It's time...

We realy reached this decision a year ago. Things got in our way of it's execution - but now we've made it. We have reached the much thought out decision to leave Arizona.

I've had this post sitting in my queue for a month, just waiting to be rave enough to post it. It's time. We will be listing our house on the market in the next two weeks. When it sells we're moving to Maine.

No, there is no job. This is where the scary part comes in. We're rational humans with 3 kids. Are we insane? That's what we've been asking ourselves for the past 3 months as we seriously pondered taking this path. Do we remember the 5 months of hell without a job? Yes, we do - and that's how we know we can do this. We believe in each other and ourselves. We will have health insurance and we will have money. I know without a doubt that Dan and I will work our butts off to make this work. He'll work two jobs, three if he has to, in order to keep our family in a safe place. Oh - and yes, we know there is snow.

We loved Arizona when we lived in Tucson. Queen Creek is nice but it's certainly not where we chose to raise our family. This is our dream. Dan asked me where I'd *choose* to move. My list was very short, and his matched exactly. Michigan or New England. I assured him I'd go wherever he takes our family. In our ideal world there would be a job waiting, so far their isn't.

We're hoping that we'll have a great buyer - and close on the house before July 24 so that Julia doesn't start school here. At the very least we hope that we'll close before the end of August so that our family makes it there for Julia to start Kindergarten.

We have housing options - some are ideal and some will be great and some will work. We'll rent until we're sure of where we want to live permanently. Where we'll be moving puts us in fairly easy distance of Portland, ME and Portsmouth, NH and even close to Boston if that's where this leads us.

We know the risks and have spent hours planning, talking, making lists, researching this. It's not something we're doing on a whim and it's certainly nothing we've taken lightly. Would it be better to go with a job in hand? Of course. Dan's been looking since November. He has some great recruiters that are working with him - but they all tell him the same story. The kinds of companies he's looking to work for - don't have the money to recruit nationally. so - we're going to try our hand in New England.

"So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain (Danielle- thanks for putting these words in my life, see you on the East Coast)