Big Moves, Part 2

You know how I start a post with something like, oh it's been a while! Again! Things are busy! Etc!

Soccer field wind tunnel

Everytime I write that a part of me genuinely thinks I will soon have time to properly blog. Like there will be whole nights where I just sit with James and watch a show that doesn't require my whole concentration (currently watching Severance which does in fact require all my focus because wtf. I definitely like it, but I also definitely have no idea what's going on much of the time) and type and recount our days and smile and look forward to reading about them again in the future.

Instead, each day involves the complicated logistical maneuvers of 3 kids and 3 pets, a husband and a house.

Each day also involves a lot of laughter and love and funny text messages and pictures of Maggie.

"Conversation" with the teenager

Each day involves me doing work that makes me feel smart and happy and valued.

It works.

Each day ALSO involves 2+ hours of me driving to that work. Some days it's 90+ minutes each way.

This does not work.

And so, the Lag Liv family has some big news:

We're moving to Dallas!

As is our way, it was all decided fairly quickly. I talked with James one night and he immediately said, "If you need to move, we need to move."

And so the next night we talked to the kids over dinner. They weren't thrilled, but they weren't surprised- it was something we talked about when I took this job. They're all sad to leave Fort Worth- we've been here over 10 years (!!), but they're excited about a new city, new house (hopefully with 4 bedrooms this time!), and new opportunities.

Cora is the most sad. My extremely outgoing child dislikes change IMMENSELY and is still morning the dead bushes we cut away in front of the house five months ago.

Claire is sad but okay. She made a lot of new friends this year and is devastated to leave them, but I also think she feels confident in making new friends right now so that helps a lot.

And Landon is neutral. He's excited to be part of a bigger swim team and was initially excited to be closer to his best friend in Weatherford until we explained Dallas is an hour in the opposite direction, but they have plans for lots of sleepovers.

(That picture is actually from a shopping trip I made him go on with James. The girls and I went on our own and had a blast. His reaction to replacing his wardrobe for another size was somewhat different than Claire and Cora's.)

The cats have no comment and Maggie is just delighted we found a rental house that will allow her to come along.

Because yes! We have a house! After we took the kids to our hoped-for neighborhood ten days ago and drove them by the schools, parks, lake, and several houses, we realized home buying right now is impossible (we looked at 4 houses and all 4 sold before we were back in Fort Worth an hour later). So we're renting! Which we've never done before. It's a 6 month lease with mont-to-month extension option starting June 1 that will let us get to the neighborhood we want to be in (FOUR POINT TWO MILES from my office; so different from 42), let the kids start school (registered them today!), and then let us leisurely look for our forever home early in the new year.

I'm very excited about this, and now that they can see our next steps, the kids (even Cora!) are more excited too. This will be her first move, but I truly believe she's going to do amazing. She's a bloom where she's planted kind of girl.

We spent last weekend packing up all the extra to get the home ready to be listed. We went through every closet and drawer and even in a house with little to no storage, we found you can accumulate many things in 10 years. It was a long busy weekend, but all the kids were such troopers and we got everyone's pizza Sunday night.

A pod comes this weekend for us to load up, then the gorgeous new doors and giant double-paned windows I ordered late last year are finally arriving (sob) and will be installed, and then we'll do pictures and list! I'm devastated my gorgeous new bedroom wall just got done and I just now gave myself a (similarly gorgeous!) home office and now we're leaving, but the timing is what it is. Our house has nearly tripled in value, so it's not like we're not getting everything back and a whole lot more.

Hopefully someone will appreciate my crazy wall paper, and if not, they can take it down. I've kept the extra for a wall in our new forever house.

And so that's the news! We'll be living in our fourth Texas city and fifth city together. Only an hour away from where we are now, but far enough to require changing out just about everything about our day to day lives. We all have a lot of feelings about this, hopefully to be explored later, but the biggest thing I feel right now is a sense of rightness.

2012

This is right for our family. It will bring new opportunities for everyone and will let me be a bigger part of all their lives.

2021

It might also even let me go to yoga for the first time since mid-February, which is really a win for everyone.