The Lincolns are Moving!

I actually wrote this post in my head yesterday as I was driving to the paint store for 50 shades of grey paint (did you see what I did there?) -
side note: these are my priorities. It's EXTREMELY important to me that I have paint samples WITH ME when I arrive so that the first thing I can do in my new house is put paint samples on the wall, choose a color and paint. Like, Day 1. Yup, I'm a total freak.
Onward. I started to write this post in my head and began bawling uncontrollably in the car. I pulled it together to go inside and get my samples, but then picked up the bawling immediately as I got back in the car.

We're moving to Denver, Colorado. It's been a whirlwind that I'm not sure I could even accurately depict to you right now. Basically, I've been hounding Ritchie for years (since Max was born) to look for work out of the state. I do love California. Well... I love that my family is nearby. California is fine and all, but I've craved having four seasons and a slower pace and better schools for my kids ever since I had them. Perhaps a bit of grass is always greener? We'll find out, I guess. Anyway, Ritchie wanted to put more time in with his job and gain some experience and plus he LOVES California so he kept putting it off. "In two years" he told me 3 years ago. A year ago I pushed HARD and he even applied to one place and never heard back. This time I knew our lease would be ending come November and I wanted to make sure there would be ample time to land a new job so we didn't have to sign another lease and be here another whole year. Ritchie basically threw a few applications out there to placate me. Within a week he had several responses, one of them from a company in Seattle, WA and one from a company in Denver, CO.

Seattle has long been one of our favorite places. To sweeten the pot, my BFF lives there. That certainly would make transitioning a whole lot easier. Ritchie began to move forward with the Seattle company and didn't with the Denver company. He just ignored them.

Fast forward about a week. The Denver company contacted him again and said they would be in the bay area if he wanted to meet them and do an informal interview. He agreed, but almost canceled twice! The Seattle thing was moving forward, neither of us were super thrilled on the idea of Denver (Ritchie had never been, and I had only been once, MANY years ago). He did decide to go, though and when he came home from that meeting I remember it was a turning point.

He was EXCITED about this company, this position, these people and they had REALLY sold him on Colorado. From that day I on I KNEW. I knew we'd end up there. I wasn't the happiest. I had been planning this grand life where my best friend and I hung out with our kids all day. A built in network was far more tempting to me than some mountains.

But, I am the type of person (thankfully) that truly can become excited about anything and therefore I put my mind to learning all the great things about Colorado. In the meantime the Seattle company fell through, Ritchie had one intensive interview with the Denver company and was fairly immediately offered the job. All within 2 weeks of applying. The company was on a big push and couldn't take the time to fly us out there immediately so we planned to visit 2 weeks later and see if we liked the area enough to live there.

That trip happened 2 weeks ago. There are pros and cons to any area and we sought out both so that we had a healthy perspective on what we would be getting ourselves into. We fell in love with Stapleton, a neighborhood very close to downtown Denver where Ritchie would be working. I'll go into our new hood and home in a different post though. The trip solidified that we would be moving there. The rest was just a matter of waiting for human resources to get the paperwork done. Once that was finalized we found out that in order to have health insurance for the month of August Ritchie would have to start by August 1. So, we quickly put into motion our plans to be in Colorado by July 22 so that we had a week to settle in before he had to begin working. That was last week. We load the truck tomorrow.

To say it's been crazy would be an understatement. I still don't think it's hit me that this is ACTUALLY happening. I will delve more into my feelings on leaving my family and friends here as well as what I'm looking forward to about moving in another post. For now, there are the basics. I need to nap :)