I'm Back

Wow - 2 days in a row of blogging. This is a record! We all had an extremely busy day today. Bub and Buckets did "Donuts for Dads" this morning at preschool (although what was weird is that the handout that was given at it this morning said doughnuts - totally not the right spelling!) and they had lots of fun. Grandaddy showed up as well. Bub gave daddy some homemade gifts at the event and they are so cute!

I picked him up from preschool and we went to McDonalds. I don't know what was up with McD's today but it was packed and I was the youngest customer (besides Bub) by about 50 years! After lunch we went to the library, read some books and attended preschool storytime. We then went to Home Depot and after that we spent about 2.5 hours at the local park with our MOMS Club. We had so much fun! It was then onto home for dinner, bath and bedtime. He was SO tired that he actually just fell out of bed (only the 4th time since we took the rails off last year) and kept sleeping. I went into his room and put him back into bed and he never woke up!

Speaking of Home Depot - it was absolutely gorgeous today! I go to the one in Aspen Hill, MD which is one of the largest profiting stores on the east coast. It gets SO much traffic going through it because there is no other HD or Lowes anywhere nearby. I used to be the HR Manager at Aspen Hill a few years before Bub was born for a short while and did all of the hiring for their 2003 spring season (which starts in February for HD btw). I still see a lot of people I used to work with up there. Today I went into Hardware and there were about 10-15 managers (you can tell they were managers because any associate wearing dress shoes and an apron is in management! - you'd have to be nuts to wear dress shoes as an associate working on concrete floors all day!) doing a walk. A walk is basically what it sounds like - you walk through the store and critique everything. So I ran into Steve, my old Assistant Manager, and asked him what was up because wow - there were a lot of shirts! Well, the VP of Marketing for North America was doing the walk along with the Director of Marketing for the East Coast. Wow! Those are biggies. No wonder the store looks fantastic! Everything was organized and cleaned up. The floors were polished last week I was told and there was an over abundance of aprons in the aisles. Today was a great day to shop Aspen Hill Home Depot!

Well, the reason I explained all of this is that Steve mentioned asked me if I missed all of this and to tell you the absolute truth.... I do! I loved the rush of doing walks with the biggies. It was so exciting. In Frederick we had the President of the East Coast come do a walk with us and it was so much fun. I miss the rush of working 70+ hours a week! I know, I do that now... but it was different. There I was always working on something productive. Now, I'm watching episodes of Little Bill.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE staying home with Bub. While I totally miss working and organizing (because that is what I love to do and that is what most of the HR job at HD is) I can't imagine handing Bub over to someone else all day at this age for 1 minute. I would love to have both but with a company like Home Depot - that is just not a possibility. You are expected to work a *minimum* of 55 hours a week if you are in management. And while I also have a fantasy of working part time in paint (it's fun!) that's also not a possibility because to be PT you have to work at least 8 hours on the weekend - and I'm not up for that right now!

So that's how our busy day went. After all of this we then had our small group from church over for our Thursday meeting. Bub went to sleep and we talked about the grace and forgiveness of God. This was actually an amazing small group tonight. It just reminded me of how incredibly excited I am that I have an intimate relationship with God. I know that I am forgiven and that others can be as well. I take that thought for granted so much and it boggles my mind that others just can't accept that sometimes. But I think that should just go into another blog.

It's now about midnight and I really should get to bed. I have a whole day to myself tomorrow! My inlaws are picking Bub up at 9:30 and taking him into DC and Buckets will be at work. I don't know what I am going to do with myself!

Night night and God Bless!