. He replied back and confirmed that they wouldn’t try to counter again, asking me to let him know my decision. I emailed the manager of the other company and explained I was out of state, with limited internet access, and asked for his patience until I returned. He agreed.

I noticed that for the last job offers, I felt more apt to leave when I was away from the office, and more reluctant to leave once I got into the normal routine in the office. Having a week away to think about things helped me be more objective, even though it was still a difficult decision. When we returned home and I got back to Symantec, I slipped back into feeling scared of a change. However, one of the managers was best friends with the new position’s manager, and told me a lot about him. With this positive endorsement in mind, I started considering what it would be like to leave.

When the HR rep from the new company called me around lunch time, I told her I accepted the position. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the last day, hoping I can endure.

Finished Basement

When we arrived home this afternoon, we found Dave here working on some things, and we also found a finished basement! There are just some minor things that still need to be finished up but otherwise, it is finished.

They still need to put the banister back up:

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Here is the family room as you come around the corner off the stairs:

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Here is the view of the family room including the book cases:

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The bookcases still need a bit of work. There will be doors on the bottom portion, and then crown molding along the top and there is other trim to put along the seams of the book case up against the walls. Dave didn’t want to take a chance making the doors and end up messing up so he ordered those and he also ordered the crown molding, so he is just waiting for those to arrive and then he will need to stain them before they can be put on.

Kyle’s closet under the stairs:

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The storage room:

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The girls room:

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The boys room:

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The tiny linen closet:

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They also haven’t put in the sink in the laundry room. Since we weren’t home we weren’t able to really pick something and Dave didn’t want to just pick something for us (for which I am grateful) so Kyle and I will need to find what it is that we want in there and tell Dave what it is so he can finish that up for us.

It has passed the final inspection and so we are good to start moving things in! We aren’t going to move anything down tonight, though. We are wiped out from all this traveling! So we will just go to bed tonight and work on moving stuff down later. 🙂

Coming Home

We were up very early this morning to get the kids dressed, pack up the last of our stuff and leave Grandma Katrina’s house. Mom was coming with us, and since Jenny spent the night with Auntie Laura we needed to go pick her and James up before going to the airport. We would have liked to stay longer, but considering our basement was being finished while we were away I was feeling very anxious to get back. Also Jenny needed to be back before Tuesday, so we all flew out on the same flight.

The airport was crowded this morning. It took the lady at the desk quite a while to get all of our seats situated. We were just glad we called the day before to get tickets for the morning flight. We then went to the long line to get through security. I was so happy to find that there was separate (much shorter) line for families, so we got through much faster than we expected, even though they had to x-ray Adam’s bottle of water. We were running short on time though and we got to hitch a ride on one of the carts that airport employees drive around. We made it to our gate just in time and boarded directly. This time the plane was FULL. There was not a seat to spare. Our seats were in the very back of the plane, and I honestly think there are the very worst seats on the plane. There were windows, but you couldn’t see anything out of them because the engines were right there. And because the engines were right there it was very loud. We couldn’t hear any of what was being said over the speakers, and we couldn’t hear each other either. Mom and Jenny got to sit closer to the front of the plane.

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Here we are walking through the Dallas airport. Jenny turned around and used her phone to take a picture of our family. You can’t see Jeremy though, because he got cut off the edge (he is standing right next to Chloe…). In Dallas we had to split up and go our separate ways. Jenny, James and mom had a lot further to go to find their next gate. Our next gate was just a bit of a walk from where we got off our first plane. Once we found our gate, Kyle went to get some lunch for the kids and then he went back to get some lunch for us. We ate, while we watched airplanes landing and taking off outside. Soon it was time to get on the plane that was going to take us home!

We had the same back row seats on that plane, like they wanted to put all kids in the back. We finally arrived at the Salt Lake airport, and we went to the baggage claim to collect our stuff. Now things were going to get tricky. Not only did we have the seven kids, the booster seats, carry on bags, car seats, and the three suitcases, but we now also had the three cases of girl scout cookies to juggle to the car. I think next time we go anywhere on an airplane we are going to bring the stroller! We ended up having the older kids help with suitcases, and set a box of cookies on top of each and we slowly, and carefully walked to the pick-up zone.

Here we sat to wait, while Kyle took the car seats and got on a shuttle to the parking lot to get our van. It took a while for him to get there and get the car seats strapped in, and even longer to get the van out. It had snowed while we were away, so the windows were all covered in icy snow, so he had to scrape all the windows clear. Then, the van wouldn’t move as the ground was covered in a foot of icy snow, but after clearing the ground around the wheels and rocking the van forward and backwards, he finally got out and came back to get us. We loaded everyone and everything up and now we are home!

Sunday and the Raleigh Temple

We woke up first thing this morning and took mom and the kids to a local ward to attend church, about half an hour away. The kids were well behaved, and I think our family nearly doubled the size of their primary. Ethan and Tyra were in the same class, since they normally had so few kids in it. The people were really friendly and many of them came up to us to welcome us and ask who we were. We saw several looks of disappointment when we mentioned that we were just visiting.

As we were leaving the church we saw someone with boxes of girl scout cookies, but the boxes were different than the ones we get in Utah. Kyle went to talk to them and found out that they have the cookies that we can’t get in Utah! So we asked her if she could find get us a case each of the Lemonades, the Thanks-a Lots, and the Mango Cremes. She said she would find out and try to deliver them to us tonight, or ship them to us.

When church was over we drove out to Raleigh to see the temple. It is such a cute dinky temple! It shares a parking lot with a stake center right next door, and I don’t think the temple was much bigger than the stake center. We were able to walk around the whole temple in only a few minutes.

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I found it interesting to see kale growing on the temple grounds.

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It was really bright today, (actually it’s a nice break from the freezing weather that we have been having back home).

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When we got back to Grandma Katrina’s house we found that she had a large pot of chicken soup waiting for us. Kyle was a bit concerned because a couple of days ago she had made the comment that she doesn’t cook much anymore. I pointed out that not cooking and not knowing how to cook are two different things. 🙂 It was actually very good soup. She used some of the leftover chicken and the vegetables that were left on the veggie tray that the cousins had brought over, and turned it into chicken soup. I had never thought of putting broccoli in chicken soup before. It turned out very good and I was very surprised to find that my kids ate it all. I didn’t see any kids bowls lying around with uneaten vegetables in them.

After we finished eating dinner, my girl scout cookies arrived! Just in time for dessert. We were all very excited to try the cookies, so we opened the Mango Cremes first. Grandma Katrina was reluctant to have one, as she doesn’t eat sweets much anymore, but after finishing the first, she asked us, “okay, what’s next?” We tried all three flavors.

Old Salem

Yesterday we didn’t really do anything besides going back to the cemetery to put the flowers on Great Grandma Ruby’s grave now that it has been filled in. I also walked around taking pictures of headstones of other family that is buried there.

Today we decided to go see “the teapot”. Aunty Laura led the way and we followed in our rental van. Auntie Laura didn’t seem to know where she was going however, so we kind of just drove around until we found it, and then we realized that it was on an island in the middle of the street and there wasn’t really anywhere for us to park. So Kyle and Auntie Laura got out to look at it and take a couple of pictures:

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Then we were back to driving around trying to figure out where to go. As we were driving around I saw a sign pointing to a “Visitor Center”, and I wondered why we didn’t just go there. We drove down one of the main streets of Old Salem and the buildings were all cute really old buildings. I saw some people dressed for the time period too, and thought that was so cool. Then we ended up going back and finding the visitor center. 🙂

The first thing the kids saw in the visitor center were some penny smashing machines. They have never seen anything like this and really thought it was cool. Grandma Katrina saw their interest and instantly thought of all the change that she had in her car. So she took Tyra with her to go get the change and when she came back she gave each of the kids two quarters and a penny so that they could pick a design to smash into their penny.

There was also a video playing that gave some of the history of the Moravians that settled Old Salem in the 18th and 19th centuries. The kids also got distracted in the gift shop, and Grandma Katrina got distracted at the treat shop (she ended up buying several kinds of fudge to share with us). We finally bought some tickets and then worked our way across the bridge to go see what there was to see.

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So that main street that we drove down before, with all of the old buildings, ended up being the ‘museum’ that we were going to see. Most of the really old buildings had been restored to look the way they had originally looked when they were first built. Each building had a sign outside to say what it was, and inside there were people dressed in period clothing to tell us all about the buildings and the people that lived or worked there.

First up was the tavern:

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In the kitchen of the tavern the lady talked about coffee beans, and showed us how the people would roast them, and she let the kids use the grinder to grind some of the coffee beans.

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Next, we saw the print shop. In one room they had the giant printing press:

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And across the hall they had a photography room.

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Next we saw the “Single Brother’s house”. When I first saw the sign I wondered why the single brother didn’t have a name. It made more sense when we went inside. The Single Brother’s house was not a house occupied by a specific single brother, it was occupied by all the single guys that had left their homes to go learn a trade. 😛 This is the room that they used for meetings:

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Also in the single brothers house, there was a tailor. He was sitting on a table, sewing something and when we walked in he talked to us about his job of making clothes for men, and the different materials that were available for use during this time period.

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Farther on down the hall we came to the room of the tinsmith. He was sitting at his table working on a pattern for something, and he told us about his job of making things out of tin. On one wall there were some shelves with a bunch of things that a tinsmith would have made. Things like cheese graters, coffee pots, cookie cutters, and tart pans.

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On our way out of the single brothers house, mom saw a pump, and thought that was so cool. She asked if we thought it would still work, and I told her not to mess with it because I didn’t want somebody that worked there coming over and telling her that she shouldn’t be touching it. But mom didn’t listen, and she went over and after pumping it a few times, water actually did come out!

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Next on the street was the Miksch house and gardens. Behind the house there was a large garden where they had all kinds of plants growing. The man there told us about the kinds of things that would be planted, and what they would do with them. He also talked about letting some of the plants go to seed so they could collect some seeds for the next season.

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Here is a picture of the kitchen in the house:

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This was the end of the first side of the first street and we decided that we had better go see some of what was on the second street, so we walked to the first building on the second street, which turned out to be the doctor’s house. The first rooms right off the entrance were: on the right, a sitting room, and on the left the apothecary where the doctor would fill prescriptions for people:

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Upstairs there was just a kind of mini museum of things that a doctor during this time period would use for tools, and maybe some of the procedures that they would do. Downstairs towards the back of the house was the kitchen, which was rather large compared to the rooms that we had seen in some of the other houses. As we left the doctors house, we were told that there were some crafts in the barn, so we went to go check that out. Each of the kids got to make a valentine and they sent us on our way with enough paper for the kids to each make a second one later. This also proved to be a good break for Jenny to be able to nurse James. Then we were on our way again and because we were running out of time (they were closing the museum soon) we decided to head to the bakery next, because many people had made comments about it throughout the day. The bakery was a bit crowded, and Adam was getting fussy by this time, so mom offered to take him to the van and feed him (because I left the bottles and formula in the van rather than carrying them around with me all day). So mom took Adam, and Jenny, James, Auntie Laura, and Debby all went with her. We finished up at the bakery by purchasing some treats, and worked our way back toward the van. We came across the Timothy Vogler Gunshop and decided to check it out. The men showed us some guns that were made there and told us a bit about the building. They actually sold their guns, so if we wanted a hand-crafted rifle for $2500, we could have purchased one.

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By the time we left the gun shop it was time for the museum to be closing, and so we headed back to the visitor center to meet back up with the others. We let each of the kids pick out a souvenir, and Grandma Katrina bought the five older kids each a pop gun, and it was time to go back to Grandma’s house to figure something out for dinner. 🙂