A lifelong dream fullfilled

Finally, I can broadcast the exciting new that Brian has secured his dream job... he is now a full time structure Firefighter/EMT with Wood River Fire & Rescue. Yea Brian!

Ever since he can remember he has wanted to be a structure firefighter (that's a fireman with a city department as opposed to a wildfire-only firefighter.) He studied fire sciences at University and trained at a fire academy, but had little luck when he was younger testing for any city departments (when you're one of sometimes more than 5,000 applicants, it's easy to see how your brilliance can be overlooked.)

So, as many of you know, he re-routed his career towards wildland firefighting, at which he excelled for the past 10 years. However, in the back of his mind he always knew that structure fire was where he wanted to be. So, with a little help from me, he joined the local department as a volunteer 2 years ago, and gave up the wildfire career to follow a new path with a great company in the valley called ESS, which he really enjoyed and turned out to be a career he could see being happy in for a long time. But fate intervened and a position opened up with Wood River. This time he only had to test against 4 other people and emerged as the department's choice to join them full time.

We got the call that the Chief wanted him on board on the eve of Christmas Eve in Florida, and it was truly the best Christmas present we could have wished for. He starts with them on January 22 and is really excited and happy. Wood River is a medical and fire department, so he will be running ambulance calls as well as fire calls, and hopefully will get to train to be a paramedic in the not too distant future.

This is also great news for us as a family, as he will work 9, 24 hours shifts a month, meaning he'll have a lot more time to spend with Owen and giving me a little bit more free time to focus again on my own career. We also get full health care for the whole family, which is a huge deal and something that will really help us in all our plans for the future.