A Place to Call Home

Ok, so this post is long overdue. Back in June I did a post called Lessons Learned. I wrote about our housing "crisis" so to speak. So if you haven't read it or you want to refresh your memory you can click on June in the column on the right hand side and catch up! This post is a continuation of the Lessons Learned post. If you're interested that is :)

Anyway, the last part of that post I talked about how we had done some house hunting, but we really felt that we should hold off on buying a house. For about the first month or so that we lived here with my parents we continued to search for a home. We looked in many different subdivisions in the area and we even got the information on some homes that had been foreclosed on. Some of those foreclosures were screaming deals!! Each time we looked at homes and had found one that we really liked we would start to get a little excited and think, "Yeah, we could live here! This is a great house!" But the same feeling would always come afterwards. . . . Wait. We would house hunt again and again and get excited again and again and then - AGAIN that feeling would come, every time. . . .wait. One night I remember asking Heavenly Father, "What are we waiting for?" He didn't tell me. But we did take the hint after that and we quit house hunting. And we just decided. . . . .to wait.

So wait we did. My parents were great through all of this. They kept telling us, "Don't feel like you have to hurry out of here. You can stay as long as you need to. Take your time." I just didn't want them to feel like we were leeching off of them or something. But they were so nice about everything. Living here we have grown so much closer to them, we've grown closer to my grandparents who live downstairs in the basement (it's complicated, really :)), and we've grown closer to each other. My parents let us get out pretty much every weekend. We haven't dated this much since we were dating! We wouldn't even ask them if they could babysit the kids. They were so nice and would just offer to watch them if we wanted to get out. Of course we took them up on that offer many many times! It's been nice for Craig and I to be able to get out with each other like that for some good one on one time. They have been so kind to take us in and take care of us like they have. We've been able to get into a better financial situation living here as well.

Meanwhile, sometime in July Craig had gone on a business trip to Maryland. His company has a facility in there. The man who was the manager in Maryland got caught doing some dishonest things and the company ended up letting him go. So they flew Craig there to help the guys out in Maryland who now don't have a manager. Craig was out there for a week and almost every night I talked to him he would say, "I can't believe how beautiful it is out here. It's so green and there's trees! I could live here!" I would laugh and at one point during the week I told him, "Well, hey there's a job opening there now, maybe they'll ask you if you want to move out there and manage in Maryland." He really loved it there, but never thought that would happen. A little bit after he came back from his business trip we went to the Temple together. We were talking (whispering) before we started our session and I noticed that the lady I was doing the temple work for was from Maryland. I kind of smiled and pointed it out to Craig and said, "Hey, maybe the Lord's trying to tell us something!" Craig laughed and said, "I would rather move to New Jersey than to Maryland!" The company Craig works for also has a facility in New Jersey that did not have a manager.

Two or three weeks later Craig got a phone call from one of his bosses from the corporate office. His boss wanted to know if he would be willing to move to New Jersey and manage the facility there. He told his boss, "Let me talk to my wife first." (Good answer, babe!) I very clearly remember the morning that Craig called and asked me how I would feel about moving to New Jersey. I had just finished bawling my eyes out to Heavenly Father. I was sick of waiting. I am a planner. I like to have a plan. The last few months of life had had NO plan. And I was at a loss! After standing still and waiting for so long I wanted to feel like we were moving in a forward direction. It's almost funny how a few hours later the phone rang and a PLAN landed in my lap. Craig asked me how I would feel about it and he told me he wanted my honest opinion. I started laughing! I said to him, "Do you remember what you said a few weeks ago in the Temple?" He said, "No." And I said, "You said - out loud - in the Temple - that you would rather move to New Jersey than to Maryland." (Apparently Heavenly Father listens in on all those side conversations we have in the Temple!) He then remembered saying that and he started to laugh a little. We don't know if Craig was ever being considered for the Maryland position or not. But he did get asked to manage in New Jersey none the less.

He DID accept the offer. After much prayer and a couple of trips out to New Jersey we do feel that this move is right for our family.

Looking back we now see why we needed to WAIT. Had we put money down on a home here- we would have been out all of our earnest money! The home we are supposed to move into is not here. It's in New Jersey. Across the entire country. Very far from family.

So why the impression to move closer to family in the first place? In the Lessons Learned post I had mentioned that I wasn't sure why I had had that impression. One of my guesses - actually my first guess - was: Maybe Craig will get a job transfer out of state and we will end up raising our family far away and this is a time to be close to family before we leave. I think I hit it right on the nose with that guess. We are so glad that we did not move back into our home after we found out that the sale fell through. We would be stressing about what to do with our house. It probably would not have sold yet, we can't know for sure but with the way the market is it most likely would not have sold. We would be stressing with thinking about putting renters in it before we leave or do we just leave it on the market to see if it sells, etc.? We would have had to pack EVERYTHING up all over again! Most of our stuff has just remained in storage the past few months. So it's nice that there wasn't much to pack, just the stuff we had at my parent's house. We already have renters in there and things are going very smoothly. The house is being taken care of and it's one less thing that we have had to worry about as we have prepared to leave. Shortly after breaking the news to my mom, she came to me teary eyed and said one of the reasons the Lord put us here was for her. She expressed how grateful she was that she got to be so close to us for a time. She's loved watching the grandkids grow. Clark wasn't crawling when we got here and now he's standing on his own two feet. I've caught her telling Clark a couple of times, "I want to see you walk before you go!" Chase lost his first tooth and Mallory turned three. She says it's been a special tender mercy that the Lord has given to her to have us here in their home. Mom and Dad, we can't possibly thank you enough. . . . .

So today is Tuesday. We leave Friday. It's real. I can't believe it's real. But it's happening whether or not we're ready for it. All of our stuff is packed in storage boxes that will be shipped across the country. Our cars are being shipped as well. We thought about driving, but after weighing the options we decided that flying would be better. We could spend 4 days, in the car, driving across America - with three children - or we could spend 4 1/2 hours on an airplane. Driving would have been a little cheaper, but the many times we pictured driving, we pictured it as going something like this - "Mom, he's touching me!" "I have to go potty." "She's not giving me back my toy!" "He hit me!" "WAAAAAA", from the 11-month old who's sick of being in his car seat! Then we would just be yelling at our kids. I'll take the airplane thank you! It's already stressful enough on us moving our family across the country. We didn't want to pass that stress on to the kids.

Craig flew out this last weekend and rented us a townhouse. We thought about buying, but with how bad the economy is lately we didn't wanted to take on another mortgage. Maybe when we get our AZ home sold we'll talk about buying something out there.

We'll miss a lot of things about AZ, but we're excited for the adventures we'll have in NJ. There will be many changes. The wards in New Jersey encompass 7 or 8 cities. The closest temple is in Manhattan. It rains approximately 4 inches a month. And snow, we WILL have snow! And big puffy warm winter jackets with mittens and hats! NYC is less than an hour's train ride away. Washington DC is three hours away. The beach and Atlantic Ocean only 35 minutes away. Philadelphia is 30 minutes. Six Flags Theme Park - 30 minutes. It's against state law to pump your own gas. You wait in your car and someone does it for you. No tip required! Adventures, yes. . . . there will be many. . . . .

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. . . . . leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. . . .