Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.
So the semi-big news is that we are staying in Texas. Most of you will not see this as big news since you did not even know that we were considering NOT staying in Texas. So perhaps the semi-big news is that we were considering leaving Texas (going back to Indiana) and the also-semi-big news is that we have decided to stay in Texas. Anyway, that's the news.
Either way we went, my family has sacrificed enough for me during the past 12 months. They moved from a 1,583 sq. ft. house on about 1/2 of an acre into this 1,150 sq. ft. apartment with no yard at all. The kids went from having their own room to sharing a room (a concept they found exciting for about the first 6 months but is wearing thin now). Everyone had to make new friends and hardly see the old friends at all. The wife lost all her free, "no advance planning needed" babysitters. We had to find a new home for our dog, Pongo (I think even the cat misses him, though I doubt Tiger would admit it). Many, many sacrifices all made on my behalf so I could take a shot at advancing my career.
Don't get me wrong, we were not looking forward to leaving Texas. We have found a great church, made some great friends and we very much like the weather. Allen is a better city than Kokomo. When the wife and I listed the pro's and con's of one state versus the other, they came up about even. One thing on the side of Indiana was that we were going to keep our return a secret from almost everyone in Indiana. The wife and I plotted about this quite often. We were going to work with one or two people in Kokomo and get settled back into Kokomo. Then we were going to have a contact there invite both our mothers and my wife's sister to a fake party (Tupperware, Pampered Chef, etc.) and give the address of the party as our new address. We almost wanted to move back just to do this. It would make for one great story to tell (and blog to write).
But in the end, the job is going pretty well and it would not be a wise decision career-wise for me to leave my company's headquarters and go back to the relatively small office back where I started. Plus there is much more opportunity here then there ever was back there. Yes, staying is the best and only choice really.
Our apartment lease is up at the end of this month so we needed to find a place to move to once we we're kicked out of here. We crunched the numbers, found a price range for houses we could afford and in the end decided that leasing a house for a year was a better financial decision. This gets us into a house at least (with a yard) but does not tie us down to what we can afford with my current income. Perhaps in another year down here we will be able to afford a house that we like. For now with us running out of time to find a place to live, we decided on leasing. So in about 2 weeks we are moving. I will be going up and down those same 19 steps that I did when we moved in here last year. This year though the move will not be preceded by a 900 mile trip in a U-Haul (ah, memories).
So in the next few weeks you can expect blogs about the frustrations of moving (again). I will try to make is so they are not just reruns.
Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.
Jon
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