The Woods Family Website

Last week I got a call from Josh Smith at Manpower and he scheduled an interview for me with a company called Almaco.  They are a manufacturing company that makes agriculture equipment for research.  The market is good and they are looking for someone to help drive continuous improvement in the facility and increase their capacity.  I drove down their plant (in Nevada) on Monday the 7^th to interview.  Things went well and on Tuesday they asked for my references.  So it sounds pretty promising.  As far as my interest, I really like this opportunity.  The company is basically a job shop and it will require me to stretch my LeanSigma muscles a little.  The biggest excitement is that this company isn’t nearly as regulated as my previous employer.  Having the ability to walk out to the production floor and immediately implement change is very nice.

I’ll keep you all updated as things progress.

Wow… words can’t describe how awesome this weekend was.  I didn’t realize how much I missed being together as a family (Candice, me, and the kids).  I mean, I feel lonely pretty often without them with me, but I had so much fun I didn’t want the time to pass.  We met up in Ames on Friday night because Cameron (Candice’s youngest brother) was in town to see Marcus.  We got a chance to chit-chat and enjoy Cameron’s company before we headed back up to Fort Dodge.  That night was pretty tame; we put the kids to bed and called it a night.  The next day was absolutely gorgeous.  The sun was shining and there was a nice breeze.  We got the kids dressed early that morning and spent as much time outside as humanly possible.  I got a chance to clean up my car and the boys played outside all afternoon.  Around 5 PM, John brought over his two nephews and his niece to play.  The kids were a lot of fun to have around.  I got a feeling of what it’d be like to have a large family.  Candice did too, and mentioned that we should consider having 5 kids… yeah right!  We grilled out, had a few beverages, and let the kids play until it got late.  John had to drag the kids out… they wanted to stay the night.  Sunday was pretty lazy.  Candice helped me with the laundry and we vegged for most of the morning.  In the afternoon they packed up and headed out.  It was painful to see them go, but hopefully we won’t be doing the long distance thing for much longer.

Josh arrived in Des Moines on the 22^nd of March and is back from the UK.  We met him at the airport and went out to dinner at Perkins.  On Easter Sunday, Josh and Kelli came to church with us and spent time visiting with us and the kids.  They also went out to the Ballard’s house to spend time with Kelli’s family.  From what I understand, Josh is here for an undetermined amount of time to conduct an experiment for his research and ultimately his thesis.  Last I heard from him he was still developing his study, but hoped to start conducting the actual experiment sometime in the next week or so.  Good luck bubba, we’re all so very proud of you!