We’re moving…again!

For the last couple of months, Kellen has been in the process of interviewing for a software development position at a big tech company in Austin, Texas. I’m proud to announce that he got the job! Which means that our family is packing up and moving 2,000 miles across the country in just a few short weeks.

Neither of us are exactly strangers to moving. In the last 10 years, I’ve moved over 20 times, including some big moves from Austin to Minneapolis after I finished school and then another big move from Minneapolis to Seattle when I was a flight attendant. Kellen similarly has moved around quite a bit, including moving from the Oregon Coast to Texas when he was only 18. Still. Moving once you have established careers and a child–and enough stuff to fill a 26′ truck–is a lot different than being carefree college students who can fit all their belongings in the trunk of their car.

I knew 5 years ago when I moved to Portland that this wasn’t our final destination, but I’ve still been completely surprised by how quickly we went from thinking we’d probably be in Portland at least another year to moving in under a month. The day after Kellen received the offer, we had to put in our notice with our apartment and get in touch with a realtor.

It’s been a crazy experience getting everything prepared. The biggest challenge has been finding a place to live, since we weren’t able to take off to go look in person and since the Austin housing market is kind of nuts. My parents very graciously spent 4 days trekking all over Austin with a realtor to find us a new home, and we fortunately got all that sorted out and finalized today.

Apart from that, it’s been making a lot of reservations, coordinating travel plans (all of those travel posts from last week? what I didn’t mention is that Isla and I have one-way tickets this time!), and packing everything into boxes. I also had to let everyone at my work know that I was moving 2,000 miles away. I’ll be staying with my company, doing the same thing I am now, but it will be very different and challenging to work remotely full time.

It’s bittersweet. We’ve been planning to move back to Austin since Kellen graduated from school, but we’ve never had the opportunity before. We’re thrilled to finally make that dream come true. But it’s sad to leave behind all our friends and family here. Even our current apartment, which is by no means glamorous…we moved here when Isla was only 3 weeks old. Almost all of our memories with her are here in this home. It will be hard to say goodbye to the place where we experienced so many firsts.

I am absolutely over the moon, though, about going back to what is in my opinion the best city in the whole wide world, and I know we’ll experience so many more firsts there. Bring on the adventure!