Changes

I have been waiting to get my pictures in order before writing another blog post, but we got a new computer and I'm still trying to figure out how to use it (Apple), and I just don't see that happening anytime too soon.  So, instead of putting it off any longer, I decided to just write something before I forget any details!

We have moved!  We are in Wisconsin, still settling in.  I love it so far.  The weather has been wonderful (although I was a bit surprised that our first week here the temps were in the 60s!  Thankfully that wasn't normal for the first week of July, and it's warm again).

We left Florida around July 25.  We drove to SC for a few days to spend some time with Garrett's sister and her family.  We had never been there before, so we figured we should go that route before we left the South!  We had a great time, visiting a water park and doing some other fun things.  After that, we drove to TN to spend a day with Garrett's parents.  After that, we made the long drive from TN to Madison.  We arrived around 9:30pm and spent the night in a hotel before meeting the landlords at the house early the next morning.

The house is great!  Since it has a finished basement, it feels huge and it's more than enough space for us.  In fact, we haven't even touched the third bedroom - it still has empty bookshelves and unopened boxes that I may or may not ever get around to unpacking.  I'm considering making it my sewing room.  The girls are still all sharing a bedroom - it's in the basement, just off the playroom.  The kitchen is wonderful and the cabinets and deep shelves provide more than enough space for everything.  In fact, some cabinet shelves are empty!  I love it.

The house is on a dead end street (second from the end), which makes for a very quiet neighborhood.  We have met a few of the neighbors and everyone seems very nice.  There aren't any kids, really, but that's fine.

We are spending lots of time exploring the area.  Most nights after dinner, we drive to a new park or trail to check out.  So far, we love going to the lake the best.  We live about half a mile from a great little park right on the lake, and we've had a handful of dinner picnics there, right next to the water.  We are seriously loving the summertime here and I can see why people love this place so much.  It's beautiful, there is great shopping, and the people are so nice.

That being said, we still don't have any friends besides the ones who moved up here from Gville with us.  Our ward is nice, but everyone seems to have their own friends already, plus most of the ward members with kids seem to live in a newish small town that's about 20 minutes away.  Not far, of course, but far enough that we won't be hanging out with people every day.  It's no Gainesville, that's for sure, but I'm actually fine with it.  I totally understand that when people hear that we are only here for a year (only 10 more months at this point), they might write us off.  That's okay.  I'm really looking forward to getting a lot of good family quality time in, enjoying a new area, and making some fun memories.

And now, the REALLY hard part begins.... job hunting for next year.  The next few months will probably be pretty busy with that.  This feels a lot more stressful than the other steps along the way.  Moving for medical school wasn't hard - he applied late in the process so he only got into one school, so that's where we went.  For residency, he make a rank list and then was told where to go.  For fellowship, he applied to a bunch of places and took the first offer (plus, we figured we could move anywhere for a year, so it wasn't that scary).  For a real job... it's much more permanent and it feels like there is a lot more on the line.  We won't have an easy "out" like we always have had in the past (school/residency/fellowship all have an end date!).  So, it's hard!!  We've made a list of 4-5 cities where we would like to end up, but admittedly I've never really been to any of them, so that's also scary.  Word of mouth is big in Garrett's specialty, so we are trying to contact anyone we know in those cities to help us get a foot in the door somewhere.  We are also trying to keep an open mind about other locations that we might not be considering.

I know something will work out, I just hope that we get a strong impression about a place once the ball starts rolling.  It's hard to feel in the dark about the future - everything is so unknown! However, it's exciting at the same time.  We've been looking forward to this time for 11 years now, and now that it's here I'm going to try to enjoy it!!

Hopefully I'll figure out in the next few days how to get my pictures uploaded, and will share them in the next day or two!