Moving Story

Ryan has more opportunities in his work for promotions if he were outside of Utah. With this in mind, we decided we could move as soon as we refinanced our home. Before then it was financially irresponsible. Plus we felt our family of 5 was bursting at the seams in our condo. Once we refinanced in August the feeling of urgency to move dissipated. We each had some obligations to fulfill; and we decided Ryan would start looking for jobs out of state starting in January. It was a really busy 4 months for me while I was teaching dance 4 nights a week and once a week in the mornings. I didn't give a lot of thought to moving during that time. A week before Christmas, as an afterthought, I told Ryan that he should start looking for jobs. He had been really busy at work lately and hadn’t looked into any positions, so the next day he looked it up and applied for a couple positions.

His coworker had applied for the same position in AZ and had already interviewed. He told Ryan he would hear back if he got it or not around the New Year. Ryan had his initial interviews with the human resources, but didn’t hear much after that. By January 6th I had pretty much given up on the prospect of this particular job because he hadn’t heard anything for 3 weeks. I figured it might take a few months of searching before he found the position he wanted anyway. Ryan emailed the AZ branch that morning reminding them that he hadn’t interviewed yet and was wondering if the position had been filled. Within 5 minutes the branch manager called him back to set up an interview with him at 3 pm that day. The area manager was also in on the conference call. It went well.

Normally the hiring process takes a few weeks and the company flies the person out to have an interview face to face. Not so with this opportunity. They called the very next morning offering the position. I cannot emphasize how UNEXPECTED this was! On top of that, they wanted him to start on Jan. 13th just 6 days later. Luckily Ryan negotiated his start date a week and a half later. There was NO WAY we could have figured out everything in 6 days!

After Ryan called me to tell me the news, I was super excited. Then I realized I had about a thousand things to do in the next few days. A few hours later I had purchased tickets for Ryan to fly out to AZ to look at properties. I then had 2 days to set up as many appointments as I could. He would fly in Thursday afternoon and fly home early Sunday. We combed through hundreds of listings looking for places within 15 miles of Ryan’s work. I had three things I really wanted in a new place that we didn't have in our condo.

• It must have an enclosed back yard
• It must have a garage
• It must have a pantry

I was on the phone all Tuesday and Wednesday. Once Ryan was on the plane I began the work of cleaning our place spic and span for potential renters to come view. This was not an easy task while trying to pack at the same time. A few hiccups occurred trying to list our place, but it all worked to our benefit. Literally the first people to come see the place were the ones that rented it out. They seem like an ideal couple for our place. We feel really good about them. I feel so blessed that Heavenly Father aligned all of our ducks so we could have such a smooth transition to AZ.

Paul and Raeanna Cardon came to our rescue while Ryan went to look at properties. He was able to stay with them. They took him to and from the airport. They even let him borrow a car for those two days so he could go see properties. We are so, so blessed to have them close by!

So with two weeks notice, we were literally driving down to Arizona with all of our belongings in tow. Of course Boston threw up in the car within the first hour of driving, so that was awesome. But seriously, it was a whirlwind, and we made it with no real problems.