First of all, I have to thank everyone for their advice and input! Many of your suggestions we hadn’t thought about or considered. A couple days ago, while doing the dishes, I found myself crying out of gratitude for all the wonderful people the Lord and placed in my life. Through all of this people have been so supportive— willing to do anything to help our situation.

I thought it’d be fun to respond to each of your comments in a post.

Thanks for your support, Jessica. It’s nice to know other people have made it through similarly difficult circumstances!

Michelle, you’re right about the fact that we at least have insurance. I could be worse. Your encouragement that it is possible to take care of the kids by yourself was helpful. I am more confident now that Link and I will be okay. For now, staying in California while Miles is in Utah looks like our best option. I can’t believe that the medical bills for Isabelle were so much! That definitely put things into perspective when we were considering just taking a chance and paying out of pocket in Utah. Thanks for your prayers! And no, we don’t have any idea where we’ll be living. We’re looking at a few complexes that are close to Miles’ work, at least within biking distance. That way, he won’t need a car and can leave it for Link and I to use.

Lilly, it was good to talk to you about this in person a little bit the other day. You’re right that making a few phone calls doesn’t hurt. We are planning to talk to HR hopefully Monday or Tuesday after we get all the details of the offer in writing. As for the Kaiser possibilities, from the phone calls I’ve made we really have no possibilities. It stinks.

Jason, it was good and surprising to hear from you! Your advice was definitely comforting and informative. And we’ll possibly hit you up for that dinner when we finally arrive in Riverton! We too feel guided by the Spirit in all of this. Hopefully we’ll be in contact again soon!

Sara, through all of this, the option of delivering in a birthing center was not excluded. I definitely think natural child birth is a good thing and it is cheaper. However, we decided there is still a risk of being transferred and then we could still be stuck with a huge hospital bill. It stinks that making these decisions comes down to money! Good to hear from you! It’s been awhile!

Amber, I appreciated your insider’s view about how the hospitals work. I’d heard similar stories from a couple other people but you helped clarify how this works. Though we don’t have a strong Plan A, working with the Riverton hospital is our Plan B. You’re a very wise women.

Laura, I’m so excited we’ll be living closer! I thought about that the other day and am wondering where you live exactly. Is your condo in South Jordan? I couldn’t remember. I’m not sure how the move-in part is going to go, but we might just take you up of your offer for help. At this point, I think Miles is planning to drive the Uhaul up next week while I camp it out in California.

Monica, unfortunately Kaiser doesn’t have any out-of-network coverage options except for emergency services. Thank you so much for your well wishes!

Abbi, I couldn’t believe how creative your idea was! I brought it up to Miles, be alas, we figured out that we’re not going to have a lapse in employment. Miles will be receiving paychecks from the University through May. And unfortunately living in “poverty” as students here in California doesn’t equate to poverty in Utah. So, we don’t qualify for medicaid even with our current salary.

Bri, like I mentioned to Sara, I thought natural child birth would be a great option, but it doesn’t solve our problem with not having insurance. And yes, I agree that it stinks to make the decision based on money!

Thanks for your kind words Jackie! You’re such a sweetheart!

Love you all. We’re so so so grateful for your kindness!

So our life has been a major roller-coaster lately. I’ve been dreading this, but I’m about to report the WHOLE story. I’ll be incredibly impressed if anyone makes it through the entire post. That’s a challenge!

So about this time last year, Miles and I found ourselves sitting in bed talking about the possibility of Miles not continuing his PhD in biology. He had come to the realization that he just wasn’t passionate about/ obsessed enough over it. In case you didn’t know, a person has to be absolutely in love with something to devote 6+ years of their life to it. Two years into the program and Miles found himself already dreading going into the lab each day.

So what now? Well if you’ve spent more than 20 minutes in a conversation with Miles, you’re sure to know what he is passionate about. Computers. Apple. Programming. Problem solving. There was just one problem. He didn’t have any formal training in computers whatsoever. He was self-taught. He’d done a few websites here and there. And he sure spent a lot of time on the internet learning about different programming languages etc. But really in the end, he didn’t have much to show for it. So yeah, I was scared. I let Miles know my insecurities, but in the end, I knew he was not happy and that this career change needed to happen. So we started praying. A lot. And we went forward.

Miles dedicated the next few months to strengthening his resume. He checked out books from the library and continued learning. It reminded me a lot of my dad who built two homes by basically reading how-to manuals.

Then the tedious job search began. Applications, cover letters, resumes. Yuck! And it took awhile for Miles to nail down exactly what jobs he should apply for. But then a miracle happened. He got a phone interview! This was before Thanksgiving. They liked him and gave him a project which he worked on until 2:00am every morning for a couple weeks. To make a very long and drawn-out story a little shorter, after a couple more interviews, in March they flew Miles out to North Carolina for and in-person interview. I paid my own way and went along too. I devoted the couple days to looking at the area and checking out places to live. We thought for sure we’d leave with an offer on the table.

Well, we flew home, still confident, but without an offer. A few days after getting home they emailed us a less-than desirable offer. The bummer was that they weren’t offering benefits. But after some thought, we decided we could make it work. We prayed about it and felt good about accepting the offer. Actually how we felt was that it was a good offer but that there would be others. But since we didn’t have any other offers in the works, we’d be crazy not to take this one. But instead of receiving a updated offer letter, we received a two-lined email stating that they decided not to renew the offer. That there’d been a question about Miles’ commitment to the company. What the?! We had no idea what they were talking about! This was such a blow. It hurt a lot. Miles sent a very lengthy letter the the owner of the company trying to clear up any miscommunication. After they reviewed his letter, they responded by saying they just didn’t think Miles was a good fit.

So after months of being in the interview process with this company, and applying to many others, we were back at square one. We started again, only this time we were looking to be much closer to home. North Carolina was really far, and it put some things into perspective. So more applications, resumes, interviews. This time though, three separate companies asked to interview Miles: one local company; one in Littleton, CO; and one in Riverton, UT.

It seemed we’d struck gold. Miles had three interviews with the company here in Irvine. And we actually got an offer from the company in Littleton. When we got the offer, however, we were in Utah where Miles was interviewing for a Database Engineer position for the LDS Church.

He’d applied for the job with the Church thinking he was very under qualified. Which he was. In fact, during the phone interview he was told so. But they still wanted to meet him. They said they saw potential.

The interview went well. And we were very hopeful! This would be a great opportunity for growth. And there’s no doubt that Miles indeed does have the potential to do very well. We wanted this position. My family wanted us to get this position because we’d only be a few hours away. We were so grateful when my mom told us my family would be fasting and praying for Miles to get the job. Well, God heard our prayers. The next day, Miles got a phone call informing him that they’d like to hire him with a start date of May 17th. Nothing short of a miracle!

We are so thrilled! But as we learned from our experience with the NC peeps, it’s not official until it’s official. So just today we heard the details of the offer. Great salary and benefits! Who could ask for more?

Only one problem. Remember how I’m supposed to have a baby mid-June? Well the benefits don’t kick in until July 1. Now this complicates things beyond belief!

I currently have a private plan through Kaiser Permanente. Utah doesn’t have Kaiser. I cannot buy into an other individual plan because pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition. Blah. We do not qualify for medicaid assistance even though here in California we are living in poverty. So that leaves us paying out of pocket. Maybe not too big of a deal if everything goes perfectly. But that’s a big risk. We could be paying tens of thousands of dollars if I need a c-section, not to mention all the other possible complications.

So where does that leave us? In a very hard situation. We’ve come up with two “solutions.”

1. Link and I stay in California and Miles moves up to Utah to start his job. This would mean me taking care of Link by myself for a month, risking Miles not being here for the birth of the baby (would probably ask the doctor about induction to decrease this risk), paying double rent, and trying to move with a newborn by myself since Miles will have to be back at work.

2. We move together up to Utah as planned. I stay in Riverton and get things settled for a couple weeks. Drive down to St. George to stay with family for a week (it’s 4 hours closer to the Kaiser Hospital), then the final week I’d stay in a friend’s apartment while they are out of town. This would mean I’d pay for prenatal visits out of pocket, we’d still be risking Miles not being there for the birth, and I’d have to travel back up to Utah with a 2-day old.

So neither option is a good option. I hate to say it but our current health care system here in America sucks!

As my grandma said, we’re going to need to talk to the Lord about this one. Indeed!

I welcome any thoughts/ advice. Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of?

Recently our Disneyland passes expired. Link and I especially enjoyed them. We went about once a month. Yes, we probably should’ve taken advantage of them more. The funny thing about Disneyland is that it grows on you! The more you go, the more you love it! I couldn’t believe how sad I was when I took Link for what was, hopefully, the last time. I say hopefully, because weren’t planning on being in California long enough to renew our passes. But that is another story entirely, *sigh*.

Here are a few pics of our last trip. I didn’t get much variety, and if I hadn’t told you, you probably wouldn’t have any idea where these were taken. As it turns out, it’s hard to take pictures of a toddler you’re too busy chasing.

Here are my failed attempts at getting a good picture of Link and I together. Oh, and just so you know, Link really has a good time when we go, though you’d never guess from the pictures!

Posing in a car from Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. He’d want to crawl up inside this car every trip. It was great. He loved it, and the best part was, we didn’t have to wait in line!

Boat rides are Link’s favorite. And if you didn’t realize, Disneyland has a lot of them. When we talk about Disneyland, he always mentions the bo (boats) and the wadden (water).

Here he is on Small World—his favorite.

Coming off Small World, being all independent with his buddy Benji.

I bought Link a pair of Mickey ears with some left-over birthday gift card money. I should have removed the price tag before photographing him wearing them.

Oh how I love my little buddy! We really have such a great time together!

Yes I’ve been missing from the blogging scene lately. I’m full of good excuses, but my best is that I had a lapse in my flickr account so I was unable to post pictures. Without pictures to post, I lost most of my motivation. But you’re in luck, my flickr account is up and running again, which means this post is going to be picture overload.

Lincoln has a love for literature. Often when I hear silence and think Link is probably getting into something, I’ll find him in his room, sitting quietly, pulling books off the shelves, carefully paging through them. He’ll spend at least 30 minutes a day doing this. It’s probably his favorite pastime. Often I’ll place him near his books with a snack, and he’ll keep himself entertained the whole time I take a shower!

Before Halloween we visited a local pumpkin patch and petting zoo. Even though he didn’t actually “‘pet” the animals, he was still very excited about the whole thing and he did touch them a couple times.

For Halloween, we all dressed up like pirates. Actually, that’s not completely accurate. For the Day Before Halloween, we all dressed up like pirates. We were so Halloweened out by the end of that night that we actually went to dinner on Halloween night instead of going Trick-or-Treating. Here are a few pictures from our many festivities. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of all of us together on our camera.

Miles competed as the reigning champ of the pie eating contest at our ward Halloween party. Unfortunately the title was taken from him by Brother Wingard. It was a close one though!