Many Years Have Passed...

Many, many years have past since I did a post on this blog.  I guess we've just gotten busy.  Keegan is in middle school now and Lyle and I are still working.

Lyle works from home full time and has for the last couple years.  This has been very nice.

I am still working for 3M, although I've change jobs internally a few times.  First I took a job as a Project Lead for Electronic Lab Notebooks.  This was in an effort to gain more flexibility and be able to work from home more.  With the copious number of meetings I had and the strange requirement that I had to be in the office for a lot of my conference calls, it ended up being much less flexible.  After realizing I was getting very depressed, unhappy, and gaining a lot of weight....I decided to seek out another lab job.

I landed at a job in the Commercial Solutions Division.  They were looking for a formulation chemist/engineer to work on the organosol process used to create vinyl films.  The bulk of their business is in car wrap films.  I've been in the new job about 9 months and it's been good.  The people are really great, the work is challenging, and I get to be in the lab quite a bit which I love.  I am down 10 lbs from last year and pretty happy.  I still struggle with the horribly long commute (45 min each way).  I get up pretty early to get into work so that the commute isn't longer than that.  I do still wish I could find some good work closer to home.

Right now I am at home on Short Term Disability because I had to have a hysterectomy a few weeks ago (almost 6 weeks now).  I had a number of issues going on: heavy bleeding, chronically aenemic, polyps in my uterus, and severe adenomyoisis (where uretine cells grow into the surrounding muscle).  I was in a lot of pain a couple weeks a month at least and having a lot of trouble managing the bleeding.  Recovery from the surgery is going well and I am looking forward to having a more pain-free life!

I am also still doing a lot of work on my blog (http://hiddeninpages.com/) and ramping up my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIIFPu2AhLpDWOPT6svPGsA?view_as=subscriber) so check those out if you are interested.

Keegan is still involved in many activities.  He is doing hockey all year long; for off season right now he is in a 3 on 3 league.  He is also continuing with swimming.  Additionally, he is participating in the table top game club after school.  He decided to call karate quites shortly after he got his black belt.  He spends a lot of his freetime playing Fortnite on the PS4 with his buddies from school and playing outside with the neighbor kids.

 

Keegan Playing Hockey

Keegan has been doing a pretty darn amazing job in middle school.  It was a lot of changes this year but he adjusted well.  He's been on the A honor roll every trimester, is in advanced math, and has continued to stay in the mid to upper 90's percentile-wise on all his standardized testing.  He has grown so much both in responsibility and attitude this last year.  While we are getting a bit of the pre-teen attitude...he does his chores mostly without complaining and he was an enormous help to me while I was recovering from surgery.  He didn't complain a bit when I had him lugging around laundry bins and picking stuff up off the floor when I dropped things.

Keegan and Lyle have also been helping Lyle's dad replace his deck this spring.  This has been a really great learning experience for Keegan.  He's learning how to use a miter saw, measure and cut boards, and just some general carpentry.  It's great for him to learn all these life skills.

Jubei passed away nearly a year ago from a combination of bladder cancer, heartworm, and possibly digestive cancer.  He was an awesome cat and shared an amazing 14 years of life with us.

A Young Jubei

We weren't going to adopt another cat, they usually live 15-20 years and we want to retire to live in our camper in 10-15 years.  However, Keegan talked us in to going to PetSmart and they had just gotten in a ton of kittens.  We ended up with a wirey orange guy who we named Raviti.  He has been an amazingly fun addition to the household and I am really really happy we adopted him.

Raviti gets along with all of our other cats great, is very loving, and crazy fun all at once.  He's been getting into places our other cats never dreamed of and loves being around his people.  He's very smart and talkative and a perfect fit for us.  We've been trying to ease him into becoming a camper cat by getting him used to his harness and walks, as well as going for car rides in a special screened in carrier.

Crazy Raviti or "Kitten" as he gets called a lot.

We took an amazing trip over spring break out to LasVegas and then through Death Valley, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks.  We ended up in Sedona, AZ which was incredibly beautiful.

Highlights of the trip were an ATV ride through sand dunes outside of Zion and Antelope Canyon in Arizona.  I really enjoyed Sedona and would love to go back and do more hiking there in the future.

 

Above are images from Antelope Canyon

Above are pictures from our ATV ride outside of Zion

By the Bellagio Fountains

At Badwater Basin in Death Valley

Hanging out with Cow Mules at the Grand Canyon

Hiking in Sedona, AZ

Anyway, it was an amazing trip!  I think that's all I am going to say about that :-)

We also love our "new"...now three years old house.  It's been perfect.  We love the neighborhood and the school.  So, nice to be able to sit out at the fire ring and I enjoy the outside work.

I hope everyone is having a great spring.  I would promise to update this blog more....but that's probably not going to happen.  We're just very busy with work and activities!  It would be nice if we could do a post more than once every three years though...