Rewind!

So because I was such a horrible blogger in 2011, I thought that I would do a little overview. This year has been so amazing, and we have learned SO MUCH! Ever since graduating in April, things have been crazy! I always thought that once we "settled down" and were out of school things would be so smooth...HA. I have a lot to learn about "real life."

So we bought our first house. It was a great deal, maybe too good of a deal :). It is about 15 minutes from any kind of town, and store, but we thought we would give the country a try. It hasn't been bad, except that since moving in, everything in this house has died! We have bought all new appliances, including a washer and dryer. Our TV died, our vacuum died...It was amazing. I didn't think everything could just quit on you all at once :) It was just one thing after another, so we haven't been able to save much money at all, besides Riley's 401K. We still have a lot of work to do on this house as well.

Things were feeling a bit more "stretched" than we liked. We were going into the holiday season hoping for a Christmas bonus to give us a little more "padding" especially with a new baby coming and having to buy a bigger car this spring. Well we got a bonus, just not a monetary one :)

On December 8th Riley called me from work, which was weird, normally he just texts me, so I knew it was something important. He told me they laid him off and he was coming home. I was in shock. This company who had recruited him so heavily this summer was now laying people off? I was sad, scared, mad for us and for the other engineers who were without jobs right before Christmas. They were paying him through the end of the month, but who hires during Christmas time? I thought we would be dead. Things were tight, and now this.

Riley didn't leave the computer for like 2 whole days. Contacting anyone and everyone he knew or who had contacted him about jobs. We put the house up for sale immediately. All his other job offers when we graduated were in Seattle, San Jose, Baltimore, Portland, etc. We thought we would have to prepare for a cross country move.

Then 2 days after losing his job, he had another offer that he could do from home. It wasn't what he really wanted to do, but it was a job at least until he found something permanent. They wanted him to start ASAP and were going to pay him what he was making before, and while it wasn't ideal, it was a great band aid.

Then the calls started coming. Miracles were happening all around us. There was still a bit of uncertainty, but we weren't scared. We knew things would work out. He ended up taking a job here in Utah that we think will be a good one (we thought that about the first one though :) We went from having no job to having to pick between jobs again. It was an amazing week, and made us think so much about the true meaning of Christmas and the miracles that happen daily.

Riley starts his new job today. So it's like we didn't miss a beat. He just got a nice, long, paid Christmas Vacation :) What a blessing to have time to be together. We really enjoyed being together and spending time with family.

The house is still on the market. There is supposedly an offer coming in this month after they save up a bit more money. We really have enjoyed our time out in the Cedar Valley, but we feel like moving closer to town and making wiser decisions about paying a bit more, but not having so much fixing up to do would be a better decision in the long run. So the house hunting has begun...again :)

We will see what happens, and have learned a lot from the decisions we have made this year. We made decisions that we thought were the best, and given the chance, we would have made them again. Life isn't always what you plan, but it is what you need.