John's August Letter

August 22, 2012

Dear Children,

     The past few months have been a little crazy. July started out with a family reunion. Your Aunt Rachel wasn’t able to make it with her family, but the rest of us where there. We stayed in cabins at a campground and spent most of the time just hanging out with each other. It was nice to get to see all your aunts and uncles and your cousins. It was the first time that many of us had been together at the same time since your mother and I got married. It was also nice to get out of town and have a break from the stress of looking for a job. The hardest part was coming back home afterwards. Our apartment felt really empty after spending that much time with family.

     Once we got back we had to switch over to moving mode. Since I graduated from BYU, we couldn’t stay in on-campus housing any more. We found a nice condo that costs a little more than we were paying before, but it’s also quite a bit bigger. The landlord also allows us to have pets. That means that as soon as we had the essentials unpacked we headed to a shelter to pick out a kitty. We named his Reeses because he is orange. When he’s not playing us to death, he’s loving us to death. He really loves his people. I know you didn’t get to help pick him out, but I bet you’re still going to enjoy having him as part of the family.

     Then, a week into August, we had an adoption conference sponsored by Families Supporting Adoption that we attended. We had wanted to go last year, but it was too far away and we didn’t want to spend money on a hotel unless we had to. We ended up leaving the conference with some mixed feelings. Some of the presentations and classes were really good and gave us some ideas of how to talk about adoption more openly. On the other hand, it was hard hearing everyone else tell stories about quickly their adoption went or how easily they found their children, or how many children they have adopted. I know we will get to the point where we have stories like that to share about you, but it can be hard to see that from where we are at right now.

     I’d still been applying for jobs like crazy and getting interviewed at least three or four times each week. Unfortunately, I seemed to be everyone’s second choice. Principals wanted teachers with more experience that I currently have and everywhere else I applied didn’t want to hire someone who was likely to leave for a teaching position in the next few years. I finally got a call from one of the assistant principals I had interviewed with. She offered me a job for a position that had come up last minute and she thought would be a better fit for me than the position I had applied for. So now I’m working as a facilitator for high school distance learning classes. I get to sit in the classroom with the students and try to figure out how to operate the technology. As luck would have it, the entire system went down my first day and I ended up sitting in a room with three students and no way to connect to the instructor. I know they were bored, but there wasn’t much to do about it.

     I want to apologize for not writing a letter last month. Things were busy, but I still should have made the time. One thing I can promise you is that I will always make time for you. No matter how busy things get, my family will always be my first priority. I love you.

Love,

Dad