Genaw Family: It's mid-September?!?!? Holy Cow!!!!

Oh my! The summer has gotten away from me! I haven't written in 2+ months! Where have I been? Well, in July we visited family to celebrate Joel's youngest sister's, Jessica, birthday. His uncle Buddy also came up from Florida and I met him for the first time. I know we stayed busy, but I can't honestly remember all what we did in July. In August we celebrated my nephew Alex's 1st birthday! I even made cupcakes for the party. It was so fun watching him destroying the big cupcake that Amanda made for him! Joel and I also celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. We decided to take Tuesday, the 20th, off from work and spent the whole day at Michigan's Adventure. We had a blast! We went on the bigger roller coaster and rides from 11-1, got a snack in the car before heading into the water park around 1:30, and spent a good amount of time there. We went on almost all of the rides- even the Funnel of Fear (which was the longest wait of the day- maybe 45 minutes). Then we dried off, got into dry clothes, and went to the all you can eat grill for dinner at 4:30. We took our time and enjoyed some good food. Then we went back on the amusement rides and left just before the park closed at 8:00. We went home and were pooped! We had walked back and forth from the two sides of the park at least 4 times and climbed a lot of stairs. What a work out! But it was so much fun just spending the day with my best friend & love of my life. These past 4 years have been amazing! We still haven't been on our bikes much, which is disappointing- Joel isn't even going to do the tour of the White Pine Trail this year. :( I will still ride the Colorburst Tour in October.

I still love my job!!!! I have been doing well and have been praised for it. I don't need the praise, but I'm glad to hear that everyone is pleased with me & impressed by my work. I had my mid year review and got great comments. My previous manager, new manager, and I also talked about some things they would like to see me finish yet this year. Yay for a challenge! One of them was to visit a co-manufacturer to see how some of our products are made, another is to attend culinary training to broaden my knowledge of cooking, a third is to help run a pilot plant trial. Well, this past week I spent Tuesday afternoon- Friday night traveling for work. I went to our main co-man. for the toddler meals in Ohio. I flew out Tuesday night and spent Wednesday-Friday helping run trials to test some new technology. I carpooled back with 2 women coworkers on Friday and didn't get home until 12:45am! (technically Saturday) It was really cool! I did a lot of the prep work in the kitchen, but it was great to be a part of this new learning with product developers, thermal process experts, engineers, and even people from other Nestle divisions! Monday at noon, I will be leaving again for work. I will be attending culinary training at out PTC in Solon, OH. They have chefs on staff there, because that's where they do frozen meals like Stouffers and Lean Cuisine, among others. I won't be back until Friday evening, but I'll be carpooling with coworkers both ways so it should be interesting. The next day, the 21th, Joel leaves for Switzerland and will be gone until the 28th. Man oh Man, what a busy month September has been and how busy it will continue to be!