peace & blessings

2014 has been a crazy year for us, and i feel the need to publicly express gratitude for the MANY blessings we've experienced over the last few months. cory and i have had to make many life-changing decisions, we've encountered many obstacles, yet as i write i feel so much peace and love for my heavenly father and his blessings.

cory began looking for jobs after graduation in winter 2013 and spent many hours perfecting his linked profile. we went to career fairs, networked with family and friends and read lots of books/articles on life after college. he had about three main options by winter 2014 and we had to really think about what was best for us and our future family. we would've ended up in alaska, oklahoma or somewhere that would be a total surprise to us (with accuquest). with scheduling, cory couldn't fly out to illinois for his third interview with accuquest until the beginning of april (a mere three weeks before graduation!) and was told they would most likely extend him an offer. we waited over a week for that offer and finally, after a few emails from the VP, HR sent him the offer. it turns out they had sent the offer to cory three days after his interview...to the wrong email address. nevertheless, we felt so grateful and sure that this was the job for cory, even though it meant i would be hanging out in a hotel all summer with sienna.

we had packed our two suitcases for the summer in the extended stay, booked a cruise, booked a moving truck for our cross-country trip when i found out i was pregnant. it was SHOCKING. we had been trying for less than six months, but i was convinced we couldn't have children and was emotionally working through that. it had been a hard five months and i was planning to work once cory finished training. in retrospect, i have NO doubt it was the Lord's timing at work, because with the morning sickness i experienced my first trimester, i would not have survived work and school. another blessing of being pregnant at this time was that i could help pack and move (several times, so far this spring/summer), and that i could be with my family for part of the pregnancy. also, i think i would've gone crazy for two months in the extended stay if i didn't feel so sick. blessings in disguise!

the plan was for cory to train in illinois for two months, then complete his last month of training in august in indiana. my sweet parents came down to chicago and got sienna and i to take back up to minnesota for the month because i was still feeling sick, but getting better, thus boredom was setting in. it was surprisingly hard for me to be away from cory. maybe it was the hormones, but when he found out the company was keeping him there for another month, we were both a little bummed. he hadn't done as well with his sales his first two weeks, but he did phenomenally the last two weeks and by that point, the decision had been made. one of the doctors said that they felt bad they kept him there for september because he obviously didn't need to stay. HOWEVER, the Lord has a plan and cory did great during his second month and ended up with the highest averages in the region and was placed in tennessee with TWO offices, instead of the customary one. i was holding out for south dakota, we kind of expected to move to california or pennslyvania since they had many openings in those states, so when cory said he'd be working in murfreesboro and franklin, it caught me totally off-guard.

it was tricky planning our move to tennessee because we had less than two weeks until he would start work down there and the company wanted us to either live in the extended stay or find a short-term lease. did i mention that cory and i really have never spent time in tennessee, nor do we know anybody who lives here? after a few days of looking non-stop on zillow and craigslist, we realized we would just have to move here and then find a place to live. a house was out of the question because we may really be here less than six months, and apartments charge way more for less than yearly leases, oh and there's crime to consider, too. we had one apartment complex we were really holding out for, hawthorne park south, and they had an opening when i called friday morning. we were making the trip two days so we could spend some time with friends, meaning we wouldn't get to tennessee until saturday night and we had an appointment with the leasing consultant at 1 on sunday. well, we drove down to murfreesboro on sunday to find out they had sold the lease right before closing on saturday. we were devastated and kind of at a loss. i mean, we had back-up places but we really wanted to live in those apartments because they are so nice, safe, clean and fit our budget. we drove around to about four other apartments and toured them with no real love for any of them. we were disheartened when we went back to the hotel sunday evening. on monday morning, we went to the first place i had on our list, one that several church members lived in, and it reminded us of BYU housing. it was a few miles from MTSU and we could easily fit a 3 bedroom apartment into our budget and it seemed like it would be great. they were older apartments, but for the space and price and overall atmosphere, we felt like we could live there and completed the application. during the tour, i got a call and voicemail and i knew before i listened that it would be hawthorne park south. they weren't going to have any openings until mid-november. i had felt such a peace that morning driving down, as well as the impression that i should call them, which i figured i would do after touring the first few places on our list. anyway, our first-choice apartments had miraculously had a two-bedroom apartment open up that was available for immediate move-in. we went over, filled everything out, found out we were approved yesterday and now we are waiting for the head's up from cory's boss to sign the six month lease. these are blatant MIRACLES in our lives. i could go on and on, like how we had to get a doctor's note yesterday and called and went to many places without success but in the afternoon, cory was finally able to get all his records from all over the country and get the doctor's note signed. and, we found out sienna had lyme disease two days before we left, and we were able to get her help and on the road to recovery within 24 hours. i don't know what we would've done if her symptoms had shown up even 48 hours laster, while we were on the road, away from a vet. i just feel SO blessed and i know that it is the doing of a loving God.

as i stated in the beginning, this has been a crazy year, especially for two people who love planning SO much. cory and i have literally had to put our trust in the Lord so many times this year and even though things haven't happened when or how we thought they would, they have always been for the best. i just want whoever reads this to know that these incidents may seem like luck, but i know without a doubt it is my Heavenly Father shaping our lives in accordance to our faith in Him. mostly, this year has been a learning experience for me about timing and trust, and gratitude. i could go on and on, and i hope that many other blog posts will follow this theme.

p.s. i would be remiss if i didn't mention the blessing of a healthy baby :) he/she is doing well and kicking all the time! 13.5 weeks left!