Tumwater or Bust

As you remember from how Jen and I met, she moved from Olympia, WA to marry me and live in Boston. Jen made it clear that if the career opportunity presented itself, she would like to return to Washington.

In August, I prepared a presentation for my company suggesting that expanding into the Pacific Northwest would be good way to affect the bottom line. I also stated that I would like to be considered to open the area and eventually become a divisional sales manager based in Seattle.

In October, I attended our semi-annual plan of action meeting for my company and was told that expansion to Seattle is likely to happen. I was also told that I was being considered to open the territory. I got the offer to move to Seattle in January 07.

This posed a big concern for me. We were spending lots of money to get pregnant. We had embryos that were here in Boston. We did not know if we were pregnant. How will be able to continue with our insurance coverage and with our doctor if we moved? We could not move if we were not pregnant. We prayed about the transfer. It felt good. But, the lagging concern of not knowing if we were pregnant was hard for me. I wanted to believe on our answer to prayer and pick up and move. We decided that we were 95% certain we would move. I needed to respond to my company on Monday. Jen called me to tell me she was pregnant on the very day that I had to respond. I know that our Heavenly Father was involved in this decision. I immediately felt completely secure with the decision to move for the first time.

We traveled to Washington and began looking at houses with the best Realtor in Thurston County -- Jen's Mom. We looked at several houses and did not feel comfortable with any of the houses. We liked 2 houses, but they were expensive and we just liked them, we were not in love with them. Kathy, Jen's Mom, had a tip about a house that was going to go on the market. We drove around and could not find it. While driving around looking for this house, we happened upon a small subdivision. We decided to take a look at a couple houses in it. The first house that we looked at felt right. We knew it as soon as we looked at it. The only problem is that it was only a 3 bedroom with a bonus room. We knew we were pregnant and so we decided that we needed a guest room, nursery, an office, and of course a master bedroom. We were short a bedroom, but this house felt right. It felt like our home. The bonus room was large and I decided that I would make that a media room and office in one....probably not the best idea in order to get work done. So we made an offer and it was accepted. We just needed to sell our home in MA too. We could not afford 2 mortgages, so we made the offer contingent on selling our other home. It was accepted with the contingency.

We already had our Massachusetts house on the market. We just needed to sell it. Our realtor listed it on 80 websites. We were hopeful, but our 90 day contingency began to run out and not a single showing. We prayed about it and decided to take a leap of faith and set a closing date on our Tumwater house. This scares the pants off me, but I guess a leap of faith is needed.

Getting Pregnant

Sorry folks that it has been so long since we last updated the blogomeister. I know, you guys want in on more of the Campbell Lovefest. Lots have happened since my last post.

As many of you know, Jen and I have been trying to start a family and to no avail. So we went to the Reproductive Science Center and had IVF done. It was a grueling process, but ultimately well worth it. On the Friday prior to Christmas, after weeks of medications and shots for my dear wife Jen, we had 11 eggs extracted. Over the next few days 8 of them were viable fertilized and on Christmas morning they were implanted back into Jen. Our doctor tried to discourage us from implanting 2 eggs, but Jen wanted to increase the odds of getting pregnant. We were told that with 2 embryos implanted there was a 50% chance of a successful pregnancy. There was also a 30% of the 50% chance that we could have twins. Jen was not deterred by the fear of having twins and directed the doctor to implant 2 embryos. For the next several weeks we waited and waited to find out if Jen was pregnant. I started to suspect that she might be when out of the blue she started craving grapes. Bringing home grapes would make her so happy. Note to self, maybe I can substitute grapes for flowers at Valentines Day. It'd save me a fortune. Finally the day came. We went to have a blood test. Then we had to wait all day. I dropped off Jen at home and went and made sales calls. I was returning home from my calls when Jen called me. Between tears of joy she told me I was going to be a Dad. Yippie. I was so happy. I couldn't believe it. Happiness can not truly describe what I felt. It was unbelieveable.