St. Patrick's Day

We had a fun little St. Patrick's Day around our house.  The thing I love about St. Patrick's Day is it is so easy to dress it up as a holiday.  I can pretty much do the same thing I do every day, but make it all green, and the kids LOVE it.  The night before St. Patty's we went over to Courtney and Tyler's house, and the kids made some rainbow-pot-of-gold cupcakes.  They had so much fun, and the cupcakes turned out so yummy and cute!  On the actual day, we enjoyed green milk, green pancakes, and green drinks.  We wore green, and painted our fingernails and toenails green.  We woke up from naps, to find leprechaun footprints all around, and a scavenger hunt provided by a funny little leprechaun named Patrick.  And for dessert, we made mint truffles... Definitely a very fun, and very green day!

Matt's First Business Trip

A couple weeks ago Matt had his first business trip.  He was nominated for the Dan Aaron Leadership Award at work, and was picked as one of the finalists!  He flew to Denver, for a few days, with the other finalists to have some round table discussions, and attend a celebratory dinner and reception.  It was quite an honor for Matt to be picked as one of 6 finalists in the Western Division of Comcast (everything west of the Mississippi).  And he was the only finalist from the Mountain region for his award.  Matt is now apart of an exclusive group in Comcast called the "Circle of Success" which can be proven with his trophy or nice Comcast jacket :)  

The criteria to be a nominee for the Dan Aaron Leadership Award:

• Exemplifies the Credo and its touchstones while demonstrating leadership skills
• Overcomes obstacles and persists in the face of adversity
• Identifies issues and develops appropriate solutions
• Motivates and inspires employees to be proactive in providing moments of excellence for our customers and Comcast
• Understands their role in the company and how their work impacts our business
• Provides regular and meaningful feedback
• Develops the skills of team members to enable them to pursue their career goals

Matt with Steve White, the West Division President, and his manager, Shauntel Paskett

Matt's manager, Shauntel, told Matt's "story" at the reception, which explained why he was nominated, and he had a couple pages in a booklet telling about him:

As a Collection Rep Matt hit the ground running- and as a part-time employee he was quickly out collecting our full-time employees.  


Because of his performance, attitude, and commitment to the business, he was offered a temporary supervisor role.  Not only did Matt excel in this role, his team climbed to become a top 10 performing team in the Collections COE under his leadership.  Soon after, Matt accepted a permanent Collections Supervisor position.  His dedication to his job from the get-go has enabled Matt to progress from an outstanding part-time employee to a superb, career-oriented leader at Comcast.


Matt's experience as a frontline agent at Comcast has enabled him to share a wealth of knowledge with his team.  As a leader, he has continued to use his skills to coach and develop his team as well as share best practices with the other Supervisors in the Collections COE. 


Matt has been especially an asset with helping with the new dialer system that has been implemented in the COE, and has become known as a go-to person for the system.  


"Matt is consistently the first person to step up and take on additional projects to help the company, including helping with our hiring process, incentives and building tools.  His potential as a leader in this company is great, as evidenced by his progression."- Shauntel Paskett, Collections Manager


"The way Matt applies constructive criticism has made a lasting effect on me because he has helped me to improve my work without ever making me feel like a bad employee.  He always makes sure that all of us on his team receive feedback weekly regarding our calls and how we handle our customers.  My save rate has increased over 5% since moving to Matt's team.  Our team is consistently in the top ten in our call center." - Suzy Smith, Collections CAE




I couldn't be more proud of Matt.  He has had four different positions at Comcast in the last year, and has exemplified each one to the point that he has been able to climb the ladder.  He is well into Comcast and is looking at making Comcast his career.  He works 40+ hours a week, and obviously gives 100% effort in his job.  He takes 9-10 credit hours every semester, and doesn't even take summers off.  And on top of that he comes home and spends time with his family and magnifies his church callings.  I am so happy that his hard work at Comcast has been recognized, and that he had the opportunity and honor of going on this trip.  He absolutely deserves it!  I definitely missed having him in bed next to me while he was gone, but funny enough, we were able to spend more time with him the three days he was on his trip than we would spend with him on a regular Tuesday-Thursday... because we were able to spend Tuesday morning and Thursday night with him before and after the trip, and usually we don't see him at all on those days.  Matt is such a great husband and father.  I am so incredibly grateful to him for working so hard, so I can be a stay at home mom.  I know that it is a hard schedule on both of us, but I also know without a doubt, that it is the right thing for us to be doing for our kids.  I love that he is willing to sacrifice so much for them.

Congratulations Matt!  I love you!

Sydney Update

Wow! Sydney sure is getting so big!

Recently, we changed her car seat into a booster seat.  She was one happy and proud girl that day!  She loves that she can unbuckle herself when it is time to get out.  

Sydney is loving coloring and drawing lately.  I often find drawings of our family, pretty much anywhere there is a paper/pen/crayons, including in my planner and on my lists.  It makes me so happy that her favorite thing to draw is our little family of four.  I love finding her little drawings all over the place...

She also has learned how to spell all of our names.  Many times she writes our names on her drawings, but other times I find little things typed onto our computer.  Good thing she doesn't know the password to get the computer turned on :)

Sydney has loved spending time with her new baby cousin Landon.  She is so proud that she can hold him by herself (sitting down with the support of a pillow and supervision, of course).  She talks about having another baby sister in our family.  She and Cooper love to play "mom and dad" and take care of their "children."  It is so cute.  Sydney will be a great mom someday, and is already a great big sister.

Sydney's hair has gotten so long!  One day we straightened it, and were surprised at how long it was.  Last week we cut three inches off... it's still pretty long, but looks nice and cleaned up.  Sydney loved going to Michele's to get her hair cut.  

Sydney especially loves going to school.  She loves everything about it.  She has been learning how to read three letter words, and is always sounding words out, or figuring out what letter words start with.  It is so fun to watch her learn and grow!  We are so proud of her.  

She also loves telling stories and making up songs.  She has quite the imagination and tells some pretty lengthy stories at bed time.  We have to save story telling nights for non-school nights because of this :)  

Sydney has been really good at helping around the house.  She does struggle to clean up toys, because she gets so distracted.  But she loves to help load/unload the dishwasher, pick up dirty clothes, transfer laundry to the washer/dryer, set the table, and take Cooper's diapers all the way out to the big garbage can in the garage.  

We sure love our "Ni-ney!"  She makes us so happy and is such a good girl!

Snow Day

It's been a weird winter around here... Until today, we haven't really had enough snow to go out and play in.  It has snowed a few times, but it always melts so quickly and isn't around past the morning hours.  (It sure was a great winter for us to pick as our first winter to invest in snow clothes for the kids, huh?)  

The kids were so excited to see our blizzard of snow last night, and I told them that we might be able to play in it the next day.  Luckily, we were able to work that idea out...  Sydney kept talking about making snow angles, footprints, and snowmen!  We were able to do all three and even made some snowballs for Cooper to carry around.  It was so sunny, that the kids were barely able to open their eyes, but it kept us nice and warm, which was perfect.  It was so nice to get outside and get some fresh air, after being cooped up in the house for so long!

Ready to go and so excited!

Holding hands with our "veggie loving snowman" 

Yes, his eyes and mouth are made of broccoli, and of course a carrot nose...

So fun!

Sydney's Spotlight

Sydney got to be the spotlight in preschool last week.  She was so excited!  Sunday night, at bedtime, we realized that we hadn't filled out her poster yet.  So Matt got Cooper in bed, while I helped Sydney do her poster.  It was so fun to work on it together.  She was the brains behind the entire thing.  Telling me what colors to write in and everything.  One of the things she was supposed to fill out was "If I could wish for one thing, I would wish for..."  I prompted Sydney to write Disneyland, because she really does want to go there.  She assured me that, "wishing for Disneyland wasn't a good wish, because, we ARE going to Disneyland.  I'm going to wish for a rainbow dress." Of course!  Why didn't I think of that?! When it was time to present her spotlight poster in preschool, she did such a great job!  She pointed at each and every thing, and explained the whole poster by herself.  We hung her poster up at home, when it was done hanging at school.  I just love looking at it.  It captures Sydney at 4 years old so perfectly.  It's colorful and has darling drawings.  Sydney to a T.

New Arrival

We are so excited to have a new baby cousin join our family!  Baby Landon Page was born on Sunday the 19th.  We were able to drive down to Payson to visit him on Monday.  Sydney loved holding him, and touching his little face and head.  He is just darling.  Congratulations Chris and Lisa!

Lately

Life sure slows down in the winter... a lot.  It seems like there isn't much to do.   Which is why there has been a lack of blog posts lately.  There just isn't much to report.  We spend a lot of time at home... like more than most people I think.  It gets pretty mundane.  Laundry, ironing, cleaning, movies, coloring.  Daily things around here.  I'm pretty anxious to have spring show up.  I know, we've had a mild winter, but it's still too cold to go outside... Luckily, we have found a few things to keep us busy in the past month. 

I've been trying to catch up on my quilt squares that I've been sewing with the Page girls... and learning about my new sewing machine in the process.  One Monday (Matt's day off) we decided to take Trax to the down town library with the kids.  It was a fun adventure and wore us all out.  Matt, Sydney, and Cooper fell asleep on the train ride home!  My aunt Syd's dog had puppies last month, so we went and visited them a little bit after they were born.  Both kids loved it and now would love to have a puppy.  Sydney tells me we need to buy a "doggy pool" so a puppy would have somewhere to sleep in our house.  I've also been working on a couple of projects on the computer... putting together a book to print out our 2011 blog, and updating my mom's weight watcher's blog.  If you haven't seen her blog you should really check it out.  I've been using it a lot lately, trying to cook healthier, and have lost 10 pounds!  The blog is a lot easier to navigate now, and I'm pretty proud of it.  There is a little more work I need to fix on it, but overall it is ten times better than before... just check out Dreams Becoming Reality on my sidebar.  We celebrated Matt's birthday, on Superbowl Sunday. And of course had a fun low-key Valentines Day.   Overall, life is good!