Oh my, what a year it’s been.
365 days ago, Danielle, Belly, and I were enjoying our blissful life in Eudora, KS. Danielle would be wrapping up her 2nd to last finals week and taking a much needed breather before beginning her last semester of law school in January. Belly was probably cozied up next to the fire or napping on the couch (as was I). Christmas was approaching quickly, and I had taken paid time off from my work as an insurance representative for Farmers Insurance for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We were looking forward to spending time in our hometowns of Stockton and Damar with our families and friends.
Fast forward to the present. Danielle, Belly, and I are now enjoying a blissful new life in Stockton, KS. We are awaiting the much anticipated arrival of the newest member of our family, our baby daughter Remy Elise. In the meantime, Danielle is working as the Assistant County Attorney in Rooks County, as well as doing private work at Hageman Law Office in Stockton. I took over the Branch Manager position at the Farmers National Bank in Stockton. Belly is now napping on a new couch in a new home in Stockton.
I suppose none of that is really news to anyone, so I’ll get to what this post is actually about: the journey from there to here.
After Christmas 2010 and the New Year celebration, it was back to work for me, however Danielle didn’t have to start her last semester until later in January. While she was out of school, we had a lot of fun. There were many nights spent at our favorite bar & grill, Set ‘em Up Jacks, in Lawrence, and many more nights spent enjoying a bottle of wine at our home. Even though I was back to work, January and most of February were not very busy times for me. Although I had an occasional frozen pipe claim or fire to adjust, for the most part I spent most of my time in the office or working from home, so I was able to get by on not a lot of sleep.
It was during these late nights that Danielle and I resumed discussing our future plans. With Danielle being a semester from graduating and starting her career, and me reaching a point where I thought it was time to move on from my current job, we began exploring our options. We had talked in the past of moving back home for several reasons. We both had graduated high school from Stockton, we had several friends still living there, it’s a nice small town to raise a family, and most importantly, both sets of our parents live in or near Stockton. In addition, we were tired of the hustle and bustle of the city and traveling on the highway every day commuting to work and school.
On the other hand, we each have sisters and their families living in Olathe that we got to see on a regular basis, and we would miss being able to see them whenever we wanted. We also had great friends living in the Kansas City area and hated the idea of moving away from them. We also wondered if the transition to a small town would be easy after getting use to the city and all of its conveniences and attractions.
I’m not sure when or if the decision was ever actually made to move back to Stockton, but everything began happening very quickly in the first quarter of 2011. We had talked to Ed Hageman about Danielle working with him at his law firm and eventually buying it out. We met a couple of times with Ed to discuss the details of the contract; however we still weren’t quite sure that we would move home. Our biggest concern was if I could find a suitable job and make enough of an income that we could support a family together. If we moved home, Danielle would get a guaranteed, but small, salary for the assistant county attorney position, but would be on her own to get clients for the private side of the business and we really just didn’t know what kind of income we would have.
In February, we had scheduled a short vacation to Las Vegas with Nathan & Julie Glendening. It was designed to be one last hurrah before we started families (and that’s exactly what it turned out to be). Vegas was great. It was a nice break from work, school, and the mounting pressure to figure out what we were going to do with our lives. Danielle and Nathan even had some success gambling. We played a lot of Blackjack and some Roulette. We ate an amazing dinner at the Top of the World Café at the Stratosphere. We went to Mystere, a Cirque de Soleil show and it was awesome. We drank ourselves silly and had a good time.
While in Vegas one day, I received a phone call from a head hunter. She had heard from a family friend in Stockton that I was interested in moving to NW Kansas and that they were looking to fill a position. I did not get any information other than that; however I was excited for a job prospect since they were few and far between in and around Stockton. I scheduled a call back to the head hunter after I returned to Kansas.
In December of 2010 I began experiencing lower back pain and shooting pains down my legs. I went to a Chiropractor and was popped right back into place and felt great. The fix was short lived however and I began to have nagging back pains off and on. I saw 2 more Doctors in the next couple of months and they told me I needed to stretch. Each time I tried to stretch, it was worse the next day. My back and leg problems continued through January and February all the while everything else was going on. Work was difficult and I was starting to think that I wouldn’t be able to play golf while in this shape.
It was just after my second Dr. appointment in February that I returned the call to the head hunter. She still did not give me a lot of information about the job but just wanted to know about my qualifications. After we spoke she set up phone interview with the prospective employer. She finally told me that it was Farmers National Bank and gave me some information about them. I did some research and found that the FNB main office was in Phillipsburg, and there were branch offices in Stockton, Logan, Agra, and Kensington.
In late February, I completed a phone interview with Farmers National and they invited me for a formal interview on March 11. Luckily, I had already taken that day off from work to celebrate 311 day with my friends, and it also happened to be during the Big XII basketball tournament, which was in Kansas City.
At this time, I was pretty good friends with my supervisor at Farmers Insurance. He had known for some time that I was planning on leaving by summer of 2011 because Danielle was graduating and we had talked about moving home. I didn’t keep any secrets from him and didn’t think I needed to. In addition, I began asking about workman’s comp because of my back issues. I don’t know for sure that my back injury was work related but since I was having a hard time working I thought it was worth looking into. Anyway I went into the office on the morning of Tuesday, March 8, 2011 and my “employment was terminated.” I was not given a reason for my dismissal and was told in the state of Kansas employment is at will and termination does not need a cause. This was less than 2 weeks from me receiving my 2010 bonus and just 3 days away from my interview. I don’t know if me planning on leaving, being injured, and about to receive a big bonus had anything to do with my termination, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything else.
It was pouring rain that day. Having a company vehicle, they had scheduled a ride home in a Towncar. After cleaning out my personal items I was wished luck and on my way. I didn’t know what to think or do. Danielle would be home, not yet gone to class. I had been looking forward to quitting that job for 2 years and now I would never get the chance. I was embarrassed and humiliated.
Danielle was great. We drank champagne and celebrated the end of an unfulfilling job that I hated. I fielded calls from several co-workers, equally stunned as I was. We decided that we would keep this a secret and I would go to my interview as if I still had a job.
On Thursday, I went to KU’s Big XII tourney game at the Sprint Center with Shaun and then headed back to Stockton to prep for my interview the following day. Danielle was invited to the interview with me so we went together. I guess it’s a bank thing. Anyway, even with the added pressure of now needing a job, the interview went well. I did a good job of being humble while Danielle talked me up. I was told they would make their decision in a couple of weeks and I could expect to hear from them at that point.
After the weekend we headed back to Eudora so Danielle could continue school and I would just have to wait out the decision on my future. That week, another kid at Lyla’s daycare got sick, and since I all of a sudden had some free time, I decided to babysit her for a couple of days. After two days of carrying Lyla up and down the stairs at her house, my back was a wreck. By Sunday the following weekend, I couldn’t get out of bed. On Monday I went to a third doctor and finally convinced her to take x-rays. The x-rays came out negative/normal so she would not recommend an MRI. Again, she suggested that I try stretching.
The next day was even worse. After an hour and a half I was finally able to get out of bed and Danielle took me to the ER. By this time I was in excruciating pain and could not move at all. I received enough pain killers to get into the MRI machine and they found that I had a severely herniated disc. Finally, after 3 months of pain, we knew what was wrong and it was going to get fixed. I was scheduled for surgery the next day in Kansas City.
The surgery was outpatient and the surgeon thought it went as well as possible, even though it started about two hours late. Mom and Dad had driven up to be there which was nice, however by the time I got out and got home they could only stick around for a short while before the headed back. The recovery was to be 6 weeks. I spent a lot of time at home the first week playing XBox. The second week I began getting out and walking around. The back of my right leg all the way down to my heel had gone numb while in the MRI machine and the doctor told me it could take several months to a year for the feeling to come back. It still hasn’t.
The day after my surgery, I got a call from Farmers National and they offered me a job! Finally some good news. They told me that they would call me the following week to work out a contract and I thanked them. All of a sudden, our decision was made: we would be moving back to Stockton.
The next week FNB called and we worked on the terms of the contract and when I would start. Danielle wouldn’t be done with school until mid-May and I didn’t want to leave her too long before that, so I agreed to start at the beginning of May. This would give me about 5 weeks to recover and also to relax before jumping into another job.
It turned out that it also gave me plenty of time to prep our home to put on the market. Considering the housing market, we did not have high hopes for selling our home. We spoke to a realtor, however we found that with the diminished value of our home and me being unemployed, we couldn’t afford to use a realtor. We did pay a small fee for some online help from forsalebyowner.com, and Danielle went to work making a blog for our home, taking pictures, and getting the word out that our home was on the market. Meanwhile, up and down our block there were several other homes for sale and a couple of foreclosures as well.
Whenever we would get some interest in the home or someone wanted to look at it, I would take Belly for a ride while Danielle did some last minute cleaning and showed our house. We did this several times and had some mild interest. We watched as one couple that came and looked at our home on 4 separate occasions ended up buying a similar home 2 blocks over.
Meanwhile, we had heard of a nice home in Stockton going on the market. Although we had no hope of selling our home, we did get some interest in doing a rent to own contract. With the housing situation in Stockton being exactly opposite of everywhere else in the country (there’s really not many nice houses in Stockton, let alone any for sale), we went all in and put down an earnest payment on the home and decided to purchase it without ever seeing it. More on that later.
As April came to an end I was packing my bags and getting ready to move into my old bedroom at my parent’s house. The weather was getting nicer and we spent a lot of time in Lawrence on patios at some of our favorite places. We were making it a point to say goodbye to all of our friends and hang out with them all one last time. We threw a going away party at our house. Since we didn’t have anywhere to move our furniture anyway, we staged our home for showings, left a key in a lockbox on the front door, and went home on Sunday, May 1st. I would begin my new career the following day.
While my job was entirely new to me and I knew nothing about banking, it was pretty uneventful for the most part. Two weeks later, though, we returned to Kansas City to attend Danielle’s graduation on a Saturday and Lyla’s second birthday on Sunday. We stepped foot in our spotless, staged home for the first time in two weeks. After the graduation, we went into Kansas City where our friends John & Laura were throwing a party and we planned on crashing at their home and then going to Whit & Shaun’s the next morning.
We partied hard that night, not knowing when the next time might be that we would get to see and visit our friends in KC. The next morning we woke up in a hungover haze to Danielle’s phone ringing. I didn’t recognize the number and handed the phone to Danielle and said “It’s someone that wants to buy our house.” She answered as I went to the bathroom to clean up. When I came out she informed me that someone did indeed want to come look at our house – in two hours. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but we didn’t exactly leave it ready to show the day before. We said our goodbyes to everyone and raced 45 minutes home to clean up and leave the house before the potential buyer showed up. We didn’t feel good and we ended up being late to Lyla’s birthday party, but it was all worth it. In just over two months, we had sold our house, and the best part was that we weren’t closing until the end of June, so we had plenty of time to move all of our furniture into our new home.
We took ownership of our new home on June 11th. Two days later, Mandy had her third child, a baby boy named Eli. We had moved out of the old home the weekend before, and now frantically spent the week trying to get settled so we could go back to KC the next weekend to meet our new nephew. After that the rest of summer flew by.
Danielle spent most of the summer studying for the bar exam and I soaked up the sun when I wasn’t learning my new trade. Danielle took the bar at the end of July and then we spent our first anniversary attending an Ostmeyer family reunion in Estes Park, CO.
In August, we went to St. Louis to attend Grant & Emily Burchfield’s wedding. Right before we left Stockton to head to St. Louis, Danielle informed me that she was pregnant. We were incredibly excited about it but couldn’t really talk about it because Danielle’s little sister Hannah was riding with us to spend the weekend in Kansas City. The week after we returned was the Rooks County Free Fair in Stockton. We decided we couldn’t keep a secret and decided to go ahead and share the news.
In September our friends John & Laura Schmidt along with their son Jude came to visit during Labor Day Weekend and we tried to show them a good country time. We spent a week in Florida with my parents and Whitney, Shaun, and Lyla and had a lot of fun relaxing on the beach and eating a lot of seafood.
October flew by in a blur. We met my parents in Hays for dinner on their 36th anniversary. We attended Goblins Glory and a Halloween Party at the Hilbrinks. November went even faster. I got some pheasant and quail hunting in with my dad and then we spent Thanksgiving with Danielle’s family.
Now here we are less than a week from Christmas. I am at my happiest point in my life. I’ve been blessed in so many ways. Back in April I was rehabbing my back and waiting to start my new job in Stockton. I was doing a lot of waiting at that time. Danielle and I knew exactly what we wanted. We had worked hard for several years to get to where we were and to have the opportunity that lay ahead of us. But we had to wait. We had to wait for Danielle to finish school, graduate, and pass the bar exam. We had to wait on my back to heal, wait to start my job, wait to sell our house, and wait to move into the new house. We had to wait until the time was right to start working on a family.
Well now the waiting is done and I feel like we are living the life we were meant to live. The life we have been working toward. And the best part is that I’m doing it with my best friend and my love.
Merry Christmas to all and may everyone be as blessed and lucky as me.
-Bryant
