Jeff & Kristina Oliverson

So after taking a 7 month hiatus- I'm optimistically recommiting to blogging. At least more often. Some updates:

Jeff got hired to teach P.E. at SCMS in St. George! YAY! It seriously is an answer to a year or more worth of prayers. It was pretty awesome how it all happened. Let me rewind a little bit:

In January, Jeff was told that a teacher at Cedar Middle School was retiring, so a P.E. position was going to be opening up, finally. So we waited.  And waited. And then waited some more. And then found out that they filled the position within the district and did some juggling so there wasn't going to be an opening after all.

Then, a couple of months ago, Angie & Derek applied for Derek to be a City Magistrate in Page, AZ. While they were looking into Page, Derek noticed a teaching position open at the High School.   It was a "Reconnecting Youth" position- which required a teaching license, but it didn't have to be a specific one. So Jeff applied and got an interview. Then a few days after that interview, he got called back for a 2nd interview, scheduled for the next week. The interviews were serious intense, hours long. By the end of the 2nd interview, he was told that he had the job. We were super excited. Then the next week he went back to shadow the current R.Y. teachers for a couple of days. On the 2nd day, he found out that the teaching position was only for 1 year. WHAT?!   We knew that it wasn't a normal teachinig job, and that it was grant funded, but Jeff had gotten the impression that it was good to go for awhile. So finding out that it was only for a year and that the health benefits were going to cost $500 a month, it started seeming less and less appealing.

At first I was feeling like it didn't matter that it was only for a year, that at least 1 year was better than 0 years of teaching experience. (And let's be honest, I was really really excited to be potentially living 3 blocks from my sister!) Jeff wasn't feeling good about the job because the administration hadn't been totally honest with him, and he had heard bad things about them from the coaching staff of the football & baseall teams. By the time Jeff got home that night, we had both come to the same conclusion: the job in Page was worth the move when we thought that it was A) a start to a teaching career & B) had good health benefits. But now that we knew it WASN'T a start to a career in a district & the health benefits weren't all that great- we were better off staying in Cedar so that Jeff could go back to school to get his Special Ed endorsement while working @YHA w/a promotion that had a health benefits option. Once we'd decided that, I felt at peace. I had been feeling restless, for lack of a better word, since the whole Page interview process had began.

So he got the promotion, and that was the plan. Then, on the 22nd, a couple in our ward, the Kroffs, randomly invited us over for dinner after church. We had never hung out with them one on one before. So that night while we were talking, they asked about Jeff's job situation and Steve mentioned that he had seen a P.E. teaching job on the Washington County School District website. A few days went by and Wednesday afternoon I asked Jeff if he had checked the website, he hadn't, but got up right then and checked it out. We found the job description and the bottom of the website and then saw that the deadline was 4 pm the next day! Luckily, Jeff had everything ready to go, it was just a matter of filling out the application and printing it out. I turned the application in the next day in St. George a few hours before the deadline. The next morning Jeff got the call for an interview, scheduled for June 1 at 9 a.m.

Jeff went to his interview, it was only 20 minutes, and walked away feeling good about it. He got a call from the principal a few hours later saying that he had a really good interview, etc. but that she wasn't allowed to tell him if he got the job or not. She said something about him waiting for a call from Human Resources, so we were thinking that meant he got the job, but didn't want to just assume it without hearing FOR SURE. So after the longest couple hours of Jeff's life, he got the call from Human Resources telling him that he got the job. We then proceeded to make the requisite family phone calls,sharing the good news, while roaming aimlessly through Costco doing the happy dance.

But the goodness doesn't end there.

The next day I woke up at 5:45 a.m. and couldn't fall back asleep. I just kept thinking about needing to get back down to St. George to find a house to rent. Jeff had been scheduled to work that afternoon but someone had asked him to switch shifts, so he had the day off. He agreed to go down that day to look for a place, probably realizing I would be worthless around the house that day if we didn't because I'd be so distracted! Shanna watched Elea for us while we looked and looked. All the houses we liked when we looked online the night before were already taken, one that was really nice only wanted to rent the top floor, and the ones that were left were crappy. Then we just started driving around areas we liked, but neither of those felt right either- one didn't have a backyard and the other's yard was way too small. So we were heading back to return a key to the property management company and I decided to check craigslist one last time. I saw a listing that had just popped up in the last couple hours, called, and then we headed straight there.

I loved the location right away, then we walked through the house, and it was PERFECT for us. PERFECT. The family that owns it is in the process of moving to Texas, had just found out that week, and needed to be there in a month. They were only planning on leaving the ad up that afternoon and were planning on deciding that night. So as we were checking out the house, there were boxes everywhere, toys, etc. and it didn't even matter. Jeff and I didn't even talk about it by ourselves before we asked them for a rental application, we both just knew. It was pretty funny actually because they didn't even have an application, I just wrote out our info on a half sheet of printer paper. We sat and chatted with them about the house, our history, etc. for almost a half hour. When we left, I immediately called my friend Amanda whose husband works with the owner of the house and BEGGED her to call them and tell them we are good people. (And they did). I was more nervous about whether we were going to get the house than I was about Jeff getting the job. I felt confident about Jeff getting the job because I trusted in his qualifications, etc. But I had no idea what the owner's of the house were going to use to make their decision. But luckily, they called that evening and told us they'd rent it to us!

We went to sign the lease yesterday and are so excited to move down to St. George and into the house. They are leaving the playhouse in the back for Elea. We're allowed to paint it if we want to, they don't really care WHAT we do to the house cosmetically because they never plan on living in it again. We won't have bi-yearly inspections or anything like that. And, if anything goes wrong, we'll just call someone to come fix it, and send them the bill. Fabulous!

So anyway, this week has been pretty much perfect. (knock on wood and all that). So many prayers have been answered in such a short time for us, it's pretty amazing.   Now we're about to go through our storage unit-- like I said, knock on wood.