Sweater. (on major sale!) Shirt. Jeans. Boots. Bag. Sunglasses. Necklace.
First of all, I want to thank you all so much for all your kind words and birthday wishes on Friday’s post. I had such a lovely 34th birthday.
So I have some exciting news to share with you today…
We are moving!
This has been in the works for a little while and I’m so excited that I can now finally share it with you; we are leaving Seattle and moving to New England.
Craig and I have had a dream, pretty much since we got married, that we’d like to raise our kids on our own little farm. (Well, truthfully it’s been my dream since I was a kid myself.) You know, a house in the country with chickens and horses… That’s the way Craig grew up, and every time we visit his family, it reinforces how much that is just the life for us.
We’ve moved a lot since we got married, (I’ve actually stopped counting how many times) following Craig’s career from different opportunities and different projects and promotions around the western half of the United States. I thought for a long time that we would settle in Seattle. In fact, when we moved back here 2.5 years ago, that was the plan. We rented a pretty house and started looking for “the place.” The one we’d settle down and finish raising our kids in.
But the truth is, no matter how much we looked, nothing ever seemed to fit. There was never an area that felt right for us.
Seattle is a very expensive place to live, and there’s not a lot of open land here, or places we could have the set-up we were looking for.
We knew if we stayed it would mean letting go of some of the things we really wanted, and there were so many times I thought it would be fine if we did. But nothing ever fit. So we kept renting and praying about what the answer was for our family.
Fast forward to last summer, and as we were discussing Craig’s next career step we floated the idea of looking outside his current company, and maybe even outside of the area. We put some feelers out there and this fall he got calls from two different companies in Connecticut. I flew out with him when he interviewed and we both fell in love with the area.
Just the quintessential New England countryside; rolling hills and little colonial farmhouses as far as the eye could see. I was in heaven.
A week after we got home, he was offered both jobs. One of them was “the one.” You know, the dream job.
We’ve had to work extremely hard for every opportunity we’ve gotten since we got married. My husband was the first in his family to graduate from college, he spent months and months working to get an internship when we were in college, and every job and promotion since then has been the result of a long, long struggle and a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears.
So, I’m not saying this lightly when I say that this job literally fell into his lap. It was like God was saying to us, “here you go, everything you’ve ever wanted.”
We prayed about it, and decided that this was the right thing for our family.
Right before Christmas, Craig and I flew out to Connecticut for a house hunting trip. I was fairly certain we weren’t going to find what we were looking for right away, that we might have to rent for a few months until just the right house came on the market. But the last house we walked through on our first day was “the one.” (I still get chills thinking about it.)
It’s a pretty white New England saltbox built in 1790, on acreage with a big red barn. It’s just what we’ve been dreaming of. They accepted our offer without any counter and we were under contract right in time for Christmas. Our realtor even cried when she told us. (I was crying too.) A farm for Christmas.
Again, it felt kind of like God was saying: “here you go, everything you’ve ever wanted.”
So, long story even longer… we are leaving Seattle for the East coast at the end of January, and moving onto our little farm in the Connecticut countryside.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I love Seattle. I love it here so much that the thought of leaving makes me super emotional. I love the area, the landscape, the beautiful city, the Puget sound, all my dear friends. I hate leaving any of it.
And if this move didn’t feel so right, if everything didn’t fall into place in that completely-meant-to-be kind of way, I don’t think I would be able to. I’m learning that most decisions in life are at least a little bitter sweet.
I’m sad to leave the PNW, but I am so excited about the sweet to come.
And just in case you are wondering how the kids feel about the move, they are thrilled. In their own words, “Yes! We can finally get a horse!”
;-)
Since it snows in Connecticut I’ve already started hunting down more warm clothes. (Any excuse to shop, right?)
Abercrombie has the best sweaters this season and they’re all on sale right now, so naturally I’ve been stocking up in preparation for our move to an {even} older climate.
I’ve rounded up some of my favorites here:
