Since
last we talked, things have been busy in our lives. I have been working
on the book quite a bit. We have finished 10 of 12 chapters, I have a
few major items left; the glossary, the cover design and the end-of-book
project. It has been a good experience, but I am ready to have my
nights and weekends back.
JaLeen has finished her big report regarding her field work - a
70 something page report on her activities. It was good to get that
finished up. She is working on the statistics for her project and will
be finishing that up this week. A lot to work on.
Her birthday was this week as well. She remarked that for her
birthday she would really love to get a job offer. And she did!
Children's Learning Institute offered her a job on her birthday! She
decided not to take it however. But it make us both laugh. Thank you to
all of you who made JaLeen's birthday special.
We went house hunting and found some beautiful homes in an area
that is just about 10 mins further from work than where we had been
looking. We absolutely fell in love with one of the homes. We'll have to
give some thought into how far we want to commute etc., but it is a
nice area as well. We'll continue looking around and get a feel for what
we really want. We have seen 4 ideal homes come onto the market and get
sold in the 2-3 months we have been watching, so we feel like we have
an idea of what we want, what we can expect etc.
Work has been an ever-changing adventure. 2 months ago I was
working strictly on the small facilities. I was asked to switch to
pipelines and get those pipelines built ASAP. I put 5 pipelines into
construction since then, I have 2 more to put into construction this
week. It will be a crazy time. We hired a new graduate, her name is
Meredith, and I have been helping her come up to speed on pipelines and
how to build them. She has her first project going into construction in
about 2 weeks, so I will be helping her a lot with that as well. By boss
resigned and went to work for another oil company. Frank and I have
been trying to work out how to take care of her responsibilities until
they get a new team lead for us. I have taken over control of the
pipelines group, Frank is managing the facilities group. The main
difference is that now I am responsible for helping the 3 other Murphy
people get their projects executed, I am responsible for the overall
pipeline budget of $59 million and I manage our growing pipeline
construction staff. That staff will double in the next two months from 7
to about 14 or 15. I have been looking at lots of resumes the past few
weeks.
JaLeen and I have been having a lot of working parties; she has
been working on her stats while I am working on the book, but we have
been having some good times in there as well. This weekend we went to a
wedding reception for some good friends of ours and played some ultimate
frisbee. My favorite play was a floating pass, four of us went up for
it and I came down the frisbee, tossed it to Kelsey in the in-zone for a
touchdown!! Kelsey and JaLeen and are getting better and better at the
frisbee thing.
Oh- a little off-topic, but JaLeen made an oatmeal cake this week. It is so so good. Like its-making-me-hungry-just-
thinking-about-it good.
We also enjoyed a visit down to mom and dad's last weekend to see them speak in their new ward. It was a lot of fun.
We'll be heading out Wednesday to go to Utah for JaLeen's
brother's wedding. She will stay to do her school stuff and I will head
out again the following weekend for her graduation ceremonies. It will
be fun! We'll see if we can't fit some frisbee, rock climbing and hiking
while we are down there.
