Kaiana's Birthday Celebration

Kaiana doesn't actually turn 2 until tomorrow, but Caleb was so excited about her birthday present, that he requested that we celebrate tonight. I figured since she's so little she wouldn't care, so we decided to do it!
Here she is with her first gift. You can tell that she's really into the whole unwrapping gifts thing, huh?
We did eventually convince her to open it, so here she is playing with the gift from Caleb. He was really into it as well, so I couldn't get a clear shot of her playing.

I gave her a couple of hats, because she loves hats. Here is the one she decided to wear.
And this is Caleb wearing the other one. He wasn't really interested in posing, I guess he realized that he might be embarrassed by the picture when he's older. :-)
Kaiana's been really into monkeys lately (as well as fish, frogs, horses... Pretty much any animal that she can say) so I made her a monkey cake. It was really hard! I'm hoping Caleb's is easier next week. ;-) Both children picked the ears to eat first, which didn't surprise me. They're big donut fans!

Kaiana tried really hard to blow out her candles! I ended up having to help, but she's getting there!

Trip to the Zoo

Yesterday, we decided to take a trip to the zoo. It was a lot of fun. The children weren't particularly interested in seeing the animals, but they loved the waterpark. Isn't it great that in Arizona you can play at a waterpark in October? :-)

Caleb made this Smilebox to show off the pictures I took:

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Kaiana is talking really well now. While she doesn't have a huge vocabulary, she figure out how to get her point across pretty well. She loves hats and will put them on and take them off all day saying, "Hat! Hat! Hat!" I just wish that she liked hairbows because she looks adorable in them but refuses to keep them in her hair. :-)

Kaiana started nursery last month. She did great the first day and stayed in there the whole time except when she needed a diaper change. After that, though, she's been upset at the idea of being left in there. It's kind of weird because she's usually so friendly. I'm hoping she realizes that nursery is good soon. :-)

Caleb memorized our phone number. I'm really proud of him. Now he's always asking to call people. He called Christopher yesterday and got upset because he got the voice mail. I guess he thinks that everyone should just sit around waiting for his phone calls. He's also really big into cooking. His favorite things to make are cookies. He keeps asking to make donuts, but I haven't been convinced to make them yet. We usually just buy donuts if we want them. It seems easier.

We're doing tons of hiring at work right now. We started with 42 people taking calls, and by the end of December we plan to have 140. We are also going to start taking another type of calls. Right now we take phone calls from patients and doctors. We're adding to that a pharmacy line. The training class for the pharmacy line starts on Monday, so I'm taking one of the trainer's classes while he attends the pharmacy class so that he can start teaching it. I'll be doing his class for three weeks, then I think I'll have a week without a class. After that, I'll be teaching my own class. It requires a lot of overtime, but teaching the classes is fun. I'm hoping to prove myself well enough with these classes that I can get promoted to a full trainer.

A couple of funny anecdotes

Last Sunday, we made Low Country Boil for dinner. It's a Southern dish where you boil seafood (shrimp and crab) as well as a bunch of vegetables (like potatoes, onions, corn on the cob, etc.) together. I don't like the seafood, so I just ate the vegetables. They were really tasty. Caleb loved the crab. He's never had it before and he kept asking for more. Then yesterday, I asked Caleb if he wanted to make cookies with me. He said, "No thank you, how about crab?"

Kaiana's been singing a lot lately. Usually she sings the Star Wars theme. It's not necessarily recognizable with the tune, but you can tell by the timing that she's singing Star Wars. Today I watched an episode of Psych and once the theme song was over, she wandered around singing "I know, I know". (The line is actually "I know, you know" but she was close. :-D)

Post titles are hard to create

I interviewed for a trainer position at work 2 weeks ago. I've pretty much known since last Thursday that I was getting the position, but I haven't been officially offered the job yet. I found out today that it has to be approved by one more person before I can officially get the offer, but once I accept it will be back-dated to Monday the 10th and the pay increase will be effective from that date. Now I just want to know what the pay increase is. ;-)

I've been filling in for the trainer this week because he is on a business trip. He will be teaching classes to new hires starting in early September and I'll be responsible for keeping track of the continuing training for all of the current employees. We have training scheduled for 1/2 an hour once a week and so this week I've been setting up people's training and keeping track of what they've accomplished. It's gotten me off of the phones for 1 1/2 hours every day, which has been nice. Once I get the position, I won't have phone time anymore.

I also was involved in a focus group with the new President of HR for the company. She's visiting all of the locations to do discussions with employees to find out what we like about the company and what we would change. It was an interesting experience and she was really personable.

I've also gotten two awards this month. I was chosen as employee of the month for my department. I don't get anything for it except recognition and a certificate with my picture and comments from all of the team leads and management about how wonderful I am. lol It's nice to be recognized, though.

I was also awarded my MAGIC mastery. (If you don't know what that is, look down a couple of posts for the one titled "It's MAGIC!" and I explain it there.) I'm the first US representative to be awarded the mastery. The reps in the Philippines were trained in it about 6 months ago, but the US reps only started in the last couple of months. I was awarded a nice certificate and they put some balloons on my phone so that everyone knew I has done something good. One of my coworkers suggested that it would have been better to give me a cauldron and a magic wand... I think that would have been awesome.

Daniel and the children have been having a lot of fun this summer. I bought Caleb some water guns and he really enjoys playing with them. Here are a couple of pictures and he and Daniel on the day I bought them.

Kaiana is sleeping in a real bed now. She likes the freedom it gives her, even if she doesn't get quite as much sleep now. Caleb loves it too because it's just a mattress on the floor so we let him jump on the bed. Kaiana's trying to learn how to jump, but hasn't been particularly successful yet. She's talking a lot, too. She says "Thank you" really well, and "I love you". She call most people "Daddy", so we're still working on that one.

Caleb loves riding his bike and he's really skilled at it now. He and Kaiana both like swimming, too. I didn't get Caleb in lessons this year, but he likes playing in our pool. Caleb did gymnastics this summer and had a lot of fun.

I probably have a lot more to say, but I'm not coming up with anything. I guess that's what I get for waiting so long to post. :-)

Triforce

Caleb came downstairs this morning with his MagnaDoodle in hand. He ran up to Daniel triumphantly and showed off his artwork. He'd made a Triforce on it using a triangle stencil. For those of you not familiar with The Legend of Zelda video game series, this is the Triforce:

Daniel was so proud of him and Caleb was pretty excited about it himself. I think he likes artwork that is so easily recognizable. I didn't get a picture of his, but I'll post that later if he does it again.

It's MAGIC!

I just finished two days of training at work in a program called MAGIC. MAGIC stands for "Making A Great Impression on our Customers" and it was all about improving communication with people. The trainers emphasized that being "magical" is really about a way of life rather than just at work. It was focused on empathizing with people, being confident and treating the person you are communicating with as a priority.

I tried out some of the techniques on my calls this morning and I was amazed by how effective it was. More than half of the people I spoke with complimented me on how polite and helpful I was. I get compliments fairly frequently, but having so many was really different. I still have a lot of practice so that I have magic calls rather than tragic ones (I know, it's hokey... but it's funny, too. ;-D). It is a start, though.

Last night I was reading The Cat in the Hat with Caleb. He has progressed really well with his reading. He can sound out many 3-4 letter words. I had to help him, sometimes, to decide which vowel sounds to use, and he didn't like that "to" "too" and "two" all sound the same. I was really pleased overall, though. He's been learning a lot with reading lessons from Daniel.

At Church on Sunday, Caleb decided he wanted to work on writing. He wrote the letter "Z" and then asked me what words begin with "Z". I told him that I thought he could think of something. After a minute he said, "Zebra!" (Well, actually he says it "Zebwa".) He started sounding it out and said, "Zee" "Buh" "Wuh" and wrote on his paper "Zbw" I was pretty impressed with his deductive reasoning, even if he got the wrong answer. :-)

Kaiana is in a really loving mood right now. She is always running up to Daniel, Caleb or I and giving kisses. She also communicates very effectively. She says "Yeah" and "No" and will also shake or nod her head. I was counting and I believe Kaiana has 13 words/phrases that she says right now. It's really fun to hear her figure things out.

The Month of May

Caleb is working really hard at learning to read. Daniel's mom gave us a book with reading lessons in it and so he and Daniel work on it most days. He's really into sounding things out now and loves writing too. He's also trying to figure out humor. He thinks knock knock jokes are the funniest and is always making up new ones. He's cute enough that even when the joke itself isn't funny, it's still easy to laugh because of his facial expressions.

Caleb has decided that he likes sleeping on his floor. It's funny because he sleeps in the corner right in front of his closet door, but he likes to have the door open a little bit so that he has some light (we leave the closet light on for him) so he sleeps kind of cock-eyed. I guess it works for him, though, because he always insists on sleeping there rather than his bed or even the middle of the floor.

Kaiana develops more of a personality every day. She's talking some more now. She says "What's that?" "Hey there" "Daddy" "Jane" and I'm pretty certain she was saying "Love you" to Daniel last night. He's become her favorite person. If she hasn't seen him for a little while and then he shows up, her face lights up and she calls out for him. She's also figuring out how to communicate even without words. If she wants a drink, she goes to the fridge and yells until we come and help her. She also really likes having her hair brushed, and her favorite stylist is Daddy. Kaiana loves to play upstairs in her bedroom all by herself. Sometimes she'll spend hours up there entertaining herself.

From Blog June 3

Caleb and Kaiana love to play out in front of our apartment, so we all went outside to play one day. Caleb took this picture of Daniel and I.

From Blog June 3

It's really hard to convince Caleb to let us take picture of him, but I snapped this. The umbrella is one of his favorite toys.

From Blog June 3

Kaiana decided to work on blowing bubbles that day. She was pretty successful. I tried to get a video, but she was only willing to cooperate for still shots. :-)

From Blog June 3

We went on a hike with Daniel's family. We did the Green Mountain Trail up on Mt. Lemmon. It was fun, but a little too hard with the children. We had fun anyway, though. Here are the men:

From Blog June 3

Here are Kaiana and Jane:

From Blog June 3

She wasn't a big fan of the carrier, but I'm so glad we had it. We all took turns carrying her. Here is Kaiana at the end of the hike after a few good falls.

From Blog June 3

I put in an application for a team lead position at work. We had a team lead retire at the end of May so I was hoping to get his position. Unfortunately, management decided that rather than hire a replacement team lead, they just split his team among the other team leads so that they could save money. It was frustrating, but I still have hopes of a promotion eventually. The plan is to hire a new training class in August, which means that they will have to hire more team leads. I have some of the best stats in our department, plus I have the respect of the other team leads as well as the operations manager, so I figure I have good chances. I've been asked to do one-on-one coaching with some of my coworkers and management chose me to represent our location in a conference call with Medco and a focus group with a potential client.

Daniel's and my fifth anniversary was May 22nd. We took a trip up to Oro Valley and stayed at The Golf Villas there. They were really nice. We reserved a single suite, but got a comp upgrade to a 2 bedroom apartment that was bigger than the one we live in. It had a full kitchen, large living room, and a balcony. It was really nice. Here are some pictures of where we stayed.

From Blog June 3

The Living Room

From Blog June 3

The balcony

From Blog June 3

The kitchen (And Daniel... :-D)

From Blog June 3

Okay, obviously this wasn't part of the hotel, but I just have to say that you can tell you're in a nice section of town when you hardware store looks like this. :-)

I tried out golfing for the first time. Daniel has been before, when he was on his mission, and I think he did a good job. I, on the other hand... Well, let's just say that I can putt, but other than that my aim is atrocious. :-) We decided not to keep score so as to keep from embarassing ourselves. It was really fun anyway, though, and the weather was perfect. It had been raining in the morning so it was a little muddy, but we didn't get rained on and it was overcast so the temperature was great.

Daniel planned our meals. We knew we were going to have a kitchen, so we brought cookbooks and food. We tried out a few new recipes. They turned out really well.

From Blog June 3

This was our appetizer. I can't remember its name and for some reason I can't find it in the cookbook, but it was really tasty. I think when we have it again, though, we'll eat it for breakfast. I tend to view eggs as a morning dish, not evening.

From Blog June 3

I have to say that these looked a lot tastier in real life than they do in the picture. We had Asparagus Parmesan and Chicken Breast with Cheese Sauce.

From Blog June 3

This was the best food we ate all night... It's called Peaches Zanzibar. We had extra ingredients so we made it again Saturday night for the kids. Kaiana's been really picky lately but one bite of that changed her mind! :-)