BIG NEWS!

(Some of you may have already seen this on  FB but I've reserved details and feelings for the blog. Warning this is extra long. )

John was promoted to full time with UPS on Tuesday!

This has been a LONG time coming. It was the 3rd time in the last few months that he has been considered for a full time position and the first two times were sooooo disappointing. I have to admit it was hard for us to get as excited this time around. And with that lack of excitement, faith was a little harder to come by as well. We tried hard not to think about it in the two weeks that we had to wait to find out. That was hard too. In order to fully understand where we've been with the job situation I need to go back a lot farther though.

John has been working with this company for 5 years now. He's been a supervisor for at least 3 years I think, just part time, which was great while he was going to school and I was working. As soon as he graduated he had his full time application in and we were hopeful it would come quickly. That was in '09. All that summer we kept hoping and I kept wondering if I really was going to go back and teach in the Fall. I kept wondering what I would do with Cache. Nothing happened and so I did go back and teach and we were able to work out caring for our little one with the understanding that as soon as John got promoted I would have to quit. Possibly even in the middle of the school year. That would have been hard but worth it. As it turned out I finished that school year, but in April I had decided that I needed to be at home with Cache no matter what happened at UPS. We may need to sell our house or look for other job opportunities but I KNEW I just had to be home. That was a VERY hard decision but I was counting on our act of Faith to land us a great job somewhere. 

 Again, we waited and hoped John would get a call. Fall started to approach again and my last paycheck was going to be in August, after that we would have to do something. I should mention while we waited John didn't just sit back and do nothing. He applied EVERYWHERE in Logan it seemed like. Most applications he never got calls on and the few he interviewed for just didn't work out. Finally he applied at Conservice and got a full-time but very low paying job there in August right in time for my pay checks to stop. (That was a huge blessing for which we are soooo grateful.) This meant John would be working graveyards at UPS and during the day at Conservice. 14-16 hour days. He did it without hardly a complaint and I got to stay home like I knew I needed to. It turned out to be a good thing too when we got the surprise that I was expecting again and I ended up on the couch for a month straight. That wouldn't have been fun to try to deal with teaching at that same time. 

Since August money has been a lot tighter but we have been blessed every step of the way. I've always known how to budget but just didn't do it. I started and it has been a great learning experience for me. I realized how much we could have been saving when I was working and have made a promise to myself that with the extra money we may have I will be a better saver. 

We have learned to live simply, on very little and have been so grateful for what we have. Though we have been getting by, there is a lot of stress connected to tight money situations and so when we got the news about John's job on Tuesday we all cried with relief and gratefulness. We understand very clearly  where this blessing came from and I have a new perspective on lots of things. There were a few times when I let myself get down for a second, when it seemed that we just couldn't get a break, but right after was always when John and I seemed to grow closer as a couple and I felt our family get a little stronger. I can honestly say I am grateful John did not get the job sooner. No,  I wouldn't have wanted to go much longer, but the lessons learned are irreplaceable. I will never be the one to say that money is not important, you have to be able to survive, but I will be the first to say it is NOT the most important thing. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, Family, and Friends come first, and when they are the priority you can be happy no matter how much money you make.