Ah, life.

2 months ago, Jacob's cousin came to us and told us he was getting married. We had told him quite some time ago that when he got married, he could rent our condo from us because we were planning to buy a house this year anyway. He came to us just after proposing and wanted to know if that was still an option, given that he was getting married on March 9th and the date he came to us with the news was January 2nd. Short notice, but we bought this place in less than half that time, so sure! And we'd been planning on this move for a while, so it wasn't too big of a shock. We found ourselves a real estate agent and a mortgage broker and got started. After one whirl-wind day of looking at houses, we found the perfect one and submitted and offer. The seller was great, met us in the middle of our offer and his asking price and we were on our way to dealing with the mortgage side of things. Oh joy! :-) Our mortgage broker has been great, but the new restrictions now in place on buying a home, especially if you already own one (as we do our condo) are very, very, very annoying! And since they are so new, people (ahem: Wells Fargo) have their own interpretations. So five weeks and innumerable faxes later, we finally had stuff straightened out for the mortgage. So here we are this morning, Feb 12th, approximately 5 days from closing on this wonderful house that we love after lots of feverish work in the last 2 months.

Jacob calls me just after lunch. "Can you come get me from work?" "Sure. What's going on?" "Well, you remember that big board meeting all the partners were having this morning? Three-fourths of the company got laid off and I'm one of them."

Dun-dun-dun.....

So here we are now, approximately 3 hours into our brand-new, completely different course in life. There were some tears from me - my emotions have been a little out of whack all week, if you know what I mean - but I had my two hours to be angry about it and I'm good now. Jacob was planning parties for all of his former co-workers who were now laid off 5 minutes after he found out, so we know he's cool with it. It just amazes me how fast life can change and how quickly you can figuratively have the rug pulled out from under your feet!

So the new direction: yeah.....we don't know! :-) Since we are not going to back out on our agreement to rent the condo to Jacob's cousin, we still need to find a new place to live and be moved out in two weeks. We're going to look for a condo or small home that's for rent, preferably for a 6-month or shorter contract while we figure out the employment situation. We both feel confident and peaceful about Jacob finding another job, most likely still here in Utah, in the next several months. And as far as the finances go, we're actually in better shape now than if we would have bought the house! We've still got my salary and my job isn't going anywhere (death and taxes - you know) AND we've got his 2 months of severance pay AND we've got all the money we've been saving for our down payment. Yep, no worries there.

So now we go from having our entire lives for the next 10+ years decided to....who knows? Sky's the limit and we've got every other option we'd disregarded back in the running. I guess we'll just have to see. We'll keep you posted. :-)