Decisions Decisions... so very many Decisions!

If this is too long for you. Sorry! But it's important for our "family journal". Read on if you care to.


There are reasons for our long blogging hiatus.  For so long there was so much, and yet, so little to blog about. (nothing with fun pictures anyway)  Life has been a bit of a whirlwind for us.  The semester is winding down at a scary/jubilant pace for Luke. We knew this day would eventually come, but it still feels surreal.  The college student life is the only life we (as in, US together) have ever known.  Now, in about 3 weeks, it's over...

With that said, that means we need to board the REAL-LIFE train.  Luke applied and applied and applied, for almost any electrical engineering job he could find within Utah's borders, beginning in January, as well as attending any sort of job fair the school offered.  That resulted in a several phone interviews with various places, one interview-ish type thing at Hill Air Force Base and a whole lot of rejections. But we didn't give up hope.
Even when it got rather discouraging.  But alas, about 2 weeks ago it felt as if everything was finally falling in place for him.  In one week he got an (personal-not just phone) interview at the Space Dynamic Lab here in Logan, several phone calls from people from companies he applied at and was rejected by, saying there were new listings and he should reapply AND his current employment explained that they were still trying to find a way to keep him on.  He also got a call to go down to Payson for an interview at a small company called Sunstone Engineering for the following Friday.  Well then he got word that he was probably going to get an offer from SDL (Space Dy. Lab) and we felt that it would be best to see if he could arrange for his interview in Payson to be moved up. He got a hold of them Monday morning and we were down there interviewing by 3 pm that afternoon.
He came away from that interview very excited.  I was already excited.  When I first heard about Payson as a possible place I had a really good feeling about it.  So while he was interviewing I was driving around the city trying to picture us living there. I became more excited!
They also seemed very interested in him and said if they decided to do a second interview, it would probably be the owner and his wife taking Luke and his wife out to dinner.  The next day, the phone call was made and we had dinner scheduled for Friday.
Meanwhile, he didn't hear back from SDL as he had expected.  Yet he continued to hear back from other companies, including Hill Air Force Base about new job listings.  We decided that one was just not for us... and we looked forward to our dinner interview.
Friday came and we had our "interview" at Shoots, a place in Provo. It happened to have a live band just outside of the restaurant and after only a few minutes it was relocated to Ruby River.
The dinner was delicious, meeting and getting to know the boss and his wife was very nice, and learning about the company was very interesting.
But the best part of the night........... he got a job offer!  It was a happy moment!
He explained he did have an interview with Rio Tinto (for the following Friday-which was 2 days ago from now) and they said he could have until the following Monday to tell them. That day is tomorrow!
We spent Friday night at our friends, Blake and Chantel's, house. They were kind enough to watch our girlies during the dinner, and let us stay with them. They even kept us company while we looked at several houses with our great Realtor, my brother James.
We tried to come home Saturday after looking houses, but we nearly got in a car wreck, witness another one, and drove through the after-math of one, within 5 minutes of leaving their house. SO we stayed until early Sunday morning and drove home before Fast and Testimony meeting.

Well, after thinking (and fasting) about it over for the weekend we were about 90% sure we would take the job.  It being a smaller company, it can't pay very well like the larger companies... but hey, it was a lot higher than no job pays! And... like previously mentioned, it just felt good! We even got really serious about selling our house (as For Sale By Owner hasn't been successful) we decided to list our house with the afore mentioned Realtor.  He came up Tuesday afternoon to finalize the paperwork and put up our new lawn ornament. (it's not quite as cute as our other new one)

Back to the story. Tuesday a wrench got thrown into the plans..  SDL (logan) called him up  and extended the job offer.  Immediately looking at it, we thought, "oh it's not that much higher in salary.. we can still easily take Payson) But then we looked into their benefit's package that was broken down for us.  It started to look AMAZING! Salary wise it wasn't a whole lot more, but when you take into consideration the retirement and everything else, it brought the actual pay to be a much MUCH higher sum.
I hate to complain about this. We are SO SO SO GRATEFUL to have 1 job offer, let alone 2. That is a huge blessing for us.  We understand so many people can't get jobs in these tough economic tines, and here we are with 2 offers at 2 great companies.
We are grateful , but you'd think that having a really nice paying job would make me happy. But I was so excited about moving to Payson and now this offer is so good.... it needed to actually be considered.

This has been the hardest decision of our lives! Each company is great for their own reasons. Each has a lot of benefits and he feels like he'd enjoy both jobs. They are both in a good places to raise a family. We have loved Logan... but Payson is a lot closer to our families--which was a major goal of ours.  The small companies have so many benefits, but so do the large ones..and so on and so on. When we prayed about it, we could never get a distinct answer either. That would have made things easy. It just felt like either choice would be okay.  We have gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It's been a real roller-coaster.
But ready or not, tomorrow we have to give our answer.

Until it's finalized, I can't say what our decision is................ but I'm here to tell you, it has not come easily.

However, we went to the Temple yesterday with an answer in mind and wanted to have it confirmed. We had such a neat experience. We both felt like we'd be the witness couple, and we were.  And the spirit was very sweet in the temple.  There is so much power found by going to the House of the Lord.