Our Exodus...

This one will be a long one. i've never done this before so I thought I would just let all my brain flow out on one post to get everyone up to speed. I promise, future post will either be 1- shorter or 2- action packed.
Well, I've been in Utah since Summer 2001 and David joined me a few years later. We have spent all of our married lives (be it a short few years) in good old Provo. Caitlin has always been a BYU baby- born and raised on Campus Proper.
I've always been a mid-Westerner (still claim Troy, Michigan as my home town) and I guess I am going back to my roots but it all seems so strange to me. Leaving what I know to start something brand new in exotic Cincinnati. Don't worry... I will not become a Buckeye- at least not yet. (Maybe when everyone is grown up and such- OSU has a fairly strong Architecture program if I want to pursue that later down the line.)
Our plans- as we know them... David and Caitlin packed up our one room apartment and headed off in a Penske truck about a week ago. They basically took everything- The house looked like the Grinch had been through it! Everything gone except the nails in the walls and little bits of paper and such. Separation was not our favorite plan but David needed a Cincinnati job and being on location would make this a little easier.
I should probably reverse a bit. How about last December? David and I liked to play around on realtor.com and see what we could find. Sometimes we would look for the most expensive houses or the cheapest houses in an area. We go to know some of the realtor demographics pretty well. Our favorite house was a burnt down arson case in the middle of Detroit- it was only a few hundred dollars. We however, did not purchase this house.
We found another one about a 5 minute walk from my parents (in Johansson central basically). The house had been forclosed so the price was a little more in our range than anything else in that area. We had my mom look at the house and she even made a bid for it (we would have used a quit-claim and gotten the deed from her). We got the house and then it was time for the inspection. We knew that this was a fixer-upper and we well ready to tear up carpet and paint and get new appliances and such. If the house passed, it was our! The house failed on so many levels- structurally unsound, toxic mold, rodents, mildew, termites- you name it. To make the home liveable it would have cost atleast 90,000! The inspectors first question to us (before entering the home) was, so you are planning on tearing this down and starting from scratch- Right? Well, for 100,000 that was not our plan. No house for us!
So, I made it a couple months before being bitten by the housing bug again. I wanted to paint, I wanted to decorate, I wanted to get out of sleeping in the front room!
We like to think of ourselves as City people- even though I grew up in the middle of suburbia and David's city days include a short stint on the University of Chicago campus. But we are both draw to the amenities a city has to offer- museums, zoos, stadiums, music, non-chain restaurants, bustling activity. That said, we set our sites on a city location close to family. Well, the closest cities to family are Detroit and Cincinnati- Cincinati was the safe one so we looked there. We found a gorgeous old home that had been foreclosed and it was the same price as the one in Michigan! The previous owners thought they could flip it but were unsuccesful- a lot of work had been done and the home looked great inside and out. We put an offer in, it was accepted, and the home passed as being structurally sound! It needs copper piping in the basement, but other than that it is great!
We had been paying mortgage and insurance on the home, so why not move in? All of our stuff and 1/2 the family is in Ohio now. I am staying in Utah so we still have insurance and one source of income. David resigned form Spanish Fork before he left so it was sort of a leap of faith. Being several months pregnant and having little Caitlin, I decided to make David make the leap alone- I do not think being uninsured and unemployed is the best idea with a dare devil daughter and and a new little one on the way. So, our bases are covered mainly.
David is such a hard worker and is pounding the pavement looking for a teaching job. As soon as he get the offer, I give my 2 weeks and follow him out. If the offer does not come in, he'll come back out here and we will only be out the price of the move. Then we will have to plan again.
So for right now- or family has about 1,700 miles between us. But hopefully not for too long.