Hey there. I'm still out here.
Let's do a re-introduction and get you up to speed.
My H and I are in our mid-thirties. We have two adorable kiddos, one goofball of a yellow lab, and one betta fish named Swimmy. Oh and we just picked up our lives last month and moved from the DC 'burbs to sunny Florida. Let's go into that.
Ever since our honeymoon, my husband and I were throwing darts at the map, looking for the beach life. Hawaii, San Diego, Charleston, etc. You name it, if we've been to a place with a beach, we've considered living there. You know how that goes. Life happens, you buy a home, you have a kid or two, the market goes poop, and you're in your cozy suburbs hating winter and wishing you could pop over to the beach on the weekends but alas-you're three hours away. And you have family in your town. And your kid's school. And friends and roots and an attic full of stuff that would be a pain in the ass to go through amirite??
Well about once a year we checked our home value, checked real estate at our favorite places, looked into relocation blogs and all that and it just never happened. I love Charleston-the culture, the beach, the history and the people. We had been multiple times and were ready to go. But for some divine reason, job hunting never went anywhere, the housing market where we wanted to be skyrocketed out of our price range, and nothing went according to plan.
When summer rolled around in 2017, we again started looking at job opportunities near popular beaches with good economies and a variety of things to do. Somehow we narrowed our search to St. Pete, Florida. Our realtor finally gave us good news! And jobs to apply for were abundant. We poked along, shoring up our resumes and researching schools and places to live in St. Pete until the fall. Suddenly (after, you know, weeks of painting and fixing and working on it) the house was on the market! And OMGOMG we got an offer in 6 days. It was a goooood offer. WTF do we do? We accepted just before Halloween and made plans to move into my in-laws' soon to be vacant home down the street. The plan was to rent until summer of 2018, and then re-evaluate. Would we move to St. Pete or decide to stick around and rent in our current spot for another year?
Turns out, instead, Josh was offered a job in St. Pete in mid-November. And they wanted him in town ASAP. OMGOMG all over again. He and I flew in to Florida just after Thanksgiving, had a whirlwind 24 hours of deciding on where and what to rent, and then we flew back. Closed on the house a few days later. Lived in the in-laws house for a week. Then packed the u-haul and moved to Florida.
We are on the bay, 10 miles from the beach and a little under a thousand miles from where we lived a month ago. G is almost 6 and a half and after an anxiety-ridden first day, he LOVES his new school. My dear H loves his new job. And I am currently searching for one while staying home with the adorable terror that is our 2 and a half year old. Just trying to make our much smaller apartment feel like home while getting our bearings in this new place.
That was probably a lot for one post. I'll leave it here for now and then pick back up soon, hopefully in a week or so.
