Update on the Job

My last update left off on Thursday, August 25th.  So I was offered the job, but didn't know what to do and felt that I really needed some time to think and pray about this life changing decision.

Remember the offer for this job came while I was donating plasma.  I was excited that I was offered the job, but because I was strapped down to a half bed with a needle in the arm I couldn't show much excitement or jump up and down, so I contained myself and did a little happy dance in my head.  Plus doing a real dance isn't always a good thing since I did that once at home and broke a toe because of a twirl and a mini jump.  (Years ago folks, don't ask.)

I was told I had to take a drug test so that's the first thing I did after donating plasma.  I went into the temp agency who helped me find this job and I picked up the paperwork for the drug test.  What I found funny was that I was told this, "You can wait a couple days before taking your test if you want."   Maybe other people do this if they have stuff in their system that they need to get out, but remember my last paragraph?  I was just donating plasma and I obviously should be drug free if I'm giving my liquid insides to others and that's exactly what I am, so I just took the drug test immediately and got it over with.  I have nothing to hide on the inside.

It was a urine drug test and super gross to watch them take your yellow stuff and pour it into other containers and then compliment you on having the right temperature urine.  Then you sign a paper and the the tubes your urine is in basically saying or agreeing that this urine is indeed yours and only yours.

With that over with I still hadn't made the decision to take the job.  I had a lot of things to think about, and the biggest thing was the shift I was being offered.  Why would the shift matter?  Because I'm having a hard enough time with the idea of leaving all day, and didn't want to leave the children any longer than necessary.  I've been with the children since they were born almost every minute possible, except the times I did Pampered Chef parties or taught aerobics.  I've always seen them off to school and always been home for them when they returned home from school.

I didn't know the shift.   No one at the temp agency knew the shift either.  We were all waiting on the boss to make the decision on who gets what time slot.   Remember a couple posts ago, there were 4 shifts that people were being hired for and I, if taking the job, could only take an early shift because I want to be there for my children as much as possible and taking a full time job is hard enough.

Friday came and went and still no answer from the new job.  The boss was still deciding which teams to assign the new people to.  Monday arrived, then went away and I still didn't know anything about my starting or ending time.  What I did know was that my boss had said to the girls at the temp agency that she remembered me saying in my interview that I wanted to work as early as possible, so with that knowledge I didn't worry too much, because now I knew that they knew that I was only officially taking the job if I could start early.

Tuesday morning came and I decided that I would announce to my 8:30a.m. Zumba class that this would be my last Tuesday.  I waited till the end of class for the announcement.  I knew I'd tear up because teaching is so great and I love it.  I'm so glad I don't have to give that up completely because I'd be really sad then.  Sure enough I teared up and then lots of hugs came.  Most of them gathered around me and asked questions about the job and gave me "Congrats". 

I got in the car and my cell phone had a message that said, "Michelle, just wanted you to know that your new boss called and said that your shift will be 8a.m. to 4:30p.m."  That was exactly what I needed to hear and I was then glad I had told my Tuesday class that I wouldn't be there next week.

What is this new job? 

The job is RR Donnelley in Iowa City. It is a worldwide company that has been around almost 150 years that does printing of all sorts. My job is  to be a Customer Service representative that would help out after the Sales representatives have already gone out to other companies and sold them our products. I would follow up and see if those other companies like what they have received, then I would try and sell them more items. I will have some Administrative Assistant type work, Customer service work, and presentations and much more. I start next Tuesday, September 6th and it is a Temp to Hire job meaning, after my 520 hours (3 months of full time work) I am guaranteed a spot at their company with benefits as long as they still like me and I still like them. From what I have read on their company I am liking what I hear and I'm excited to see what this will bring. I do hope I'll love the job.  Their website is this   http://www.rrdonnelley.com/   if you want to know more.

Brenden

Brenden is 14. It doesn't seem possible but it is reality. Happy birthday to a remarkable young man.

What's in store next?

This last couple of weeks have been crazy so I'm going to catch you up a bit.

Last week on Monday we were in St.Louis, Missouri for our little family trip to see Grandma Clark, then on Tuesday it was back to our normal life for a little while.

Ok, we don't have a normal life right now, our lives have been crazy because I started that new temp job.  The job I started was scheduled to be 4-5 weeks full time. I mainly took the job because my goal was to get a job at the University part time so I figured that taking a full time temp job at the University would be a great first step in the door there.

Let's go back to Tuesday, the 16th of August.  I went to work and worked a full day then that night taught Zumba at Curves, then ran errands with the children for last minute school supplies we might have forgotten since school was starting in just 2 days.  On Wednesday, the 17th I went to work and worked all day until 4:45p.m. I noticed on my silent cell phone sitting off to the side of me that a phone call was coming in.  I didn't take the call since I was at work, but had the distinct feeling to check the message before I left work at 5p.m.  So at around 4:55p.m. I checked the voicemail on my phone and the message said this: 

"Hi Michelle, this is __________ from temp agency and I'm calling to let you know that your boss called and said that she received an e-mail from her supervisor that said they no longer need to do the project you are working on so the job ends today.   Just call me tomorrow and we'll find you another job hopefully. "

I was in shock and a bit upset, but still finished up what I was working on and actually worked till 5:15p.m. (even though I only put 5p.m. on my time sheet since I was sure overtime wouldn't be a happy thing) so I didn't leave my folder unfinished.  At 5:15 I gathered up my pictures I had posted in my cubicle, grabbed my candy dishes I had set out with candy for my co-workers and left.  The bummer was that there was only one other person  there still at this time and he was the only person I actually got to say goodbye to and the only person that knew I wouldn't be coming back the next day.  I guess it's good that at least I got to tell someone.

So here I was jobless after only 6 days of work.  The thing that made me the most upset about all this was that I had completely changed my life around to take a full time position.  I subbed out all my morning Zumba classes for 4 weeks, I changed my Body Sculpt morning class to an EARLY morning class so I could still teach it and then I said goodbye to the little girl I've watched for 3 years and she started her day care full time instead of just the 3 days of week that she used to go there.  So I wake up on Thursday, August 18th with NOTHING to do.

It was the first day of school so I did get to do the first day of  picture taking of all my children and see them off to school, however I would have done that anyway.  Then the saddest thing happened, none of my children wanted me to come to school with them.  See in the past I've always gone to their schools (all except the high schoolers) and I've walked around with them and helped them settle in on their first day.  Even my littlest one, Scott who is 9, didn't want me to come to school.  He said, "Mom I'm big now"

So here I was, jobless, hopeless, sad, and now add LONELY.  All my children were at school.  My oldest son was at work and Jason, my husband, was at work as well.  I'm home with nothing to do and began to cry and feel sorry for myself.  I guess crying isn't bad when it only happens once in a while.  Then I picked myself "off the floor" and decided to call the temp agency and see if they had work for me.

They mentioned that they had a job that wants to hold interviews for an opening and they would be holding interviews in the next day so they would try and get me a scheduled interview and send over my resume.

Hours went by and I still didn't feel good.  I then went to McDonalds and emotionally ordered a large combo meal.  (I never do this).   I ate the entire meal, it must have been 1500 calories and then afterwards felt sick.  Then I felt guilty that I
1.  Hadn't worked out that day
2.  Just ate a day or more worth of calories and it was just 11a.m.

So I then watched some TV, cried more and decided that this pity party was not good for anyone.  I started the clean the house, it looked amazing.

Then at 1p.m. I decided to go on a long run.  I ended up running for an hour and a half.  I brought my cell phone with me in case someone needed me.  I really wanted to feel needed by this point.

During my run on the way home, so I was about 5 miles into the run or more, I got a phone call from the temp agency.  They were able to get me an interview at __________________!

I was excited for an interview.  It was scheduled for the next day at 9a.m.

So Friday, August 19th came and I made myself look fabulous for my interview, practiced how I'd answer questions, prayed and left.

The interview went awesome.  I didn't feel that I could have done any better. The questions they asked were just perfect, a couple threw me, but I was quick to give a great answer.

Then I left and came home and cleaned the house most of the day.

This week I decided I'd clean and organize my house to the point that if someone came to my home they could locate just about anything, and Goodwill would have a lot of new things to sell from me.

I was donating plasma yesterday when a call came in from the temp agency that said, "Michelle the company you interviewed for likes you and wants you to start working for them the day after Labor Day, do you want the job?"  "Also you will need a drug test, so please come by and pick up your papers to go do that."

Wow was I blown away.  I guess I assumed I did well on the interview, but deep down didn't have the confidence that I actually received the job and here I was trying to decide if I'd take it.  Only issue is now is that the temp agency couldn't tell me which shift I was hired for.

I understand that there are 4 different shifts  8-4:30, 8:30-5:30, 9-6 and 9:30 to 6:30

I had mentioned in my interview that I wanted the earliest shift available.  Then they had gone on to ask me if I'd work later than that ever and I said "If a project needed completed I could stay after once in a while to complete the job".

I do hope I received the earliest shift available.  If so I'm 99% sure I'll take the job.  I did go ahead yesterday and take that drug test so in case my answer is a yes then I'll be ready to start on September 6th.

However I'm sad that I wouldn't be able to teach my morning, Tuesday and Thursday Zumba classes anymore.  I would have to say goodbye this next week to some fabulous people that I will greatly miss.  I know I will regret not teaching them, so I'm torn on what to do. 

Pros to take the job
as a family we need the income
the job sounds fun, exciting and just what my skills are ready for
after 3 months I'd have some benifits (not sure what yet)
We can pay back our student loans faster and be out of that debt.
We could pay the house down quicker and own it!
We could have savings.

Cons to not take the job
I will miss my Zumba people
We won't be able to pay all our bills
I won't be home right when the children are, they will miss me for an hour after school.
I'll be more tired
The house may suffer in cleanliness (hope not)
I won't get a nap in the middle of the day
I'll have to leave in the morning before Scott gets on the bus.  :(

So there you have it.  I'm not sure what's in store next, but we will see very soon.

First Day of School 2011

As you will see from the pictures below. My children were super reluctant to get their pictures taken, but I made them do it! I'm glad I insisted on our tradition of first day pictures, even if they all look grumpy (well except for Scott).

First here is Daniel.  He is a Junior this year in High school and is way too cool to get photographed.  Seriously I'm not sure how I captured this moment.

Brenden is a Freshman in high school already.  He seems way too young.  At least he kinda smiled for the picture.  You may think this is his smile, but this is his attempt to just make me happy by smirking.  His smile is so much cuter.

Jared is a Sophmore in high school.  He loves these shorts so you may see him sporting these shorts in many pictures in the future. 

Three children together in the same picture.  Now this doesn't happen often. 

Alyssa was embarrassed that I was even at her bus stop and then to take a picture was just wrong.  She is starting middle school this year in 7th grade.

Happy Scott.  I think he always smiles.  He is a 4th grader in Elementary school.

Lastly this is a picture of Daniel, Jared and Brenden walking away from the car to go into their high school.  They had already met up with another friend.

I hope it's a great school year. I will miss them.

St. Louis trip and Caleb's birthday

Before I get started with this LONG post, and it will be long because there are a lot of pictures, and I did this on purpose because each picture tells a story that I just couldn't leave out, I just want to say this, I love my family and I didn't realize how much really until this crazy trip was over. I'm glad we went, even though the beginning of the trip was a nightmare, as you will read about, and I'm glad I took a bunch of pictures so I could share with you this mini weekend we had.

Here is the story of the St.Louis trip:

A couple weeks ago I was on facebook and saw a post from my Mother-in-law (Grandma Clark) that said she was going to be in St.Louis for a conference on August 14th. Realizing that St.Louis is ONLY 4 hours away I had this grand thought, "Oh we could drive down with all the children and pick her up from the airport and spend time with Grandma, just our family." Then we could celebrate Caleb's birthday and do something fun as a family. The trip down to St.Louis wasn't fun at all. Why you ask? Imagine this: 6 older children shoved in the back of a mini van for 4 hours that doesn't have a working DVD player which means no movies. 5 of these children being boys who LOVE to wrestle around and fight. 4 of these children being teenagers. There was a lot of fighting, name calling, pushing, argueing, and much more on the way there.

First stop St.Louis airport to meet Grandma Clark

Before Grandma's plane arrived, the children were grumpy.  Caleb was not in the mood to be photographed.

This is exactly what you want to see when you are picking someone up from the airport.

Grandma Clark with Caleb.  Caleb hadn't seen her in almost 3 years.

Jared, Brenden and Daniel with Grandma Clark.

After picking up Grandma we went to the  St .Louis, Missouri LDS (Mormon) temple

gorgeous flowers on the side of the temple.

I was trying to get pictures of everyone together, however Alyssa was not cooperating and kept taking off.  Jason caught her and tickled her until she laughed.

Most of the Clark boys.  Not sure where Scott was.  Left to Right-Brenden, Jason, Daniel, Caleb and Jared.

Jared holding a gigantic leaf.

Finally a picture of Alyssa smiling.

A very ugly statue in St.Louis that we kept driving by.  I swear we saw it at least 10 times in 2 days.  We also drove by at least 20 Taylor Swift semi's since she was there for a concert, but I couldn't get my camera out in time to snap the picture.

Next stop the St.Louis arch.  It was a gorgeous day and perfect for pictures of the arch.

Here I am under the arch taking a leap.

Inside the museum underneath the arch was this sign.  I thought it was funny.  So I guess messing with the fake animals in the museum is a No NO.

Since I'm a Lewis and Jason is a Clark we liked this sign and have to have a picture with it inside the arch museum.

I tried to write on this cake in gel icing for Caleb's birthday celebration.

We surprised him at the the hotel room door and sang Happy Birthday.

The next morning we went to Denny's restaurant for a big breakfast to start the day out right.  Everyone seemed much happier in the morning.

another picture from breakfast

Scott being silly with Alyssa.

Next stop the St. Louis zoo.  My children loved the mist machine.

One of my favorite animals of the day an orangutan because this one was super silly and kept flipping over and pressing himself against the window.  Can you even tell that there is a windown between us?

My next favorite, the giraffe.

His head came super close to us.  I think his head looks like a dinosaur head.

Jared at the zoo.  He wanted this picture for his facebook profile.  I think he looks especially handsome in this picture.

Awesome looking tiger.

We saw this car on the way out of the zoo.  Too funny.

Next stop the Science Museum.

there was a scale in the space section that said if you stepped on it, it would tell you how much it would cost to send you into space.  All three of us got on the scale at once.



At the end of our trip we decided to eat at Golden Corral. Here is everyone stuffing their faces.



At the dessert section of the restaurant there was cotten candy.  Jared had like 5 of these.  I couldn't believe he kept eating them.

Scott using the speed detector to check out the speeds of the cars going underneath the bridge we were on at the science museum.

There was a hole in the floor so I took a picture of a car going underneath our feet.



On the trip home everyone acted much nicer, but it amazed me that there was still goofy things going on in the back seat.  Notice Brenden's head and Daniel's hand stretched across the back showing the "Nec" sign.

:

Overall a good trip. It didn't go as planned since we were going to go to Six Flags St.Louis for Caleb's birthday, however out of all the Six Flags in all of the United States this one closes during the week two weeks before August is over. It was a let down to not be able to go, but in the end it was great to do the things we did and I'm glad we made the effort for a family vacation this summer.

A very different life with a new job

About a month ago I started looking for jobs.   Full time or part time, it didn't matter.  I just wanted something steady with decent hours so that we could make our financial ends meet better than they have in a while.  

August is hard on us every year financially with 3 birthdays (Alyssa's at the end of July, then Caleb and Brenden's birthday in August) then with school starting and all the school fees, school supplies and things you have to do for that.  Then for some reason our car and van registration both hit us September 1st and that comes to around $350 together (we need to get that changed), then our van decided to have major work done to it and that is over $500.  So all in all it's a super expensive month that doesn't want to let up and it seems worse this year.  So anyway we decided that by me having a better paying job that has more hours would be better than having 4 part time jobs that I only work at occasionally.

I tweaked my resume, filled out applications at a nearby bank for data entry, receptionist and teller jobs, then filled out applications for the University of Iowa for any jobs that would come open and then I went to Kelly Services (a job placement service).  I know two awesome ladies that work there at Kelly.  I've done multiple Pampered Chef parties for them over the years and I consider them both good friends.  A little over a week ago I filled out the Kelly Services application and took a typing test.    Would you believe that after all these years I got 70 W.P.M. with no errors on my typing test?  According to them that was great.  On Monday of this week Lennie (one of the ladies at Kelly Services) called me and offered me a Temp job at the University of Iowa.  It's a 4-5 week full time job.  After talking it over with Jason we decided that this was a doable thing and the income would be nice to help pay for the van and other August expenses.

So I started the job on Tuesday.  I have now worked full time for the last 4 days for the first time in my entire life and I'm completely exhausted.   On top of this I have also managed to donate plasma twice,  teach a few Zumba classes and run over 11 miles.  I'm not sure where my energy is coming from, but somehow I'm managing to still teach and work.  Meanwhile I've been to the store for some school shopping with Alyssa, been to the grocery store three times and other various errands.  I fall into bed each night with complete exhaustion and I sleep amazingly well, better than I have in weeks!

Do I like the job?  WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL   kinda.  It's a Data entry job and that is boring, but I'm trying all kinds of ways to get super fast at it and making it fun.  One of my co-workers Peggy and I shared a laugh today, she is nice and I'm sure we will get along great.  Another co-worker (who's name escapes me) traded me fresh grown peppers in her garden for tomatoes from my garden.  Another co-worker and I talked about running.

My boss is nice, her name is Katie and she seems to like me and tells me I'm doing great.  So I'm going to believe that and hope I'm doing exactly what she wants and needs to be done.

I'm hoping that because I took this job that it will open doors for me to get another job at the University that is Part time with benefits and that the next job I find will be one I just love!

Until then I'll work my tail end off and deal with what I have for now.  I'm grateful I found a job, even though it's temporary.

I am so tired of being a parent. I know this is just a stage, and things will pass, and will get better, and blah, blah, blah. I know there is no such thing as a perfect family but is it too much to ask for a peaceful, fight-free Sunday (or Monday, Tuesday, etc...)? I know they have been taught better.

I finally really lost my temper tonight. Nobody is speaking to me right now because they are afraid that I will go off again. Unfortunately, they are probably right. Caleb is doing his best to calm things down by playing hymns on the piano in the other room but if Dan comes back up the stairs with one more stupid comment, I might just kick him out of the house.

I just want peace.

Alyssa's 12th Birthday

I am shocked that Alyssa is 12 already. These years have gone so fast. I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. Then when she got baptized just 4 years ago. Life goes too fast. I also love that she is a great reader, loves the color pink, doing girly stuff like getting pedicures, and loves everyone. I'm glad she's in our family.

Here is Alyssa waiting for her presents.  Abby managed to get on the couch and no one told her to get down.  Then Abby chewed Alyssa's coat string the entire time.






A better picture of Abby.

Daniel trying to get in the picture.



 It is a tradition in our family to let our children pick what type of cake, pie or other dessert they want on their birthday.  Alyssa actually picked my favorite pie which is a Peanut Butter and Chocolate pie.  It was super yummy.





Alyssa wanted a Gift Card to STUFF the very most over any gift.  STUFF is a local consignment store that is super fun to shop at.

Another shirt she really liked.