I've missed the boat I think; to create a post about our trip to the US to visit Oma and Opa at Christmas.....here we are, more than halfway through February!
So, this is a catch up post...no pictures or a real theme this time....just an update and hello to everyone.
Like it always seems to be these days, life has been pretty busy. Kevin has finally gotten over his fear of baths and showers, and now asks to shower almost every day before I get the chance to offer one. Once in the shower, he even makes his own hair wet, and now it's getting the showers to be over with that takes mommy's best negotiating skills.
Since we came back from the US, I've had the chance to spend 'quality time' almost every day with my son.....to wake up with him, play games, build wooden train track obstacle courses through the living room, watch Dora the Explorer or the Backyardigans, eat breakfast together, have tickle fests, feed the ducks....the everyday simple things are made magical when experienced together with this happy Little Man. I've tried not to change his routine too much by taking him of out of daycare altogether, but we did shorten his days considerably in January and the first half of February so that I could again have the opportunity of being a mommy.
As seems to usually happen, My Mom was right, and 2008 is indeed shaping up to be a year of big changes. Coming back to the Netherlands was probably never as difficult as it was at the beginning of the New Year with the uncertainty of how I was going to find a new job and ensure I could support myself and Kevin.
At the end of last year, the job prospects looked pretty dim....and early January was also going slowly. Somewhere around the end of the second week though, my resume finally started getting noticed, I was getting calls, asked to attend interviews...and I had hope that maybe by the end of March or the beginning of April I would have a new position somewhere.
The first week of February, I said my goodbyes to Quest.....turned in the last of the company things, signed the paperwork for my final payment, etc. That same day I got a call from a headhunter about a company that was starting up its European HQ in Amsterdam and was looking for someone to do Marketing for UK, or Scandinavia and the Benelux. The next day I had a 2.5 hour face to face interview, and after that initial conversation I was given 24 hours to prepare a presentation dealing with my impressions of the website, the local cultural considerations, the competitive landscape, what marketing actions I would recommend and what my first 30 days would look like if I was hired!
That presentation I had to present via conference call to the VP of Marketing in the US, and that was my second, 1 hour long interview on Thursday. Friday I got a call asking if I would come back to Amsterdam to meet with the VP of Sales for Europe for the next interview on Monday.
After that interview (again close to 2 hours) I was told there were still other candidates that needed to complete the presentation process and that I would hear if there would be a final interview by the end of the week. Later that same day though, I was offered a contract, and after a very short negotiation, I agreed to come on board and was asked to come back to the office the next day to sign the contract.
The first Interview to the signing took exactly one week. Talk about a whirlwind! I'm so happy to have a new opportunity in front of me. I guess Mom does know best when she says 'Things Happen for a Reason'. Most of all, I hope one day my predictions for Kevin will be this accurate....Is that an inherit mom superpower, I wonder?
