and I am a homebody.
I feel bad that I don't update more, but there really just isn't a whole lot of new and exciting things going on in our lives. Am I complaining? Not at all! We're happy. I'm content. I enjoy being home all day almost every day. Do I sometimes wish I was still working? Yes, but only so we wouldn't have to rely so much on student loan money, but we're getting by. And I went to go pick up my W2 from my old job the other day, and turns out that they've had to downsize, so even if I hadn't quit I would have been laid off anyway. Things just work out the way they're supposed to.
Anyway, I like being home. I read, I clean, I cook, I surf the web, I prepare my Primary lessons, I practice piano, and I'm getting a ton of unfinished projects done. I also look online at different baby things and get more and more excited for Lydia to come. While I am doing this I have long conversations with Lydia :) I figure I might as well set some things straight with her before she's even born. For example, she is never going to grow up. She's going to be my little sweet baby forever and ever :) And that's my life right now. Simple and happy.
But what about our future life? What's in store for us after Robert graduates in April and Lydia is born in May? I wish we knew. We go back and forth from having a set Plan A and Plan B to having 50 different possibilities come up. Right now we are in the midst of a 50 different possibility moment. When we are in Plan A/Plan B mode that means that Plan A: Robert gets an actuarial job in AZ and we move there once the Lydia is ready to be moved. Or Plan B: Robert goes to graduate school at ASU and we still move to AZ once Lydia is ready to be moved. The problem with Plan B is that if Robert goes to graduate school without getting an actuarial position first, chances are slim to none that he'll ever be able to get an actuarial position because when actuarial firms are hiring, whether it be for an internship or a job, they will look at people coming straight out of college first. Also, an actuarial position would pay a good amount more in the long run than any of the fields Robert would go to graduate school for. Which brings us to our 50 possibilities. (Some of those possibilities have to do with different graduate programs Robert could do at ASU, but I won't go into that in detail.) Lately, several different actuarial firms have come to BYU to do different presentations that are hiring on interns for the summer. NONE of them are internships for in Arizona. But they are everywhere else - Chicago, New York, Seattle, Columbus Ohio, Atlanta Georgia, Los Angeles, Michigan, Baltimore, New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, and on and on and on. It would be for a 10 week paid internship, and they would also pay for some living expenses. We've decided at this point to apply to all of them and see what offers we get and then decide from there. But what if we are offered a position in Seattle, Texas, and Chicago. Neither of us really have any family or friends in any of those places or have any other reason to prefer one over the other. How would we decide? It might come down to saying a prayer and then throwing darts at each location on a dart board. But let's say we chose Seattle. With Robert passing as many actuary exams as he has, doing the different research programs, and learning the different computer languages that he has, there is a very real possibility that Robert will be one of the leading candidates to be offered a permanent position. Our ultimate goal, wish, desire, or whatever you want to call it is to end up in Mesa, AZ with all of our family. These companies that are hiring on interns all have offices in Arizona, they just aren't hiring there right now. So let's say that we are in Seattle and at the end of the internship they offer Robert a permanent position. We would maybe want to take the offer so that Robert could get his foot in the door in the actuarial field and keep an eye out for openings in Arizona (best case scenario) with that company so he could just transfer and stay with the same company or an opening with another company in Arizona. But it could be anywhere from 1 year to 5 years or more that we could be waiting to get a position in Arizona. Would it be worth living away from our true home that long, or would we want to turn down the offer and then Robert would continue with his plan to go to grad school at ASU this fall. So if we think in terms of our hope and dream of living in Arizona, it's a decision of do we want to move to Arizona in 4 months (don't take an internship), 6 months (take an internship), or 1-5+ years. Both mine and Robert's first impulse when we look at it that way is that we miss our family. We hate being away from them. We think about our little baby that will be here soon and we want Lydia to be friends with and grow up surrounded by her cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents. So the sooner we are in Arizona the better. If we look at it in terms of income, as an entry level actuary Robert would start out at at least $50,000-$60,000 a year. That would increase significantly after one year and in 10 years he would be making approximately $100-150,000 a year (could be up to $300,000). With the other fields (Geographical Information Systems is the leading candidate right now) that Robert would go into after graduate school (which grad school also means more student loans for tuition and what not) on average he would start at $40,000 a year and in 10 years be making somewhere between $60-80,000 a year. Being from a big family that money was/is a near constant worry, from this viewpoint the decision is a no brainer. However that can also be interpreted as me saying that the money takes priority over our family, BUT at the same time we also need to be thinking what is best in the long run for OUR little family (Robert, Lydia, and me), BUT we don't need to be making $150,000 a year to be happy. We could be the happiest family in the history of the world and only be making $50,000, or even $30,000 a year.
Anyway, that is our predicament. I could go on for much longer, but I think I rambled enough already. For those of you who managed to read through this whole thing without falling asleep, you deserve a pat on the back. Any input is welcome, but I mainly wrote this all out just to get it all out of my head :) I know everything will work out the way it is supposed to. We are constantly praying about it, and we know when it comes down to final decision time, He will guide us to what we need to do. But right now we just feel like we are treading water, and our arms are getting really tired from doing so.
