The Family is Growing!

Big news! Around 7 yesterday morning my brother and sister-in-law brought their special bundle of joy into the world. So I now have another nephew. Here's a picture of the little stud:

Isn't he a cutie?

Michael and I were able to see him last night when he got off work. His name is Romain (pronounced Roman) Carter. I'm so loving this little guy! Michael also seemed pretty happy holding him. ;) So in the past year I went from having no nieces or nephews to having four!

Cuteness runs in the family ;)

These are the other cuties. Unfortunately they don't live near us anymore, but hopefully we'll see them again soon.

A New Year

Let me start out by saying Happy New Year! 2012 was a hard but good year. I'm really looking forward to this coming year, so many new things to look forward to. I have posted anything on here in awhile which I probably did on purpose. I tend to clam up and keep to myself when things get really stressful. Since my last post, Michael left his job at Sitel and is now working at Delta Air Lines. We feel really blessed for this great opportunity. The pay and benefits are more than we could have hoped for. Anyways, I've decided to try to get back into blogging (try being the key word). I'm staying at home now so I need something to keep me busy when I have nothing else to do. So here it goes...

In honor of the New Year I'm going to share with you my New Year's resolution. You may or may not know that my husband is French. He spend most of his life in France and he considers that his home. I used to live overseas as well. My family were missionaries in Romania. I learned to speak Romanian, not completely fluently but enough to get around. Anyways, I've realized I'm starting to lose my touch with it, and its making me kind of sad. I took pride in the fact that I knew another language. So getting back to my New Year's resolution. I've decided I want to learn French. I've been wanting to learn for awhile but have never acted on it. Both Michael and I would love to move over to France sometime, both of our hearts lie in Europe. So learning French now would be a big help for the future. I also want our future kids to grow up knowing the language so it would be helpful to know some of it by then. I told Michael about it and he seemed pretty excited about it. I also told him that I wanted his help and that the only way that I would be able to completely learn it is if he held conversations in French with me. I regretted telling him that really quick. He got all excited and started speaking French constantly. It was pretty late and I was tired so I finally convinced him to stop for the night. But I did get roped into watching a French movie, which wasn't so bad but would be better if I understood it. Anyways, we'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed!

Bringing in the New Years with my beloved.

What I Miss Most

Lately I've been missing a lot of food that's in Romania but sadly not here. I like the food here, but the food in Romania was just absolutely amazing! For instance, they had amazing bread which you could get fresh. The soup over their was to die for! All their soup is homemade, which takes a lot of effort but the finished product was heavenly. They also have amazing chocolate just like most European countries do. But what I've been missing the most is a pink grape fruit flavored soda.

Frutti Fresh: Pink Grapefruit (yummmm)

I absolutely love this stuff! It's like a little fruit party in my mouth. This stuff has a strong smell, I could be sitting four feet away from a glass filled with it and I could smell it, at least it smelled good. While on one of my trips to the grocery store I tried seeing if I could perhaps find something similar to hear. Here's what I found: 

I found it at Walmart for less than a dollar. I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't the same marvelous pink color as the one in Romania but as long as it had a good taste I wouldn't mind. I could not wait to get home and try some. I found this drink to be ok but not amazing, it didn't have quite that strong of a flavor that I was looking for but still doable. Never the less my search still remains. There's this new product that came out not to long ago and is in a bunch of commercials and stores, its called the SodaStream. Its a device that makes soda from tap water. At first I wasn't that interested in it till I realized they had...

THIS!!!!!!!!!

I now really want one! The only problem is that they are more than I can afford right now. I've heard great reviews on the product itself so I'm giving myself high hopes for this particular flavor. This will more than likely make it onto my Christmas wish list this year. Till then I'll just have to sit and let my mouth water. ;)

Here We Go Again

I really need to do better at keeping up with this blog. Life just seems to be so busy. Recently there have a lot of changes to adjust to. I just quit my job a couple of weeks ago. I had been contemplating on quitting my job for a long time. I was good at my job and did very well, but it just became to overwhelming. For the first month we were there we had classroom training. I was doing really well then, but once we actually started taking calls it started going down hill. I was doing really well the first few weeks, I wasn't overwhelmed. I'm not exactly sure when it all started to go bad I just know that I began hating my job. I stuck with it though because I knew we needed me to be working. So I continued working. After awhile my mental stress was going through the roof. Michael and I had talked about me quitting on a number of occasions but by the time it came to go to work again, I just felt to guilty to actually quit. Then a couple of weeks ago I had my breaking point. One of the other major call centers that works along side of us is located in Colorado Springs. So when the wild fires started the call center was shut down. That put everyone in our call center on mandatory overtime. I think that pushed me over the edge, I was already there it was just a matter of time before I couldn't handle it anymore. Michael and I sat down and talked over things, looked over our finances and decided that I should quit and look for something else. I was expecting to be stressed once I quit but I actually felt relieved. Now I'm on the oh so familiar quest in finding a new job. I have come across several good possibilities but only time will tell. Waiting as always been my least favorite part. ;)

A Little Bit of Peace and a Whole Lot of Business

Life has been super busy. There are so many days where I feel like my head is spinning because I just keep going and going and going and don't know when I'll stop. It's been like that for a while and it will continue to be like this for some time. Until then I'm quite thankful for the little bit of peace I get in the midst of the chaos. Several weeks ago my husband and I had the pleasure of going on a weekend trip to Savannah. We never had a honeymoon so it was nice to finally go on a trip as husband and wife. :) It was really nice. We stayed in a nice hotel for a good price. We were able to visit the historic district of town which I loved. I always love the architecture and beauty of historic areas, it reminds me a little bit of my home in Romania and all the beauty there. The whole weekend was great and I was really grateful to be able to get out of town and to relax. Something I much needed!

Absolutely beautiful!

For the first nine weeks we worked at our job Michael and I were on the same schedule. We're now on two different schedules, he's in the morning and I'm in the afternoon. It's been really hard the past couple of weeks, but thankfully we get a little break this coming up weekend for my birthday and hopefully soon after that we'll have our schedule's back together. Till then, we will persevere and look forward to the little time we have with each other.

Marriage, Work, and More

I'm not sure how many times I've actually tried to sit down and write something but then had to get up and do something else and thus never getting a chance to actually post something. A lot has happened since the last post. I am now a married woman. FINALLY! The wedding was a gorgeous wedding. Though it did feel like it passed by in a blur but for the parts I was aware of were wonderful. However I never want to go through planning a wedding again, really glad that part is over. 

Just a glimpse of that beautiful day!

Michael ended up losing his job as a security guard. Things became really hard after that. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. About a week before the wedding Michael and I were hired by a call center. This made things a lot easier since we only have one car. The job started the day after the wedding so we didn't get much of a honeymoon but we have many more years to come for one so we're fine. We've been in training these past two months working there. We have the same training schedule but not the same schedule after training. We didn't realize this till after the fact. We can't get the schedule changed till after we have worked there for 90 days. So right now we're working our training schedule and we're going to try to make it through our different schedule when they come up. We were supposed to be starting those schedules this next week, but they decided to keep over half the training class another week in training. This is based on reviews that customers fill out. They want us to meet a certain percentage, Michael and I are both just a little bit short of that requirement, mostly due to a customer who was unhappy because we won't give them free money or they don't like the answers we give them so they give us a bad survey. But the bright side of things Michael and I get to spend another week together before we have to start working our regular schedules. 

On Tuesday, we had a new addition add to our extended family. My sister-in-law, Bethany, gave birth to a beautiful little baby boy, Owen Parker. We had the chance to go see him on Wednesday. He looks like a Rinderknecht, so we all know that means he looks adorable. :)

Nothing much more is happening in my busy life, except the normal, job, cooking, cleaning and taking care of my wonderful husband (though I do have to admit that he usually takes care of me more than I do of him).  Well I think I've finally got everyone up to speed on things in my life. Hopefully I'll do a better job in keeping up this. ;)

Stress

I've realized that it has been a while since I've written a post. Yikes! Things have been really busy and very stressful. Since I've moved up to Georgia Michael has lost the job he had. When he first got the job he was guaranteed three months of work. After three weeks there they told him that they didn't have any positions available. It was a shock when we first found out. It wasn't an easy thing to hear, especially since the wedding was in almost a month. We're not sure why this happened but we're dealing with it. Since then we've been trying to find a job. We haven't had much luck except for one place. Its a call center just down the road from the apartment that we're getting. When we first applied there I really wanted that job, mainly because it was right down the road and would save on gas, and if we both got hired there it would make things so much easier with only having one car. I really think its the best option for us. They called us for a job preview and then we got scheduled for a second interview the next day. Right now we're waiting on the drug test and background check to go through. The only problem is they don't know when it would start. I'm hoping to hear from them sometime this week. In the mean time we're both still looking for jobs. Well Michael more than me. I'm still looking but not as hard. I'm trying to get things done for the wedding. I've gotten most of it done, but there are still a few more things that I need to work out. The countdown till the wedding day has begun. We're all the way down to 12 days! I'm very excited! Tomorrow the first of the family coming in arrives. Michael's dad will be arriving sometime late tomorrow night. The rest of his family will be arriving sometime next week. My family will be arriving next week as well. It's going to get pretty crazy around here.