Blah blah blah...moving stuff...blah blah

I am so tired. Between going through all of our stuff and giving/throwing things away, now packing and cleaning and having seemingly endless playdates and playgroups (so Alex can spend as much time as possible with his friends before he moves) I am just completely beat.

The good news is things are getting done.  Lots of our stuff are finding new homes with our family and friends, it seems every day someone leaves with a truckload of stuff.  Strangely, we still have so much left!  I packed up half the kitchen today,  I'll finish tomorrow and maybe start packing up the playroom as well. 

I've reserved the moving truck and hotel rooms for the trip.  We lucked out that a buddy of John's is able to come with us to help us move.  My mother is also driving down with us to help watch the boys for a couple of days until we get settled.  We'll all leave Monday morning, John and Josh will drive the truck all day and stay in Beaverton the night before we can get the keys to the apartment.  Tuesday morning they can start moving the stuff in.  My mom, the boys, the dog, cat and I are going to drive to La Grande and stay there Monday night and drive the rest of the way to Beaverton on Tuesday, arriving sometime in the afternoon.  Mom will watch the boys while I help the guys unload the truck, then we do some creative sleeping arrangements to make 6 people fit comfortably in a 2 bedroom apartment full of unpacked boxes for the night, Josh flies home Wednesday, my mom flies home Thursday.

Alex's birthday party is tomorrow afternoon. This is his first kid party, and he is SO EXCITED! I hope it goes well.  There will be 8 little kids, plus Alex and Max. We reserved a room at a local place that has playground equipment and a big bounce house indoors (I didn't want to have to worry about weather), we'll have pizza and cupcakes and the kids can play like maniacs for two hours. I've asked everyone to please NOT bring gifts because we're already having to give away a lot of his toys before the move.  I'm hoping he'll have so much fun playing and eating cake that he will forget that there are no presents.  I did make up some goodie bags for all the kids with some little toys and he'll have a special birthday boy hat.  I'm betting he won't even notice the lack of presents.

While we're out partying tomorrow, our realtor is having an agent tour come through our house. Just some of his collegues, to get feedback and have our home fresh on their minds if they have any potential buyers.  Our house had quite a bit of interest the first week on the market, but it seems no one is too interested this week.  Actually that's been good because we've had the house a mess with packing and going through stuff. I'm not as worried as maybe I should be about selling the house.  It's a nice house in a great area.  SOMEONE will want to buy it.  I'm sure of it. It actually makes our lives easier if no one wants to see it until we've moved out of it. I'm betting our realtor will want to do a price reduction next week and that should get people interested in seeing it again.  This is the one thing that is completely out of my control, so I'm trying to be all zen about it and just stay calm.  Focus on the things I can control and let whatever is going to happen with the house happen.  I've got plenty of other things to worry about right now.

Movin' movin' movin'...

Almost as soon as I published that last post about how I'm going to work and John's going to be staying home with the boys, John got a call on his resume and had an interview!  He says the interview went pretty well and they've asked him back for a second interview after we move next week. Wow! Ok then. YAY JOHN!

We've been busy going through our stuff and getting rid of absolutely everything we don't NEED or LOVE.  Friends and family have been showing up and taking truckloads of our stuff.  I think I'm supposed to be sad about seeing 3/4 of our possessions go, but I'm not.  It actually feels almost cleansing, getting rid of all this stuff we've hauled around forever but don't use. 

I told John to bring up all my stuff from our storage room the other day, figuring I had just my antique violins, my dad's guitars and a box of old angel figurines my ex husband gave me a million years ago.  I took the boys to playgroup and came home to find our dining room full of boxes!  I had no idea I had so much stuff.  Most of it was my dad's. Things that, until now, I couldn't part with; his lighthouses, elephants, some of his craft projects he started but didn't finish, a box of dorky old man clothes that reminded me of him...  That was the only time I got emotional about purging stuff.  But I did it.  I whittled it down to 2 small boxes. One of home videos and the other just misc. stuff that had the most sentimental value.

Unfortunately John will have to do something similar with his mom's stuff, though I suspect most of her stuff will go to his siblings, which I hope will make it easier for him. 

Our house is starting to look empty and sad. This is probably good.  The less it feels like home, the easier it will be to drive away next Monday.  It's starting to really sink in for me now.  We're leaving. We're really doing it.  We've talked about it for years, and now it's a week away.  The overwhelming feeling both John and I are having is excitement. We are READY to start our new life in Oregon.  But, I admit it, I am sad to be leaving our family and friends.  It is going to take work to keep the relationships we have built here close, but it's something I am willing to put every effort into. 

I feel so confident about this move, and have felt confident about it since we made the decision.  In fact, it's been hard NOT to be confident about it because things just seem to be happening perfectly to make this move happen.  Almost everyone we talk to tells us "Wow, you've sure got balls to up and move like this!" (translation: "You people be CRAZY!") and to us, it just feels like the most natural course of action. I mean, of course it's scary, seeing as how we have no guarantees of a job or the sale of our house, but we wouldn't have that if we stayed in Utah anyway.  Plus, we'd still be in Utah, and instead of being exicted and looking forward to an adventure, we'd, well, still be in Utah.  Maybe soon I'll be able to write a post about exactly why we want to get out of here, but until I can make it sound less like we live in the firey depths of hell, I need to remain silent on the subject. Utah is a fine place to live. For other people.  I am looking forward to visiting Utah often. Visitng Utah sounds WONDERFUL!

Role reversal

I had an interview for a job in Oregon. The office is less than a 20 min drive from our new apartment. The pay is good (for the job), the company is growing (opportunity for advancement in the future) and best of all health benefits start on the day I get hired!  Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck about the interview. So much seemed to be riding on me not making a complete ass of myself over the phone.  Turns out, I didn't make an ass out of myself, in fact, I scored an in person interview for the week we move!  If all goes well during that interview, I'll be working at a new job within days of our Big Move.

You might wonder why I'm looking for work and interviewing for jobs and John is not.  Well, I suppose it's because I'm more motivated right now.  Frankly, I think he's burnt out.  The last year was really rough on him and he needs some recovery time.  And while we do have the funds for both of us to be out of work until the end of the year, I'd much rather get a job and support ourselves on that and use the money we have towards paying off any debt we still have after the house sells or putting it away in savings for an emergency fund or in the boys' college savings.  It would also be nice to start a travel fund so we can fly instead of drive back to Utah next time.

I want John to find a job he'll be happy in. If I'm working, that gives him extra time to find a job that will be the right fit for him.  Plus, I'm excited to go back to work!  I've been home for three years, and I love it, don't get me wrong, but I think it would be really good for our family for John and I to reverse roles for a while.  I think it would be good for John and the boys to have some real time together.

That said, John's not so excited to be a stay at home dad.  The kids are at challenging ages right now and they tend to drive him crazy a lot of the time.  But I think he gets so frustrated so easily because he's not around it all day long.  They kind of wear you down after a while. You learn to pick your battles, you learn what disciplinary techniques work best for each situation.  Plus, if he REALLY doesn't like it, that will give him incentive to kick up the job search a notch!

I think this role reversal will also be good for our marraige.  Occasionally we find ourselves getting after eachother becuase we think the other has it easier.  My supporting the family financially for a while and John managing the home front will help us to better understand what we each deal with.  Who knows, we may like it better this way.  We'll see.

FREAKING OUT!

But not about what you'd think I'd be freaking out about.  I'm freaking out about Alex's birthday party that's been moved up three weeks before his actual birthday to fit it in before we move.

Alex has been excited about having a birthday party all summer.  Literally, every day since mid May, he'd wake up and ask "Is it my birthday yet??"  It's not because he wants presents, no, Dude wants a PAR TAY!

I'm worried because I want to do it next week and I'm not sure which of his friends are starting preschool and on what days/times. I'm worried no one will be able to come because it's such short notice.  I'm worried Alex will get over stimulated and go crazy and end up in time out the entire time.  I'm worried because I've never thrown a kid party before and this party has to be awesome because we're moving in 2 weeks and it will be a long time before he gets to see these friends again.  I'm worried because I want it to be perfect for him.  He's been so excited for MONTHS for his birthday party and I don't want to let him down.

I'm also freaking out because my little boy is turning FOUR and that just can't be possible can it?

Point of no return

In every plan, there is a point at which you've gone too far and there's no turning back. We got to that point in our plan to move to Oregon yesterday evening when we signed a lease on what will now be our apartment in Murray Hill. We'll be moving in on September 7th.

I know many of our family and friends think we're crazy. That we're making rash decisions. That we haven't thought this plan through.  I assure you we have given this plan a lot of thought, that we know the risks and we feel that we're doing what is in the best intrest of our family.  Will it turn out to be a mistake? Who knows.  Will it turn out to be the best thing we've ever done?  Who knows.  Last year when John accepted the promotion we were thrilled and hopeful. Sure, it was a risk for him to leave a position he loved to do something completely different, but the MONEY! The OPPORTUNITY! That didn't turn out so well.  That's the thing about taking risks, they're risky. 

We're planning to make a big life change.  We're leaving our home town.  We're selling the big house in favor of a small apartment.  John's making a career change, and we're well aware he might have to start at the bottom and work his way up again.  I'm probably going to go back to work myself.  At least until we get reestablished in Portland.

Would it have been better to sell the house first, get John a job in Oregon, then have him quit his job and then move? Well sure, of course that would have been ideal, but it didn't work out that way.  It seems our plan had a mind of it's own and started executing backwards and we're trying to keep ahead of it by taking control of the things we can, namely getting our butts to Oregon and start looking for work.  It's probably better that it's happening this way because now we're actually following through on it.  Had it happened the way we were planning, it would have been too easy to just stay in the situation we were unhappy with, formulating plans to escape that would never come to pass.

Things seem to be working out perfectly so far. Until we got to Portland this week, I was sure our plan would fizzle out and die because we wouldn't like it here, or we couldn't find a place we liked, or we wouldn't be approved or we'd have to live in a less desirable area.  But instead, we LOVE it here.  We found a great place in a really nice area.  In fact, I'd say it's nicer than where our house is now.  Now the rest of the plan is out of our hands.  We have to rely on other people to buy our house and hire us.  There's not much we can do about the house, it will either sell or it won't. It's a nice house, I can't imagine no one wanting to live there.  And I like to think John and I are still hire-able with skills that are in demand in the workforce today.  Sure, we might not be able to get THE PERFECT jobs right out the gate, but I can't believe between us we won't find anything.

Right now we're both excited. A little nervous, but mostly excited.  We don't know what the future will bring, but we can do our best and hope it will bring good things.

Waiting for approval

On Thursday we drove and drove and drove around the suburbs of portland trying to find one that felt like "home".  What we discovered is it seems you have to look really hard for a bad neighborhood.  We found lots of areas we felt we could live in quite happily.  Beaverton won the day however, it was hands down the most comfortable area we drove through. 

Out of the nearly 20 apartments/duplexes we drove by yesterday, we'd picked three that we wanted to walk through.  We couldn't get hold of anyone to look at the two duplexes, so we decided to just drive up to the one apartment complex we were interested in and look at that then try the duplexes again.  When we drove into the complex, we were reminded again why this was our favorite.  It was beautiful, though this whole city is beautiful, the complex is away from the center of town and all the other complexes, it's actually in the neighborhood and the buildings are arranged on a hill, so you have beautiful views.  Strangely, what sold us was the fact that as we drove in, we passed a resident walking her Bull Mastiff. This place was large dog friendly and we happen to have ourselves a large dog!  There are trashcans and poo bag dispensers throughout the property to easily clean up after your pet's buisness.  There's a pool, a 24 hour fitness room and a small theater room in the clubhouse.  There is no playground on the property, but there is a big park about a mile and a half away that I could easily bike the kids to.  We walked through the apartment (2 bed/2 bath) and it was definately smaller than we're used to (it's about 1000 square feet and we currently live in 3200 square feet), but it felt livable. I'd hoped for a bigger fenced patio than this apartment offers, but it will do and the park I'd take the kids to also has an off leash dog area, so it would be easy to take Fancy there to run.  There's a small laundry room in the apartment that we could take the door off and put a baby gate up to keep the cat's litter away from the kids and the dog.  The boys room is large and would easily fit both their beds and lots of toys and their walk in closet could easily be used for extra storage.  The master and the living room is much smaller than we're used to, but again, livable, and the kitchen is small, but I don't cook, so not a problem at all.

We were sold. We filled out applications and put a deposit down on the apartment without even looking at the other places. Now we wait to see if we're approved. The leasing lady didn't think it would be a problem, but our situation is a little strange, so you just don't know.  We should find out Monday.  We're leaving tomorrow, so if we're not approved, we'll have to try to get into something else from Utah, which wouldn't be ideal, but at least we now have a good idea of the area, so not impossible.

The house in Utah has been officially listed for sale and it sounds like we've already had one showing while we've been here, so that's good news.  Hopefully things are starting to fall into place for our big life change!

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We're in Portland.  We came out here to see if we'd like it, and OH! Do we like it!  It's like they took a forest and built a city inside of it. SO! MANY! TREES!  John was concerned about missing the mountains in Salt Lake, but it's hard to miss the mountains when it feels like you're actually IN the mountains.

So, we like it here, so much.  We are really excited to become Oregonians.  We spent all day yesterday driving around, looking at different areas, trying to decide where we want to try to live.  I've fallen in love with the Murray Hill area in Beaverton, but all of Beaverton is nice.  We also really liked Happy Valley.  There was only one area when I turned to John and said, "turn around. Turn around right now, GO GO GO!"  And that was in Hillsboro. I don't think Hillsboro itself is a bad area, just that one neighborhood we were driving through was pretty sketchy.

Now we face the real challenge of trying to secure an apartment.  This wouldn't be such a hard task if we weren't unemployed with two kids, a cat and a large dog and a very large mortgage back in Utah.  It seems like we're really asking a lot.  I suppose what we do have going for us is good credit, clean background checks and nice trustworthy faces. 

In the next couple of days, our dreams of moving to Portland could shrivel and die before our eyes (much to the delight of some of our family and friends back home), or we could end up getting the perfect place and living happily ever after.  We just don't know what will happen.

Starting over

As of today, John has decided to leave his job and we've put our house up for sale and we are planning to move to Portland.

It all seems sudden doesn't it?  Well, it's not really.  This has been coming on for months now.  Years, really.

We live in Utah.  And Utah is a fine place to live, I mean it's got four distinct seasons and it's relatively safe, very family friendly, decent schools, reasonable cost of living, lots of recreational activities...  But, for John and I, me in particular, it's just not a good fit.  It's REALLY conservative, and we're much more liberal.  It's REALLY religious and we're non believers.  We've both been here all our lives and it just feels like it's time to go.  It's time to find a place where we do fit in. 

As long as we've been together we've talked about moving out of Utah, and our ideal destination has always been San Diego. But when we really consider it, we realize it's not a good fit either.  It's simply too expensive.  So when we began thinking seriously about moving out of state, we looked at this great country of ours and started to talk about what exactly we want.  We want to be within a day's drive or less of Salt Lake City so we can come home to visit often.  We don't particularly like four seasons.  In fact, we'd much prefer only two seasons if possible.  We don't like really hot summers or snow at all so a milder climate was a must.  Alex has really bad excema so we'd like a more humid climate to help relieve some of his skin troubles as well as good air quality because of his and John's athsma. We want to be in a place that is much more liberal than here as well as a more diverse group of people (different ethnic groups, religions and lifestyle choices.  Everyone here is white, Mormon and married with kids, and even though we're white, married with kids, it's really kind of boring.).  Of course we want to live in a town that is family friendly, safe with good schools.  John wants to be within driving distance of professional sports teams and I've always wanted to be within a few hours of the coast. 

When looking at all these parameters, we narrowed our choices to Washington and Oregon.  Specifically Seattle and Portland.  It's been a tough decision to choose between Seattle and Portland because it seems like they are very similar, and we've never been to either city.  Seattle's job market seems to be doing much better than Portland, but Portland's cost of living is lower. In the end though, we've decided to go to Portland.  Mostly because it feels like a good fit for us.  What we hear and read about the people and the general way of life in Portland really appeals to us. 

As for John's job, he hasn't been happy for over a year. He accepted a promotion to a position that hasn't been a good fit for him and a couple of months ago, it became clear that it never will be a good fit.  We began to talk seriously about him leaving his job and what we'd need to do to survive financially and the only answer was to sell our house.  Which is a tough decision seeing as how we LOVE our house.  But it's no use living in a house you can't afford, especially if someone has to spend the majority of their life stuggling at a job that just doesn't fit.  So, we began making preparations to sell our house.  The good news is, we got a deal on it when we bought it, so we should be able to break even, which is nearly impossible to do in today's market.

So here we were, talking about selling our home and John leaving his job and it occurred to us that if we have to start all over, this might be the perfect opportunity to start over in a new place!  Then I freaked out a bit over the fact that we'd be leaving family and my parents moved me away from family when I was Alex's age and it sucked, and is this the right decision? Are we ruining our kids' lives forever by isolating them in the Pacific Northwest with no grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins to play with?  And then I snapped out of it and realized that we're moving to Oregon, not Egypt.  We're a 12 hour drive away, or a two hour flight.  And in this day and age with blogs and Facebook, Flickr and webcams, I am more confident than ever that we can maintain close relationships with our friends and relatives back home.

The snag in our plan is that we don't have jobs secured in Portland.  John's been sending out resumes for a couple of weeks, but it's tough out there these days and employers often don't even look at the out of state resumes.  Our best bet is to just go out there and rent an apartment and start looking for work.  Of course we haven't sold our house here yet, and we'd be supporting two households while UNEMPLOYED.  We're lucky that we have the funds to support our family for a few months. It's when our funds run out, if we don't have jobs yet, that it will get hairy.

But, it will also be an adventure!

I am looking forward to simplifying our life.  Living in a smaller space with less stuff.  Getting back to basics, and feeling happy in the things that matter instead of always trying to get ahead, get more, do more, etc...  It will be an adjustment.  It will be a difficult few months.  But, I am confident that our family will come through this change stronger and happier than we've ever been.

Mmm, smells good

The last couple of days, anyone who comes to my house mentions that it smells good, what am I cooking?  Well, I am going to tell you my secret.  You too can have a house that smells like mine.

Step 1:  Turn the large burner on the back of the stove on high. (It works best if you have a flat/glass top surface)

Step 2:  Forget you turned it on.

Step 3:  Actually cook your meal on the large burner located on the front of the stove.

Step 4:  Remember you have the back burner on.  Turn it off.

Step 5:  Immediately forget it was ever on in the first place and that it is still very, VERY hot.

Step 6:  Finish cooking your meal and place your large black plastic spoon directly on the back burner. 

Step 7:  Leave the room

Step 8:  Smell something suspicious from the other room, run into the kitchen to find a puddle of black goo bubbling on the back burner of the stove.  Disregard the fact that the burner is still LAVA HOT and proceed to attempt to wipe the black goo off the stove with a wet Clorox wipe.  The Clorox wipe is the key to the subtle citrus scent.

Step 9:  Burn the EVERLOVINGCRAP out of your fingers to add the musky fleshy smoky smell.

Step 10:  While burner is still piping hot, use the biodegradable, earth friendly kitchen pumice stone on the back burner.  Make sure you take care to scratch the shit out of your flat top range.  Somehow this adds a spicy scent.

And there you have it.  A unique food-like yet vaguely plastic-y aroma that is guaranteed to seep into all of your porous surfaces and last a few days, possibly weeks/months/years.

It is also best to do this just days before you put your house up for sale.  Nothing says "BUY ME!" like a mysterious smell coming from the kitchen.