Soon to be "Home"

The interviewing process has finally come to an end...and we could not be more excited! 

This whole semester of school has been rough for Kade. On average they suggest that you take 2 core Wharton classes a semester...and he decided to take 5! On top of that, interviewing and networking has been a full time job, along with the 20 hr/week library job he already has. He has had way too many late nights and stressful days...but I have rarely heard him complain. He enjoys being busy...but to a certain extent. He traveled to LA, DC, NY, TX, and NJ to interview with different companies that invited him to their offices. He had over 25 on-campus interviews, and many many networking calls. All of his hard work finally paid off.  He not only received one full time offer...but three! There were many days of disappointments and being let down, but we knew that there was a plan. Hearing the answer "no" after getting your hopes up isn't fun, but it was only preparing us for the future. It also reminded us that He has a plan for us here on earth, and it may be different than what we had in mind. 

Houston, Texas...here we come!

He officially signed the papers on Monday and faxed his "yes" over to one of the largest, privately owned, commercial Real Estate companies in the world. It has offices in over 18 countries and Houston is the U.S. headquarters for the company. They have regional offices in Atlanta, Chiacago, London, New York, San Fran, and 58 other US cities. Hines develops, renovates, manages, and finances office buildings, industrial parks, medical facilities, mixed-use developments, and master-planned residential communities in major cities around the world.  Wow. Kade is very excited for the experience he is going to get working for this company...and when he travelled to TX to interview, I could tell he was most excited on the phone about this particular opportunity.

He interviewed in TX on a Thursday, and had to reply to another offer the next day. He ended up extending his time so that he could give this other company his answer by the following Monday--he wanted to wait and see what happened with Hines first. Companies don't usually give you an offer until a week or so after you interview with them. Kade had 3 days to decide if he wanted to take his chances and say no to this other company, or take the opportunity for job security. When he got home on Friday, he called the CEO of the Capital Markets Group at Hines that afternoon to say thank you for the opportunity to just interview with them. The CEO started congratulating him and Kade got really confused. 

CEO: "Wait, have you not received your formal offer yet?"

Kade: (freaking out in his mind with excitement) "...uhhh no I haven't heard from anyone yet."

CEO: "Oh, well I will just tell you over the phone then...we would love to bring you in, give you an offer, and have you as part of this team!"

WOW. Not even one day.

When I got the phone call from him to tell me the news, I was nannying and right as I started to scream of excitement the Mom walked in the door from work. I hurried off the phone and apologized as she told me she thought something was wrong when she heard the scream! Woops! I will never forget that! 

The Williams tower has 64 floors, and Hines is located on the 50th. Yikes! Good thing Kade isn't afraid of heights! It is also located right across the street from the 7th largest mall in the U.S. with over 35 million annual visitors, and over 375 stores. Thank you Hines. :)

Living in Philly we haven't had the chance to get to the temple as much as we should, and want to. The closest ones are the DC or NY temple, which is more than two hours away. We are very excited to have this beautiful temple to attend to as much as possible.

Yes, we have heard horror stories about the heat and humidity...but we do well at adapting and I truly believe that attitude determines experience.  We will make it our home, we will learn to adapt, we will meet new friends, we will put great efforts into our callings, and we will have a great adventure. It isn't forever, but we are excited for this next step in our lives. They will finalize his start date in the Spring, but are thinking somewhere around mid-July.  We are so excited and feel very very blessed for the opportunity. It said in his offer that office hours are from 8-5, unless there is a big project they are working on. Way better hours than anything he was interviewing for...so we are excited about that. I am so proud of Kade for all of his hard work--he did it!!! WAHOO!!