Bragging Rights

As preface to our announcement of the day, I must first ask: How many of you have read the book Diary of a Wimpy Kid?



For those of you who haven't, let me tell you that it is hilarious. It is the diary of Greg Heffley, who is quite the wimp. He has a very dry sense of humor and has a rather amusing way of pointing out the obvious. The entire book is done as one very long comic strip.

I highly recommend it to anyone. As a reader myself, I was quite entertained. And as a teacher, this is the book I use to get the kids who won't read anything ever to want to read all the time. Good book. (I can't say quite the same for the second two, but the first is well worth it.)

And let me preface once more that I have always had this same opinion about this particular book, even before what I'm going to tell you next.

Chris has been offered a job, programming games for the website poptropica.com. The cool thing here is that the author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney, is going to be his boss. I told my fifth graders that and they just about melted in their chairs.

Ok. Enough corny build-up.

Besides the bragging rights of having a cool boss (he seems like a really nice guy, and hopefully a good boss, too), this job fits a lot of things we have been hoping for in terms of employment. Chris quit his previous job at the beginning of last semester because there was just too much stress with trying to stay caught up in his classes, maintain a good gpa, work part-time, and have some semblance of a family life. We adjusted our budget such that we could survive just fine on my salary, and he quit. It worked out very well for his grades. 4.0 last semester. Yay! It was also nice for him to be able to be around and be husband and dad at the same time as going to school.

We had been planning on him finding some sort of engineering internship for the summer. We were expecting to have to live in the Salt Lake area during the summer, allowing him to get the engineering experience that would be helpful when trying to find a job down the road.

The idea of being in Salt Lake for the summer became less appealing when he was called into the Elder's Quorum presidency. He didn't want to ditch out only a few months after being called, and he wanted to keep the calling when he came back, which he most likely wouldn't be able to do if we left. Now he will be able to stay in Logan and continue to fulfill his calling.

It works out very well in several ways. One, they are willing to let him work for only 15 hours a week during school, then full time during the summer. Two, they will most likely keep him until he graduates and goes into the Air Force. Three, they are letting him wait and start a month from now, giving him time to finish the big senior design project he has to do to be able to graduate. Four, the whole staying in Logan thing. Five, he will make just as much money, if not more, than what he would with an internship. It just all works out.

He has been offered the job, but the official details have not been worked out yet. There is still the slight chance that things could take a nosedive and someone on either end of the deal will pull the plug, but so far, it's still looking promising.

We are blessed.