Life Status Update……………….

Since my last post I guess a few new things have happened.
I have started doing more photography business. I’ll be shooting photos for 4 sports teams in Eaton Rapids this summer. 1 baseball team (Mason’s), and 3 T-Ball teams. I’ve also gotten a lot of inquiries about shooting dance recitals. Covering a diverse range of subjects there eh? Another BIG thing is a vacation I booked to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary. Becky and I never really had a honeymoon per se, we just got married and spent a few days in northern Michigan. So to make up for it, and again to celebrate ten years together I booked us a week in Maui. It should be incredible, but at the same time it will be tough because we will be leaving our two boys back here. Mason will probably not even miss us because he will be spending the week with his best friend. But Carter has never spent any time away from us at all. We’ll be getting him used to spending the night elsewhere over the summer and hopefully that will lessen the shock of us leaving. Our daycare provider and good friend will be keeping the boys so I don’t have any worries about that.
Another cool thing that has happened in the last few weeks is that I have converted the house over to Macs only! Becky is on a 15” Macbook Pro that is loaded w/ 3GB of RAM. And I am on a 24” iMac w/ 4GB of RAM. And Mason is using a Mac Mini w/ a gig of RAM. I am stuck having to run Parallels in order to use our laser printer though ( guess I need to get a new printer now ).
Work has been keeping me pretty busy. Weekends are pretty common around here, but at least the paychecks are great!
Becky and I have been spending a quite a bit of time out in the yard working. Our flowers are looking awesome. We actually have people stop just to comment on our yard as they are driving by. That makes the work worth it.

Enough yapping for now.

Have a good summer.

Decisions.....................

I hope no one from work is reading my blog (I doubt they are). I just got a job offer from a really cool company. The pay is a fair bit higher than what I make now, I'll get a generous sign on bonus and two weeks paid vacation right up front. Great 401k plan and they offer a lot of employee appreciation perks throughout the year.

But I've been with my current employer for close to 13..yes THIRTEEN years so I'd be leaving a certain level of comfort and a slew of wonderful acquaintances behind. They want to know by Monday (the 3rd) at the very latest. My boss has been on business in Brazil this week along with our H.R. director. They'll be back here this afternoon, at which time I mean to inform them of the pending offer. This is huge. I am pretty nervous leaving what I have been accustomed to for so long, and yet I need to do what is best from a financial standpoint for my family. I would like to hope that my current employer would at least offer to match the salary I am being offered, but they have a history of putting ego and pride before the good of the company. I fill a very unique role here, and for them to find a replacement is going to take probably a few months at the very least, and even then, that person will be expecting a wage close to that which I have been offered and they will have a steep learning curve in regards to our systems. I wouldn't ever want to be my replacement. I also have a feeling that if I leave, the guy on second shift who does some of what I do will be asked to come to first shift and take over. I am 90% sure he will quite rather than come to first shift, he has his entire lifestyle based on 2nd shift, he is at home during the day with his son, and his wife works running her flower shop during the day. So my leaving could really be damaging to the company. We'll see what happens though.
I'll post an update tonight or sometime this weekend as to the outcome of my meeting with management today.

I feel bad for them in a way, gone for a week to Brazil and they come back to a key member of the staff who is about to leave. Glad I'm not them.