The Loan is Finally Closed

Four long years. It’s been over four years since we bought our property out in Volente. We weren’t in a rush at first, but eventually it became something that we were ready to do.

Then we finally split the property. Once the property was split we chose a builder and were ready to move the process forward. Rates were at historic lows and based on the preliminary bids that were coming back, we knew that it was going to make sense to borrow some money.

I shopped around quite a bit to find out what would be the best bank to use for our construction loan. I was amazed how much variation in rates and closing costs there were between different lenders. One bank quoted me over 1.5% higher than what I ended up getting. Some banks had more than $8000 difference in origination charges. I ended up selecting RBFCU because they had both the best rates and no origination charges. 

We applied for a loan in June of 2020. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that it’s been five months that we started this process.

I knew that there would be a bit more scrutiny of our loan given the broader economic climate that we live in. Fannie and Freddie have cut back on the loans that they back. Jumbo loans are even harder to come by. However, given how low mortgage rates are, and how much money this country is printing, I feel like it would be a poor financial decision to not take advantage of these historic lows.

I’m proud to say that I have excellent credit. I take my financial responsibilities seriously. I pay my bills on time and always have. I’d like to think that I’m a very low credit risk. I have a good job at one of the most stable companies in the world. So when we submitted all of our plans, proof of income, and assets to the bank, it was not really a huge surprise that we were approved.

The next big step was that we needed to get an appraisal for the future value of the house that we’re planning to build. Before the loan goes to closing, the bank needed to validate that the house that we are going to build would justify the amount of the loan.

When talking to the loan officer, she mentioned that we could save $200 by waiting an additional two weeks. That seemed to be easy money so we said yes.

The appraisal came back on time on the new timetable. And the amount was good. Perhaps too good if we need to pay property taxes on that amount. It was actually so high that we wouldn’t need to bring additional funds to closing since we had already purchased the property outright. 

We had also been purchasing items as we’ve found things on sale to save money where we could. The plan was to later reimburse ourselves for those later if needed to help pay for the pool.

We were supposed to close on September 18th.

About a week prior, I started talking to the bank again to make sure that things were on track. It was still with underwriting. Okay.

The closing week comes and still no word. There’s been a record number of refinances, so I just take for granted that they are a little backed up. No big deal.

Finally another week or so later, I call to see what’s up. It’s only then that I come to find out that raising the loan amount is starting to cause problems with underwriting. Apparently since a non-trivial amount of my salary is described as a bonus, they won’t count that amount — even though I have an offer letter describing it as part of my compensation.

So they need more documentation and time.

Eventually they come back and decide that they won’t approve the higher amount. I was (and am still) annoyed, but at least we could finally get started.

On the plus side, they did count all expenses that we had been meticulously tracking so the amount we had to bring to closing was very reasonable. If there was a bit of a downside, this was the most anti-climatic closing we’ve had. Normally when you sign up to borrow money, you get something… a house, a car, something. That obviously is not the case with a construction loan.

But most importantly — WE CAN START BUILDING!

Summer Sailing in Michigan

Sailboat minus sail

One of my favorite things to do while we’re spending time in Michigan is to go sailing. We didn’t get the boat rigged up for nearly the first week because I was busy with work, and we all were busy with tubing on the big boat and fishing.

The wind on Friday was perfect which lined up well with my planned mental health day. We carried the boat down to the lake, pulled the rest of the rigging down from the attic, and started to rig up the boat. Dad and I really have this down to a science so it didn’t take too long to get setup, and soon we were ready to go.

Dad, Crosby, and I went out with the jib sail and had a really nice ride. Crosby was talking the whole time and definitely liked when we were going out the side a bit. With the jib and the main sail, we had a really good ride. He wanted to keep going, but we knew it was about time to go in so that Dad could make dinner.

I wasn’t ready to stop quite yet, and I wasn’t sure if Carlyn was actually going to go. I didn’t want to take her out along, but really wanted someone else to go. Korey (surprisingly) had come out and was ready to go with her, so then the three of us set sail.

I figured that a slightly calmer ride would be a better option, so we left the jib at home. Given that Carlyn was very nervous before we even got out past the bullrushes, we definitely made the right call. The slight rocking of the boat was making her really nervous, but then she settled in.

We took a slow ride with the wind to get away from the shore and find a bit more wind. After that point, we started tacks back and forth to go back to shore. As she got more comfortable, I even had her holding the rope a bit. “I’m sailing, daddy!” It was a great experience and definitely a very ride to get Carlyn started on her first ride.

The next day there was a nice, but not very heavy breeze. It was enough that we were going to have a good ride, but it wasn’t going to be a super rough ride. Crosby was eager to go again, so the three boys went out for another sail. The wind was coming from the south or southwest so again we went away from shore to get a better breeze.

We went out towards second point on a tack and made our first turn. I asked Crosby if he was ready to go in and he said not quite yet, so we made another couple of turns back and forth enjoying a beautiful day on the water.

I asked Crosby how he was doing, and he said he wanted to go another 10 minutes. We were still quite a ways out but it looked like we could take a pretty straight shot in. It still wasn’t all that windy, but there were some gusts that got Dad and I hiking out on the edge of the boat.

Then all of the sudden… BANG!

Everythings started going in slow motion.

The sail slowly started to fall away from the boat. Based on what the sail was doing, it was as if the boat was tipping over. The only thing is that the boat was staying flat. Dad and I flopped over the side of the boat because we had been leaning back.

My first thought was Crosby. I popped up and he was sitting there in the boat smiling. Whew!

Normally when the boat tips, you need to make sure the mast doesn’t go down, so that’s what we did again. I crawled back into the boat and started to pull the sail back towards the boat. Dad was out at the tip of mast to make sure that i would stay up. I started untying some of the sails so that we could rotate the mast into the boat. It was then we could see for sure that one of the stays snapped.

There was no way we were sailing in. Crosby thought this was the coolest thing, and in true Crosby fashion, couldn’t stop talking about it. In his mind, this was the best sail ever.

We got the rest of the sails untied and situated in the boat. There was only one way to get in at this point. Dad was in the front of the boat pulling and kicking. I went out the back of the boat and kicked. Fortunately it wasn’t super wavy today, so we were able to make some progress. We were about halfway towards the shore down by Brotherton’s.

Then a boat came up and asked if we needed help. They had a rope which I held at the front of the boat and they started to tug us back to the dock. When we got to the bullrushes, I hopped out and walked us in the rest of the way.

The girls were sitting there on the dock taking pictures of us… thinking that we might need some help. We surveyed the damage, and while we probably could have done a short term fix, we opted not to and that turned out to be the last sail for the trip.

Bedtime for the Last time with 6 year old Crosby

This is going to be one of those random and short blogs — really just for me.

Today is December 20, 2019; the day before Crosby’s seventh birthday. Korey had a ladies only Christmas party to go to so I had the kids after I got home from one of my first days at AWS.

Crosby had built a fort out of some chairs, boxes, the recycling bin and pillows and insisted that we eat dinner in it. Being the big kid that am, I obliged and we sat together on the base of the stairs in his fort.

Carlyn was reluctant to eat any of her chicken nuggets because she just got in her head that she wanted to eat mac and cheese and only that. Finally she came around when she realized that she was going to miss out on sock game.

(You guessed it — Sock game came next)

We set up the bouncy castle and fired it up so that the kids could steal my socks, tease me with them relentlessly, climb on my back, try to knock me over, and of course — run around the house trying to get away from me as I chased them. They still think that’s one of the funniest things and the world, and who am I to judge? I love chasing after them and having them try to wrestle me to the groung in the bouncy castle too. I don’t know how long these days will last, so I don’t want to be the one cutting them short.

After that, I gave them a bath and we settled in for books. Both of their reading abilities have grown significantly in the last 6 months. You can really tell a difference with Carlyn especially since she’s been going to ELE. Crosby is one of the best readers in his class as well.

Then there was bedtime which was ultimately what triggered me to write this in the first place. Carlyn was virtually falling asleep on my shoulder as Crosby was finishing reading, so I basically just carried her to bed and went to cuddle with him.

Despite being pretty late, he was still going at his usual 100 miles per hour. As we were laying there, he was telling me about his village in Minecraft. It had an iron gate with one of four buttons and when you pushed one of them it opened. And the village had a 2×2 mine in it.

And then there was the thing that still makes me smile just thinking about it. He started telling me something else, and then literally just stopped mid-sentence and was asleep curled up next to me.

Maybe it’s the pending birthday that makes me wonder how much longer he’s going to want to curl up next to Dad. Perhaps it was something random. But I know regardless of the reason, this is something that I’ll think back on and smile about many years from now.

Five Reasons Why We Bought a Timeshare

Korey and I have gone to more than our fair share of timeshare presentations. I’d imagine that we’re somewhere in the neighborhood of ten different pitches. Most of the recent ones have been through bookvip.com. The deal is always that you can get a significant discount on accommodations (and often they include All-Inclusive packages) in return for selling your soul for a few hours ( aka the obligation of sitting through a timeshare pitch.)

Having been through as many as we have, I’ve actually gained quite a bit of knowledge of not only how the sales pitches work and how to combat the tactics used by the parade of sales people, but I’ve also learned about the different timeshare systems themselves. And when you look past the sales info, there’s no doubt in my mind that there is at least some truth behind the story that you can either save money on travel or travel with nicer accomodations — ASSUMING that you are able to pay a reasonable amount of money to acquire your week.

It’s also no secret that we like to travel, which is why I’ve always given the idea about buying a timeshare some thought. But like many of you, I’ve often heard horror stories about them. You can’t book when you want. Maintenance fees are expensive. And you can’t get rid of them. Any of the ones that are worth owning are ridiculously expensive to purchase. Other than that, sounds great, right?

Based on the things that I’ve read, a lot of that can be true.

However, if you do your research and know what you’re getting into, owning a timeshare can improve the way you vacation… or at least that’s my theory and hope going into this. I’ve done quite a bit of research so I do feel good about it going into this.

Here are five reasons why I believe buying a timeshare is the right move for us:

 

1. We travel most years. Who am I kidding, we travel every year. Quite often a few times a year. We buy “things” on occasion, but we are definitely of the mindset that experiences and memories are more important than accumulating stuff or always driving a new car. Because we know that we like to travel, we include money to cover those expenses in our monthly budget, so that it’s covered when the time comes.

Knowing that we are going to prioritize travel means that I’m ok with the commitment to pay a maintenance fee every year.

 

2. We like going to places where there are timeshare locations. Well, perhaps more accurately, we like to go a lot of different places, and a lot of those locations also have timeshares. If you’re going to buy into a timeshare system, you should either really want to go back to that same location or the other locations that are operated by the same or partner companies. If your vacation destinations don’t line up with where there is resort availability, owning a timeshare isn’t likely for you.

 

3. We’d enjoy having a bit more space when we travel. This one is probably a bit more subjective to us right now. With the kids being the ages that they are, we’re all really ok piling into a single standard hotel room with two queen beds. Half the time, we end up splitting up the adult and kids anyway. When we were in Hawaii, we only had an adult bed and a kid bed for one night.

That being said, the kids are starting to get older, and it would be nice (not required, but nice) to have some more private space. We also bought enough HGVC points for a two bedroom unit, which would also give us the flexibility to have grandparents or friends potentially travel with us. We also don’t have to eat out every meal — especially breakfast — so having a working kitchen will be nice.

 

4. We’re getting a high quality unit at a low price. If you go out to timeshare sales sites, you can quite often find units for sale for $1 — or in some cases, I’ve even seen where people are paying all of others closing costs just to get them to take them. Quite often, those locations are with questionable companies with high maintenance fees. I have no idea what the prices of timeshares will do in the future, but I feel confident that in the worst case scenario, I won’t be out too much capital — and could easily pass on the unit to someone else. However, my expectation is that we’ll hold on to this for a long time.

The high quality unit also means that we should have good trading power if we wanted to go outside the Hilton Grand Vacation Club system. The location we’re buying into trades into both RCI and II — the two major players.

There’s one additional benefit from a high quality unit which takes me to my final point.

 

5. The week at the location that we’re buying rents for more than double the maintenance fees. Owning a high demand week in a high demand location also means that if we wanted to, we could reserve the week and rent it out and more than cover the maintenance fees for the year. If we actually did rent it out every other year, it would essentially pay for a free vacation for us every other year as well. I don’t know how often that we would consider renting it out, but I love having that as a fallback option if we don’t need it for one reason or another.

We’re definitely still early in our journey, but I’ve done enough research that I feel very comfortable with our decidsion. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out and thank you to the friendly folks at the TUG (Timeshare User Group) forums. They not only helped by answering a few of my specific questions, but just reading through others’ posts was exteremely beneficial.

Stay tuned for more updates as we actually begin to use our new timeshare. Do you have a good or bad timeshare experience to share? Let me know @TalkToErik.

Hawaiian Booking Adventures

It’s been almost 20 years since I was last in Hawaii. As you might imagine, I’ve changed quite a bit in that timeframe, but the biggest difference between this trip and those previous ones was who was paying. But as we usually do, we try to stretch our travel dollars, and managed to do pretty well on this trip — despite the high prices always associated with Hawaii.

This trip was a another casualty of the Korey travel planning bug… this time courtesy of Scott’s Cheap Flights. Round trip flights still weren’t “cheap,” but just over $400 is about as low as I’ve seen so I do know it was a good deal. When we were booking, we were also able to cash in some credit card rewards which took care of two of the tickets. It also helps that the US Bank Altitude Reserve gives 1.5 times the value when you cash in reward dollars for travel. That meant that we were able to get two tickets for about $500. We booked the flights the same day that the deal became available, so we were committed.

I should have booked our hotel as soon as we made the flight reservations since there was free cancellation up to a week prior, but I was holding off to see what other arrangements we might make. I thought James had originally indicated that we might stay with him for a night or two, but that didn’t end up working out in the end. I incorrectly assumed that I’d be able to go back a few weeks later and find the same offer as I originally saw with Hilton points.

Lesson to be Learned: Book what you want when you can… especially if you can change your mind later.

I could see some of the nights we needed at the lower point amount, but I couldn’t get five consecutive days to go through. Every now and then a person can do other things to make reservations happen, so I figured that was worth a shot. So I tried calling the Hilton desk to try to get the award level I wanted at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, but I struck out there as well. However, they did offer me 500 points to listen to a special offer… aka sign up for their timeshare pitch. As I was already in a sour mood and a little dejected that I wasn’t going to be able to book points directly on the beach, I said, sure why not.

But as fate would have it, that turned out to be a good thing.

As the guy gets on the phone to pitch the sale, one of the places he says you can go is none other than the HHV. So he and I go back and forth on the details, check the availability, etc. In the end, it would be about $800 for 5 nights at the resort we wanted, and he “triple checked” to make sure the dates we needed were available.

So I said yes.

I immediately got off the phone to make the reservation only to be told that those dates aren’t available at the HHV. As you can imagine, I was pissed. Several other calls later, I finally spoke with a supervisor who agreed to try to contact the resort for the dates we needed. If we couldn’t get the dates, he was going to refund my money. The only catch was that it would take a week to find out. He sounded legit, so I took him up on the offer. Nearly a week later, I found out that we could get what was originally promised.

I looked for two additional reward points for the other two days, so we could stay there for the whole trip. Hotel problems solved.

There were a few drawbacks to the cheap flights. First, we had to fly out of Houston rather than Austin which added about 2 hours to the drive to and from the aiport. Second, the flight left early in the morning and had a relatively long layover. And third, on the way back, we had to catch three flights to make our way back.

However, good fortune struck again in that there was a schedule change on our return flights. I called up the American Platinum Pro desk and asked if there was anything they could do because of that schedule change. It sounded like it was a bit of a stretch to do, but the agent I spoke with did change our flights so that we only had two hops on the way back home. I think he may have hooked us up a bit, but I was ok with that.

So long story short, it took some work to make it all happen, but we were well positioned for a great trip. What travel adventures (good or bad) have you had? Let me know @TalkToErik.

Who Wouldn’t Want Personal Surf Lessons?

One of the main reasons we settled in on going to Oahu was so that we could see my good friend Wave Hog. We hung out a few times while where on the island, but my favorite part of the visit had to be the personalized surf lessons we were able to get on Friday morning.
We grabbed our beach gear and hopped in a Lyft to go about a mile down the beach to the Duke Kahanamoku statue where we caught up with James. We helped him unload the surf boards from the illegal parking zone, put on our booties, and hauled them down to the beach.
It was another beautiful day on the beach. After James parked his truck, he walked back and joined us on the beach. He started off with some on shore lessons for Crosby to teach him (and Korey and me for that matter) what to expect.
Here were the four main lessons we learned:

1. Start on your stomach about a third of the way down the board and paddle out.

2. When you feel the wave start to grab the board, you do a push up to raise up on your feet

3. Despite what you see on TV, the best arm position for beginners is perpendicular to the board. It may not look quite as cool as front to back but does provide much better balance.

4. When you need to end your ride, it’s best to do more of a flop because the coral on the bottom of the ocean is sharp.

Crosby wanted to go first, so I helped him paddle out there on the big board. James had me go back towards shore a bit so that I could catch him. I had no idea how this was going to work so I went what I thought was a good ways away and waited.
It didn’t take long until there was a good wave coming. James had hopped off his board and was standing there to push Crosby’s board to get him started. James gave a him a big push, and Crosby caught the wave perfectly. Just as we were instructed, Crosby popped right up and took the position.
And he did awesome. So awesome in fact that he went flying way past me. I started frantically chasing after him, but he hopped off and was just hanging out waiting for me. We paddled back out, and he did it several more times — all really well, but none quite as long as that first one. He was having fun, but eventually wanted to go back in.

After we got back in, Korey took her turn while I stayed in with both kids. We could see her a little bit, but I couldn’t watch too much since I had to keep an eye on them. From what I saw, she was doing pretty well too.
Then it was my turn. I have only tried real surfing one other time (and that was in California with John Abbott). I never did very well there, and all I remember was a lot of paddling. I’m not sure if it was better instruction, better waves, or just better luck, but I did much better this time.
I still probably didn’t do as well as Crosby did, but I later learned that was almost to be expected. The bigger the board, the easier it is to catch a wave — or more accurately, the bigger the ratio is of the size of the board compared to the surfer, the easier it is to surf. So the fact that I’m five times bigger than he is means that I’m at a severe disadvantage. All that aside, we all still had a blast (and no one got hurt).
Thanks again James for an awesome morning of surfing!

An Unexpected Surprise at the Hilton Hawaiian Village

As I mentioned in our booking adventure, we had an early flight out of Houston, so we drove over Monday night to stay with Stephanie (Thanks Stephanie!), so that we could just get up and go to the airport. The kids were super excited, so despite it being really early, they were ready to go.

We got to the airport with enough time, but not as much as we were planning for, since it was a bit farther than we originally heard. The routing for this flight was a bit odd, as we had to drive to Houston to catch a flight to Dallas, but it got the job done. When we arrived in DFW, we knew we needed some breakfast and also wanted to let the kids run around for a bit. The only problem is that nearly all of the kids play areas in the airport have been turned into new shops. So we went terminal to terminal only to be disappointed. This was also the first time that I’ve ever seen the Skylink stop working, so we had to take the long way around the airport.

We did eventually find a mini-play area in Terminal D and got the kids some breakfast from McDonalds. This was also the first time I had a chance to use one of the Priority Pass lounges. That was another side benefit for the Altitude Reserve card, and I usually don’t book long layovers where it makes sense to use. We went with the Minute Suites option which was a nice break. Korey got a chance to lay down for a bit and the kids watched some TV before the flight.

Before we knew it, it was time to board, so we walked over to the gate and there were already a bunch of people getting on board. We had a row of four in the middle of the plane which worked out well. The flight to Honolulu was about 8 hours, but the kids really did great. I half watched a few movies and read a little bit as well. Carlyn played on her tablet a bunch and Crosby played hours of Plants vs Zombies. I had never played it before and will admit I was pulled into help and was having some fun with it as well.

We got into Honolulu mid-afternoon and were able to get our things pretty quickly. We had decided against renting a car due to the $43 a day parking fee and opted to use Uber and Lyft instead. Looking back that really turned out to be a great option. I used some Samsung Pay credits and even got some free rides for us as well. We brought boosters for both kids which was so much easier than the car seats.

Despite having some issues booking the hotel initially, I did finally sort out everything so that we could stay the whole time at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.  When we got to the hotel, we were greeted by a really long line to check in. Korey and the kids walked around a bit while I waited, but the wait turned out to play to our advantage. When I finally got up to the counter, they were very apologetic and super nice. I mentioned the two reservations I had and Rita was looking and looking at ways to string them all together. It took her a bit, but in the end she said that she was able to get us an upgraded room. It wasn’t until we got to the room that we realized how much of an upgrade it was!

We got a nice big (and updated) room in the Ali’i Tower with a full ocean view. That tower also had it’s own special pool (which we would frequent), had special desk staff, and it’s own private areas at some of the other pools. And most importantly, we were able to stay there the whole week!

It had been a long day already, but that didn’t hold us back from wanting to go out and enjoy the rest of the day. We walked over to the Paradise pool and tried out the water slides. We went down the big one first which goes surprisingly fast. Carlyn went under a bit and wasn’t too happy about that, so afterwards, she and I spent more time on the little slide. That one was short and slow, but she was still having a lot of fun. Crosby and Korey stuck together and did more of the fast ones.

After that, I went to check in on our timeshare pitch and get info about the luau for later in the week.

The hotel also built a large lagoon many years ago which is separated from the ocean and is therefore nearly still. The sand there is more coral based, so it’s a bit more coarse, but the kids still had fun playing in it for a bit.

It had been a long day, so we decided to call it quits a little bit early, but needed to eat first. We took the easy route and ordered some Thai takeout which was right up the road, pretty reasonable and very delicious!

The Exception: Fifteen Years and Four Jobs at IBM Later

I was fortunate enough to have breakfast with an IBM executive last week, and while he and I were talking about our careers and career progression, he mentioned that he had recently written a blog post about his 20 years at IBM. That, in turn, ultimately inspired me to write this, given my recent 15 year anniversary (and a bit of time on an airplane.)

If you would have asked me when I graduated college fifteen years ago whether or not I’d still be working at IBM, I would have said that I have no idea. On one hand, my dad (and grandpa for that matter) always worked at the same company, so that part wasn’t unusual. However, coming out of college in 2003 meant that times in tech were very turbulent. For that matter, had I started to work somewhere else, many of the tech companies around then are no longer around now. If you were a Vegas odds maker, the odds would have certainly been against still being at IBM.

I fully realize that staying at the same company for this long is by far no longer the norm these days. Nearly all of my other close friends from college have changed companies several times, with the biggest job hopper likely being at more than ten different companies. By age, I’m at the edge of the millennial designation, but I’ve always been more closely aligned to the older generation when it comes to decision making and approach to responsibilities.

So all of this begs the big question: Why have I stayed at IBM for Fifteen Years?

Understandably, there are many aspects to the many decisions that have kept me there, but I’ll highlight three major reasons.

1) IBM has been great to me

I came into IBM as a college hire onto a team where I was given a great opportunity to make a big impact on the business. I’ve always strived to be a top performer, and that hard work has usually been recognized. I’ve been blessed to have great mentors, managers, and executives supporting my career progression. That led to four promotions during the first twelve years of my career, and I am cautiously optimistic that I will be able to make the leap into the executive ranks in the next couple of years.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been tough times, long days, or challenges during my time here, but I know those challenges exist outside the Blue walls as well. I’ve always worked on interesting projects with great clients and have been rewarded for that hard work.

2) While my employer has had the same name, my job has not

There are certainly both pluses and minuses about working at a big company. I’m a positive sort of person, so I’ll stick to the biggest positive in my eyes: the ability to have different careers in the same company. I started off in a post-sales support/SWAT-type role where I was able to visit many Fortune 100 companies and help solve some of the biggest technical challenges they were facing. I always used to joke that I knew far more customers than IBMers, but those were great experiences to garner during the start of my career. I also was able to travel the world and get a wealth of international experience along the way.

But never knowing where you are going to sleep at night gets old, so I decided to take all of the experiences and lessons I learned in the field to empower others. I knew that I could scale my ability to make an impact by empowering a multitude of others, so I moved into an enablement role. While there, I learned even more about enterprise architecture and used that to improve the way we went about training our resources.

Then an opportunity I couldn’t refuse manifested itself, and I made the jump to a worldwide technical sales leadership role. I learned far more than I could have imagined about the sales process and how the front-end side of the business worked. Of course, I brought with me an abundance of knowledge about how customers actually use the software they buy, which was tremendously helpful. It was also great to see customers again!

This year, I’ve taken that enterprise architect role and picked up responsibilities to lead and manage an infrastructure team that now supports both tech sales and external audiences. It’s also in a fast-moving area of the business where we’re investing, which leads me to believe that, I again, am in the right place at the right time in the right role.

In many respects, these have been four (or more) completely different jobs, but with my network within IBM and the variety of opportunities, I was able to tackle them all without switching companies.

3) Work life balance

I know there are many jobs that pay more that I what I make, but I’ve come to understand that there’s more to life than money. The flexibility to balance both work and family life is nearly impossible to put a price on.

I’m a fully mobile-enabled employee; I can do most of my core responsibilities from my phone, iPad, or even on an airplane (provided there’s WiFi). While that sometimes means I answer some emails, calls, or Slack messages after standard business hours, that also means that if I have something personal that I need to take care of during the day, I feel confident that I’m able to do so without reprocussions.

The biggest aspect of the work life balance for me has to be working from home a few days a week — in particular in the morning. Mornings are my time to spend with the kids, and for the last five years, we spend a couple quality hours together running, playing, or whatever that morning brings before I go to work. There’s no way I could do that if I needed to sit in traffic and drive to the office every morning.

I’m empowered to both do what I need to do to be highly successful at work, and still enjoy the precious time I have with my family. This wasn’t historically the biggest reason that I’ve stayed, but it may be now with kids.

So the next logical question is, “What do the next 15 years have in store?” I’d likely fall back to the same answer I gave that long ago in college, that I really don’t know. What I do know is that if I’m able to repeat the success and satisfaction of the previous fifteen, that I’ll be a very happy (albeit a bit older) man. IBM has certainly been good to me, and I hope that our symbiotic relationship does continue for the next 15 years as well.

I’d love to hear why you’ve stayed or left your company. Let me know in the comments or @TalkToErik.

How Did This Five Year Chapter End?

People always say that time goes by faster as you get older, and I’ve certainly come to understand that it’s true. The best reason I’ve heard for that fact is that as you get older, the same amount of time represents an increasingly smaller amount of your overall life. For Crosby, a year is about 20 percent of his life. For Carlyn, that same year is almost a third of it. For me, it’s hard to believe that it’s now less that 3 percent of my life. All I can say is I hope like it doesn’t feel like it gets any faster, because it’s already crazy how fast it goes.

I don’t know about you, but I think about this from time to time, but sometimes there are major milestones that really drive the point home. This past Thursday and Friday were one of those that fit the bill.

Just over five years ago, I found that I suddenly began to gain a little weight and that I was not staying in as good of shape as I would have liked. Not so coincidentally that was also the time Crosby was born. It’s a amazing what a lack of sleep and exercise can do. Needless to say, that’s not what I wanted to write about here. The reason I bring that up is that I started doing something back then that did trigger the reason for writing this blog. I started running.

It’s not that I never ran before, but I certainly never loved running. However, back then I found a magical triple power that running with a jogging stroller provided:

1) I could get some exercise

2) Crosby could get some fresh air

3) Korey could get some peace and quiet.

It really was magical!

Over the past five years, I’ve probably pushed him several thousand miles in our various strollers — which is pretty amazing when I really start to think about it.

The way our work schedules typically line up, I have the kids in the morning. This is our time, and for Crosby and I it always has been. Korey went to work, and he and I ate breakfast, played, went to the park, and eventually I would run him over to day care. That’s been the routine ever since Korey went back to work.

That’s a really long intro for me to say, I really am a little sad to think that that chapter in our lives has come to an end. I really have loved that time that we spent together each day, and ensuring that we got it was always a priority for me. I don’t schedule calls then whenever possible, so that we do get that time. But kids do grow up. The little boy that used to giggle in the baby swings has become a full-on kid.

I must say though it has been a blast. As I look back, we’ve had all sorts of fun over the years. We’ve played “The Sock Game” — where the kids steal my socks and we chase each other around the house and in and out of the bouncy castle. We’ve played “The Tabby Game” —  where we present that Tabby is going to get us under the covers, and we looked down under the bed to find her. We’ve played hide and seek, and danced to music like the Party Freeze Dance. We’ve also done some things outside our house too from playing with chalk, swinging on the web swing, or even Crosby’s creative version of capture the flag with an assortment of gloves.

But of all of the things that we did over those five years, nothing could ever come close to the park — or more accurately a slew of parks. The regular park, the tunnel park, the Aunt Mo park, the green park, the blue park, the YMCA park, the school park, the other school park, the spiderweb park, the new park… we went to them all!

And of course, there were games to play while we were there. The king of all games of late has been the 100 minute game. At some point, I told Crosby that we had a certain amount of time left… say “5 more minutes,” and he said “No, 100 minutes.” And so it began! We “rang the bell” by crossing the bridge at the regular park. We played tag, “The Shoe Game,” and of course everyone’s long time favorite, kick daddy while swinging on the swing. That’s one has made the kids laugh since they were old enough to do so. I slide down into rocks, and create log jams, and play tic-tac-toe. We’ve spent the equivalent of days or weeks there playing.

So getting back to the present, how did the story end? As you may have imagined, the short version is that it ended exactly how it started.  Wednesday was the last regular day that I’ll have them both in the morning. Last Friday, ended truly exactly how it started — with me running and Crosby riding in the stroller on the Friday. Now I’m sure we’ll still run on the weekends and maybe again in the summer, but it is really a bit of an end of an era.

So I just soaked it in one last time. That Friday we went to the school park since the kids were still out for summer. We started with a game of tag and chasing one another. Somehow my using Turbo-mode to get away caused him to trip and fall from behind, so that brought a quick end to that game. Fortunately, I was able to redirect the sorrow into a trip over to the swings.

As we were swinging side by side, it really became one of those moments in time where you wish you could just hit pause to be able to come back to it. As a side note, it reminds me of something that the father and son would do in About Time. I’ll do the best I can to remember that moment and writing about it here will certainly help.

We couldn’t swing on the swings without playing the “Who’s little boy game?” I think today’s response was “Daddy’s little toot toot boy!”

Unfortunately, like all mornings, the time at the park needed to come to an end, but we did manage to play a quick round of one hundred minutes before we took off.

I know there will always be new and fun things to do as both kids continue to grow, but this will no doubt be something I will always cherish. And on the bright side, while I’ll certainly miss Crosby in the mornings, that will mean that Carlyn and I get to start spending some additional quality one-on-one time together which will be very welcomed.

Sunday Sunday Funday at the Roller Rink and More

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re not the sort of family that likes to just sit at home and watch TV all day. This Sunday was no exception. I started off the day with a 7 mile run with Wes to get things going. Crosby opted to come with today, which I never complain about. We did the normal long loop run down the trail and around Brushy Creek Lake, and then wrapped up the trip with a stop at the “School Park.”

He and I probably played there for nearly 45 minutes before my stomach told me it was time to get going home. He wanted to run a bit, and so when he got home it was too hot, so he had take off his shirt too to be like daddy to cool off.

I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and then went outside to try to finish up my rock project (which probably deserves it’s own post). I got about a third of the way down the path of setting the stepping stones before Crosby and Korey came out to tell me it was time to wash up. Korey found out that the roller rink opens early on Sunday’s for free public skating lessons, so we really hustled to make it down there in time. We had a buy one get one entry, so it only ended up being $16 for the four of us (including skate rental).

Looking back, doing the lessons were key. Korey and I even picked up a few tricks on the right way to get up and how to use the pizza shape to keep yourself from rolling. The lessons were also a big deal because neither of the kids had ever been skating before. Carlyn had some of the little plastic over the shoe style skates, but Crosby had the real deal.

Carlyn started picking it up like a champ. It definitely took her a bit to get her balance, but after a few falls, she was cruising down the rink on her own, marching, turning, and stopping.

Crosby was having a bit more issues, but in his defense, the real skates were much more slippery than the plastic ones. He was really struggling to keep his balance (even holding onto me), so we eventually gave it a try on the carpet. That drastically improved things and he was doing better over there. However, whenever we went back on the real floor, he was still struggling and getting very frustrated. He was about to give up and even started to cry a bit.

I saw that enough was enough, so we went over and tried the plastic skates this time with far better results. With those, he was out there in a hurry and able to get around all on his own. You could also just see his confidence growing as he was able to stay on his feet for more that 10 seconds at a time. We even got back out to the middle in time to do the hokie pokie with the rest of the lesson group.

Shortly after that, the roller rink actually opened and a few more people came in, but not so many that you couldn’t still get around. By this time, the kids were really into it and having a blast going around. I won’t lie in that I was having a lot of fun too!

If there was one thing we didn’t plan out well, it was food. Both kids started getting really hungry, but fortunately, some funions came to the rescue and we were able to stay for almost another hour. Korey and I would take turns with each of them, but still were able to make a few quicker laps on our own. Skating was definitely a hit, and I’m sure will do it again before too long.

Since we were in the area, and the grownups were getting hungry too, we went next door to Big Daddy’s and got some monster burgers for lunch (BOGO of course 🙂 ). I had a massive chili cheeseburger and Korey had something with fried peppers, queso, and ghost pepper aioli. As always, the food was really good!

By the time lunched wrapped up, the kids were getting restless, so we hurried up to go back home. Carlyn almost immediately fell asleep, and Crosby was only a few minutes behind her. Apparently all that skating really wore them out!

I ran a few errands, and then was going to keg the Hard Cider, but as we were pulling into Kyle and Melissa’s driveway, Kyle comes out to tell me that the autosiphon cracked as he was trying to get it cleaned up for me. At least there were some good intentions there! It was also pretty old, so there’s no doubt that I got my money’s worth.

On the plus side of things, that meant that we could just hang out a bit, so the kids and I watched some baseball with Kyle, while Korey and Melissa did driveway happy hour with the neighbors across the street. It was nice to just relax and drink a few beers with friends.

Last but not least on a full Sunday, we decided to go to Tokyo Steakhouse for my birthday meal there. The kids usually just share some edamame, but Korey and I each got to enjoy some hibachi chicken and steak. It’s always fun to see the show — even if it is the same thing every time. The food is also always really good!

To add to the entertainment, we had a family next to us whose son just turned 21. There were doing sake bombs, and having a good old time. They were really nice and also shared a good laugh when the wait staff mixed up and included a wrong name for him.

It was a really busy day, but it was also a really fun one! I’m so thankful that my family is able to enjoy days just like that.