San Diego--Here we come!

Okay, so we should give a little update since our lives have been turned upside down.
(I will post Halloween pictures later). About 4 months ago, Trent and I decided maybe we should look into going back to school and getting more education that would help Trent get a clinical research job. He's been applying to jobs in this field for the last 18 months and found nothing. We have been very blessed that he has been working at ARUP Laboratories. It's just not what he wants to do for the rest of his life. So, we started researching programs all over the country. I spent several hours over a couple of days researching schools while he was at work. I found a Masters Program at the University of California San Diego that Trent really liked. It was specific--JUST for clinical research. It has job placement help at the end and the classes are very hands-on-training-type experience for a real job. This program is much more specific than the Masters Degree he earned from the Univ. of Utah. Although, we are very glad he did that program (Masters of Science and Technology) because without it, he could not have applied to this program. Just to apply to this program, you had to have one advanced degree or another. A bachelors wasn't gonna cut it. So we started the whole transcript-sending, personal-statement-writing, letters of recommendation process all over again. FUN. Haven't we done this before?

So we finally heard last Tuesday that he got accepted! It is on a condition, though. They were concerned about his lack of experience doing clinical research. Duh! Isn't that why we need to go back to school?!?! He has to take the first class in the program (Epidemiology 1--starting Jan. 4), receive a B or better, than he can be officially accepted into the program. He's not too worried about that condition--it will be the only class he's taking, so he can really focus on it.

So after that, he can sign up for the full 6 credits starting summer quarter. The program has a track that can allow people to finish it in 18 months and that is what we are shooting for. I mean, seriously, how much student loan debt do we REALLY want to be in when all is said and done. I thought we were doing pretty good after he graduated from the Univ of Utah. But now we are going to double that amount. Fun!!

So now we have less than 2 months to: (in order of importance)
Trent needs to find a job in San Diego. ANY job!!!
We need to find an apartment or a house to rent (leaning towards renting a house--more inland, so we don't have to pay $2000 a month!) We will probably leave our kids with my parents over Thanksgiving break down in Arizona since we were planning on going there anyway and fly on over. And celebrate Cory's birthday somewhere in there since his birthday is just before Thanksgiving.
We need to actually MOVE there.
We need to find Cory's new school and switch schools
We have Christmas to plan and shop for--do we move right before Christmas? Do we move the day after Christmas? Who knows.
Work out money details--apply for federal aid, etc, etc.
We have Hailey's birthday on New Years Eve
Then hopefully, on Jan. 4 we will be all moved in somewhere, Trent will attend his first day of class, and then go to work.

All I can say is, thank heavens this isn't LAST year when I was 8 months pregnant with Sophie during the holidays! That would definitely make it much harder.

Okay, well, we're excited, and I'm so glad we took that trip to San Diego just 6 months ago! We went to Sea World for a couple of days and the beach. So I feel like we have a feel for the area. We loved it! 70 degrees year-round? Yeah, I think I can handle that. Too bad I just bought all the kids snow boots for the winter. And a cool sled at a recent garage sale. Oh well. I guess we'll just suffer by living in a perfect climate. But don't be too jealous. When I start to think about the student loans we'll have when all this is over, I start to feel faint and weak.