State of Affairs

My husband just got off the phone with a real estate agent from Atlanta.  She called him because the company that he hopes to work for in Atlanta contacted her and asked her to call him.  She wanted to know when we could come out and start house-hunting.  He tried to explain to her that we don't even have a job offer from them at this point so it's a little hard for us to even think about looking at houses until we get something nailed down, to which she replied that they are DEFINITELY going to offer him the job....they're VERY excited to have him work for them.

Welcome to my daily life.

It's so chock-full of thumbs up and thumbs down, of highs and lows, of good news and bad, that I can't even remember what a normal day is like anymore.

And this call from the agent today is just one example of the weird things that keep happening!  I've tried to refrain from posting daily about all the stuff that's going on, in hopes to spare all who read here from the insanity, but I continue to receive emails and tweets from readers asking for updates, so I'll do my best!

Currently, we are still waiting on an offer for the job in Atlanta, and that's where we THINK we want to be, so I'll start there.  I posted almost two weeks ago about receiving a call from the company in Atlanta and having them tell us that they plan to give us an offer after they finish interviewing the remaining candidates.  We had hoped that would be happening last week, but then last Thursday we got another call saying that they still had not finished interviewing due to scheduling conflicts.  They were desperately hoping that we could be patient for just a short time more and begged my husband for the second time not to take any other job offers without first talking to them.  While we are certain that a job offer is forthcoming, we are still unsure as to what the financial details will be.  The initial interview revealed that the job has a significantly lower salary than where we currently are.

Obviously, a job is a job, and we will take anything that puts food on the table at this point, but because there is relocation involved and the sale of our house in a very bad housing market, we have to be careful with how low we go.  Sacrificing and downsizing can only get us so far if we lose all our equity on our house, have to pay for our own move, end up with a much lower base salary and have a much more limited bonus potential.  Without going into all of our personal finances, suffice it to say that, while we can certainly scrimp more than we currently do, we also have many, MANY children heading to college in the near future!

So, while there's little doubt that we could be moving to Atlanta, the question has now become do we WANT to move to Atlanta.

Some have asked about the job in New Hampshire.  My husband had completed his 3rd round of interviews and was expecting an offer when another really strange thing happened.  I'm not going to go into all of the details, but it turned out that he uncovered some really troubling things during his interview which he pointed out to top management at a later time (having to do with the job he was interviewing for and it's core purpose).  After considering his revelation, the CEO's decided not to move forward with hiring anyone until they have ironed out some issues.  They were incredibly thankful to my husband for bringing so many things to light, and were incredibly apologetic for the chaos.  We decided we had probably narrowly escaped a very bad situation and were happy to walk away.

Weird.

Since we have no firm feelings about the Atlanta job, my husband continues to interview and look for other positions.  He is quickly moving up on the short list for another job that would involve living in Chicago, New York, or Boston (our choice) and then traveling to the other two territories.  It's a BIG job.  But it comes with BIG pay.  We're expecting about 25% travel.  Don't like that.  In fact, that's one of the main reasons we left Montana.  Quality of life is just too important to our family, and having my husband gone so much is too hard on us.  We'd much prefer to be rich in family, not in our wallets!

So, while we had hoped to have some answers by Christmas, and were even planning a house-hunting trip to Atlanta sometime next week, we are now left in limbo, unsure as to how long we'll be stuck here. And even if everything ends up working out with Atlanta and we do accept an offer, we still have to sell our house!

That brings me to the weird thing that happened with our house.

A couple of weekends ago, we had a family that was from Atlanta look at our house.  Not only that, but they have 7 kids.  Not only that, but they're from the EXACT area north of Atlanta that we've been looking at living!  Not only that, but they already live here, just sold their own house in Atlanta, and they love our house!!!  Unfortunately (because it wouldn't be "our life" if it was EASY), the sale on their house is being held up due to issues with their appraisal.  So, until they are certain their house will be able to sell, they don't want to make an offer on our house.

But....(because there's always a BUT when it comes to us)

.......there may be another buyer for our house.

Our agent got a call the other day from a family that looked at our house over Thanksgiving and was asking some follow-up questions about it.  Our agent sounded positive about the conversation, so once again, our hopes are up......

up, down, up, down, up........down?


The worst part about all of this, of course, is the kids' schedules.  I met with Emily's counselor yesterday, and we came up with a plan for her to finish up her senior year online, and we plan to come back from wherever so that she can graduate with her class, but it's still really tough on her. Allie had to take next semester off from school since we don't know where we'll end up, and we didn't want to pay for classes and then leave mid-semester.  Then there's Sophie, who is on the high school basketball team and who loves to play lacrosse in the spring.  Even if the transition academically isn't too tough, it's all the activities that become the issue.  As far as the boys go, I am planning to homeschool them when we move, so that's a whole new ballgame in addition to all the stresses of moving to a new place.  But that's for another post!  I'm still researching curriculum (in my spare time!) and am open to suggestions!

While I don't have all the answers, there's one thing that I know for sure.....things are changing.  It's incredible to think that we're going into this Christmas vacation without knowing anything, but by the time it's over, we could be preparing to move instead of returning to school.

At least it's not boring around here ;D