Two weeks of time and half a country covered

When I last posted two weeks ago everything was on hold. Bill was interviewing at a firm in Seattle that I felt was a total impossibility, we had received several not very good job offers that would have been hard to live on in cities we weren't in love with. I was at a really low point because hello, this job hunting process is incredibly stressful! And now two weeks later everything has changed. Bill flew out to Seattle two Sundays ago. He interviewed for six hours on Monday and met just about everyone he could imagine at this company. He flew home on Tuesday and before he landed in Greenville he had an offer letter in his email. It was a great offer, particularly compared to the others! It was comprehensive and thoughtful. It addressed parts of the total package that the other firms hadn't even thought of and when we asked about they had been chintzy in their offers. Basically it's a dream come true. We're at a sort of weird place in our career where we're just starting out but we have a big family, so whatever we picked was going to feel tight, but we feel so great about moving to Seattle. The firm is fabulous. Everyone who knows them has great things to say, which is very gratifying. It's nice to know we're going to a great place to work.

Seattle is awesome. Bill's sister and family lives there. We've never lived near family and I'm so excited about that. The outdoor stuff there is a wonderland for us. The schools are good. The location is beautiful. It also happens to be incredibly expensive and housing is jaw droppingly pricey. Haha! Nine percent sales tax. It's going to be an adjustment for sure. But after looking at every possibility in housing available at the time, one opened up that we jumped on and have an application in at that is only nine miles from work, six miles from Bill's sister, and closer than we had possibly hoped to live. We were looking at houses with commutes of over an hour each way or parts of the city that were pretty sketchy feeling. But this location is great. So hopefully we'll have it secured in a day or two once the screening process goes through.

When the offer came in and we decided to accept I threw out the idea of hey, there's nothing keeping us in South Carolina, what if we did something totally crazy and wrapped up things there, packed up, and moved in time to get to Utah in time for Christmas. This was December 19th at the time. The next week was insane. My sister and her family came to visit. It poured the entire time she was there, so we did approximately two things while they were there. We went to Bill's lab, where my nieces and nephews had a great time experiencing the wind tunnel, and we packed up my house and then the truck. Not quite the vacation they expected, but I loved seeing them and was so grateful for their help! I said goodbye to everyone I possibly could at church because hello, we love South Carolina and our friends of the last six years. I still have this giant hole in my heart for all my friends there. And then on Friday night the 21st we got on the road. We drove all of 30 minutes that first night, at like 9:30 PM, lol, just to get on the road and out of our house. And then we blazed trails for three full days. We had the most amazing weather the entire time. I couldn't believe it. Not a speck of weather hit us. We rolled into Salt Lake at 10:45 PM on Christmas Eve. Ha! We did it!

We've had an awesome week here in Utah. I can't say we've done a lot, but being with family is just heavenly. Christmas was wonderful. We've spent time with Bill's parents, his sister and her adorable kids, his other sister and girlfriend, my sister, two brothers, two nieces. We went and saw the lights at Temple Square. We've played in the snow that fell exactly one day after we'd had the most perfect weather driving across the entire country. I feel like I'm gushing, but I can't emphasize enough how wonderful it is to be with family. We loved our South Carolina life, but it was distinctly lacking in family time. And now we've had a week of complete immersion, and it's good for my soul.

I can't wait to get on the road and get our last day and a bit of traveling done and settle into our new life, but this time here in Utah has been good, really good. Here's to all the ways I've felt so blessed through this process, even when it felt like nothing was working out.