New Plans

Oh goodness, what a roller coaster weekend it has been. This last six months of Bill's grad work has been one huge hill to overcome after another. Every phase has taken twice as long as expected. Everything is hard. I kept wondering what the next hard thing would be but it never crossed my mind the job search would be it. We thought we were heading to Colorado to work for a firm there we recruited with last year. Only problem, they got back to us letting us know they actually don't have any openings right now, which was completely unexpected and it's like now what? The sky is the limit. We can go anywhere. All weekend it's been a mix of mourning the "loss" of a completely ideal job location and situation as well as throwing around ideas of what we want to do now. I mean obviously Bill is starting his job search again, and there are a couple wind engineering firms that would be really nice to work for, but their locations aren't ideal for us, so if they don't work out then we'll spread our search wide and it opens up all sorts of possibilities for deciding where to relocate. Do we want to head back west near family? The mountain west is a fairly expensive place to live. But do we want to live in some of the less expensive areas in the country? Maybe. Might be great. But there are just so many options and choices. I could do some decision analysis on it, a process I learned in my grad program, and I am loosely doing it in my head, but I can't even decide what my priorities are. Too many options. Previously we were very limited to location of desired firm. Now what is our criteria? So many things to think about.


Aside from that this week has been all about swim lessons. The kids are loving them. This was Chloe's first time floating. She did it on her own while her siblings were in their lessons and she was just playing. I'm pretty sure it was an accident but she realized it was awesome and now she's all over the pool.

She's just so cute in her swimsuit and puddle jumper. She has to wear it whenever she's in the YMCA pool not during lessons.

Aaron also figured out the puddle jumper thing and now he's all over the pool.

We went to a friend's birthday party. It was so fun.

The kids got out their own water colors one afternoon. They did a surprisingly good job of painting without making a huge mess.

Bill and Chloe got colds this weekend. This is his happy sick husband face. :)