the update

I realized there's a big piece of news I've never really posted about. I mentioned recently that we'll be staying here in MN. Here's how that all happened:

First of all, we've always known that our stay here in MN would be brief. We were always under the impression we'd be here for about 9 months, which would've had us moving a couple weeks ago. Sometime around November we received our next moving assignment. We were heading to Houston, TX. They wanted us down there at the end of January but with the baby due at the end of February we made arrangements to wait until mid-March. Houston sounded fine to both of us, but it's interesting, looking back, that neither of us were very motivated to make plans for Houston. Come to find out, without even talking to each other about it, neither of us really felt like we were really moving. We never looked into housing, we never made arrangements with Ryan's company to make a house hunting trip down there, and besides a few close family members and friends we never even told anyone we were moving.

In the meantime Ryan was approached at work with the suggestion of applying to a new position (a brand new position to the company in fact) at work. Short story is that he did apply and was accepted for the position which has him staying here working out of company headquarters.

We're very excited about Ryan's new position and about staying put here in MN for the time being. We really don't know what it means for us long long term, but for the short long term (at least the next couple-5 or so years) it looks like we'll be here in MN. Even though we made plans to move at the beginning of Ryan's career it suddenly feels so nice to get to "settle" somewhere for now. It is a huge blessing to have family so close by. We felt the need to take full advantage of being close to family for what we thought would be 9 months, and we're so thrilled that we get to continue that. It's exciting to feel like we can establish ourselves somewhere a little more permanently--friends, church, possible home, doctors, community, investing in good snow clothes (sounds kind of funny, but I'm kind of serious), etc.

I'm not sure we ever picture MN, of all places, to be somewhere we settle for a time, but for now it's a great place for us to be!