Promoted!

For those of you who read the latest family update I posted a few weeks back, then you know that there has been some changes regarding Kevin's job. First of all the location. When we moved here, he was placed at a military base that is 20 miles from our home. Now he is at a base 60 miles from our home. At first, we thought the commute was going to be over an hour and a half.  It WAS that the first few days when during the orientation meetings of the base he was going in at 8 and leaving at 5. Now that he is back to his normal 7-4 schedule Monday-Thursday with every other Friday off...he finds that his commute only takes an hour. In fact, he likes this commute better than commuting to the other base. It took him 45 minutes to get from our house to the base that is only 20 miles away because he had to drive several miles ON THE BASE as the office was several miles beyond the gate. The speed limit in the base is 15 miles per hour. With the new base, he goes through the gate and his office is right inside the gate. So even though though it is 60 miles from our home it only takes 15 minutes more than the base that was only 20 miles from our home. Kevin truly does not mind commuting an hour each way and never complains about it. Good news regarding the change of location is that after several repeated attempts to get paid mileage citing that we would not have moved so far away if we had known that his base location was going to be changed...his request was finally approved and he is being paid mileage now. He is getting enough to pay for all the gas for his car for commuting purposes now, which is significant!

I also mentioned in my earlier post that at the time of the base change that Kevin had been approached by his boss Pete to apply for another contract that would pay more, be a more permanent assignment AND require us to move 2 hours away to another highly desirable area in our state. Kevin had the first interview and it went well. Without going into details, it has turned out that the position is not available to Kevin at this time however.

Then came a phone call from Kevin's boss last night (at home) He asked Kevin to meet him first thing this morning for a meeting about "more changes" He assured Kevin that everything was fine and that they would discuss in the morning. Of course Kevin and I are wondering all night what these "changes" might mean. Another position? Another location? WHAT?

As it turns out, the news this morning could not have been better. Kevin received a significant promotion! The team of 21 employees on the 4-6 year contract that Kevin is on has been currently managed by his  boss Pete. However as it turns out Pete has been called to other responsibilities (a promotion for him) and the decision is to break the 21 into two teams and promote two people from the 21 to be Area Managers. This contract is for the retro fitting and improvements to several military bases all over our state. For several bases in our Southern part of the state, Kevin was promoted today as one of the Area Managers! Another employee was chosen to manage the northern part of the state. He will still report to Pete, however now instead of Pete managing the entire team of 21 it will be split between the two new Area Managers. Although I don't have all the details in regards to Kevin's new job responsibilities, from what I understand he will still be involoved in the construction management and architecture side of things to some extent, with his main focus being managing the southern team. This promotion means so much for Kevin. First of all, more money. Secondly, it means job security. Pete told Kevin that as a manager on the contract he is no longer at any risk for lay offs that might occur when and if the contract is down sized or changed in any fashion. (for example...when the contract started 6 months ago there were 25 hired...they layed off 4 last month when the location was changed) Job security can not be under rated! For our family it also means not having to re locate again. We really love it here in our city and for the time being, Kevin does not mind the hour a day each way commute. We have considered the possibiility of looking at areas that are in between both bases as it looks like he will be at the current base for at least a year now and then will be back at the base that is only 20 miles away for a significant amount of time. This would give him a 20 minute commute to either base, vs 45 minutes to an hour. We have to consider the cost of living in this area though compared to where we are now among other factors. Our lease is up on the house we are in right now in July. So if we should decide to make that move we could in fact do it before Kyle starts his Freshman year in High School. We will see. For the time being, we plan on staying where we are and for that I am glad.  Other than living in San Luis Obispo, CA.. I can honestly say that living where we do is my favorite place we have lived. I love it here as does Kevin. We love our church, our new friends and our community as a whole. We could not be happier about Kevin's big promotion, and I just wanted to share the good news!