All in a day

All in a day... Things change.
Your life as you know it changes. I knew this would happen, but could not predict when or how. We have waited and been told many times that AJ would be hired by various companies, but then nothing happened... We would be called and told that the money they thought they had was not there and so they did not have enough money in the budget to hire him at this time, even though we had discussed salary and when he would start. This was a very hard time. So many broken promises. Many companies would go through the long interview process leading us on, and we would think - "This is it!", but it wasn't. Then in the end they were all of a sudden on "hiring freezes". We got used to this new economy we were in. We did what we had to do to get by, and some months I am not sure how we made it, but we did.
AJ continued to interview for jobs that would never pan out, and continue to apply and find new contacts. He worked everyday at finding a new job, it was his job.
Finally one seemingly normal Monday in January a call came in from someone at Texas A&M, could he interview that Thursday! Of course he said yes, and they told him like everyone else that he did good and they would be in touch. They called on the following Monday and said he was a finalist and could he fill out some scenario situations and email them back that day. He said yes. Wednesday came and one of his good friends called and said someone was calling about him, they were checking references. Then on Thursday he had an offer and could he start February 1st?
We decided months ago that when he had signed his contract we would celebrate, and so we did. We all decided that we would go to Chuy's (and use a gift card we had saved for this occasion) for lunch and then off to use some more gift cards we had received from Christmas to get AJ a few pairs of new dress slacks (and they were on sale, YEA! clearance even better.)
This was the day we relaxed just a little. It felt good, we discussed only happy things and did not think or worry about how all of this would play out in the coming months. We talked about the move briefly with the boys because they were smart enough to figure out that Dad was moving to College Station.
It was a nice beautiful day, the sun was bright and it was unusually warm. Such a nice day to celebrate.
We were blessed at the end of the day with an amazing sunset, wondering what the future would hold as we take this path into the next chapter of our lives.
(Can't figure out why the pictures are so fuzzy. Grrrrrrrrr.)