Great news

So Monday at work my outlook informed me that I had a new message. All I needed to read in the little pop up window was, "This message is to inform you that Ibex Incorporated has been awarded...." and I knew that prayers had just been answered!!!!!!!!!

A few months ago the trucking company that I work for had to lay off about 11 guys. It was HEART BREAKING! We are a close knit family here! Right away we all started looking for other opportunities for our trucks. We contacted multiple road construction companies in multiple states, we contacted metal refinery companies, we contacted other oil field companies, we contacted EVERYONE we could think of.... with no luck. The owner then remembered that a few years ago we had hauled water for the forest service for one of the fires. He asked us to look into it. And so we did.

About a week later after a whirl wind of events Kirk, our safety and right hand guy, and I were sitting in a Forest Service building for a meeting about how to apply for the contract we wanted. Holy cow what a meeting! Not only was I one of the three girls in the room (other then the forest service ladies) but we were by far the youngest in the bunch... by like 20 years (Kirk is pretty close to 30). The guy on the front row kept repeating himself, "Well, last year when we went to California...." (We're in Idaho). He seriously said it at least once every ten minutes! Anyway, that meeting started at 7 and we sat there until 11, by that time Kirk and I decided to sneak out.... We had the information we needed.... Who knows how long we would have had to listen to "Well, last year when we went to California..." We had a lot of work to do! Lots of acronyms to learn like HUB Zone, SBA, FED BIZ OPPS, IBM, IRS, CCR, CPS, USDA, I-BPA, DUNS, DBE, CAGE, VIPR, TIN, TPIN, SIC, MPIN, etc. I was so lost.

Of course Kirk left, to go where I can't remember. So of course I "got to" (had to) figure it out myself. It was a fun filled week trying to figure out what forms we needed to fill out, what numbers I had to get, where to get the forms and numbers, and of course where to turn them in. This, of course, all fell on a payroll week! Oh the joys! After about a million calls, web searches and headaches I finally had it all completed.... Then I found out they changed the dead line! I had another week that I could have finished it!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well, it was done I was done.

Now the fun part... the waiting game! It wasn't that bad, I had other work to distract me (In fact I "might" have forgotten about it... shhh).

But then came that FANTASTIC email I"m sure you can gues what ended that sentance but let me tell ya what it said, "This message is to inform you that Ibex Incorporated has been awarded a contract for Forest Service Solicatation ###########." All I could do after reading that was smile and SCREAM "YES" (By the way I'm not a screamer. If you make me jump, that's all you get is a jump not a scream... people hate it)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So Monday was awesome! I walked around all day with a big smile on my face! It was GREAT! All my hard work FINALLY paid off! (I do feel bad for all the other companies that tried to get the contract.) I'm sorry I haven't posted all week. I've been trying to get everything ready for the fire season, which we think will be big for two reasons: #1 we were told Colorado had a beetle problem so their trees are dying and #2 It's been raining here like made the last month and now it's supose to get REALLY hot, that's going to dry everything out!

So when you see this:

We'll be there with these guys:

I'm just so thankful that now we have the opportunity to help some families get back to work. Trust me those 11 families have been in ALL our prayers this whole time! Monday was really one of the best days I've had. Now we just need some fires (I won't pray for that... that would be sad if I did!!!)