House Hunting Trip

Last weekend was crazy.  I had two interviews Thursday afternoon via phone.  This was also the second day of parent/teacher conferences.  I had permission to leave the conferences for an hour or so in order to hide in my car for said interviews.  Also, it was raining.  So you can imagine how well the phone interview reception was!

I had one really good phone interview and one really bad phone interview.  I wanted to be really upset about the bad interview, but I wasn't.  I reflected on it before heading back inside for P/T conferences, and I realized I had done NOTHING wrong.  In fact, many of the questions they asked were the same as the one before, and that interview could not have gone better.  The first interview I had was for a school similar to the one where I currently teach: it's a demographic of economically disadvantaged students and the school does a LOT to help those kids succeed.  This first interview was with the department head.  She was friendly and conversational and I felt really good about it.  The second interview started out with bad phone reception (which I apologized for, explaining I was in my car in the rain because I was in between meetings with parents).  The interview would ask a question and then interrupt me in the middle of my answer to say she could hear me better at that particular second.  Or once she asked me a question about my use of technology, and as I was in the middle of a sentence interrupted to ask, "Wait, how big is your school?  Do you even have diversity?"  Ummm…really?!  I felt like this person thought so highly of her school that she didn't even respect me enough to realize I was also interviewing her, that I was also trying to decide if the school would be a good fit for ME.

Obviously, this made my decision really easy.  Second school: cross it off my list.

After the end of parent/teacher conferences at 8pm Thursday evening, hubby and I drove nearly three hours to St. Louis to catch a few hours of sleep.  Our flight was to leave at 5:30 am Friday morning.  And we all know that you have to get to the airport a few hours early to make it through security.  After about three hours of shut-eye, we got to the airport around 3:30 in the morning!

Once we got to Phoenix (our new home!) we drove to the high school where I had given my first phone interview.  The interviewer (dept. head) had invited me to come visit her classroom and see how I felt about the school!  It went really well and I was offered a job on the spot.  I feel so blessed to have found a wonderful school family so quickly in the process!

After checking out the school, hubby and I headed to the hotel for a quick change before starting the house hunting.  Here's my outfit from AFTER that quick-change:

Top: H&M
Undershirt: The Limited
Jeans: Mudd (Kohl's)
Sandals: Toms
Necklace: Gift from hubby

Ignore the blurry shots and the ugly toes.  Day one of house hunting was a bust and hubby and I felt a little discouraged.  Day two went much, much better.  We found TWO houses we really liked and we put offers out on both.  One came back immediately with an acceptance of all our terms! Here's a picture of my outfit that day AND a quick pic of the house:

Bow Top: Dillard's
Lattice Pants: Cato Fashion
Necklace: Gift from hubby
Sandals: Toms

Since we had an offer on the house, Sunday was spent by the pool as we waited for paperwork to be finalized so that we could sign off on things before heading back to MO.

Maxi Dress used as coverup: Kohl's

To recap:  In one weekend, I got a job and a house!  Not too shabby.