The cat's out of the bag, so I guess I'll do a little (well, actually it's lengthy) post about it. I'm NOT looking for sympathy or comments expressing condolences or anything of the like. This post actually contains a lot of private feelings I've had and chronicles our less than brag-worthy situation, and my purpose in writing anything at all about it is merely because I want to record this period of our lives for journaling sake. This is my family journal, like it or not, and when our kids are grown and wonder about their early childhood, and our memory has failed us, we'll still have this blog printed in book form to be able to look back on. I guess everyone else who subjects themselves to reading this lengthy, pictureless post will understand what's going on right now, but will have sore eyeballs after all the reading. Here goes nothing.
Just when I did a post about how we thought there was a turn around in our business, things crumbled.Let me back up. Back when the economy took a nosedive, so did our business. We've been eeking along each month for quite a while now sinking deeper and deeper in boiling hot water, but we kept hoping for a turn-around and giving it our all. We laid off everyone except for our main installer, and I started going to work with Hyrum everyday starting in October (taking the kids with us) so I could learn to do books and watch the shop when Hyrum had to go out and measure or sell jobs or resolve customer conflicts. In that time, we loved being together, but it wasn't that easy to get as much done as we wanted with 4 kids running around. I felt stress and guilt everyday no matter what I did, because I wanted to be a good mom and spend my time with my kids, but then I'd feel guilty about not helping Hyrum enough, but if I tried to be a good wife/employee and pushed the kids out of my office and neglected them for work, I'd feel guilty that I wasn't giving them enough time or being a stay-at-home mom like they deserved and I wanted to be. My preschooling of Tilly was put off and other moms were taking Hyatt and her to things since I couldn't. That made me feel awful. I shed a lot of private, and public, tears over the issue. I don't know that I've felt as much stress emotionally or mentally since my whole internal conflict of whether to choose Hyrum vs Jamie some 9-10 years ago.
In any case, we gave it one last do-or-die effort in late April, getting advice from a lot of people and trying everything everyone suggested, but it wasn't meant to be. We only managed to squeeze a few more months out of our shriveled business. In that time, we got a lot of plans to draw...more than Hyrum could handle since he was the only designer, seller, measurer, collector, fire-puter-outer, bookkeeper (I was completely limited in my abilities since Hyrum had to try to train me on his spare time that he didn't have), etc, but even though business picked up in the amount of plans that needed to be drawn and people walking in our door, pretty much everyone was kicking tires and window shopping in the end, or wouldn't be ready for 6 months, or had piddly jobs that didn't come close to helping us reach zero each month, and we actually ended up going 2 months without a single sale. Not even a countertop. That was the final straw that broke our poor, crippled camel's back. No one wants to or has the ability to spend money right now! We've been clinging by our fingernails to this business since last fall when the economy and banks seemed to crash, but we can't hang on any more. This slow economy has meant the absolute death of our kitchen and bath business.
It also means we're jobless and have to swallow some pride to get help to survive.
It also means we're in financial hot water.
I hope it doesn't mean we lose our house that we've been working on for so long. We've sunk our entire savings into trying to finish the house (or using it to pay people to help us finish the house), and made some efforts to finish the house that are now biting us in the rear, and didn't even get the house done afterall.
During this whole rollercoaster ride, I've given birth to 2 babies, have had surgery, and have seen my littlest one struggle with a serious illness in the hospital.
This sad picture isn't all black though. There have been some interesting twists and opportunities that have come from all this. I guess you could call them blessings in disguise.
As a result of our job losses, Hyrum is going to
finally be able to follow the advice of his patriarchal blessing and start school this fall...to become a nurse! You know I've posted before about how I thought he'd make a great nurse with everything he's done for me recently, healthwise. We may have to sell the shirts off our backs for tuition and books since we're too late for the financial aid deadline, but we'll get him in and get it paid for one way or another. I know we'll manage because we feel the Lord has prompted us to make this decision.
The black Friday that we decided to shut our doors (3 days before my birthday), our bishop came by our shop for the first time ever to see how we were doing. We discussed the situation we were in with him. Hyrum's patriarchal blessing advised him to continue school, but he never did because one job or another dangled a tantalizing opportunity or paycheck in front of him and that always steered him off that course. Hyrum mentioned that to the bishop and the bishop mentioned that sometimes the Lord has interesting ways of making you listen to him. We thought about that, and then we looked at our bleak situation from a different perspective, and it almost seemed as though all the mysterious and unfortunate puzzle pieces that have made up our life over the last couple of years suddenly started connecting and making a whole new picture that made absolute, perfect sense!
Every unfortunate thing that has happened to us lately seems to have amazingly opened up a new door for us that has perfectly lined Hyrum up with a new career.
Since we hadn't sold any jobs in 2 months we realized that tragic situation had inadvertently created the perfect time to exit without any customers losing their 50% deposit and not getting cabinets. No customers would lose out.
When we bought the business from the partners, Clay and Judy (my great-uncle and aunt that were majority share holders) were able to leave on a mission to the Philippines, but then Clay had foot problems and they recently were transferred to San Diego to finish their mission so they could be by better doctors. If they were still in the Phillippines, they would be trying to sort out the unfortunate mess we're creating for them while half-a-world away. Instead, they're a day's drive away and are able to come back easily if needed. Coincidental? Maybe.
It just seems to us like everything was set up for this whole situation to happen now.
For instance:
Why is it that I've NEVER used birth control (only fertility pills for Talea), yet I've never gotten pregnant easily, but suddenly 3 months after Kiersa...WHAM! I got pregnant!? At the time it seemed like a cruel prank by the fertility gods, but now the timing makes perfect sense: if I hadn't had Paisli at the time I did...if I hadn't needed surgery afterward...if Paisli hadn't gotten sick and gone to hospital when she did...or even if we back up and think: if we hadn't moved here...if I hadn't found my OB...if my OB hadn't allowed Hyrum to deliver our 3 kids that were born here...
Hyrum may have never even realized his interest in nursing.
Since all those things happened when they did, Hyrum has said a hundred times "If I had it to do all over again, I would have become a nurse."
He was
fantastic when he took care of me before/during/after childbirth with each of our kids (and he had to do things no husband should dream of doing) and was the perfect nurse for me after my surgery. He didn't even flinch when I handed him latex gloves and a suppository and told him I needed help. He has checked my dilation with accuracy on my last 3 kids so we knew when to head to the hospital. That was especially helpful with Paisli since I started labor with her while we were in Portland for business meetings. He could tell by my dilation exactly when it was time for us to pack up and leave the hotel to make the 4.5 hour drive home to get to our doctor. When we were at the hospital delivering Kiersa and Paisli, I can't tell you how many nurses said he missed his calling in life and he should have been a nurse, or a doctor, and that he should go back to school. But with owning the business, nursing was just an "I would have/should have" idea.
So why did we move here and take on a business that would eventually die when Hyrum should have gone to school instead? 5 years ago Hyrum wanted to go to school to be an electrical lineman, but I was stressed over his recent job change and the arrival of our first-born, so I convinced him to make the move to Coquille to try his hand in the kitchen and bath business as my brother's partner. He hated it at first, and a lot of times in the middle and end, but he did it for me and the family and the hope of having freedom because of owning a business. We tried to leave the business entirely back before Dane did, which spurred Dane's decision to move on, but we felt too guilty leaving Clay and Judy like that, so we stayed and geared our mindset for making the best of it and making it successful. I guess if we hadn't made the move out here in the first place, we wouldn't be in this hot water right now, yet if we hadn't moved here, I wouldn't found my amazing OB who let Hyrum deliver our next 3 babies, which is what made Hyrum toy with the idea of "I should have been an OB" and got the health-care seed planted in his brain.
So even though we're standing on shaky ground facing embarrassment, feelings of failure, bankruptcy, sadness for the pain we'll cause family and others, life-altering changes, etc...we have a positive outlook because in our hearts we know we're finally doing what we were meant to do all along.
And the best part is, there's a thing called traveling nurses. We hadn't heard of them until Hyatt's birthday party at Outdoor-In where we met a traveling physical therapist and his family and they told us all about it and how nurses do it too. If you didn't know, Hyrum and I have gypsy blood coursing through our veins ever since we drove semi. The reason we buy, fix-up, and sell our house every 2 years is with the intention of someday being able to buy a house outright, no morgage, and then when it's retirement time, sell the house, buy a motorhome, and travel the US seeing all the places we only flew by on the freeway while driving semi. We love change and moving around. When we heard of travel nursing, Hyrum thought, once again, "I should have been a nurse." Travel nursing suits us perfectly because you move around from job to job anywhere in the 50 states and stay at each location an average of 3 months, and sometimes a year. What better way to explore the country?! Plus you make good money doing it! Ever since being a teacher in the public school system and having my eyes opened to the behind-the-scenes politics of public schooling, I decided I wanted to home-school my kids instead of sending them to public school. That will work perfectly for our lifestyle since we'll be moving around a lot.
We could live for short periods in Utah to see family and old roommates of mine, Kentucky to see Nancy, Washington DC to see the Pratts and visit historical sites, Arizona in the winter to see Karin (we are NOT sun and heat lovers), North Carolina to see Amanda and my sister, Melanie, San Diego to see my sister, Tasha, and all the fun amusement parks there, Orlando to play at the theme parks, New England in the fall since we never made it to those states while driving semi, Wyoming so Hyrum can reminisce and see family, Idaho to see family, etc, Alaska and Hawaii to say we've been there and see Richelle and family, the Bay Area to see Angi...the possibilities are limitless. We can visit all the National Parks. We can visit all the places you study about in school. Plus, they provide you with a furnished house close to the hospital in a nice neighborhood. Does it get any more appealing? I don't see how.
And since our kids are so close together in age and we have so many, they'll always have the best friends...each other! They won't be lonely traveling around. And they'll have pen pals from all over the country. Kind of like how Hyrum has friends from all over since his family moved so much.
Plus, we'll have job security since there's a nursing shortage, retirement, and benefits. And he'll work three 12 hour shifts a week with overtime always an option, so we'll have plenty of time to explore our new locations. What a great occupation for a devoted family man!
We feel SO good about this decision!! Better than we have about any other decision we've made, other than the decision to get married to one another.
Now, to meet with the lawyer and murk through the mud...
We'll see how everything goes. I believe we're in for a lot more stress before we can enjoy our future life.
