Is this thing on?

Hey! Guess what?! We're still alive!!! I know you weren't sure unless you follow me on Facebook. But we are still alive and we've moved across the country! We sold our house in Moreno Valley (What a nightmare!! FYI - DON'T EVER USE THE HERO PROGRAM!!! horrible horrible program. That is another blog post all together. but needless to say it delayed the selling of our house for months.)

Let me rewind - In May of last year we were trying to figure out what to do with our lives. We didn't love living in Moreno Valley anymore. We had already transferred our kids to a different school 20 minutes away (it was the elementary school I went to as a kid) We drove them there and picked them up everyday. It worked fine when Jim was home because he would take the kids to school then I would pick them up. But when Jim traveled I would spend most of the day at the school because it was a lot of driving. We loved the new school and wanted to move to the neighborhood. Problem was -  homes in that neighborhood started at over $350k and that was usually for a fixer-upper. That is INSANE! We went back and forth on what to do. Every path we tried to take ended in a dead end. So we resigned ourselves to staying where we were at. We decided we would focus on getting out of debt (Seriously what were we thinking with our credit card debt?!) We would continue to slowing fix up our house and make it the way we wanted. We even discussed eventually putting in a pool. We had PLANS! We were excited about the plans we had made. Jim even ran for PTA president for the upcoming school year. He won the election and was super excited to really get involved at the school and make some positive changes.

Fast forward to June - Jim and I were sitting on the couch watching American Ninja Warrior ( Guilty Pleasure! Although no where near as good as the original Japanese version!) One competitor came on and she was a dentist from Georgia. Jim works for a company that handles dental financing so she perked our interest. Later that evening he was looking to see what job openings there were in his compnay (He likes to keep up on what is available) Turns out there was a position open in Georgia for the exact thing that Jim does. We joked around about it and looked at he Real Estate in Georgia and HOLY COW! The amount of home you could get there vs the amount of home you can get in Southern California. Plus I absolutely fell in love with the style of homes in Georgia. We tossed the idea around a little. We have always talked about getting out of Southern California. But was this really a viable option?! Georgia is 2200 miles away! (Random Fact - this is also appx the number of miles in the Tour de France ) We agreed that Jim would discuss it with his current manager and get her opinion.

Over the next couple of days, everywhere that Jim went he heard references to Georgia. There were quite a few times that the song "Georgia on My Mind" came on the radio. It even came on right after he talked to his manager. She told him she would be sad to lose him but she knew any other manager would be thrilled to have him on their team. We talked about it a lot for the next couple of days. I felt good about moving but I had never been to Georgia. I was nervous to move across the country to a new city, a new state, a new coast. I told Jim I was willing to move but I wished we could at least visit before we made the decision. I knew it wasn't possible it was expensive to fly both of us there. That same night Jim talked to the manager over the new territory. The manager told him that if he wanted the job they would love to have him. But the manager wanted to make sure that I was comfortable with the move. He told Jim that he would have him do a presentation at a staff meeting out there and they could fly him out. (Jim had recently done a really great presentation at a different meeting that this new manager had attended so he wanted him to present it to his team) Now we only had to fly me out there.

This is getting a lot longer than I expected so I will continue it tomorrow. (I guess I should have expected it to be long. It is covering an entire year)