Whiting

Monday, January 19, 2015

Life just became a little more hectic ;)

Well, this year is Brandin's senior year at BYU and we have seen a lot of drastic changes in our life planning in just the past few months. With everything concerning my health, medication, Dr's, and such - we have decided to put off Law School and get a real job after graduation. In a couple years we will revisit the idea of working towards his law degree, or some other graduate degree. Since the original plan was always law school, we had the opinion that there was no point of doing an internship in engineering; so during all of our time here, we never did one. Well, now that we have decided not to go onto law school and head to work, this has thrown huge game changer into our plans. That's always fun. . . right? lol.

So Brandin started to apply for jobs. When I say apply, I mean he must have filled out close to 100 job applications online. He went to the Career fair on campus, had some promising interviews from that and then . . .. nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not having an internship under his belt was causing a slight problem. So what do you do? Keep applying, and keep applying, and keep applying. After all of that hard work of applications, then came the rejection letters. So now what... yup you guessed it, keep applying.

To say that we were worried would be an accurate statement. We both knew, and had very strong feelings that everything would be okay. Getting to the "okay" part however, can take a while. So we decided that as long as we were doing everything we could to secure a job, it was no longer in our hands. We prayed and fasted and set a date that by the end of the semester we would really appreciate Heavenly help having a job (if not multiple) offers. October and November flew by and . . nothing.

By the end of November Brandin received a phone call from a company that had found his resume through BYU's recruitment site and contacted him. The initial interview on campus did not go so well to say the least. Brandin left the interview feeling very frustrated and discouraged. The interviewers had Brandin as their last interview and they had to cut his interview short because they needed to leave for their flight. When I say 'cut it short,' I mean that they gave him 5-10 mins to talk about himself as they anxiously watched the clock. I'm not saying that we gave up hope, but there were a couple of days in there that it might have felt like perhaps hope was all but gone.

The end of the semester was December 19th, and we were getting dangerously close to it without any progress. Frustrating right? The company that Brandin had interviewed with (the one that went so terrible) emailed to say that they were going to refer him for another position within the company. A couple of days later we were contacted and asked to set up a time for a phone interview. To say that the phone interview was a much different experience than the on campus interview, would be a gross understatement. The interview went so well that hope was rekindled. In fact, the day after the phone interview the company got back to him and said that they wanted to fly him out to Houston for some onsite interviews. So they started working out the details to get him down in the next week. A couple of days after setting up the flights and hotel stay, Cummins called and did a phone interview as well that seemed to go really well. We were cautiously optimistic by these positive experiences. With only a few weeks until the end of the semester, and with the Christmas break approaching, we still could not fully shed our fears of not seeing the blessing of an offer by the end of the semester.

During the week of finals Brandin sacrificed two days to fly down to Houston and interview. He said that it went great, but he didn't really know where he stood and what his chances were of getting the job. Surprisingly, the next day after he returned from Houston was an amazing blessing and answer to our prayers. With only one day left until the semester would come to a close, Goodman, the company that flew Brandin down to Houston, called to say that he got the job and they were putting together an offer letter and would send it hopefully by the end of the week.

Only minutes after he got off the phone with Goodman, Sandia National Laboratories called inviting him to fly to Albuquerque New Mexico for a follow up interview that he had had with them back in September. Brandin informed Sandia that he had another pending offer but the company insisted he come anyways for an onsite interview. He agreed and set a travel date for the first week of January.

2 hours after the call with Sandia Goodman contacted Brandin with the offer letter. Their offer was amazing! It was far better than we could have hoped for or even expected. They told Brandin that they wanted to offer him the highest end of his asking salary range, just so they could ensure his motivation to come and work for them. We were told from the HR rep that the VP of engineering (who had met with Brandin while he was in Houston interviewing) said to offer Brandin whatever he was asking for because he wanted Brandin! When Brandin called to accept the offer, the HR representative he had been working with during the process told Brandin that before we accepted the offer he was going to renegotiate the salary for us. 1 hour later Brandin received a final email with an offer that was 6% higher than the original! AMAZING! He sent his acceptance right away. Less than 5 minutes after accepting the offer from Goodman, Cummins emailed to say that they were offering a job for us as well to go to Indiana.

With more thought put into the offers we decided to go with Goodman in Houston, and because of Brandin's previous work at One Hour working with and selling Goodman air conditioners, they are starting him off as a Design Engineer 2, not even an entry level position that college grads typically get. And the cherry on top? They are paying for a company to come and pack us and move us to Houston! We are so excited for our next journey to begin and now the real fun begins. . . house shopping!!! lol.

Heavenly Father certainly pushed our faith to the wire, with the offers coming in only one day before the semester ended. Our prayers were answered and a great lesson was learned. Seeing all of this play out the way that it did, having all of these miracles come together at the very end, is a testimony of how important enduring to the end is. We are so thankful that the Lord waited to pour these blessings out until the very last day possible because we received the chance to be taught this lesson.

Makes one kind of wonder what great blessings we might be just on the verge of receiving and either miss out on because we give up to early, or are only moments away from receiving so long as we endure. What an amazing parallel this experience has been to our time on earth. We could never had imagined that we would be blessed with so many great things at the very end of our trial, but we knew we had to endure in faith and hope for the best. I think this is very similar to this life and the reward that we all stand to receive for our faithfulness. I am not sure that it is possible to realize or comprehend the amazing blessing at the end if we only endure, but I can bet, using this simple experience, that enduring the trial will be well worth it. Do not give up - you are on the verge of something so great.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Happy New Years

Typically for New Years we have people over or do something, but this year we decided to be super lame and lazy and avoid the horrible 0 degree weather and stay in. We picked up two movies from Redbox and some yummy Martinellis, and snuggled on the couch. What a wonderful relaxing night! Then at midnight we drank our sparkling cider, took the obligatory pict, had our midnight kiss and went to sleep. :) Happy New Years!!!

Temple Square

Being Goofy :)

As usual we decided that we were going to go see the temple square, so we went and froze to death outside.

This little bean was still loving checking out the lights, and wouldn't hold still, so the only pict I got of her smiling is super fuzzy, but I will take what I can get. :)

The Temple

So totally weird and artsy fartsy, the camera was on the wrong setting when I took this pict, but in a weird way I kinda like it. . .

Christmas in Colorado

Brandin flew to Houston for a job interview, and then had finals, so I decided to take the kiddos and go to Colorado early to play with my flowers. It was fun to go back to flowers for a little bit, because it has been such a long time since I was able to play with them. After a week Brandin was able to find a ride over to Colorado with some other students heading over to Denver. We had Christmas day early with my family because my brother Ty had to work our of town on Christmas, so the Sunday before Christmas we celebrating with my family, and then Christmas Day we celebrated with Brandins Parents and his two unmarried siblings Gared and Holli. Everyone else was out of town this year so it was nice and relaxing and quiet. Christmas night we went to my grandma and grandpa Bishops house with my fam, and aunt and uncle and cousins. Overall it was a nice trip, and then we headed back to Utah for Brandins week break before classes start back up again!

Our Christmas Card we sent out to family this year.

The Christmas decor in our apt.

My table

Christmas morning! Kenna loved her little train.

and so did Carter :)

Aunt Holli all festive on Christmas day

Carter opening up his gifts

Kenna helping Grandma Whiting open up her Christmas gifts. . .

Mater!!!

The Bishop Clan

Carter and Aunt Holli putting their puzzles together. .

Pick me up pick me up pick me up!!!!

Monday, December 15, 2014

Christmas Kiddos

I wanted to get picts of the kiddos in matching Christmas clothes, They only co-operated for about 30 seconds, so I took a lot of almost identical picts. lol. Oh well, At least they smiled for a couple of them!

Friday, December 12, 2014

Christmas Parties

This year we had a couple of church parties. First, the singles ward had their party with BYU catering. . .

The party going on. .

The food. .

Carter took over my camera and took some funny picts. .

Me and bean. .

Carter carting Kenna around. .

We had taken our s'mores bar to the party and set it up.

It seemed like quite a success. :)

The singles ward had a party in the Wymount Skyroom for the bishoprics in our stake. The skyroom was on our bucketlist for Utah things, so we were excited to be able to check it off! It was great, the food was great, and our place cards were all together with our own wards, so there wasn't even any awkward chatter!

The centerpieces. .

Us. . .

The skyroom. .

I felt so fancy having my name on a place card :)

random photo. . . Brandins group built a car in class and took first, they were quite proud of themselves :)

For our home ward (wymount married ward) They did a fiesta theme, that didn't feel like Christmas, but was still a lot of fun! I was asked to take picts for the photo booth, and

The bright banner. . .