Phew

Okay.  Kendall and the boys are having a camp out in the backyard. Dodge is asleep in his bed. It's time for me to do some much needed blogging.  It has been a jam packed summer and an important one. I need to get writing it down.  


Let's start with the biggest stuff...major life changes.


We've been considering a job change for Kendall for a while.  We've thought about it and considered all kinds of options.  Kendall needed a new challenge and we really wanted to have something that allowed Kendall to be a little more available to the family.  We thought and thought and researched and considered until one day Kendall came home and said it was time to start applying for some things.  So, for about a week or two, he applied for jobs online.  The next week, the calls started coming.  He had a lot of calls back. We were feeling so grateful for that. He went in for 3 face to face interviews and ended up with 2 job offers!  What a huge blessing.

We knew there was one offer coming in from a company in Idaho Falls. We were super excited about this opportunity. We went up there and checked out the area.  We'd looked online at real estate.  We'd talked to people and googled things. This company took every other Friday off. This was so great for our desire to have Kendall around a little more.  Every other Friday ends up to be a lot of extra days off a year!  Monday morning, I would have told you we'd be heading to Idaho Falls.

In Idaho Falls. Did you know Brigg is an expert pumper? Luke taught him. Great!

Picnic lunch at a park in Idaho falls

  Then, another company called Kendall back. Northrop Grumman in Salt Lake City. Kendall had just gone in on Friday for an interview there.  He didn't feel like he did a great job at that interview and the schedule at Idaho Falls  meant a lot to us.  Northrop wanted Kendall to talk to one more person over the phone and then they said they'd have an offer come in later that day.  We were super grateful for this, but as we talked it back and forth, that promise of better work life balance was really outweighing the better (for us) location of Salt Lake.  But, when Kendall talked to that last person from Northrop, he found out that they ALSO do every other Friday off!  What in the world? I was shocked! How did both of these companies that we were getting offers from have this schedule!?  It was really an answer to our prayers. We were searching for a way to have Kendall a little more available to us and Heavenly Father presented us with not one, but two options! 

Needless to say, this new information changed everything completely.  Now we had a company that not only had the good schedule, but ended up offering higher pay and was in Salt Lake which is where we secretly hoped to go.  There is a lot of benefits to being in a place like Salt Lake.....

Number ONE: way more things to do and places to shop! :)  Really, though....we keep talking about this. 

2. Tons of opportunity for jobs if Kendall ever decides he'd like to look elsewhere. 

3. Closer to family.  

4. Closer to big hospitals.

5. Right by the airport.

etc. etc. 

Although the IF offer was a little less money, they did offer a relocation package that SLC didn't, which was extremely enticing.  And IF has really affordable real estate. It wasn't an easy decision.   In the end, we felt like we had 2 good options. 

 We felt like it would be okay to go either way. 

  And we chose  Salt Lake. 

 Kendall started last week.

We've been prepping our house to put on the market for a while too.  We put it up online by owner and got almost no response.  After we accepted this job offer, we paid a flat fee to post our house on MLS.  We had people start coming and on Kendall's first day of his new job, our house was officially under contract.  We pray that things will go smoothly through the closing day at the end of August. 

We have also been house hunting this week and have a couple of good options for houses to buy near Kendall's new job. We should know for sure in the next week.