Wow what a month!

This is my first attempt at blogging. Stacy has done all of the other entries so far. I want to add my perspective to what she has already written. This has been a truly amazing summer for us. We started out thinking that the whole summer would be spent starting the process of building a farm from scratch in eastern Utah. Instead we have spent the whole summer trying hard to find the right job and the right place to live and have our farm and raise our family. In any event, things seem to be working out alright.

As most of you know, I went to the Nashville Tennessee area this summer to work. I was installing video surveillance systems in a Sam's Club out there. It was not what I had envisioned for my first job out of graduate school. I spent about 6 weeks away from home. It was a great experience. I got to work with my younger brothers Mike (33) and Rick (26). It was fun to work with those guys and to see how all of our parent’s teachings about working hard paid off. There is nothing quite like working with your brothers on a really big project like that. We did really well and got through with the job when we wanted too. I really liked the day to day association with my brothers. It was also nice to see Mike’s kids and wife. I had not spent much time around them in about 6 years.

One of the reasons I went to Tennessee was so that I could be a little closer to Missouri and Arkansas. I have had my eye on those states for quite some time as potential places for us to live and to work. At one time, Stacy and I had decided that we would move to Vernal for a few years and then if we still wanted to, we could look at moving to Missouri or AR, and take our time doing it in 2 or 3 years. I called that our "three year plan". Well things did not work out with the job in Vernal. It was a state job and when the final pay offer came through, the salary that they offered me was way too low to raise a family on. At that point Stacy and I decided that our three year plan might have become a three month plan. I began looking at jobs in those two states with a little more enthusiasm.

During the time that I was studying job possibilities in MO and AR, my brother-in-law Dennis mentioned to me that I might want to consider going to work in Tennessee with Mike just to make a little money to hold me over. I thought that was a great idea. We worked it out so that I could take a week off while I was out there to go to MO and AR and interview for jobs. I worked for two weeks and then took my little road trip. I interviewed with 12 agencies in 6 days. I drove over 2,000 miles in one week and I saw a lot of country. I was impressed not only with the quality of the agencies that I interviewed with, but also with the places that I saw and the people that I met.

The result of my week of interviewing was that I got about 11 job offers. I could not take all of the jobs so I narrowed it down to the three jobs and places that I thought held the most promise for our family. After that, I went back to work in Tennessee for a week and a half. Stacy came out to TN on the 2nd of August and we started yet another road trip with the intention of allowing Stacy to interview with the agencies that were interested in hiring me, looking at real estate in each area, talking to church members in each area and learning about the schools and communities in each area. After that we would decide which area was best for us.

My top three choices were Jonesboro Arkansas, Fort Smith Arkansas, and Nevada (pronounced nev-Ay (like hay)-duh) Missouri. As Stacy and I went to each area, we tried to keep an open mind and open hearts. The short story is that even though each area had things that we loved, we decided that we are going to live in Nevada. That is a very interesting town about 50 miles north of Joplin, MO and about 65 miles south of Kansas City, MO. The schools there are very good; the town is friendly and very faith and family oriented. There is a very small ward there (about 100 active members) and there were many options for homes for us to consider.

Eventually we decided to buy a 23 acre property outside of a town called Milo. It is about 15 minutes from Nevada. It has everything we want in a little farm. It has a huge shop building, a small milking barn, a well plus rural water, a storm shelter, several acres of grass hay, chickens rabbits, fruit and nut trees, good land for a garden, and so on. It also comes with some fun things for the kids, an above ground swimming pool with an elevated deck, a trampoline, a basketball pad and hoop, a big wooden swing set, a Jacuzzi, lots of frogs and so on. The house is a bit small for the size of our family, but it will work for us. It is a double-wide trailer that has three bedrooms and 2 baths and is about 1400 square feet. We anticipate that in a few years, we will have to upgrade the house a little bit and then we will have a new, somewhat bigger house and the existing house can serve as a guest house for when everyone comes to visit us.

We will close on our Utah house on the 24th of August and have to be out of here by the 31st. We hope to close on the Nevada property soon and hope to move around the end of the month. I hope that this helps you guys get a perspective of where we are and what we are doing

I love you all, Chris