End of the Graduate School Decision Marathon

After Andrew's crazy traveling experiences (including being stuck in a North Carolina ice storm) we have finally made a decision on where we will be heading for school this next year.......

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY!!! 

Andrew walked out of his interview feeling great and decided that if we got in then we would accept right away. The interviewers had told him that it would take 1-3 weeks before we would hear back. I also knew it would probably take longer since they had to shut down campus that same day because of the crazy snow storm that was coming in and it was also President's day weekend. They also told him that no news was good news and if he heard back quickly it was probably a rejection. Well, Andrew hung out at his cousin's house for a few extra days since everything was closed down. He finally got a flight out on Friday. When he got to his first layover from North Carolina he opened his email to find an email from NC State telling him to go and check his application status. So in the St. Louis airport Andrew opened his email thinking that he had been denied since it had only been 48 hours since his interview. He was quite shocked to see that he had been accepted!! I had no idea/even thought it was possible to hear back so quickly. So when Andrew called from St. Louis I thought he was just calling to check in but the first thing he said to me was "So I got an email from NC State!" I stopped in the middle of Walmart and started crying as he told me he got in. I was shopping with my mom and she looked at me really worried when I stopped walking in the middle aisle. I just looked up at her and said "We're moving to North Carolina!" After I hung up with Andrew I was just in shock and my mind was racing like crazy. All through the craziness I felt total peace knowing that it was the Holy Ghost telling me that North Carolina is where we need to be. 

We're SOOO excited to start this new adventure in North Carolina. We feel really great about the decision to move there and have seen the tender mercies in our life that really show that North Carolina is where we are suppose to be.  We will be leaving Provo the second week in May and hopefully settling in a new place by the last week of May since Andrew's school starts in June. We wanted to have a few weeks before to explore the state. We hear North Carolina has some of the best beaches in the country! :)  We want to get as much done as we possibly can because Andrew's school is an intensive one year program. 

We'll keep y'all updated....I guess I can start saying y'all  since we will be living in the South ;)  

This song was on the radio the first day Andrew & I were together after his trip. We've kind of fallen in love with it and of course Andrew's favorite song as well. 

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions,

We are finally at mile marker 25 in this marathon of graduate school decisions. Last week in the time span of 48 hours we heard back from the last three schools we were waiting to hear back from. We haven't really told a ton of people/blogged about our graduate school choices because we knew that things can change quickly and they still can. Since we've heard back from all the 5 schools one way or another we thought it would be best for Andrew to fly out to visit them to help make the decision. It also helps that one of the schools he has to go interview there so he will already be flying out across the country. So when I say we've heard back from all the schools we applied to, some of them have not gotten back to us with a yes or a no. Andrew interviewed with one and the other says that they will tell us any day now.

A lot of people might wonder as well that we actually decided not to apply to the 6th school we were looking at which was BYU. It was a really hard decision to make to not apply to BYU because of all the pros of staying here. Cheap tuition, we already have a place to live, we LOVE BYU, and most of our family is in Utah. We never really got excited about BYU while we were looking at all the other schools and their programs. Also, all the schools that we applied to are just 10 months long and his Masters will be in Analytics and not Statistics which is what BYU's program is and BYU's program is two years long.  With the pro of Andrew having a REAL LIFE JOB in Summer of 2015, in about a year and a half, and also a lot more opportunities for jobs in his field by moving to bigger cities all contributed to us not applying to BYU. We also just feel like we need to move outside of Utah.

We're really grateful that we have many choices to choose from and glad that we have the Holy Ghost to help guide us in the right direction. We know wherever we choose is where we are suppose to be. So hopefully by the end of next week we will have made a decision about where our next step into our future for the next couple years of our life.

Here is a list of the schools that we might be heading to. All through this all I can keep thinking about is this quote from Dr. Seuss.  “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...” 
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

: Tempe, Arizona

 :Raleigh, North Carolina

 :Washington, DC

:San Francisco, California

:Baton Rouge, Louisiana 

Elder Lincoln Bangerter

Last week we said goodbye to my brother-in-law Lincoln. He is going on a two year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Adriatic South Mission speaking Albanian. He is going to be a great hard working missionary for those two years. We're excited to see his life be blessed for his service and also to hear about all of his experiences.

GOOD LUCK LINCOLN!

 Claire and her family flew in just in time to drop Lincoln off. So all 10 of us jumped in the car. All the kids wanted to sit with us in the back seat.