I'm writing this post to get everyone up to speed on what's going on with us right now. Particularly, where we are living and what we are doing. This has been a bit of story to tell and I have tried and generally failed to tell in the tale briefly but properly.
Around July our company put together a proposal for a large project for the levee rebuild/reinforcement in New Orleans. Having been been in the office in Seattle on a regular basis for the last four years I was itching to get back out on a project. The timing was perfect.
Lachlan had just turned 5 years old. Michele and I made the decision to "redshirt" him for kindergarten. With Michele being a stay-at-home mom, it meant we had about one more year to cast off the lines and have one more great adventure before settling down to real-life. And New Orleans seems about as near an opportunity to work a different country as we'd get.
Fast forward to September, we had spent the last two months doing a sort of spring cleaning on our belongs. Lots of Goodwill runs and basically getting rid of anything we ought to have given away a long time ago. September 28th...we get the news. Our team was awarded the job and we are off to New Orleans. Or so we thought...
We had a storage unit and our belongs mostly moved out. The cars were ready to ship across the country. We were leaving it all behind except for what we could fit in one car. Michele, Wesley, and I flew to New Orleans during the first week of October to check out the city and find a place to live. She talked me down from living in the French Quarter and Uptown and we signed a lease on a nice little cottage in Old Metarie. We both flew back to Seattle but I purchased a round trip ticket originating from New Orleans. I even left a check bag with a friend in New Orleans because I was going to be back in a matter of days. Or so we thought...
By the second week of October we were finishing out our Seattle bucket list and were down to moving mattresses and sleeping bags out of the house. And then we found out the project we were awarded had been protested by a competing contracting team. Under the legal provisions of the protest, the contract was to be reviewed by the general account office and resolved in no more than 100 calendar days. So we were still confident the conflict would be quickly cleared up and our family would be back down south by the beginning of the year. Or so we thought...
It appears now that the project contract will be re-evaluated and re-awarded in April of this year. This means we may be leaving or we may be staying. This is pretty much the limbo our family has been living in since July. After things got pushed back to April we started moving back into our place in Fall City. But I'm still sitting on a one-way ticket back to New Orleans and I have a bag full of books and clothes down there right now.
We are still excited about the opportunity to go down there but the we are little worn out by the uncertainty. At this point we'll trust God to take care of the circumstances and prepare to meet that challenges of tomorrow with joy whether they be in New Orleans, the Seattle area, or else where.
On the upside, as a result of this saga Lachlan and Silas now have a small family of stuffed alligators they sleep with every night. I guess that will be one more thing we'll need to pack....or not.
