How was your trip?

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Why did we go to Washington?
Why we don't want to leave...
My Wonderful Friends

(Disclaimer: I have started this post three times and then stopped because I'm not really sure what to write. Greg says to just tell it like it is - so here goes. Feel free to skip a lot!)

This was my view, although the plane tilted once and I got to see Mt. Rainer up close and personal. Too bad I didn't have the camera out!

We left here at 7:30am and arrived in Seattle at 8am to a day of glorious sunshine. First we drove up to a small town called Marysville. Before leaving, we had researched it online and it seemed like our most viable option given housing prices, sizes, and town amenities. We ate breakfast at a little restaurant called "The Village." The waitress confirmed our suspicions that the sunshine was a fluke when the first words out of her mouth were "Would you like to sit in the sun?" She excitedly pointed us to a table near the window and neither one of us had the heart to tell her we see the sun almost everyday :). But it was a good little breakfast while we planned our day.


Marysville was a nice place, PROS: It has the only Winco (my grocery store) around for miles and miles and miles...it has a nice, new Costco, and the Seattle Outlets. Additional bonus, the prices at Winco and Costco were about the same as here. Also, the housing is somewhat reasonable. CONS: The yards are tiny and the schools are not ranked very high. Greg would also need to commute about 40-50 minutes depending on where we lived in town.

Lake Stevens

Then, we headed over to Lake Stevens which is a cute little community east of Marysville nestled around, you guessed it a lake. The houses were a little nicer, still reasonable and some even had yards. It had a nice small town feel and the lake was very pretty. But the you had to go to Marysville for almost ALL shopping and the commute was about an hour and apparently, "the tressal" gets VERY backed up at times.

The tressal

Then, we headed south to look more around Greg's work, which would be in Lynnwood. We looked at an area called Bothell/Mill Creek and our tongues were hanging out of our mouths when we saw the schools. They were SO nice. Beautiful homes, beautiful schools, wonderful commute...so what's the catch? Our jaws dropped when we saw the housing prices. Outright highway robbery for housing ESPECIALLY if you need a yard for a little pug dog.

After 11 hours of being in the car (and I had been up since 3am before we left), we decided to check in to the hotel and get some info from the internet. I called a couple of realtors in the area and look few houses in our price range. We drove around Bothell and Snohomish looking at them. They were all right, but we just couldn't see ourselves there.

The house on the left is our house (almost now) - notice they even drive the same truck we do. It sat on .13 acres and was over $500,000.

These were more up our alley, on .10 acre, 3BR/2.5 bath, watch your neighbor brush their teeth for only $400,000! :)

Around 8pm, we realized that we hadn't eaten lunch and we were just getting grumpier by the minute (the fact that the GPS, a.k.a. "Maris" led us 20 minutes off course didn't help either.) So, we went to a steakhouse Greg frequents when he goes up there on business. It was very good - the best mushroom steak I have ever had. I must admit it was a little awkward though. You see, two days before the trip, my wedding ring broke (long story- it has done this before), so Greg and I were at dinner - he with a ring and me, without. I have NO idea what the waiter thought. We were hoping we could pass for brother and sister, but we barely talked at all, so who knows. At the end of the night, the waiter said, "Thank you, Mr. Reynolds" and then turned to me "Miss." and left. I kind of chuckled.

We left dinner and went back to the hotel where we had a lengthy (Greg will vouch for the fact that it was probably 2+ hours) discussion about our current predicament. We just hadn't seen anything we loved, in fact, not a lot we really liked. Don't get me wrong, the weather was great and the scenery is beautiful. It has the mountains of Utah and the ocean from Florida and the trees from back East. It's just we didn't see our family in any of those communities. Greg was ready to be done and I just didn't see a way for it to work, so we went to bed with the plan to just get up the next morning and head to the airport to catch an earlier fight back home.

I laid awake almost all night listing the pros and cons. I finally wrote them down on the plane the next day, but here was my list:

PROS

• Greg has a job (and our family has health/dental benefits)
• Sally can stay home with the kids
• The greater Seattle area offers a lot to do

CONS

• The temple is MUCH further away (probably 5 hours for babysitting if we go)
• The ward boundaries are larger, so it will take longer to get to church.
• The airport is further away (it will be a 15 hour trip cross country to see my family, including layovers and airport driving times each way)
• We will need to fly to see Greg's family in Utah
• The yards are literally 6ft off the porch, the dog would not have a yard
• Most of the homes we saw were not in neighborhoods, so Ethan could not play outside with friends.
• The schools (in the areas we could afford) were older with low test scores.
• The costs of living (housing and gas) are much higher.
• Greg may have to commute, so we would see him less.
• We leave all our wonderful friends
  

It was a huge reality check on whether this job would really be the right move for our family (I didn't even list the weather and other knit-picky things I wasn't thrilled about). You see, the day before we left, I interviewed with Wells Fargo and they offered me a job at a branch less than 0.5 miles from our house. I would be a Mortgage Consultant and the starting salary would be enough to cover our bills here in Boise. Now, as we lay awake in the hotel room, it started to look like a good option, although neither one of us liked the prospect of me going back to work.

Thursday morning, Greg checked his e-mail and there was a note from the Boise office saying that the government had denied Cypress' petition for the grant to retrain its employees. Apparently, India and China are NOT countries that are recognized as stealing American jobs. (Yea, don't get me started on that one). So, now I could go back to work, but either Greg would need to find a job or we pay for his schooling. Greg, after seeing the reality of Washington, and taking it all in, agreed that this may not be the right thing for our family and we were ready to come back to Boise and take our chances with the job market.

Before we left, we decided to go look at apartments, just in case we still needed to take the offer. It was so scary, so, so, so scary. I walked out of one of the apartment just crying my eyes out. At that point, I really didn't care what the lady thought. We realized we could survive, yes we could, but it was not the life we wanted for our kids. As a last ditch effort, I asked Greg if we could drive out to a little town called Monroe. We hadn't researched it at all and I don't know why I picked it, but I did.

We started driving and it was SO beautiful. THIS was the Washington everyone was talking about. I felt like I was back east driving through PA and MD. I tried not to get excited because as we got further and further, I realized what a long commute it would be for Greg. I was also thinking about how we can barely remain civil to each other after three hours of church on our .5 mile home trip, so I don't know what 30 minutes each way in Sunday clothes would do to our family :). As we drove on, I started thinking, "Ok, it's beautiful, but it's going to be a dumpy little town, with one gas station."

Then, as we rounded the corner coming into town, the first thing we saw on our right was an LDS Chapel (the first and only one we saw the whole time). I was happy. Next, was the high school. It was huge - and decent-looking! Ok, so the prison was next, but at this point, I wasn't getting picky :). We got off the freeway at a supernice Chevron and I actually hoped for one moment that there might be a Wal-Mart. Turns out, that was hoping for too much. We drove on, looking at the subdivisions - they had YARDS - real YARDS! We didn't see any prices, so we didn't know what to think, but we were really getting hopeful.



We stopped at a local real estate broker and they were SO helpful. The people were friendly and everyone I talked to had that "small town feeling" again. They informed me that my hopes for a Wal-Mart were too much, but they have a Fred Meyer and an Albertsons and a Safeway. They also have their own movie theather and Red Robin. There is a Taco Bell, but not a Wendy's. The schools were decent, the yards were bigger, almost all the housing were in neighborhoods and although they still cost a lot, it was a HOUSE, not a detached townhome. :)

I looked at Greg and I said, "I love it." He turned to me and said, "I would commute for this." He may have to make a few Wal-Mart runs, too, though since there is a Wal-Mart right next to his work. But there is a Costco twenty minutes away in the neighboring town. We had to admit, we breathed a sign of relief. Maybe it was the contrast of looking at apartments and then looking at houses again, but it was a welcome change.

We haven't offically made up our minds to move. We are still waiting for the counteroffer from Cypress this week and there is still the little matter of selling our home in this wonderful market. But, my con list got a LITTLE smaller and it's all what we need to sacrifice for the two items on the PRO list up there. So, we have to admit, we are leaning in that direction. On the way home, I looked at Greg and asked him what he was thinking and he replied, "I'm thinking it's doable." And I replied, "Yea, I know."

I am still having a really hard time coming to terms with leaving our friends and the life we built here. But, we have been reminded how important the PRO things are over and over again. Last week, our church meeting's topic was adversary (which was right on target for us) and this week, it was on change. I can't tell you how much we felt like those were written for us. Also, Primary's whole theme this month is on families members' responsibilities and the Proclamation on the Family.

If you made it to the end of this post, thanks for reading. It's been a long three weeks and I know the next few months will be even longer, but as we learned, adversary and change come to all of us. It's our response that is important.

I'm so grateful for a husband who shares the same goals and desires for our family. When push came to shove, he was wonderful enough to put his family's needs above his pride of not having a job and his fears of never finding one, just so we could continue with our life here. I'm grateful for friends who have shown support in all sorts of ways - especially for taking the kids (and being on call) while we were away. I don't think we will ever be able to repay them, but maybe we can pay it forward.

I wished there were "life-calming" devices.

We'll keep posting stuff as we hear it. We did have some light-hearted moments on the trip, but I will let Greg post about those. He is an awesome storyteller (of course, I am biased), but we had some serious laughs. After we saw Monroe, we had exactly one hour to finally see the waterfront. It was breath-taking. The ocean air helped clear our heads and we were ready to come home and see the kids! We wished they were there - Ethan would have loved the train and Katie ADORES birds. (But we know the 11 hours in the car would have killed us all the day before). Maybe they will still see it after all...I guess only time will tell.

Riding to the airport

Saying good-bye

Greg made one funny point. For the majority of our "blog readers", almost nothing will change. You'll see just us in a new place. So, I guess it's not all bad :).