Bittersweet Uncertainty

So, today is my last day in the Bethel Universtiy CAS Admissions Office.  It's an odd feeling.  I love this place.  I still view it as "my dream job!"  However, I'm taking a leap.  It's a fairly small leap...in fact, it is just across campus as the Bethel University CAS Assistant Registrar.  However, it still feels odd.  It's definitely bittersweet and certainly uncertain.  

It's bittersweet to be packing up my office and getting ready to "say good-bye" to my very fun co-workers.  I realized early on in my 'working career' that when you work full time, you are actually around your co-workers more than your spouse (at least while being awake).  I am going to miss the people I've been working with....some of them do feel like family!  So, although I am happy and excited about my new position, it is bittersweet.

As for the uncertainty...the job itself is very stable and certain....I am just not certain what it will look like, be like, or feel like.  I was so surprised to be offered the job even after interviewing.  Thrilled actually!  But then I had to make the decision....will I leave what I have known for the last 5 years (7 years total if you count my student worker experience)?  What will the day-to-day look like?  No one could really answer that question in my interviews and speaking with HR.  It just kind of leaves it uncertain.  

The biggest draw to me is the more regular hours of the Registrar's Office.  The added events, college fairs, travel, evenings and weekends of Admissions was getting to me.  It also doesn't help (or does help- depending on how you're looking at it) that there is this very sweet little boy at home that I love to snuggle, kiss, and just watch in amazement.  I hope that this will be a job (as I am told) that will allow me a little more time with my boys (little & big).

Another big motivator was the idea of moving into something that will better use my master's degree...moving to the "academic side" of the university.  I have no idea what this will bring for my future, but I feel that it might be time for a move and this direction was/is appealing.  I guess we will see what happens as a result.

What remains, at least for the next few days, is uncertainty.  As I have been telling people at Bethel about my move, almost all of them immediately said, "Oh, Registrar!  That's a busy office."  This seems a bit concerning.  What does it mean?  Am I busy now?  Do people say, "Oh, Admissions.  They are busy." or am I jumping into something that is way over my head??  


I guess I'll find out in just a couple days.  My first day there is Monday.  I will have a couple weeks overlap with the person who currently has the Assistant Registrar position.  I'm looking forward to learning from her and, mainly, answering a lot of my uncertainty.  I'm excited....just nervous.

Snow!

This winter has been crazy [read: fantasticly warm].  Remember way back in November when I thought that winter was here to stay, we had snow and that was the last of our "fall weather"?  Haha!  Yeah, well, it didn't really get cold until this last week and today we woke up to the most snow we've had all season.  It was finally enough for Tryg to go 'sledding' (or at least his version of it).  I came home from work to find this...

 

 

 

 

Three Weeks Later... (Christmas Review)

So, it's been a little crazy around here and it has been MUCH harder than I thought it would be to get back into the reality of working full time after having almost a week and a half off for Christmas break.  We truly enjoying just relaxing as a family.  Tryg was home from daycare and Erik and I were both home from work.  We LOVED it!  We stayed up late and slept in every day (Tryg slept in too --fantastic!!).  We rarely had anything specific planned besides family gatherings.  So, we just did what we wanted.  It was a wonderful way to celebrate Christ's birth and cherish family.  Tues, Jan. 3rd hit hard and even though I still have not worked a full week, I am struggling to get back into the swing of real life.  I also get Monday off for Martin Luther King Day, which is great, but not helping the whole "real life thing."

So, here are some pics to capture the week and a half over Christmas:

 Gifts under the tree.  I enjoyed wrapping the gifts in a simple way this year.

 

 This pretty much sums up the Santa photo experience: 

                     

(Although it was nice that we got a picture with the same Santa as last year)

Tryg had a blast with his 2nd cousin, Calvin, on Christmas Eve when we went to Erik's Aunt & Uncle's house.

 Santa came to our house on Christmas morning.  Tryg really loved opening gifts this year!

 On Christmas day Tryg got a wagon from Grandma Sue and Bompa Randy.  As you can see, he loved it.

 The day after Christmas we celebrated with my family at Grandma and Papa Elsbecker's house.  The kids loved opening gifts and playing together.

(Tryg liked wearing Cousin Kya's new bike helmet & stealing the candy that Grandma put on the coffee table)

 Tryg spent A LOT of time in the tub since he got the stomach bug that was hitting all the homes in the midwest.  He got it two different times.  Poor kid was just not doing well, but we did our best to keep him clean and hydrated!

 Tryg also found new loves...  Thomas the Tank Engine (or "Choo Choo") and Elmo (or "Melmo") are now common guests in our home...books, toys, and video with either one of the two are requested frequently by our little boy.  We are not even really sure how it happened.  It's not like we pushed it at all!  He only has one book with Thomas and a couple things that happen to have Elmo on them.  He also has a million other toys, cars and books with a million other characters on them.  How is it that kids just gravitate to these two things!?!  I blame daycare! (haha, sorry Jennifer) :)

We hope that you also had a great Christmas!  We're hoping for a fantastic 2012.  It already started out pretty well....I got a new job!!  I'll share more about that in another post, but I got a job as the Assistant Registrar at Bethel University.  I'm glad that I'll still be at Bethel and hoping this will also be a good fit for me.

2011 in Review

I have been horrible at keeping up with this blog (good thing it wasn't my New Years Resolution --or maybe that is a bad thing).  So, I thought I would at least do a review of 2011.  However, this will look VERY familiar to anyone who gets our Christmas letter! 

This has been a great year.  We’ve had a lot to celebrate, some times of relaxing and times of busyness.  Overall, we’ll count it as a good year for our family!

We started the year with a road trip back from Montana.  We ran into a lot of snow and ice but after an extra night in a hotel in SD, we made it back.  Our six month old had a successful first road trip and got to see mountains and a few moose during our surprise visit to Auntie Rachel and Uncle Billy.

In late January, we got to celebrate Grandpa Forbes’ 90^th Birthday and Erik’s 30^th Birthday.  They are one day shy of being 60 years apart.  We enjoyed throwing a big party in Owatonna for Grandpa…I think he enjoyed it too!

February, March and April were filled with many firsts for Tryg…first foods, standing up, crawling, going up the stairs, first tooth, sledding, and getting into everything!  We are loving almost every second!  He has brought pure joy to our lives!

Winter and Spring were also filled with hours of reading and studying while passing Tryg back and forth to each other and to friends and family.  With Erik and Mindy both in grad school, it made for some busy days and nights.  However, we cherished every moment we could with our little boy and are very grateful to friends and family who helped along the way!  We survived and both graduated in May!

In June we celebrated Our Little Rockstar’s First Birthday!  It was such a delight to have so many friends and family to our home to party in true Rockstar style with a guitar cake and backstage passes.  Tryg also took his first steps in June but really started walking in July.  He’d been running ever since! J

We spent the summer having fun with family and friends.  Erik and Mindy both cherished the free time with Tryg without homework!!  We enjoyed family dinners from the grill.  We went to Erik’s parents’ cabin a couple times.  A few landscaping projects were completed and we put up a new shed in the back yard.  We went to friends’ houses for dinners that turned into family dance parties.  And we finished off the summer with the Steele County Free Fair in Owatonna with Mindy’s parents.

This fall was wonderful.  We had fantastic weather for watching the leaves change and visiting the apple orchard.  Our family enjoyed a nice fall weekend in Appleton, WI while attending Mindy’s co-worker’s wedding.  Tryg sported a dinosaur costume for Halloween and was cleverly called “Tryg-a-saurus-rex” for the day (T-Rex for short).  He was very into the whole idea of taking candy and putting it in his pumpkin shaped bucket!

One of the highlights of the fall was celebrating our 5^th Anniversary in Marco Island, FL with our little family of three.  Tryg saw the ocean for the first time and couldn’t get enough of it.  We truly enjoyed a relaxing time on the beach each day.  It was just a joy to have time together without expectations or time constraints.  The weather was absolutely fantastic and we loved it!    

We had a great holiday season and I hope to post about that soon (with photos)!  We hope that you have a fabulous 2012!

                                                                                With Love,

                                                              Erik, Mindy & Tryg       

That Time of Year...

So, with my Birthday being 4 days before Christmas, I have been a very Bitter-Birthday-Person.  However, I am trying to become more mature in my old[er] age and embrace the "Holiday Season."  So, with my Birthday Party last night, this is what our chalk board said....

It was fun to have people over last night and just have a casual gathering with friends and appetizers!  There were tons of kids, which made for a lot of chaos, but it was a lot of fun too!  It's crazy how fast these kids grow up!!  Of course, Erik and I forgot to take pictures, but Amy got a few pics of the kids with her phone while she was there...

 

 

 Tryg was out-numbered with all the girls around!  These pics only represent a few of the people who were there.  We had a great turn out (the livingroom was PACKED).  Thank you everyone who could make it.  I know it's a busy time of year!  Sorry to miss some of you.  I hope you all have a great Christmas with your friends and family!

Snowy Day

 Hats, mittens, snow pants and all...

 

 

Our FL Trip

So, we went to Florida the last week of October.  My intentions were to keep a blog post for each day while we were there and to post daily.  However, the internet connection was not working.  Then, of course, we got back home and the busyness of everyday life took over again.  And well, now, we are a month from our actual vacation.  

Being a month behind also means that I don't remember what happened each day of our trip but luckily that doesn't really matter because EVERYDAY can be summed up with the phrase "We hit the beach!"  We went to a couple different beaches and had some fantastic meals.  We also got to meet up with my (Mindy) Aunt and Uncle who live in Naples.  But the whole purpose of the trip to Marco Island was to have NO agenda and spend time together.

We had the most relaxing time!  It was such a blessing to be able to take a week off and have fun as our little family of three.  Thank you Coyours for allowing us to stay at your place!  Tryg had a blast and LOVED the ocean and the beach!  He could have played with seashells for hours (and he did!)  We went in the ocean and the pool at the condo everyday.  The pool must have been heated to about 85 degrees, which I loved!  Erik and I also found some free movie rental codes and put them to good use each night.  I think the grand total for the week was about 9 movies.  This might sound like a pretty lame vacation (the beach and movies each day) but it was just what we wanted.

Since our 5th Anniversary was during our trip, we also kept our tradition of watching our wedding video that night.  On our actual anniversary, we went to Naples.  We shopped, went to the beach and walked around the city.  Once we got back to Marco Island, we went out for a nice dinner and then finished the evening with our wedding video.  It is fun to remember the people and events of our wedding day and talk about how we were nervous and excited.  We laugh together as we remember that day and all the days that have followed.  I love you, Honey and I'm happy to have spent the last 5 years of my life married to you!

Never Mind....

All the snow is gone. :)

A Perfect Day for It...

I found it a bit comical that at noon today (in MN) Erik and I were both outside doing things that probably should have been done a month ago (or at least a week ago)....

I was trying to get the last of the leaves off the grass before the first snow. Mind you, the first snow was already in progress at the time. Does it matter that I was raking snow? Last year (you may recall) the first snow was in early to mid-November and we got several inches all at once. We had forgotten about all the leaves that were left in our front yard until the spring melt. We had some raking to do in May. So, this year, we wanted to get them all BEFORE the snow came. We almost made it! :)

Erik was working on another project. He was helping the neighbors behind us put in new windows! Not the best day for making four foot square openings throughout your home. But...this is when the windows came and it's best to get the new ones in before winter is in full force. It was also a good way to test the new furnace they got this week since their last one gave out on them. It has not been the best week for them but we were glad that Erik could lend a hand with the windows. ...Not so secretly, I wanted Erik to get some experience and maybe a little sweat-equity for someday when we get new windows for our place! They are desperately needed.

Well, winter is here in MN. I'm not sure if we'll see the grass again before spring. The wool socks are already out but we still need to buy an extra space heater or two ...remember the desperate need of new windows I mentioned.

**Please note: These photos were taken at noon. It's now just after 5pm and we can no longer see our grass. Welcome Winter :-(

Need a Nuk?

This morning I looked under Tryg's crib for a Nuk and this is what I found.