Graduation, Jobs, and Car Accidents

Life has been pretty busy since the last time that I wrote, and unfortunately that means that I can't possibly share everything that has been happening. So I'll just share the things that are most important...or actually more like the things that are standing out more in my mind right now. Brian has been working very hard over the past month to complete his master's thesis. Things were absolutely crazy with his deadline to complete this in addition to all his final papers and projects. I am happy to say that Brian was able to complete his master's thesis prior to the deadline and as of May 15, 2015 Brian has his Master's Degree!!! I am so proud of him and the dedication he has put into his work. It has been hard at times, but I love that I was and will continue to be able to support him through these years in graduate school.

Because he now has his master's degree on his way to the PhD he can now teach at most universities. He is lucky enough to have cohorts who work at Cal State Fullerton in their psych department and so when they told him about job openings he jumped at the opportunity to apply. Brian was contacted for an interview and spent many days stressing and prepping for it. I told him he would do remarkable because he tends to always leave a good impression. Brian's hard work and diligence has led to a job offer teaching at Cal State Fullerton this Fall. He will be teaching two sections of Research Methods. We are both beyond excited for this opportunity. It is such a blessing that he was able to find a job so quickly, especially in comparison to most of the job hunting we've experienced since coming to California.

On May 18th, while Chloe was taking her nap and Brian had already texted me to say he was coming home from setting up an intervention at a local high school, I was surprised see that I was getting a phone call from Brian. I rejected the call because I didn't want to wake up Chloe and texted him back to ask what was up.....If I had known what his text would be in response I would have answered the phone right away. His text read: "Someone hit me...pretty bad. I'm OK but I'll be awhile" My heart stopped, even though he said he was OK it's a terrifying thing to hear that someone you love has been in a car accident. I immediately called him back and he told me the car was in pretty bad shape. I asked Brian to write what happened, but he's still pretty upset about the situation especially because of how things are now going with the car... but I'll get into that later. Brian was coming home and as he had stopped as an intersection he looked behind him in the rearview mirror and saw a car speeding towards him. There was nothing he could do except wait for impact. The car slammed into the Maxima's rear end with such force that the Brian's car was pushed into the car in front of it, and that car then rear ended yet another car. Because of this lady's reckless driving 4 cars were involved in an accident, and our car unfortunately took the brunt of it and was the middle of the sandwich.

You could actually see the Honda symbol from the car imprinted into the bumper and the trunk would no longer close. :(

:(

Last Wednesday the insurance adjuster came and estimated about $4200 in damages and gave us a check and a name of a body shop we could take our car for repairs. He then told Brian that they could increase their coverage to about $5200 if needed. Unfortunately Brian let me know that if it did surpass that amount that would mean that the car would probably be totaled, that the insurance would not be fixing the car and would instead give us a check for what they feel our car is worth. Yesterday we called the repair shop to see how things are going, their estimate has now exceeded the maximum the insurance had allotted. Not the news that we were hoping for. While the insurance hasn't officially told us they will be totaling the car, we don't have much hope that they will pay for the amount the shop has quoted. We could take the money insurance gives us and repair the car, paying for the rest of the repairs out of pocket, however that would mean that the Maxima would have a salvage title. More than likely it looks like we will be trying to find a new car. Yay!....Not really.....

Brian and I really loved this car. It has a lot of memories in it and we put a lot of hard work into fixing any repairs ourselves so we could save money. It's frustrating that because of someone else's bad choices we are having deal with the worst of it. I'll try to do another post in a few days once we hear back from the insurance, maybe things will turn out more positively....and I'll focus on Chloe things, I love that crazy little girl of ours.