missing information for those who don't know the full story

For those of you who I haven't talked to in forever here's the info that's missing from my blog. After the trip to New Mexico in January we continued to apply for jobs in the NM area and in the Northwest, we weren't getting any solid lead so we were still thinking we'd end up in Gallup, NM. One Thursday Larry was volunteering for the Woodland fire department when his chief heard Larry's cell ringing from his jacket pocket (usually Larry left it on vibrate, but he "accidentally" left it on this day). Larry grabbed the phone from him and on the other end a nice gal told him she was calling from the Clovis, NM fire department and they wanted to know if he would be attending their fire testing this weekend. Larry told her he knew nothing of the testing and she said that they had emailed him about it a whole week prior. So Larry let her know that he'd do whatever he could to get there and asked her to re email the message. Larry called me right away and told me to book him on the next available flight to Albuquerque. I got right to work on finding a flight and eventually I remembered I had enough mileage saved up for a domestic flight and I got him a 6 am flight out of Portland on Delta. If we had known better (or even just looked at a map) we would have realized that its a 3hr40min drive from Albuquerque but its just an hour and 40min drive from Amarillo or Lubbock TX. Larry arrived at the fire department Friday in the evening just in time to do a practice run of the physical agility test. He made it well within the qualifying time and after some dinner he went right to bed. The following day he made it through the physical agility with the best qualifying time so they scheduled an interview for the following day. One of the firefighters invited Larry to church with him, which was nice but the pastor seemed to think the whole congregation was a disappointment. Larry lost his tie somewhere along the way so right before he went to his interview he had to run to the local mall (if you can call it that... its just Sears, Dillards, Bealls, and JC Penny and two fast food places in an enclosure) to grab a new tie. The interview went very well and Larry felt confident that they would offer him a job but he had nothing definitive to return home with. The following day the fire department called him in and told him that they didn't want him to return home without hope and they told him as long as his background check was clear he would be hearing from them by the end of the week.

With that information in hand Larry believed it would be a good idea to go apartment hunting. After several dead ends he finally found something perfect for us. He paid a security deposit and returned home the following day. We immediately began getting our affairs in order and visiting with people for one last time. We sold my car the same day Larry was officially offered the job and only 4 hours after we posted an ad on craigslist (that was a sad moment for me). We didn't have much packing to do since we already packed everything when we left our house in November. We took three days to make our way to our new home and the weather was much better than our previous trip down.

We arrived at our new home on March 1st. The place Larry got us was pretty gross looking on the outside and descent on the inside, but I can't complain about it when its only $420 a month. It has been a major adjustment not having family and friends nearby and having limited activities available to us. When we have our next baby we'll probably have to deliver it in Lubbock cuz the local hospital is only able to perform another c-section on me (and I do not want another one of those). On the bright side they have a nice little zoo, the people are friendly and welcoming, and we LOVE our new church. The weather is mostly nice but this is the season for wind storms so I haven't gotten to go on as many bicycle rides as I'd like. Larry is very busy either working or studying so I'll have to make some friends so I can get out once in a while. I was going to join up with MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) but it seems that they mostly get together to do crafts and scrapbooking and I don't enjoy that sort of thing. I am thinking about potting some indoor plants so that I can learn how to cultivate life other than little humans. Larry will receive a substantial raise after his probationary year and we would like to find a rental property with enough land to start a garden and have some farm animals. Our big dream is to some day (after Larry retires, or shortly before) open a breakfast/lunch restaurant with home grown eggs, dairy and veggies.