News!

Big happenings here in the Mikkola household! John accepted a new job today at Brookstone. He'll be working two more weeks at Sears Holdings, then have one week off, then he'll work for one week in a local Brookstone store before finally starting his new job at the Brookstone headquarters in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Yep, that's right! We're moving to New Hampshire! This all seemed to happen so fast. Six weeks ago John got a call from a headhunter and things just snowballed from there. We are both so excited. It's a great career opportunity for John, and sounds like the kind of company that will be great to work for. And from what we've heard about NH and what John saw on his two trips out there, it sounds like exactly the kind of place we would LOVE to live. Very forrested, very hilly, lots of small towns. It's one hour from the ocean, one hour from Boston, and one hour from the mountains. There will be lots of snow, which we both miss. If you're going to have cold winters, you should at least have enough snow to play in! :) Actually, that area averages about half the annual snowfall that John's hometown does, so it won't seem too bad to him -- and it's probably pretty comparable to my hometown. And, the area also has a significant Vietnamese population (for New Hampshire, anyway). That was very important to us.

Now I just need to focus on getting this house ready to go on the market -- i.e. declutter big time. We're firm believers in "staging" a house to sell it, which means a lot of things will need to go into storage and all that yardwork I've been putting off will have to be done finally. I've already found a great resource for helping with the decluttering: Freecycle. There are groups in communities all across the country. If you have things around the house that you don't really want or need anymore, but don't really want to throw away because they're still useful, you post a message on a message board and people who could use it contact you to come pick it up. People also post for things they're looking for. Everything is a free give away, hence Freecycle. It's awesome! Check it out at http://freecycle.org/

Ok, second bit of big news: our agency had a referral this week! Hooray!!! After quite a few months with no referrals, things are starting to roll again. They have several prospective referrals in various stages of processing right now, so they believe that they will be coming at a steady rate for at least a few months, hopefully for much longer. I emailed with our coordinator today, and she said that we are now between #55-60 on the wait list, so we've moved up from the #70 spot we were at when we got on. I know that some families chose to leave FTIA during the referral drought, so I'm guessing that's how we moved up. She also estimated that our referral should come in late 2008, and we would travel in early 2009, which is right where I was thinking we were. So that's all good news.

I was so excited for Matt and Elaine and their family when I heard about their referral this past week. I actually teared up quite a bit. It's really good news for all of us waiting with FTIA.

So, lots going on here! I'll try to keep you all posted. :)