Life Lately At Home

After hoping to return to work for quite some time, I was quite surprised and very blessed when the right opportunity fell into my lap. In early October, I joined Blankenship Change Consulting based out of Dallas as a consultant and project lead. Our organization supports clients with people/process change management, and the best thing is that I am able to work remotely from my home office. Occasionally I will travel to Dallas or elsewhere based on client needs, but primarily I can be found at home and quite possibly in my pajamas. ;) I recently had to provide a head shot for some client materials and Jeff snapped this quick one at home, ha!

As I was getting up to speed on my new job, Jeff was fully enjoying his new role as "Retiree" and taking on various projects around the house. One of his first big projects was to architect and build overheard storage shelves in the garage. He worked on and off for several days and sweated through multiple shirts but managed to build a solution for all of our extra garage junk!

As school started back for both kids, we were all a little shell-shocked at the immediate increase in difficulty of the curriculum. We knew that the academic standards in Katy were far different from our former school in Dubai, but it was still surprising to see the kids struggle with the pace of their subject curriculum, particularly in math. Connor volunteered to help Kaitlynn with her word problems on several occasions, while Connor and I began having many one-on-one tutoring sessions for his high school level Algebra course. He didn't really mind the breakfast study breaks at Chick-fil-a!

Speaking of Connor, at age 13 he is quickly surpassing his mother in height. I noticed the other day that I had to look UP to him and Kaitlynn took this photo as evidence of his taller stature. He is also now wearing a Mens size 12 shoe and his voice is sounding deeper everyday. :-( This age is proving to be our most challenging yet. I have said so many times that I would NOT want to be a teenager in this day and age. So tough!

Lately at home, Jeff and Kaitlynn have been thankful for our next door neighbors and their precious backyard pups, Sadie and Sassy. Most mornings before school and afternoons after school, Kaitlynn can be found outside getting and giving love to these girls. So cute!

Finally, I couldn't resist sharing this photo posted by our realtor and friend, Mary Ann. Jeff is considering a rental home investment and we recently went to tour a boarded-up foreclosure home. Before we could get inside, we had to sign a strict waiver that signed away our rights should we sustain an injury up to and including death! We had no idea what to expect but we all came prepared, ha!