Unmistakably Blessed

In the words on my dear friend Amanda, we have been unmistakably blessed.  Two years ago, there was an opportunity to go to the UK office that I was very interested in to work on a project in Egypt.  Then this happened.  We had rushed the get passports for everyone and didn't even set up a Christmas tree since we didn't know how fast it would happen.  Well it didn't happen and we signed Emilia up for spring soccer and kindergarten and went on with our lives.

Then it felt a little like deja vu when I was asked about Perth except this offer wasn't dependent on a project.  We had just set out all the Christmas decorations over Thanksgiving... and I mean decorations!  Chris was born on Christmas Eve and loves Christmas so we go all out.  We even bought a new slimline tree with the lights already on it and sold our other tree.  Life was good.  Emilia has a new best friend named Amelia that moved into our neighborhood this summer that she met on the 2nd day of school.  She had just played in the Winter Blast soccer tournament in between the fall and spring seasons.  She moved to Level 3 in gymnastics and finally got into her friend Bridget's class that we were on the wait list for.  I was about to start changing Emilia's room from princesses to Paris.  I promised when she was 3 and choose Sleeping Beauty that she could change it in 3 years.  I found a fabric to jump off of and make a couple of pillows.  Now her room in Perth will turn into Paris.  Beau is counting to 10 and potty training.  Chris had his groove at work and I was hitting my stride with project management and new engineers programs.  Plus I finally felt like I had a set of Mom friends in The Woodlands that my kids liked to play with their kids and we could hang out and chat.

Would I be interested in going to Perth?  Australia.  I've wanted to go there since I can remember knowing about this country.  I wanted my dad to get transferred there when I was little but he would just go on business trips.  He even brought Emilia a koala necklace a few years ago.  So I didn't hesitate when I was asked.  The timing would work for Chris since it was a few weeks until his Christmas break and that would be a natural break point for the students.

I told Emilia's teacher that it was a possibility when I was the classroom helper if she heard her say anything.  Then the next week had to tell her that it was happening.  I was supposed to run Bingo for her school's big spring fundraiser and had to back out.  This was also the friend from Villa that convinced me on Labor Day that we could do the sprint Triathlon as a relay where she would run and I would swim and someone else would bike; then I looked at the distances and thought I had enough time to train to do it all (thanks Jenny for the inspiration/crazy dream).  And I got a new friend and neighbor to host the January bunko that I signed up for.

So things just keep falling into place for us even with the Christmas break.  We already had passports so we could apply for the visas, my offer was more than the minimum number Chris and I came up with to consider a move, I found a storage place half off, rented a mailbox, got a phone number and could transfer our current house number, friends and family have watched the kids, loaned us trucks and trailers, helped load boxes to storage, and things were getting sold off Woodlands online.

We were going to list our house before Christmas for lease.  Then it kept getting closer so we decided to just get all the Christmas decor put up before pictures were taken so we had time to clean out too. So the pictures were taken Friday after Christmas.  She thought they might get uploaded on Monday in time to get them up before New Year's but they got them late in the day.  We signed the paperwork on Monday night and got the lockbox and sign in the yard then the listing went up yesterday morning.  An hour later we had an appointment for a showing and that afternoon we had a full price offer for 1 year and probably 2.  Now should we have asked for more?  We thought it might take 30-45 days to get it leased and have to reduce the price since the market is slow in the winter but only 4 other houses had pools in our zip code with similar bedrooms.  I call it a God wink that hopefully everything will work out with this family and that they were meant to have this house for their son and daughter.  We will break even on the mortgage/insurance, yard and pool maintenance, storage unit, property manager, real estate costs, and mailbox.  So now we just need to get the cars sold.  People have been interested but flaky.  I'm going to go by the dealer and CarMax since I'm sure they would buy them just for less money than independently selling them.

Everyone has good things to say about Perth.  The only drawback is that it's expensive and isolated.  Closest place is Bali which is a 3 hour place ride and Sydney in 5 hours.  Their school year starts in February so now we're anxiously awaiting our visas so we can plan the next part of our lives!  Maybe I'll come back a rower!