We're Moving to Washington

It's official: we're moving to the Seattle area!  This morning Mc accepted a job offer up there and we'll be selling this house and moving within about 6-8 weeks.

We've been planning for this for almost 2 months now, and so things are already in the works.  We've met with a realtor and they've set us up with a landscaper and a handyman and we're getting a free staging consultation for our house as well (the chainsaw work from my last blog post was part of our preliminary yard work to get ready to sell the house).  We don't have to be living here for any of the selling process, so pretty much as soon as Mc secures an apartment for us up there around the middle of April, we can move.

I'm excited about the move.  I'm a San Francisco Bay Area gal, so this hot dry climate of Arizona has been really different, and it's been hard on my skin.  ;)  The Seattle area will be much more moist and cool, which is what I'm used to.  And our kids will actually be able to play outside in the summer!

I'm excited for other things, too.  From what I hear, Seattle is an extremely racially diverse area; here in AZ it's pretty much white with some Mexican as well.  I miss diversity and I'm looking forward to being around it again.  I've also heard that the culture up there is very casual, and that'll be fun.  ;)  And they actually have culture; here, not so much.

We'll know only a small handful of people at first.  Two friends of ours have recently relocated up there and we haven't seen them in years, and we're excited to hang out with them again.  One of Mc's former managers from KPMG works at the same company (she's the one who recommended he apply for the job in the first place), and we have a brother-in-law-by-marriage in the area as well.  I'm very shy when it comes to meeting new people and making friends, but I'll try to adjust.

That's another thing I'm looking forward to, believe it or not: moving back into an apartment (or townhouse, we'll see which soon).  I love our house but I have felt isolated in it, especially since leaving the LDS church which was my main source of meeting people and socializing.  We have nice neighbors but no one hangs out outside-- people in Arizona tend to stay in their houses a lot because of the heat, so I really haven't had much of a chance to chat with them.  With an apartment you have no choice but to interact with your neighbors because they're right there, so that'll help me get back out of my shell.

Our plan is to stay in an apartment for 1 year and then evaluate whether we like apartment living better or worse than a house.  There have been lots of pros and cons to renting apartments over the years and owning a house, so going back to an apartment will help us see which pros/cons list we prefer.

I can't say I'll miss much about AZ.  We have some friends down here who we've known for years and I'll be sad to leave them.  Both Mc and I have made a few friends from church and I'll miss them, too.  But that's about it.  Nothing else has me tied down to this state and I'm up for a new adventure!