Virginia Bound & Blessed

We've got one more week until we head out for Virginia and let me tell you it has been a roller coaster ride so far. In the last five days alone I've gone from super stoked to super nervous, fearful to faithful and back again, happy to sad, and everything in between.

Most of you know Justin and I are heading out to live in Charlottesville, VA--the Happiest City in America--for Justin to go to grad school for Speech Therapy. It's going to be an amazing, and hard, experience but we are both ready for it and are overall excited to dive right in. I plan on keeping this blog so that all of my favorite people in the world can keep tabs on us even though we'll be living on the other side of the country (Trust me, I never thought this was going to happen to me!).

As we've been preparing for Virginia, we have been so blessed to see such miracles and blessing emerge from the faithful decisions we've tried to make. Some of the blessings have been pretty simple such as saving an extra $60 on a new pair of glasses I needed because the eye care center receptionist gave me the "friends and family discount" because it saved me more money than my insurance. Others have been a bit larger...

I quit my job at Emergency Essentials last week, something that was actually really hard because I loved the work I was doing and I loved the people I worked with even more. On my last day there, my wonderful boss bought a big cake with lots and lots of frosting (my favorite!) to wish me luck and to say good bye. Everyone signed a card for me and my boss gave me a card because she "needed an entire card to herself" to say good bye.

As I left for the day, my boss (Sarah) called me into an office with her boss (Dean), the CEO (Kyle), and my other supervisor (Taylor) and they told me how much they appreciated all that I had done for the company and how hard I worked. They all told me how much they'd miss me and Kyle even told me to come work here again when I get back from Virginia because they'd take me. And then the biggest surprise of all! They gave me a Trekker II Emergency Kit (a $150 value!) as a good bye gift! This was an amazing blessing to me! Justin and I have been trying to pull together our food storage and 72 hour kits, but they were no where near complete. The Trekker II gave us everything we need for both of us to survive for 3 days after a disaster...and knowing Virginia, we may need to use this sooner rather than later. It was an amazing blessing to me to receive this gift because I was worried about not being prepared, but now I have peace of mind that we'll be okay if something happens. 

I felt such love from all of my coworkers and am really going to miss them all. I am so grateful for the things that I learned from working with this company and with my coworkers. Before I got the job at Emergency Essentials, I prayed a ton about what job I should take. When I got an offer from EE, I also was really confident that I had an offer from 2 other companies as well...one of which paid more than EE. I prayed about it and felt like I should take the part time job at EE. So I did. Nine months later I had learned so much about writing, marketing, and creating company emails. I'd learned more than I thought I could about social media and how to optimize it for a company. I'd made amazing friends and had been hired on full time. I know I was supposed to work at EE so I could learn the things I needed to in order to make me a more marketable candidate for future jobs...which ended up getting me a part time job at a company called River Runners. River Runners is letting me work remotely from Virginia so it is a great job to have to help us through the transition of this big move!

I've felt blessed as I've received this job, as we received loans, as we found the cutest housing only a 40 min bus ride from campus within our budget, as we had such support and love from friends and family donating items to our moving sale and allowing us to keep the money...all within this last week! I definitely feel Heavenly Father watching out for us. In fact, I have felt Him telling me, "I'm watching over you, do not fear. Doubt your doubt before you doubt your faith."

This is the biggest change I've ever made in my entire life (besides getting married) and I am overwhelmed with excitement to go and be with my amazing husband, and sorrow to leave behind my wonderful family and friends. This will definitely be one of the biggest adventures of our lives and it all starts in one week!