Season of change

Everywhere one looks in North East Ohio, one cannot deny that Spring now has her foot firmly in the door! Trees have embraced the warmer temperatures and have begun preparing their buds for their annual showcase! Lawns are green, and flowers are blooming! One of my favorite things about living in Cleveland is that we have four distinct seasons that each have their own own unique beauty!

Another change for us is that little Joshua is now eating solids! It was a challenge at first to get the cereal into his mouth, but as every parent knows, it is all about perseverance :)


One of the biggest changes for the McCarthy family is that I will be swapping my daily commute to a large corporation in downtown Cleveland for a much shorter bicycle ride (possibly) to a much smaller company one suburb away!

When my old company announced that a number of people would be laid off in March, I started working on a plan B to cover any worst case scenario that may have arisen! During this time, I applied for a job at this new company, as it seemed my skills were a perfect match for their requirements. I received a reply to my resume within four hours of applying for the job, and was soon being interviewed. Those went well, and I was told that I was shortlisted with one other person. Then there was a period that I did not hear much from the company until the week before Easter. I was told that I had the job and the owner would soon be making an offer to me. When the offer came, it was significantly lower than what I was currently making, and I was quite disappointed, as there was no way I could accept anything less than what I currently earned. I made an optimistic counter offer, and prayed that God would clearly show me where He wanted me to be. Again, there was an unsettling period where I didn't hear anything from the company, and I started thinking that God wanted me to stay where I was..... until the owner came back to me last week saying that he will amend his original offer to meet what I asked for in my counter offer! Thank you Lord.... there was no doubt in my mind that God had opened this new door for me!

I start at my new company on April 24 but I will not be in the office until May 4 since the company is flying me out to San Francisco, California for a weeks worth of training!!! I finally get to visit the West Coast of the USA!!!! I haven't even started working there yet, and i am already loving it! God is so good!

We now return you to the regular programming..........

Friday night was Nathan's choice for Family Fun Night. He choice was to get the Disney's Bolt DVD again (this is his current favorite movie - can you tell?) He also watched it over and over again on Saturday morning before we had to return it.

On Saturday, I gave in to the neighborhood peer pressure, and fired up my lawnmower to cut my grass for the first time in 2009. I guess it is one way for me to get a workout, but it is not in my top ten things to do on the weekend!!! Something that does make it into the top ten list, is having friends over for dinner, which we did that evening!

On Sunday, we attended church as usual in the morning. That afternoon, we had some good chats with our family back home in South Africa. We had a pleasant surprise! Craig (Liesel's brother in the UK) called us on Skype. He had just purchased a web cam, and we were able to share a wonderful video call with him and his wife! Now all our immediate family (on both sides) own web cams, and it is amazing how that technology makes the person on the other side feel that much closer!