We Had Chinese!

BIG NEWS for our family! My husband has been offered a job!!! He'll start tomorrow even...so this whole week has been a whirlwind for us. He'll be working with a company called ECS in their Fayetteville office. Here's what happened: on Friday the 15th, we knew we had an offer for a temporary position. It would've been a 4-6 week job with a different company and there was no guarantee that it would become permanent, and even if it did, their benefits sucked :(. However, at 4:45, Scott's phone rang and it was the branch manager of the Fayetteville office wanting to know if they could do a phone interview that night at 6:30. He said yes, and the rest of us (wouldn't you know it was family night?) tried to keep quiet as the time approached for the phone call. Of course, in true Dowell fashion, when his phone DID ring, all you-know-what broke loose in our house and an almost comical situation ensued as we tried to get him set up in a "quiet" place while attempting to keep the girls away while attempting to prevent the smoke alarms from going off because someone forgot that they were making turkey gravy in all the commotion and it boiled over onto the stove and into the floor. By the time all was set, the girls and the pets had been corralled into the front of the house and I was standing under the smoke alarm in the kitchen repeatedly silencing it with a Swiffer handle and Scott had holed up in our bedroom. After about an hour of going "shh shh shh," and starting dinner even, he came out and said that they'd had a rather nice interview (as far as phone interviews go...) and that he'd been invited to come to the office on Tuesday the 19th for a face-to-face interview to discuss the position and salary in greater depth. We all said a little prayer and tried not to get our hopes up over the weekend. On Monday, we decided that we would spend the morning doing household chores and then hit the aquarium in the afternoon since it was free admission day. I stayed at the house with Kate while Abby went with Scott to Wal-Mart, and out of the blue, they called him and told him they'd had meetings with the clients of the first project he'd be doing, as well as with the principals of the company and that there was no question about it - he HAD GOTTEN THE JOB. All they would do Tuesday would be iron out the details and get him set up for a start on the 25th. WHEW! Big weight off!!!! And finally no longer living off the government! I am so proud of my husband for hitting the streets so hard looking for a job...he was unemployed for 1 day less than 3 months in the WORST economy of recent memory.

The only downside to him finding this job is that it IS in Fayetteville, so we'll have to move again. That means we've had to list our beautiful house for sale or rent, with more focus on finding a renter. Here's what it looks like:



We think that if we can just wait a year or two for the builder to get finished with our neighborhood then we won't get into a price war with them because we can't afford to play that game. If we list our house for sale, they'll drop their prices, and we can only drop our price so far before we go upside down. So we figure if we wait it out for awhile, we'll have more control over the price (and we'll have more recently sold comps to get price points from). Hopefully, we're figuring right! :)

I have been told that I will be able to keep my job and I am extremely thankful for that!!! I knew there was a reason I created a niche for myself in social media and internet management...LOL. I plan to return to Wilmington at least once a month to attend the #ILM Tweet-Up and re-connect with my friends and business contacts. Hopefully I will be close enough to Raleigh that the company will use me as an asset at their Raleigh hotel as well...or maybe that's just me dreaming :).

So today we packed up Scott's truck and he'll strike out tomorrow morning for a week in Fayetteville. I pretty much have my week already planned out so that I don't get too lonely during the first week. I am going to attend a Mommies dinner tomorrow night (at Flaming Amy's Bowl - YUM) and on Tuesday I'm going to Fayetteville with Jan (it'll be the first time either one of us has ever been to the city). Wednesday will be Katelyn's first dental exam (she's seeing a friend of mine who's in hygiene school - let's hear it for saving tons of money with great deals! - check it out if you have no dental insurance!). Thursday I get to work at the hotel on-site and on Friday, Scott comes home! And somewhere in there, I will probably show the house a few times...and I'd like to clean out my minivan. But tonight, also in true Dowell fashion, we got ready to send Scott off with a very special "we've had great news" dinner - we had Chinese!

All my love,