Will Spring ever come?
We are well into 2008 and I figured it would be good to get a short update produced on the latest happenings here in Murray.
We have had a very heavy snow season; I cannot remember one this heavy in the 12+ years I have been here! You just get your driveway cleared and wake up the next morning to another few inches (or so it seems). Jensen created a short poem last year that is very appropriate at this time when we all crave short sleeves, sunshine, and sand:
Brittany is staying very busy with her activities. She participates in lacrosse (she has conditioning twice a week with the high school team), piano (she starts again in March with her cousin Zach; he was married in December, so they took a couple of months off), voice lessons, and a co-ed dancing and performing group. The performing group she is in is going to New York in June, and Cindi and I will accompany Brittany and the group out and visit Cindi's brother (Carl) and his family in Connecticut when we are back there.
Andrew has been making some good strides recently. Although he is not extremely verbal, when we approach our neighborhood he will say "house" quite distinctly and point in the direction of our home. He seems to be much more settled and calm (we do give him 0.5 Risperdal every morning and evening, and that may help some as well). He makes relatively good eye contact and seems to enjoy more interaction with other than I can remember. This all changes when he has sensory overload and a lot if happening around him, but overall we know where he can go and what he can do, and that helps a lot.
Jensen is doing well in school, and has been gaining ground in spelling and reading. It is still a struggle, and we try to work with him as often as we can to see improvement in those areas. His math is almost at grade level, and we are proud of him for his efforts in those areas.
Cindi is enjoying working at Heart to Heart Adoption agency (she is the medical coordinator). The job allows flexibility in time (she can work from home if needed) and she constantly gets praised by her superiors for her work ethic and overall skills she brings to the position.
I am still at Fluid and enjoying that position. March will be my 10th anniversary working there. Our largest client, Orbit, cut back their marketing budget for Fluid by over $400,000, so we are trying to find ways to ameliorate that loss of revenue. If anything, it is causing us to become more lean and be much more aggressive in our sales efforts.
We have also started finishing our basement. With the housing market in a decline, we were able to subcontract out much of the work to the same subcontractors used when our house was originally built 5 years ago at a cost that was very appealing. I did all the insulation and we will also do the painting (basically areas that it is hard to mess up and does not require a lot of knowledge to complete).