The awesomeness of our lives...

As I have been blogging in the past few weeks, I realized that pretty soon I was going to reach 200 posts on our blog! Yeah, I know – way exciting! I was trying to think of something really cool to do for post #200, like 200 interesting things about our family, or 200 of our favorite things – but that is a LOT of things. Way too many to think of and way too many for people to read (come on, how interesting would that really be?) So then I thought I’d just post about something really exciting. Well, it’s time to write post #200 and I suppose the recent events worth blogging about are exciting in a way, but are definitely not what we had planned for our family right now! So, here goes -

As you may know, we have been planning on moving up to Idaho and have been job searching for the past couple of months. We decided to move up there for a couple of reasons, one being that Jonathan’s family lives in Adrian, Oregon – not far from the Idaho border and about 45 minutes from Boise. Also, Jonathan is planning on applying to PA school (physician assistant) and there is a program in Boise we want to apply to – so we decided to move here, be close to his family for awhile, hopefully get into that program and be Idaho residents and save a lot of money on tuition. Our original plan was for Jonathan to hopefully get a job and move by the beginning of October. After applying to lots of jobs and having no luck in that department, the beginning of October came and went. Jonathan talked with his boss about working there longer and they said that was fine. We continued our job search, and then found out that Jonathan had cholesteatoma and needed some pretty intense ear surgery. This was a bit of a blessing in disguise for us and we were glad we hadn’t moved yet and that we were able to take care of his ear while still on our insurance, instead of finding out about it between insurances.

Jonathan was home recovering for about a week and returned to work last Wednesday, when his boss talked to him and told him that they wanted him to quit at the end of the month, since they had already hired his replacement. They let him work longer because of his surgery and the whole insurance thing, which was very nice. And we completely understand where they are coming from, but the hard thing was that this happened on October 29 – meaning that he only had two more days of work, and then he had to quit!

While it was a bit of a shock, and we really wish they had told us a week or two sooner, we actually were not very worried about it. We really feel as if everything will work out perfectly and that the Lord will guide us. We see it as a bit of an adventure for our family, and a push to get us up there and finding a job soon.

So right now we are staying with Jonathan’s family and are job searching like crazy. We drove up on Saturday through a pretty intense rain storm and got here late Saturday night. We almost had to pull off the freeway because it was raining so hard, but we were in an area out in the middle of nowhere in Idaho with random exits with absolutely nothing nearby – no gas, no food – and we weren’t sure if we would be able to get back on the freeway if we took them! Luckily the rain died down a bit and we were safe and sound. James likes to pretend like he’s driving when we pull over for gas or for food – this time he even made some driving noises while turning the steering wheel!

We pulled over to feed James and he had a nice little visit with his Daddy.

Jonathan’s parents have been in North Carolina for our nephew Benjamin’s baptism (congratulations, Benjamin! We are so proud of you!), so we have had a great time with Rebecca, Anna and Spencer, who stayed at home. Jonathan’s siblings had “waited up” for us and this is what we found when we got home–

James was wide awake when we got here and wanted to play with his sleepy aunts and uncle!

We had a nice Sunday going to church and spending time with Jonathan’s siblings. I took this pretty picture on our way home from church – it is so gorgeous out here!

We were so sleepy on Sunday and we ended up going to bed super early. After being on the phone for a few minutes, I found my boys like this –

I love my boys so much and am so grateful for them.

There are a couple of jobs we are waiting to hear on that seem promising and we are hoping that one of them will work out. Cross your fingers for us!

Tonight we were getting James ready for bed, and Jonathan was reading some books to him, which is our nightly tradition. Usually we read to him from the scripture stories books with the abridged scripture stories and the pictures, and then Jonathan reads some books to him and then we put him to bed. We didn’t bring our scripture stories book with us to Oregon. While Jonathan was reading to him, James was kind of flipping through the pages of one of his books. All of a sudden he started saying “Jesus …Jesus…” It was so sweet – he missed reading the scriptures and wanted to read about Jesus! I went and found a book on the Bosters’ shelf with pictures of Jesus in it, and I think he was happy. It was the sweetest thing and such a good reminder from our little boy.