New Job

This post really has nothing to do with Heidi, but what's a post without this cute face? As long as we're talking about Heidi, I have to say, we are loving the 6 month phase and she can stay this age as long as she wants!

I have loved staying home, but have been kicking around the idea of going back at least part-time if a job opened...until lately. It seems she does something new every hour and I cannot imagine missing one grin. She is growing up way too fast and I don't want to regret missing a thing...even if I do miss working. There will always be time to work and if I am blessed enough to stay home I should take full advantage of it.

One part of working I have missed though is my paycheck...especially lately. Having a baby definitely costs money and I know she will just cost more the older she gets. I have been having to use more formula lately and well, it just adds up. Oh how I wish I had more milk!

Anyway, a few months ago we were out and Heidi fell asleep in her carseat. We knew she would wake up if we went home so on a whim we took a drive to the town west of us. (This, of course, was before gas prices were where they are now...ugh.) We were driving around and saw some lots for sale. Both Jeff and I had this overwhelming feeling that we needed to move out there...it was really weird, because we had never even talked about it. (This town is the same distance from Jeff's work but about an hour closer to UT). We stewed about it for a long time, but couldn't shake the feeling we should buy the land and that we would figure out where to cut expenses so we could get it paid off quickly. Everything fell into place and we had our half acre by January. Then I caught wind of some part-time teaching jobs that might be opening and I thought maybe that was what I should look into, but never really felt super about it.

Long story short...Jeff was just offered a job in his company that is three pay grades higher. It's a supervisor position that he would have to take at some point in order to move up in his career. If they assigned him to it, his salary would stay the same, but he would only have to do it for one year. If he applied and got it, he would get a pay raise, but be stuck in it until an engineering position opened again...which could be anywhere from 1 year to 10 years.

Anywho, he decided to just apply and see what happened. He got the job and the more we think about it, the more excited we are. The position is shift work, which is why we hesitated even having him apply, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized this is the perfect time for shift work. Jeff, being the engineer minded person he is, calculated it out and realized he will have 40 extra hours with a Heidi a month. Right now, he only sees her 1-2 hours before she goes to bed and on the weekends. This way, he will work longer days, but be home A LOT more. He will actually only be at work 14 out of every 28 days.

The hard part will be when he has to work graves, but everyone we talked to said your body adjusts and he won't work graves all the time. He will also be working two weekends a month, which leaves me to do church by myself twice a month. That will be hard. My friend that I taught with last year has a little boy who is about Heidi's age and her fiancee does it and they love it because they hardly have to take their little boy to the babysitter and he gets so much time with him. The pay raise should help us pay the land off faster and I won't have to go back to work. PLUS, since Jeff will be home during the day quite often, I will be able to sub and keep myself involved in the schools. I am excited for that.

There will definitely be downfalls to his schedule, but if he can get this experience out of the way before Heidi is in school, it will work to our benefit. I just hope it doesn't last more than 5 years or it will be when she is in school and then it will be way hard because then she really won't see him much. We definitely feel that we have been blessed and I am so excited Jeff will have more time with Heidi--that is definitely what we are most excited for. As it is, when he gets home he refuses to put her down. He takes advantage of every second he has with her and I couldn't be more grateful that he pays so much attention to her. It makes me love him all the more!