Immediately he was a part of our family. He looked exactly like baby Isaac and especially baby Luke. Amy wasn't feeling very well afterwards and so we didn't pick out a name for him until the next day. We narrowed it down to Asher or Jonas or Levi or Noah. After a number of circumstances, opinion from little brothers, dreams, and picking a name from a hat we finally named him Jonas Kendall Larson.
He was 7 lbs and 1 oz.
This is Jonas a few days old.
Now today is his 1 month birthday and he is nearly 10 lbs!
We let him eat it ALL. Messy boy...
He's a beautiful child and we are so lucky to be his family. We loved having Valerie, Janet, Rhone, and Jessica over to meet him but we can't wait to have everybody else meet him in Utah.
So we've been living here in Carthage Texas for 9 weeks now and we'll be here for another 6 weeks before the year ends. We've LOVED it here. We've fallen in love with small town life.
We're about 2 hours away from Duck Dynasty and although we've never seen the show, the culture of it is VERY familiar to this part of the country.
Someday we'll all die and go to heaven. Heaven will be like Carthage, TX except all of our family will be living here with us. Also there will be one mountain nearby, and there will be no allergies and it will snow for 1 month every year.
We are in Carthage because I've got an externship site to learn from out here. For the first time in my life I feel like I'm finally getting a good deal for the tuition money that I'm paying. It costs $10,000.00 for this semester so that means my experience here is pretty awesome. I'm learning something new everyday. I've been forced to improve on all my weaknesses and I'm finally becoming a competent doctor of optometry. It's wonderful.
Our future now lies ahead of us. Not the distant future, but graduation is now less than 6 months away.
This weekend I am writing my grand resume. Probably one of the most influential documents I'll ever write in my life. This I will send out to Utah and its surrounding cities. I will send it to optometrist and ophthalmologist offices whether or not they are hiring. I'll be fishing for an opportunity.
There are no opportunities advertised in Utah and so I need to find them.
But there are 2 advertised opportunities here in Texas and they are both tempting my attention.
If you're interested in the possibilities you can google option #1 in Onalaska, Tx and option #2 in Piggot Arkansas.
I'll be frank about the very very basics: In Utah we simply may not get a job. It's not that we will turn down a job in Utah and thus we may choose Texas, it's that we may have no choice.
The average salary an optometrist makes right out of school is 87,000 a year.
This salary is NOT dictated by the profession's ability to earn money, it's not dictated by the value of the optometrist, but it is fully the product of one simple fact: Student loans.
No optometry student can accept any job position will a lower salary due to the tremendous demand of the accumulated student loans from 8 years of college education. (and the demand of taxes)
If I want to take a job in Utah it must offer this much for a salary or else I'd have to live in a parents basement long term.
But we have faith that anything is possible with God. We are sending out our resume's and will follow any leads given to us because being near family is a huge priority.
At the same time Texas would like to demand our attention. We currently have an opportunity which could offer us much more than 87,000 a year annually. These offers, will hard work, have a tremendous earning potential of owning a practice which within 5 years may gross 1 million annually.
As far as family goes. I remember one of my favorite cousins was Camber, and although his family lived a thousand miles away, seeing them only a couple times a year was still very special. I enjoyed a great relationship with my cousins despite the distance. It was much better when they moved to Utah, but I know it's possible to know your family that live far away. I need Isaac, Luke, and Jonas to know their cousins too, and I think that will enough success we'll be able to afford to visit Utah every 4 months at least, plus have room for visitors at least once or twice every year.
My heart is currently split on what we should do. For the last year I've felt strongly that we should aim for Utah and so it still holds sway in the decisions.
God will help us decide.
I think that the video didn't work...
So.
I'll just post it on FaceBook.
But I wanted to add one more thing.
at 3 weeks old... I took Jonas into the office and examined his eyes. They were PURE BLUE. Absolutely no pigment anteriorly.
today I took him in again to see the progress and I don't know what to see.
Perhaps my eyes were tricking me but I thought I saw a light dusting of pigmented cells throughout the entire iris OU.
So this means that all last week we had a pure hope for Jonas being a blue eyed baby, but now I'm pretty convinced he'll be brown eyed. By next week I'll recheck again and let you all know. Please remind me to tell you.
2 comments:
Congrats! We love and miss you!
Thanks Jess, miss you too!!!! We need to catch up one of these days.
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