New Job for J.D.

For awhile now J.D. has been applying for jobs and nothing seemed to be working out. We just kept applying and applying, and we never got one response. It was kind of disheartening, but we stayed strong, kept praying, and we got by. One day I told J.D. that he should just apply for an oil field job with our brother in law Danny. The company he worked for was hiring and we at least had an 'in' with Danny being able to push for J.D. to get the job. At first J.D. was skeptical because he thought I didn't understand how different our lifestyle would be, how much it would change, living in Montana away from family, and he didn't want to work in the oil fields the rest of his life. For me, I had decided in my mind that I needed to be open to all of that and who knows....maybe we wouldn't get it. I understood the changes, but I explained to J.D. that maybe not getting all those jobs we'd applied for was telling us to open our horizons and look a little further. Maybe the Lord needed us someplace else. AND anything can be temporary. We wouldn't have to settle, but we could move up. 

One weekend we went to St. George and my dad talked to J.D. about getting his foot in the door and moving up. Maybe the 'foot in the door' job wouldn't be the lifetime career we wanted, but it would get people to see J.D. and how much he had to offer. 

SO, we applied. The job starts as a hand crewman with a crew out of Glendive, MT. It involves doing maintenance on the oil rigs. It offers so many wonderful benefits and pays really well. We didn't put any effort into this application and just answered the questions. We spent the least amount on this application and making it look fancy than we did on any other application. Literally 1 week later J.D. got a call asking him to start work that next Monday (5 days away because it was Wednesday). He said "you bet!" We spent the next moments analyzing everything, but we felt really calm about the decision. 

The plan: J.D. move up and live with my sister Jori for 2 weeks, J.D. come back for the weekend to load the truck and bless Monty, then all of us move up. It's amazing how everything worked out. My brother Matt has cow loads all the time out of Glendive and he had his HUGE cow trailer that we could use to move. It's a blessing because we didn't have any money to move, so Matt getting a load out of Glendive meant we didn't have to pay for a truck to move things. The head crewman on this crew J.D. would be on offered for us to rent from him as long as we did work on the place. With this he lowered the rent and offered February free. Another blessing counted. Also, it turned out that the crew J.D. would be on was all LDS except 1 guy. Another blessing. 

We spend the next few days telling family, and having a lot of fun. We went to Parker's wrestling match in Juab where he took FIRST place! It was region wrestling, so we were pretty proud of Uncle Parker.

 Three months prior I had scheduled to get my wisdom teeth out that weekend. My mom had already planned on coming up to help with the kids in case J.D. would be gone. I was totally awake and it only took maybe 1 minute to pull them out. I only had 3 too! :-) I was pretty sick, but after realizing it was the medicine making me sick, I stuck with Tylenol and was totally fine. I was so grateful to have my mom there helping with Monty and Dawson. Plus we got to spend some one on one time with her before moving. On Saturday, (the day after getting my wisdom teeth out) we went bowling at Fat Cats. It was SOOO much fun! It was a perfect last day with J.D. before he left for 2 weeks. 

 Dawson was having the time of his life! We ate Costa Vida and bowled while we ate. Here's Grammy and Dawson! So cute!

 

Dawson was pretty amazing at bowling! It got pretty intense once the black lights came on!

 We did make it to Holden a couple weeks prior to let Great Grandma Marjorie see Monty for the first time. I'm so grateful she got to see him before we moved.

 We also made it over to Chet and Bobi Sue's earlier that week. Dawson and Taylee apparently were pretending to be racoons with Chet's skins..... pretty scary!

 J.D. left Sunday morning at 5 am to make the trek to Glendive Montana. It was the start of 2 long weeks without him. However, it turned out to be perfect to have J.D. go first and get things figured out for us before we all came.