** FYI - this post is a little lengthy and a little personal. Feel free to skip if you're not interested. There have been several times I've wished our blog wasn't linked up to Facebook. I've thought of 'un-linking' it but that requires figuring out how to do it and takes way more energy than I have at the moment.
***FYI Again. This post was written a week or two before we came back to Utah. Our plans have totally changed, but this is how I was feeling and I want to document it for me to have so I'm posting it here. I'll do an update and what's really happening soon.
We've moved a lot. Utah, Germany, Thailand, LA, Turkey, and Arkansas have been our 'major' moves. But there have been so many additional local moves and then all the 'pit stops' in Utah in between school/jobs trying to figure out what's next. I don't think I can accurately count the number of times we've loaded up all of our stuff into boxes (or suitcases) and headed off. Let's just say the number of past addresses in our amazon account is slightly embarrassing. It just isn't right when you're being asked about old addresses (for security purposes) and can't remember if you ever lived at that address or not....or occasionally forgetting where we are living right now. Or being able to tell which kid it is in a baby picture based on the location....yikes!!
We've had some great adventures and I wouldn't trade them, and the lessons learned, for anything. But, I'm definitely ready to settle down. This move to Arkansas was fully intended to be permanent. It was a legit job with benefits - we were actually going to have insurance! Can I tell you how excited I was to be able to find doctors for our kids and never have to switch again!!!!!!!!! Not just another adventure. We contacted a real estate agent and even looked at houses to buy. This 'legit' job didn't pay very much, and we knew it would be very tight for a few years, but hey, we're frugal. We don't need a lot. Our kids have never had much and are young enough they don't complain too much. We had done the math, evaluated our anticipated budget in every possible way. We were ready to make it work and were excited about it.
And then we moved. And then after a month and a half received our first full paycheck. And we realized our budget was way off. Our anticipated take home pay was lots less than what he had calculated (apparently you can't trust everything you read online)! :D
To make a long story a tiny bit shorter we quickly realized there was no way we could make this work financially. To top it off we had major issues with medical insurance - and haven't been insured. There has been lots of stress. So...we stopped looking at houses to buy and started looking at different jobs. There were lots of jobs we discussed, so many applications filled out, and a few interviews. Some were promising, some not so much. The job search really isn't very much fun (and it's not even me doing the work). Anyway, James was offered a job here in NWA and we were really excited about it. We thought we had things figured out and it made perfect sense. But, the job offer was rescinded and we went back to square one.
After lots of thinking, praying, pleading, sleepless nights, frustrating days of trying to figure out how we could this work we realized we needed to move back to Utah. I don't know why. Logically it doesn't make much sense. Not at all. No job, no promise of a job, awful dry weather and freezing cold winters....but it feels right. I think. As long as I don't think logically.
So, we've been packing up our stuff, yet again...and moving on.
As a major side note....I feel like we're pretty minimalistic but how in the heck do we have so much junk stuff?!!!!
Major, major side note....we bought a truck. Not a minivan, but a truck!
* An update on what our new plans are will be coming soon....this was getting too long!
