The Last 12 Months of Beck

I have been thinking about writing this post for awhile now in order to share with everyone the amazing journey that God has brought us through in the past 12 months. So here it goes! (Be prepared, it's long.)

It all started in spring of 2011. We were living in beautiful Durango, Colorado (God's country, I tell ya).  Basically, I loved it there. We had an amazing church, great friends, small town living and did I say how breathtaking Durango is?  However, housing is expensive, we have no family for over 700 miles and job opportunities were very limited for Rod.  About April or May, Rod approached me with the idea of moving back to California.  Besides the reasons listed above, he could see that there was no room for advancement in his current job.

 At first, I was very resistant to the idea.  When we left California the last time (when we moved to New Mexico at the end of 2006), we had been so excited about leaving.  Our whole purpose of taking the job in NM was to be closer to Durango and eventually work our way back there. (We lived there previously for a year early in our marriage.)  Why would I want to consider moving back to California again!  Rod encouraged us both to be praying about it, knowing that something needed to change.  Either the move needed to happen or housing and job opportunities in Durango needed to make themselves more clear.

So I did.  I really prayed about it for several weeks.  As you can guess, I did not want God's answer to be, "Yes, you need to make the move" but in the end that is what I knew he was telling us to do.  I had to come to the realization that Rod's reasons for wanting to move were more sensible than my reasons for wanting to stay.  That being said, I can't say that I was happy or excited about it.  I still wanted to stay in Durango and to this day if we felt God calling us back there I would go in a heartbeat.  But I did feel a peace about the decision.  I realized that sometimes God asks us to make difficult decisions not because we're excited about the outcome but because following where he leads will always be better than when I take control.

So with that decided, we started thinking through our moving scenarios.  We didn't want to leave Durango (aka, a job) before Rod had found one in California.  We owned a mobile home and were just about ready to put it on the market so there was also the thought of what to do if our home sold but there was still no new job.  To add to my stress, Amelia was starting kindergarten in the fall and my worst case scenario had her changing schools up to 4 times in her first year of school.  What to do, what to do?

Well, God decided not to leave us guessing so at the beginning of June Rod got laid off from his job.  As much as no one wants to lose a job, this made things immensely easier for us.  Rod worked non-stop on our house getting it ready to put on the market.  We set our move date for the beginning of July and quickly started packing.  We officially put our house on the market on June 14th doing a "For Sale by Owner".  Our plan was to try to sell it ourselves for the two last weeks we would be there and if nothing happened then we would turn the selling over to a real estate agent.  Selling a mobile home is actually a lot easier than selling a house because it is considered personal property not real property (but that's a lesson for another time).

By June 18th, we had an offer! (So, God, you really do want us to move, don't you?)  And by the end of the month our mobile home was sold and we had our money in hand.  The plan now was to head to California and stay with Rod's parents in the High Desert while Rod did his job hunting.  I think in both of our minds we thought that we would be with them for maybe 3-4 months and by the fall we would have our stuff back and be in our own place again.  God had made a lot of things clear to us by this point but obviously this was one thing he kept us in the dark about.

As soon as we got to California, Rod began job hunting aggressively.  He made tons of phone calls, followed every lead he had and literally knocked on every aviation door he could find.  His persistence paid off and in October he was offered a job with a charter jet company.  Seemed like our timeline was going along smoothly enough.  Then we started to understand the finer details of the job including the schedule of 10 days on, 5 days off and when a charter pilot is on it usually means they are gone away from home.  This was a little hard to swallow since his last job had him flying 2-3 days a week and even when he did fly he was usually home every night.  The second kicker was that he would have to pay for his own training to the tune of $11,000. (I wanted to share the amount with you not to say, "Look at the money we had!" but to show you how God works and what he can do when we are faithful.)

After praying about the job and the training, we decided that it would be the best thing to do.  It was a job, right?  And don't a lot of people spend that kind of money to go back to school in order to get the job they want?  The other thing was we did have the money in the bank.  Why?  Because we sold our mobile in Colorado and the money from the sale was sitting in the bank waiting for us to be ready to buy another house.  But there was another twist, how were we supposed to get our own place if the money we would need to buy was no longer available?

Rod finished his training in November and finally started flying (thus finally drawing a paycheck) in December.  We had decided to stay with his parents a few more months in order to put some extra into our savings and thus start to build back up what we had spent on training.  Here is where God once again reminded us that he was in charge.  In January, after working only 6 weeks, Rod was put on furlough because the plane he was flying was going in for a major maintenance overhaul.  Furlough is a fun word the aviation industry likes to use meaning "you're not being laid off, but since we don't have any work for you right now, we're just not going to pay you for awhile".  At this point we were very glad that we had not jumped into buying a house right away.

Then again, how were we supposed to be saving that extra money in order to buy a house if Rod was on furlough?  Well, enter our $8,700 tax return and a $5,000 inheritance from Rod's grandma who passed away in February and just like that we had back the money we spent on training.  Neither of these were expected.  We typically get back money from our taxes but this year's return was more than double what we've gotten back in previous years.  God is good!

As the middle of March rolled around Rod was back flying again and we were ready to start house hunting.  Like most places in California, prices are way down in the High Desert.  One of the downsides to staying in Durango had been that we could not afford a decent house.  Even a modest house that would have been the size our family needed was about $100,000 over what we could afford.  At the beginning of April we found a great house, put in an offer and went into escrow.  When the house was appraised, it came in $10,000 over what we're buying it for!

Fast-forward to today and we've closed on the house and are just waiting to move in at the end of the June!  All told, we will have been with Rod's parents almost a year.  Definitely not what we expected when we made the decision to move last summer.  Has it been challenging living in someone else's house for a year? Yes. But has God taken care of us through it all? Absolutely! We did not have to go into debt at all in the last year thanks to a few sacrifices on our part and a huge sacrifice by Rod's parents to allow us to invade their lives for a whole year.

I know this has been a long narrative but friends had encouraged me to write it all down so we wouldn't forget this journey we've been through.  As with any time in our lives, we know that God will continue to work.  Rod is gone a lot with this new job so we continue to pray for His guidance in that situation. My hope is that our story will encourage you in whatever you might be going through right now and know that God is always in control!

Rod's Alaska Trip

Well it's been a while since Rod's trip to Alaska but he took some amazing picture so we wanted to share them with you. It worked out that they flew up there on Tuesday but were not flying home until Thursday so he had a full day to explore Sitka, Alaska. These were taken the last week of April.




I think you should be able to double-click on any of these photos to see them larger.

A Bit of Inconvenience

So this week the kids and I are in Arizona visiting my Rod's parents (otherwise known as Nana & Papa). When we got to the airport in Durango, I went inside for a minute to see if there were carts available or an employee that could help me since I had luggage and two carseats to bring in. After being inside for less than 10 minute I went back outside to retrieve said items only to find that the truck's passenger window had been smashed and my diaper bag and computer bag stolen. Most of the items that were taken can be replaced but sadly the kid's blankies were also in the diaper bag.

It has been a good lesson on trusting God with the outcome. It has also given me a chance to talk to Amelia about how there are just mean people in the world and conversely how God wants us to act. There are some things that we just don't understand but at least I can still be at peace about it.

We're still here!

Wow! How long has it been since you've heard from the Beck's? I think about 5 months. Sorry! And since I didn't get Christmas cards out in December you might have thought that we fell off the face of the earth. Nothing of the sort, just regular busy lives with the two little ones.

I don't have a lot of interesting stuff to fill you in on over the last five months. More importantly, I'm sure you just want some updated pictures. I have been busy working on my Recipes for Moms website. It's a fun hobby and maybe I'll make a little money from it as time goes by. If you happen to have your own blog or website, I'd love it if you grabbed my Recipes for Moms button off the site and added it to your site (Thanks!). As for Rod, he recently went to a week of training to learn to co-pilot a Lear Jet. He is very excited to have this opportunity and will be flying a local business owner around once a week or so in addition to his job at Mesa.

OK, now to the kids. Caleb is already 9 months old and crawling everywhere. He loves to be with his big sister and smiles constantly. Amelia is sharp as a tack, which is excited to see and sometimes a bit tiring. She is looking forward to spring weather and our return to time outside.

Here is a photo montage from the winter, Christmas and now:

Off to San Diego

Since the summer is over, we decided that it was safe to travel again without the risk of being stuck again since we're flying stand-by. This last weekend (Sat.-Tues.), the three of us flew out to San Diego to see both my parents. Thankfully all our flights went smoothly. It is always good to be able to visit with family.

On Sunday we went to the Padres game since a trip to San Diego without seeing a Pads game is torture to me. They have a great grassy park area in center field where we ate our lunch and let Amelia run around for about an hour. It worked out really well because then by the time the game started she was full and tired. She slept for at least 3-4 innings only stirring when the Pads made a good play and everyone cheered. Plus the Padres won!

Here's a side note to anyone with toddlers that likes to eat at Claim Jumper. We went there for dinner after the game and without asking they brought out a toddler plate for Amelia very soon after we were seated. It had cinnamon applesauce, mandarin oranges, turkey and cheese. We didn't have to order anything for her and she had food ASAP so she didn't get fussy. Claim Jumper gets four stars in my book for this idea. All in all it was a fun trip!

Visiting Williams

Last week Amelia and I went to visit Rod's parents, Richard and Connie (otherwise known as Nana & Papa), at their place in Williams, Arizona. Williams is about 30 minutes west of Flagstaff and 50 miles south of the Grand Canyon. It's great to relax and enjoy the great views from their place. We took Amelia into the community pool and, again, she loved the water. She also loved the big yellow tomcat that they feed when they're there. One night for dinner we had corn on the cob and for the first time we offered Amelia the cob. As you can see she loved it and had no trouble eating it.

Now speaking of trouble, that came on our way home. Since Rod works for Mesa Airlines, we get to fly free on any US Airways flight or their affiliates. Before we left to head into Flagstaff on Friday I called to check the availability on the flights we were taking. At that time there were 6 seats left on the flight from Phoenix to Farmington. I know that doesn't sound like very many but the plane only seats 19 people so 6 seats is almost 1/3 of the plane. Well to make a long story short (or shorter), the flight was full when we got into Phoenix so we had to stay in a hotel for the night and then our flight out the next day was delayed. So finally we left Phoenix at 2:45pm on Saturday. Amelia was so tired on Sunday that she slept in until 9am and then took 2 naps! I know we should almost expect that to happen since we fly stand-by but you always hope it won't.