How we got here, part 3

For the last few years, it's kind of felt like our lives were on pause. We had some awesome babies, went to work and did our thing, but since we knew we were going to be moving at some point we avoided things that would make the transition harder. We tried not to buy furniture or big things because we knew it would be too hard to take with us. We would see stuff in stores and say, "I'll wait and buy that in Portland". Mark didn't try to get a better position at one of his schools because it would only be temporary until the move, and he was afraid it would look bad to leave a new position after only a few months. I had my friends that I enjoyed working with but I didn't really socialize much outside of work. Most of our time and energy outside of raising our cutie pies was to facilitate this move, and for several years we just felt like we were in a holding pattern. I talked about moving a lot at work, but I got the feeling that a lot of people didn't really think we were serious. So when the time came and I actually quit my job, people I think some people were pretty surprised. And during my final few weeks, I was in some serious shock. I definitely got graduation goggles at the end there, and it was hard to say goodbye to people I had worked with for so long.

So, I had put my resignation in because we thought we were all going to have to be out of the house by the end of May...but a few days later we found out that the realtor was kind of shady and the contract ended up falling through. For a while my mom encouraged me to rescind my resignation, but we forged ahead and started trying to find housing. We decided that if we got this apartment, we were going, and that's what happened. About a week before we were supposed to leave, I decided to try and sell our second car instead of paying a ridiculous amount to have it shipped. It was a great car and it was paid off, but saving the money from not shipping it and getting the cash for it's sale seemed like it would be the best plan since we were going to leave without me having a job lined up yet.

Around the same time I decided to sell the car, my phone rang one day while I was doing laundry. I noticed it was a Portland number so I answered it, and it was a nurse manager for one of the positions I had applied for, at the hospital that I really wanted to work at. She asked if I wanted to come in for an interview, and I told her that we wouldn't be in the area until May 31st. So, we talked on the phone for a bit and she told me about the unit and the position, I told her what I had been doing for the past few years and it seemed to go really well, though it didn't really feel like an interview at all. I was very hopeful that this job would be one to pan out.

Luckily, I managed to sell the car incredibly easily. It only took a few days and it sold for a great price. I was a little sad to see it go, but we knew it really wasn't necessary for us to have 2 cars here, and the expense of shipping it just didn't make sense.

So during our final week in Florida, we were incredibly busy. We were packing the pod, packing boxes, cleaning, I still had to finish work, and say goodbye to my friends there. They threw a great going-away party for me, and a few of us went out downtown for a while afterwards. Of course, it was when I was leaving that I would start going out and doing fun things! We still had tons and tons of packing to do, and a bit of shopping for the roadtrip too. We had to get the car checked out, and ended up needing to get new brakes and new tires  and a new battery - $$$$. We had some of my friends come over to the house one night and we all drank a bunch of beer and hung out and had a great time...it's sad that we never managed to do that prior to me leaving.

Things were just so incredibly hectic those last few days, it's kind of hard to remember it all. It was a whirlwind of packing and crying and trying to soak in a few more memories of the home that I grew up in.

How we got here, part 2

Once we decided that, yes, we are moving to Portland, we then had to figure out just how the heck that was going to happen. At the time we made up our minds, Lily was about 16 months old and I was pregnant with Amelia. We also had a dog and 2 cats, 2 cars, and a house full of way, way, way too much stuff. Oh, and my parents were also going to be selling their house and moving too, ideally at the same time. We didn't have a time frame worked out yet, but we slowly started getting rid of things we hadn't used in a long time or didn't intend on taking with us. We packed storage totes and labeled them for Portland, but at that point, it was still just a dream. We talked about it all.the.time. but there was an annoying feeling in the back of our minds that it wasn't actually going to ever happen. Eventually, we got the ball really rolling by listing our house. We kept getting rid of things, stopped accumulating junk, and we moved out of our house in January 2014.

We temporarily moved in at my parent's house, and started the incredibly difficult task of cleaning out a giant house that had been lived in for over 20 years. My mom had totes of old artwork from me and my brother, I still had papers from high school in my old bedroom, and Mark and I had tons of stuff from college stored in the garage. We had 2 garage sales and had a charity come haul away an entire truckload of things. Several times a week, we would all just sit at the dining room table with our Macbooks and do Portland research and talk about moving. We looked into where we should live, where we should work, even what grocery stores we would shop at. And most importantly, we kept asking, "How are we going to move to Portland?". Moving is expensive, and moving 3100 miles is ridiculously expensive, but our main issue was figuring out how we were going to move all the animals - 4 dogs and 6 cats - safely. We considered flying and shipping our cars, but our vet really recommended against it because Stanlee would have to go as cargo under the plane. Even a nonstop flight in mild weather would be too stressful for him. So, that solidified our mode of travel - we had to drive. Our last road trip with the girls had some definite rough patches (ie, screaming children) so we were pretty concerned about how they would do on a 3100 mile trip. A so, an iPad was born.

By spring, my parents had listed their house and quickly had an offer. I had been applying for jobs, as Mark and I decided that if something good comes along, I should take it and we should just go. I actually ended up turning down a job that didn't seem like it would be a good fit for me, but I had a handful of pending applications out there. We started getting the feeling that our Florida address was holding us back though. I had gotten my Oregon nursing license and had all of my certifications up to date, but we were concerned that hospitals were going to chose local nurses instead of one on the other side of the country. Once my parents had the offer on the house, things changed in an instant. We were told the closing date would be in 4 weeks. I was still at my job that I had been at for 9 years, but policies there were changing frequently because they had been taken over by a corporation, and the following day they were going to begin requiring 3 weeks notice to resign. After some hesitation, and then encouragement from Mark and my mom, I turned in my resignation that day, and I cried. I was happy and sad and just in shock that this pipe dream was actually turning into reality. I had spent almost a third of my life working at that hospital, and I didn't always have good feelings about it, but I was finally in a good spot there and had friends that I really enjoyed working with. Quitting was truly harder than I thought it would be. but of course it was a necessary step to get to the west coast.

Let's back up.

I regret not actively writing about the last few months, because I think it was probably one of the defining moments in my life. About four months ago, we packed our car with as many bags as it could hold, loaded the kids and the dog and started driving. 10 days later, we made it to Portland. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that. Looking back on it, we never even realized that we wanted to be west coast people until 2009, when we went to California for a friend's wedding. We went back the following year for a great vacation, but left with the realization that we were basically priced out of California, and after some cursory Googling kind of assumed we were priced out of the whole west coast. We knew we had to get out of Florida, but our destination was unknown at that point. We wanted seasons but not a lot of snow, better schools, better jobs, lower crime, different politics. Lily was born and we knew we would need to figure something out soon, because we didn't want her to grow up in Florida.

We started looking at North Carolina. It kind of met our requirements but after a couple of visits, we were unimpressed. It was still part of the south, it was still really hot in the summer, it didn't give us the feeling that we got from California, the politics sucked. I got pregnant with Amelia and we still didn't know what to do...but decided to expand the search again, because if we were really going to do this - really leave our home and jobs and friends and family, we needed to go to the right place. We didn't want to settle for something mediocre some place semi-close to Florida just because it was easier to move there. I came across a cost of living calculator online one day in 2012 and started doing comparisons between different cities. I was very surprised to find out that we came out significantly ahead in the Portland area. We were shocked, really, because we thought we couldn't afford Portland, or any place cool in the west. We did massive amounts research online - message boards, Google Street View, real estate sites, HGTV, Food Network, Youtube, and yes, we watched Portlandia. We calculated how much it would cost to actually move. Since the move would be so expensive, we decided to not spend a few thousand on a visit to check things out, and just move to Oregon sight unseen. On paper, it looked like it would be perfect for our family.