A room with a view

Nathan and I recently had the opportunity to travel to Great Falls, MT for a job interview (our first) WITHOUT the kids!!!!  Thanks to many of our great friends here in VA, we were able to have a little get-away and it was wonderful!!  I needed a break and it was so nice to get one.  It was the first time since we've had kids (7years) that we were able to have more than 24 hours alone together.  The people in Great Falls were super kind and we felt right at home.  The Great Falls Clinic (where he interviewed) totally pampered us--- they had someone meet and greet us at the airport and make sure that we got our rental car, then they put us up in a beautiful 3rd floor room of La Quinta Inn with a balcony and view of the Missouri River and the fall trees.  It was gorgeous!  The night we arrived we had a dinner arrangement with 2 of the women from the Clinic at a pizza place right next to the hotel.  It was great food and we really enjoyed meeting the women and getting our first taste of what the clinic was really like and what the people that worked there were about.  We were super tired by the time we got back to our room (although it was only 8:30 Montana time, it was 10:30 our time after a day full of traveling..  So we went back and prepped a little for Nates' interview in the morning and went to sleep.

The next morning Nathan was up early and studying- going over every possible question in his mind to be ready for whatever the people asked him.  He was fully ready to sell himself,, but after being gone from 8-5pm he came back to me and said that he really felt that they were basically begging him to come and he didn't have to sell himself at all.  He was really impressed with the facilities and the idea of being in a physician owned clinic with doctors of every other kind sharing the clinic.  It seems that the people of Great Falls are all really down to earth, small town kind of folks.  We had another dinner that night (only an hour after Nate got back), with 3 doctors and their spouses from the clinic.  It was at a nice restaurant called Dante's and we were both treated to steak and potatoes.  The other doctors impressed us because they were so real and not full of themselves.  They were just your every-day people that weren't trying to make a good impression or show off their money.  It made us feel very comfortable and quite at home.  Those are the kind of people we'd love to associate with and work with in the future.  It appears that the only downfall to this job could be the competition it has in town with the hospital and Benefis system.  Nate did his best to find out all the knitty gritty details about it because it has been causing a lot of doctors to leave the clinic in the last few years.  We love the town and the people, but are making sure that if we are going to bring 5 kids anyway, it will be a stable place to raise them!

I had a great time just being able to read and sleep and do what I wanted at the hotel for most of the day.  I was also able to go tour the town with a local realtor that the clinic had assigned to me.  She was very nice and showed me the majority of the neighborhoods and gave me a good feel for the entire town.  Great FAlls has only about 50-60,000 people in it (similar to the town I grew up in) and I was able to see nearly the entire town in less than 2 hours.  We didn't tour any houses on Friday, but I got a good idea of what areas I wanted to be in and what ones to avoid.

After dinner that night we went back to the room and once again were exhausted beyond measure.  Nathan ended up staying up half of the night not being able to fall asleep.  I was pretty much dead to the world until I heard him rummaging about or had to use the bathroom.  We got up at 6 am (8 am VA time) and went to the continental breakfast offered at the hotel.  Then we went out with another realtor (a man that one of Nathan's patients in VA referred us too).  He led us to about 10 different houses, which we toured and got a good idea of what we like as a couple and how much the housing market is there.  The one thing we were really disappointed with were the backyards.  For being such a rural place with so much land, the lot sizes were rather ridiculous.  It looks like we'd have to luck out and either buy a place built on 2 lots or build one ourselves if we want to have the kind of backyard we both desire.  We went in to the process thinking that we'd love to just move in to our dream home and never had to move again, but after looking and researching, it appears that it will probably have to rent for a while to save up a good downpayment and perhaps build our dream home in the process.  It seems that the majority of homes there do not have our necessities in place (I'd love to have enough room on the top floor for each of our kids to sleep on the same floor as us-- is that so much to ask?).

Wednesday night (our last in MT) we had to ourselves and we went to the Great Falls National Park then out to eat at a local mom and pop restaurant that we terrific and very friendly.  I will post more pics in the next post.  We had a great time and it was definitely a treat to not have to take care of the kids and to know that they were in good hands.  I felt spoiled rotten and am extremely grateful that the clinic was kind enough to pay for both of us to go out there.  It was wonderful!!  We aren't sure if we will end up there or not, but we will have to decide soon.

We have another interview in Ohio next week and then we will be praying hard to know where the Lord wants us.  I know that He has a master plan for our family and that no matter where we end up we will be happy and continue to learn and grow.