more visiting Ann and James

Ann and James were coming back from their trip, so we decided to go stay at their house for a few more days before going to Georgia. They had a lot of helpful input about finding houses.

Until this point buying a house wasn't even something I was thinking about. I figured buying a house was something you did when you feel really secure about your job and you know you want to stay there for a long time. But after talking to the bishops near Augusta and a realtor who they had recommended, we realized that because of the strong military presence there, renting is more expensive, and Ryan was talking seriously about buying a house. I was really nervous about taking such a big step.

Ryan's sister Eliza offered to watch our kids so we could go to the temple, and we gladly took her up on the offer. Ann and James gave us some family names and we did an endowment session. While we were waiting in the chapel, Ryan felt prompted to open the scriptures, and I know this sounds incredible, but he was specifically told to go to the Doctrine and Covenants, then go to Section 48, and then he read verse 3 and laughed out loud: "And inasmuch as ye have not lands, let them buy for the present time in those regions round about, as seemeth them good, for it must needs be necessary that they have places to live for the present time."

So while we were in the temple I thought and prayed a lot about it and I felt that it was at least worth it to look into buying a house and see what would happen. We talked to the realtor and she sent us information about some potential houses we could look at so she could get a sense of what we were looking for. The more we talked about it and I thought about it the more it made sense to buy a house. We figured out that we would probably be paying $500 more per month to rent a house than to buy a house, and we felt that it was likely that we could get a pretty nice house and have a house payment that was less than what we were paying at Baity Hill. Plus, if we bought a house, even if we didn't stay there forever, we could sell the house and get a lot of that money back, whereas if we rented that wouldn't be the case. Or we could rent it out since the military presence is so strong in the area. So I felt better about it the more we talked about it, even though it still felt like a big step.

While we were looking into housing we were also thinking about getting our kids into school, and when I looked up the school district where we wanted to send our kids to school I realized that school started on August 8, which meant that we had two weeks to drive to Georgia, find a place to stay, and get our kids enrolled in school. And closing on a house would probably take a month, so we needed to find temporary housing too.

The Apartment Guide recommended several places for temporary housing, but that website was decidedly unhelpful because all the places they recommended actually required a minimum 12-month lease. I called a lot of places and started to lose hope because none of them would let us rent month-to-month. I was also worried that Kevin and Heidi would have to start school at one place (and most of the apartments are in bad school districts) and then transfer after we closed on the house. I ended up writing a rant about it on Facebook and asking for prayers. Well, somebody must have said a prayer for us because I ended up calling one more place, and while they did require you to sign a 12-month lease, they said that the penalty for terminating the lease early was only one month's rent, which actually wasn't that bad compared to some of the other places we had talked to. So within an hour after my Facebook post we had an apartment set up with the lease starting the day we were planning to arrive in Georgia. So we were very grateful that this had worked out. I was still worried about the school situation, but we hoped that if we could make an offer on a house we could persuade the school to let our kids start attending there from the beginning.

Anyway, it was nice to get to spend more time with Ryan's family.

There were a few visits from a mother deer and her twin babies, which are not as cute when they eat all your flowers.

We found this little girl playing in the dirt by Ann and James' house, so we decided to take her in and give her a bath. It turns out it was actually Heidi. :)

I never did get all the brown stains out of that skirt.

We had a dinner at Eliza's house the night before we left for Georgia. Becky and Paul came with their family too and we got to hear about their experience being in the Palmyra pageant. It was very fun to spend more time with everyone and for our kids to get to know their cousins better.

Kevin and Nathan figured out that they're the same age (even if Kevin is a head taller . . . ) and were instant friends.

Heidi and Ann Marie enjoyed playing with Lucy (or Boosey, as Ann Marie called her).

We got everything packed in the van and left as early as we could the next morning (because we had to get to New Mexico, not because we were eager to leave).

more pictures from my parents' house

It was so great to get to spend two weeks with my family.

It was such a relief when we knew that Ryan had accepted a job offer and everything was finalized. But the stress didn't end there because now we had to figure out when to leave and find housing. We were able to get in touch with some of the bishops in the area to get advice about where to live. One of our top priorities was getting our kids into good schools, and they were really helpful about telling us where the good schools are.

When I get stressed I start organizing and decluttering, and I ended up going through all the dolls and Barbies (and there were a lot). It was interesting to see that some of the doll clothes I used to use were still there. I don't think any of my old Barbies or dolls were still around, but it was interesting to go back down memory lane.

On our second Sunday we went to visit my grandparents, which was great. Grandma shared a lot of new things she had learned from Uncle Wallace about her family history and she had some pictures I had never seen before.

I wanted to be sure to get a picture with my grandparents while we were there.

Ryan found this in the pantry. Apparently the weird food storage lady from the ward gave these out as Christmas gifts. Yes, those are freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches, and my only question is, Why???

So, interesting story. Michelle really wanted to come down and see us before we left, but Donovan had to work and needed the car. So my mom went to pick her up from Rexburg, and Ian and Ellen were going with her. Mom offered to take Kevin and Heidi too, and they seemed excited about it, so we said they could go.

Several hours later Michelle sent me a text asking when they had left. By this point we thought they would have almost been back home, but they hadn't even gotten to Rexburg yet. I asked her to let us know when they got there because I didn't think they had a cell phone (it turns out Mom took Dad's phone, but I didn't know that). Half an hour later when I learned from Michelle that they still hadn't gotten there, I slowly started freaking out, until I was certain that they had been in a terrible car crash and I had lost my child, my mom, and my brother and sister all in one day. I knew it was kind of illogical to get this worked up, but I kind of gave in and got way too upset. Finally I started saying a prayer begging Heavenly Father to bring them all back safe, and as I finished the prayer I literally heard the voice of the Spirit say, "Why are you crying?" And immediately all those worried feelings were gone and I felt kind of silly for crying. Then I heard the voice again saying, "Mine is not a spirit of fear, but a spirit of peace." A few minutes later we heard from Michelle that my mom had just arrived. It turned out that the traffic had been really bad, and that was why it took so long to get there.

So they finally got home and we got to enjoy seeing Michelle for a day, which was really nice.

Giving Aunt Elizabeth one more hug.

Ann Marie found my mascara in the car.

Kevin's Birthday

We celebrated Kevin's birthday with my family.

Melissa had come up and she and my mom made four really delicious pizzas.

One of the first things I ever pinned was a recipe for making Lego cakes, so I decided it was high time I actually tried it. I made a chocolate cake and frosting. The cake was great, but Ryan said the frosting was weird. To make the legos I cut the cake into three rectangles and frosted them, then I cut marshmallows in half and frosted them for the top. My mom had some lego candles too. Kevin really liked the cake and says he wants the same cake next year.

Kevin is a very fun kid!

Kevin got a lego submarine kit from us and a book and some coloring books from Grandma and Grandpa Glenn. Ellen helped him start working on the legos that evening and he really enjoyed it. It was fun to get to celebrate his birthday with my family. I think he had a fun birthday.

It's hard to believe Kevin is seven. He is very interested in science and building things. It's fun when he sits and watches things to try to figure out how things work. I hope that I can help him to reach his potential and always love learning and experimenting.

Church History Museum

While we were visiting my parents we took a trip to Salt Lake City to see the Church History Museum and some other sights.

We brought lunch and ate at the City Creek Center.

Seeing one of the original Book of Mormons:

Learning about using pulleys to lift up heavy stones to build the temple:

Kevin is lucky to have Uncle Ian to lift him up:

Children's section:

Making origami doves:

Tabernacle:

Visiting the Christus:

New Job

The day we moved out of Baity Hill, Ryan got an email from Augusta University asking if he could do a phone interview. Unfortunately, Ryan didn't see the email until late the next day when we were in Nauvoo. We didn't have very good cell phone reception there, so Ryan asked them if they would be willing to wait until we had better reception, but they wanted to finish all the interviews by the next day, so we concluded that Ryan wasn't going to be able to get this job.

But then while we were at my parents' house, Augusta University contacted Ryan again. They hadn't been able to fill the position and they still wanted to interview him. So Ryan did a phone interview in my parents' garage (the only place in the house where you can get cell phone reception) and it seemed to go really well. Ryan found out that they had just recently merged with another university with a med school and they were trying to build up their department and figure out how to make their introductory physics classes better for pre-med students. Incidentally, Ryan has been helping develop a Physics for the Life Sciences course at UNC for the past few years, so he has a lot of experience with that.

A few days later Ryan did another interview with the chair of the department that also went well, and Ryan was offered the job.

At this point Ryan also had been asked to do another interview with another university, and Webassign seemed to be seriously considering hiring him because they wanted to fly him to Raleigh for an on-site interview. Ryan had also been in touch with some friends who worked at Los Alamos in New Mexico and he thought there might be a possibility of doing a postdoc there, which would generally be considered a good career move and would also pay very well. So the position at Augusta University looked like a great option, but there were also other options to consider.

After praying about it and reading about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis burying their weapons of war, Ryan had a strong feeling that even if he was offered a job at Los Alamos he shouldn't accept it. He would have been doing work with nuclear weapons, and for some reason he knew he wasn't supposed to be working with nuclear weapons.

In comparison with the other two positions, Augusta University was the obvious choice, so Ryan accepted the offer in mid-July. What a relief! The job is renewed yearly, but the department seems to have an interest in having Ryan stay and there is a possibility that a tenure track position could open up for him in the future. We'll just have to see how that works out, but for now we're grateful for what we have.

(If you want to hear more about the entire job hunting process check out Ryan's blog post about it here.)

Visiting my parents

While Ryan's parents were traveling we got to spend two weeks with my parents. I woke up the first morning and Elizabeth had already become Ann Marie's new best friend.

The girls discovered the Barbies and the baby dolls pretty quickly and played with them a lot.

Ian humored Kevin with lots of light saber fights and video game fun.

One evening we roasted hotdogs and marshmallows for dinner. Yum!

I don't know if you've noticed, but my parents have a great fenced backyard with a playground and sandbox and lots of shade.

We went to the park one day and then went exploring. We went and looked at this old burned down building. It used to be a mill and then John H. Bott used it to build monuments and headstones until it burned down.

The girls enjoyed "helping" Grandpa with the garden one Saturday.