The Traveling Kind

I know it's been a while since my last post and that's mainly because I GOT MY JOB BACK! Yep, that's right. I was hired right back on into my exact same contract that was canceled. I don't even know what all my recruiter had to do to make that happen but I'm sure glad she did! Since it is the same contract I'll be ending November 8th, but we are still hoping to stay through the beginning of January. So come November I'll be at the mercy of Dell again. But fingers crossed that things work out and I get word of an extension soon. Ryan has also secured a job through the holidays. He works at an Austin apparel/gift store that's right across the street from our apartment building called Austin Rocks. There are only 3 other people that he works with so he's had a great time getting to know them. We've also already benefitted from his awesome discount! The past few weeks we've just been settling into our new jobs and continuing to see friends. T

Well I think everyone knows by now that my contract with Dell Children's Hospital was canceled by the hospital. That was 12 days ago now and I still don't have a new job. Normally what would happen if a contract was canceled is that my recruiter would submit me to pretty much any available PICU day jobs throughout the country and I'd go to the first one that offered me a job. However, a decision we made in regards to our housing and the fact that we want to stay in Austin is kind of limiting my options. Lucky for me, (hopefully not for bad/sad reasons) a traveler currently on contract with Dell is not going to be able to finish his/her contract. This led to the the Dell director contacting me again and asking if I was interested in coming back and finishing out that contract. Of course I said yes but due to all the junk that has to be done between my company and the hospital I don't have an official offer yet. I could still potentially not start work again until next we

It's that time again!! The pants ants are in full force and I've accepted my next assignment!! We've got about three weeks left here and it's going to fly by. We'll be filling our days off meeting up with old friends we haven't seen yet and two concerts: Kenny Rogers and Lyle Lovett with Emmylou Harris!! I'll wait and let y'all scream with excitement------- Speaking of live music, for our next assignment we'll be in AUSTIN !!! I'm not so thrilled about being there in the dead of summer but the fall will be nice. If the pants ants stay away we'll be there through the holidays, so far it'll be through the end of October. We'll see how that goes. We can't wait to get to Texas and be living in the city where so many of our friends are! I'm excited to do all of the fun touristy Austin things we've never done before (Franklin's get in mah belleh!). PLUS, I'll be working in the PICU at Dell Children's which is a job

Ugh. I really didn't want this to my next post but I'm getting a lot of folks asking about our tiny house, so I guess I can't put it off...and it's been a month so that's fair. So about that tiny house. Remember how I said we had everything figured out and we're doing this and we spit shook on it and everything? Well, long story short: no tiny house for us right now. In the end, it all came down to funding. Which I never even considered because my income is sufficient and my credit is great. As it turns out banks don't like that we don't have a house and you can't see my "housing income" from my company on my W2. Oh, and we haven't had a loan that big before. Uh, duh. It would technically be our first house, of course we haven't had a loan that big before. But you can't tell 'em that. I'll say more about that later. Okay, so here's the long version: CHAPTER ONE: The Home and Garden Show On June 20th - I'll n

...And we're building ours on wheels! Ryan and I have decided to build a tiny house! So no, I'm not pregnant for the millionth time! Can everyone (probably just my mom) just stop wishing that on us already and just give up?! :) Ryan and I have been doing our research (read: watching days worth of HGTV and YouTube videos) for the past couple of months and tonight we sealed the deal. Like with any big life decision we make, we spit shook on it. There's spit in there! Ryan's got a few more hours invested than I do. He's actually lost sleep over it, like an entire night. I had to work the next day and and got a hot breakfast out of the deal. WINNING. We're like, actually doing this. We have a lender, the company we're buying the plans and trailer from, Ryan has the floor plans all drawn up, and I'm working on getting my next assignment in a tiny house building friendly location, AND I've gone into a Home Depot...and no one had to drag me. I wen

WARNING: Boring picture dump ahead... But there's a story about a bidet...so that's not something you see everyday...whose idea was that anyway?? Ryan and I did the trip from Denver to Thousand Oaks, CA in three legs. Our first day we drove from Denver to Moab, UT. How beautiful that drive was. First, we started out in the snowy mountains where the temps were in the 40s.  Then, as we slowly made our way to the west side of the mountains the snow disappeared and the temps rose. The landscapes were so vastly different but so beautiful in their own ways. I just can't believe that if Ryan and I would've chickened out that day 4 years ago we could've missed this. We would've spent our yearly vacations on a beach somewhere and completely missed it. Moab is the cutest little ol' town. There are a few national parks nearby with loads of hiking, biking, and ATV-ing, a river for rafting, and there's tons of stuff to do in town. We DROVE through Arches, st