A High Adrenaline Day

Today was a high-adrenaline day.

Layth had a phone interview this morning that went very well.  It landed him an invitation for an on-site interview.  While he was on that interview a place in Vancouver contacted him for a second-round of phone interviews to happen in a little over a week.  That round will be one hour interviews with 4 different people.  And then, he got a call later in the afternoon about another company that would like him to interview - he would have his pick of Seattle or Portland as locations if he landed that job.  And then late this afternoon, an email for another interview.  So, by my count, he has 8 interviews in the next 10-12 days...  So far.  CRAZY!

Went over to a friends house today and it was awesome.  Soren made a friend and I am SO GLAD.  He has been wanting a friend here so much.   Kyle is 7 and the first thing they did was get out Battleship to play (which is one of Soren's favorites) and from there they went onto football and soccer outside, then back inside for a round of wrestling, a few games of UNO and then racing a home-made obstacle course over and over and over and over.  Soren could not have been happier.  Keiton played with Katie most of the time and they got along great.  With two older brothers Katie was fine with playing cars and legos and even wrestling.  Jenny and I talked.  With many, many interruptions of course.  It was loud and chaotic, but that's the story of both of our lives and so we just talked in-between the disruptions.   We found we could relate on so many levels with our moves and all.  It was a healthy talk; not "woe-is-me" stuff, but frank honesty about how we were dealing with things.  We'll definitely get together again, soon.  We have to, Soren came home in one of her boys' pants after his ended up soaked from tackle football outside.  Not sure if they were Kyle or Collins.

Came away with some perspective today as well.  Jenny had mentioned earlier that she could not get together one day because she was going to be at the hospital all day.  Come to find out, her youngest son (5 years old) has Leukemia!  That was a shock.  I asked her the story and she told me, and then talked about God's faithfulness, provision and peace through it all.  They will be done with treatments in October finally after 2-3 years.  We saw some of the effects today as he was on his after-chemo steroids.  I am reminded that health is not something I should take for granted and I am thankful to God that as of yet, we have not had any issues like that in our family.  What a crazy journey to have such a young child experiencing and enduring that sort of illness.

Tonight was MoPS Auction.  I enjoyed it.  We came away with home-made bread and a dozen home-grown eggs.  Our table had a good time and I definitely feel like I got to know some people better as a result.

Now we're finally home and tomorrow night we're having dinner with some friends we knew from Salem... actually two different couples that we knew in Salem.  And one couple from here that I do not know, but the other two couples do.  I am very much looking forward to that!

I am also looking forward to sleeping in. I hope i get to sleep in.  I'd better get to sleep in. 

I am working on my goals for this year.  At the end of every December at our anniversary, Layth and I evaluate goals we set from the year before and then set new ones for the upcoming year.  We set goals - 4 to 6 usually in each of these areas:

Personal Goals
"Others" Goals - includes ministry, friendships, praying for certain people, etc
Spiritual Goals
Couple Goals - we do these together
Family Goals - we do these together

First, we spend time evaluating how we think we did for each specific goal and then we share with each other how our thoughts.  Then we spend time in prayer and set our own goals (personal, others, spiritual) and then share with each other what they are and then we discuss together what we want our couple and family goals to be.  It spurs fantastic communication, honesty (we talk very openly with each other about our failures and successes) as well as driving great conversation.  Layth and I each have a journal that we bought on our first anniversary that is just for these goal-sessions and so I have a record in one place of all my goals and evaluations since we began.  It's pretty cool. 

Anyways, one of my personal goals this year is to read through my goals once a month to remind myself of the goals.  So, I got it out today again and read through them and chose two to work on in the next couple of weeks.  I really like that we do what we do.  SO many things have been accomplished as a result of goal-setting in my life personally and in our life as a couple and as a family.   I'll have to post sometime about some of the great things that have taken place because we are so vigilant.

That's enough for tonight.

With all these interviews taking place, I can't help but wonder where we'll be and what we'll know in regards to our future two weeks from now...

Thankful for health and peace through the journey...

--Betsy