Thoughts Around Here Lately

Life sure is full of difficult decisions. Sometimes it is hard being an adult and not having someone else just go ahead and make those decisions for you. Sometimes, though, it is exciting to be in charge of your own decisions.

Ben and I bought our house in 2008. The market was at an all-time low and we thought that was the low point. However, it kept getting worse as we all know. Anyhow, we love our house. We just aren't in love with the location. Or even our state for that matter. We pledged that in five years when, of course, we would have gained some equity in our house, Ben would be at a point in his career to stay at his company or leave with great experience, and most likely we would have a child (or two), we were moving to Denver, Colorado.

This may sound random however, we had been to Denver on our honeymoon, hear great things about Colorado, like the way that Denver is a big city but you don't have to drive far to be out of the city in the beautiful mountains and who can beat 300 days of sun a year?! We also factored in that we would be just a 2 1/2 hour plane ride away from both families. Right now we are a 5 hour plane ride away from one family and have one family here. When considering this, though, we think a plane ride? Not such a simple way to have to visit family. 


We just kept telling ourselves that we obviously couldn't make a decision like that then and that over the next few years things would become more clear.

Well here we are, almost 4 years later and it feels like things have not cleared up. In fact, it feels as if things just get more complicated. We had a discussion on Sunday night about the situation. We love being near my parents because they are helpful, involved and it is nice to have grandparents close. However, both of my parents were born and raised within 30 minutes of where they currently live and even though they sometimes mention or joke around about moving, Ben and I aren't convinced that they really would. We really don't think Texas is the ideal spot for our family either even though when it is in the 20s here and 70s there it does seem appealing.

We discussed the fact that even though we don't feel like this is the right spot for us, we feel this is where we are tied down. Even though the idea of moving to Denver sounds like it would be ideal for many reasons--weather, cost of living, fun city, good outskirts, etc.--we know it would not be ideal to move somewhere with no family and no friends. We like the idea of our kids growing up with grandparents because, for the most part, neither Ben or I really had involved grandparents for most of our lives.

We are also discussing different parts of Washington than where we live. We are also picky because we need to be within reasonable commute to a city for Ben's career and we don't want to move to the middle of nowhere because we obviously want our kids attending good schools. We think about the Spokane area due to jobs there and the climate being less rainy than here. We think about south east a little bit from where we are due to it being a nice driving distance from a bigger city yet with the possibility of more land and good schools near.

Neither one of us like the feeling of being unsettled but that is somewhat how we feel. We loooove our house. The set up, the yard, how cozy we have made it so that is a positive. We aren't in a situation where we feel like we will outgrow our house, need to get out, or anything like that. We are just trying to feel out the best place to raise our family. If you know Ben or I, then you know that these types of issues weigh heavy on us. We get to points where we just put it out of our minds and think it will all work out but now we are getting to a point where we will have to start seriously thinking about things.

I just wanted to get this down because it was a conversation we had and I feel like writing about it sometimes makes me feel better. It is very surreal to be in the stage where these are the kind of issues we have. Not what we are ordering for dinner and what movie we want to see like the good ol' college days!

What big decisions has your family had to make and how do you handle it? Any advice on any of these areas to live? How important has it been/is it for you to have grandparents near your children?