Corporate America rears it's ugly head!

I thought long and hard about whether or not to post about this subject but in my effort to always keep it real on my blog, I decided to go ahead and do it! Please don't interpret this post as a rant or rave or a bash on Corporate America. I'm simply filling you in on what's going on in my life right now.
Effective tomorrow, I am officially "displaced", "realigned", however you want to say it, I've essentially been layed off. My company has been reorganizing several of it's divisions over the last year and with that always comes budget cuts. Three people in my department have already been layed off this year, and now IT'S MY TURN unfortunately. As the youngest member of my team, with the least amount of experience (and no masters degree) I just became the victim of round two of displacements (along with two other of my more "seasoned" colleagues).
This is the type of thing that you think will never happen to you, or at least I thought that. You think, my boss likes me, my clients think I'm great, and I've won awards! I work hard and I'm great at what I do. I'm safe! That's not always the case and so I have just learned.
In digesting this large slice of humble pie over the past two weeks, I've realized that this is not the end of the world. This may complicate our lives right now and put certain plans on hold but as this song says... There's more than this. And I truly believe that. And I've been lucky enough to have the work experiences that I've had so far and I'm looking forward to what's next!
So as I embark upon the next few months of "pay-cation" (What my friends at work and I like to call it) hopefully I will find another job that I will love even more than my current job (corporate communications consultant). I also hope to have a little summer fun with all my friends who have the best, most important jobs in the world, stay at home mommies! Now that I'm home during the day now call me! Let's go to the beach!

Flip #4 SOLD!

We just sold our fourth flip! We're REALLY grateful and relieved that it sold so quickly. The real estate market here is terrible (unless you're a first time home buyer, then it's GREAT because you can buy a great house for next to nothing!) It's definitely a buyers market right now but we managed to do pretty well on this one.

Update on Flip #3
Our cash deal fell through making that the THIRD contract that fell through on this house! After that, we decided to take flip #3 off the market and make it rental #6! We'll put it back on the market again when the real estate market turns around. You win some, you loose some! Flipping can be very risky! All in all, it's worked out pretty well. Our new tenant will move in June 1.

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday! Ours was very relaxing. We saw a couple of movies (See movie reviews below) and we spent time with the family. Here are a few pictures we took over the weekend...

Me and mom (matching colors were unintentional!)


Me and my baby, Molly


And here's my other baby! I think you know this guy!

TPC

John and I went to the TPC Golf Tournament a few weekends back while it was being played here in Jacksonville. My parents live in Sawgrass (where the tournament is played) and it's great because we can park in their driveway and walk across to watch the players. Do we know a thing about golf? NO! Do we know any of the players? No! But it was still fun to watch! For all you golf fans out there, Sergio Garcia won! Tiger didn't play this one. He was recovering from surgery.

We're off to the TPC with my parents nifty lawn chairs!


Sergio playing like a winner!

Jonesin' it

We saw the new Indiana Jones this weekend and it was so good! Indi's still got it after 20 years! Two thumbs up!

We also saw The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and we LOVED it! I loved it even better than the first one. If you've read the books by C.S. Lewis, you'll love it! I think you'll love it even if you didn't read the books. Go see it!

Dave is my fav!

I'm SO HAPPY that David Cook won American Idol!!! He's been my fav since day one! (I loved David Archuleta too though- he came in a close second for me) And I was SO TOUCHED when DC cried after he won! What a great guy! I love to see a humble winner! I'll be buying his CD when it comes out! Good choice America! You 97 MILLION voters chose... wisely!

Tribute for Aunt Brenda

Some of you may know that my Aunt Brenda passed away last week. It has been an UNBELIEVABLY difficult week for my whole family. She died on Thursday at age 60. I could go into all the details of how she died but instead, I'm going to tell you how she lived.
There certainly aren’t too many people out there like my Aunt Brenda. She was so much fun to be around and kept our family laughing all the time! Brenda was a true girly girl. The smell of nail polish and hair spray will forever remind me of Brenda. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I can remember going to Brenda’s house and sun bathing with her in the back yard. She used to tell me as we laid on her blue lawn chairs to hold my hands up vertically in the air so the veins in my hands wouldn’t bulge! My mom and other aunts would look outside and find me and Aunt Brenda laid up on those lawn chairs with both our hands in the air! What a site! Aunt Brenda was definitely prissy.
She also had such a deep love for animals! Her two dogs, Buster and Rosy were her babies and she took such good care of them! Besides loving her animals, Brenda would nurse little birds that had fallen out of a tree back to health. And one day, she noticed that a lizard had gotten in her house and she tried and tried to find it. After a few hours of not being able to find it, she put down a little cap full of water for it because she didn’t want it to perish from thirst! Only Aunt Brenda! She was one of the most caring, loving, and compassionate people I’ve ever met. She would give you the shirt off her back. She had such a childlike innocence about her that made her so enjoyable to be around. She was a free spirit.
Aunt Brenda loved her flowers and she just loved her mama as well as her sisters and her whole family. She was truly a mama’s girl though. She would call granny 2-3 times a day. Granny was her best friend. Whenever she was sick she had to have her mama close by. She had a flair for the dramatic. She could do her make up and her eyes as good as anyone I’ve ever seen. She was just beautiful! When she was young and just out of school, she was a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines and people would tell her she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor. And she really did! She loved to look good.
She wanted no part of any kind of manual labor. She would always tell us, the lord knew what he was doing when he didn’t make her a carpenter. Her body wasn’t cut out for manual labor! She was a true girly girl. She used to tell me, she just loved to hang out at her house and watch her soaps! She always knew exactly what was happening on the Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the Guiding Light.
Aunt Brenda was always so light hearted and funny but she was also very smart and very deep. Right after my Aunt Lawanna passed away about 8 years ago, as the family was making funeral arrangements, she told my Aunt Sheila that she couldn’t bare the thought of Lawanna being buried in the ground! She wanted her buried behind a stone like Christ was. So she was buried in a mausoleum behind a marble stone, just like our Savior. On Saturday, we layed my dear Aunt Brenda to rest the same way, true to her wishes, just like our Savior.
It is so hard to lose such a beautiful, loving person like Aunt Brenda. Life here on earth will never be the same without her. But I can’t help but to be so happy for her today because I know that she is having such a marvelous reunion with her father, her sister Lawanna, and her brother George that have gone before her. But most importantly, I’m so thrilled that Aunt Brenda is able to be reunited with her Heavenly Father and her Savior who love her so much and are welcoming her home. We love and miss you Aunt Brenda and bid you farewell until we meet again.

Change is good for the soul...

Wise words from my profound cousin Kristin. So, I've decided to change my blog layout! I hope you enjoy it. I've also included a few pictures from this weekend. John's parent's came down to visit us and we had so much fun seeing them! I don't have any picture's of John's dad because he hides every time I bring out the camera! He tells me that snapping pictures of him should be saved for after the Resurrection when his body is perfected! ha-ha! I guess you'll have to wait til then to see pictures of him!

John's brother Robert and his mom Marlene


Hangin out at the house on a Sunday afternoon


New flowers Robert planted in my front yard for me


Other new potted plants by my front door. I love the bright colors!

The Female Brain

My book club just finished reading a very interesting book called The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine MD. The book discussed the differences between the female and male brains and how differently they think and act. I really learned a lot and I think it would be time well spent for each married couple to read this book together. It's very insightful! One interesting fact that I learned was that men think about sex once every 52 seconds (on average) and women think about sex once every 24 hours! What a huge difference! Is this really true men?

Here is a picture of our awesome book club. If you want to know what we're reading each month, check the side column under Books I'm Reading. We're still trying to decide May's book. Stay tuned for an update. And I recommend the Female Brain. It's a very interesting read!