Week One on the New Job

Monday was our first day official day on the job. We are now one week in. No kids, but lots of work has been done.

To begin with, we've had the usual training items (which for a houseparenting position encompasses a little bit of everything from menus, school schedules, using epi pens, picking up groceries and household supplies, appropriately recording medications, and documenting the lives of the children).

While trying to wrap our minds around the specific idiosyncrasies of the function of this particular campus (I've been watching a lot of Big Bang Theory lately--I think it's affecting my large word usage), we've also been pouring hours into cleaning up our cottage.

At this point, our apartment is looking quite nice. Not perfect, but comfortable and cozy. What I'm referring to is the rest of the cottage, where the children live and we spend the rest of our days while working. This used to be a boys cottage, and has been empty for the last half a year or so. The design of the cottage is great, but Harley Davidson helped finance the redecoration of it a number of years ago. And therefore, the decor is....Harley Davidson. Well, "was" Harley Davidson. After a week of hard work, it's much more girly and less motorcycley. Additionally, we had to get the Christmas decorations up as well.

One of the best experiences of this week was having nearly all the houseparents on campus come over one day and help clean the cottage from top to bottom, decorate, move furniture around, etc. Without this help, we would still be scrubbing the toilets at this point. It was such a blessing.

On top of all this, Baby Q decided to develop a nice case of croup, requiring me to hunt down the Urgent Care in town, fight with our old insurance, and have several very worried nights.

Additionally, we bought tickets to fly to Texas for our week off in December, so we can spend some time with some beloved family. Haven't told Blueberry yet that she's going to get to see the Cousins again, but as they've been a frequent topic of conversation since we saw them this summer, I imagine she'll be pretty pleased.

Oh yeah, and it was Thanksgiving this week. I nearly forgot that part. Bit of an unconventional Thanksgiving for us this year, but pleasant nonetheless.

One day of rest and Monday we get the first of our new childrens. Yay!