Part Two - Moving Forward

Being in Michigan has been wonderful so far, we are enjoying spending time with family and friends.

Here is how our week went:

• Monday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, watched Beer Wars together on Netflix
• Tuesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, evening spent working on projects (games, websites, etc.)
• Wednesday: Dinner with Mom and Dad, then square dancing in Dimondale and the Green Lantern movie (an early private viewing) with some friends
• Thursday: Dinner with Mom, then a Poker night with new friends with a $2 buy-in where Nate took the pot!
• Friday: Took the night off to relax and recharge
• Saturday: We hosted a barbecue with many of our friends, all sat around the fire and we just talked for hours

Whew! It was a great start to our new lives here, and followed by a week of sushi, game night, helping friends roof and an upcoming U2 concert Sunday.

Here is the plan for the next month or so:
Both sides of the family are coming to Torch Lake starting at the end of July. We don't want to go looking for jobs before then, because we want to be able to be there the entire time with our family, so we're putting everything on hold until we get back from the Lake mid-August. So Nate will continue working remotely at least until then, and I am spending the extra time doing some fun projects and learning HTML. We will be staying at my parents until we go to the Lake, and then (if we don't get any offers on the house between now and then) we'll start looking for a place to go.

My Mom delights in telling everyone she knows that we have moved back in with them. I have to follow up with “for a month, before we find our own place” quickly because I’m afraid that people will think that we’re bums. I think Mom is tickled that we are back (so are we!), but I want to be careful not to let people think that we are part of the Boomerang Generation – moving home to live with Mom and Dad because they have no other choice. In the past we haven't been very good about taking time to relax, so we're treating ourselves to a low stress break before diving head first into our next phase.

One of the things we were afraid of in moving to MI is that we would go to the entire other end of a spectrum – instead of having virtually nothing to do, we would find our schedule filled to overflowing and would have not times for ourselves. Luckily, we seem to have struck a good balance between time out and time at home. It is very important to use this as a growing period, and I’ve spent my mornings catching up on work and reading about future opportunities. We have done a lot of talking about what the future holds, and are considering some webdesign freelance just to see how it goes. Could be a fun experiment that'll give us some experience and (hopefully) some extra play money.

So, things are up in the air and we're just enjoying ourselves for now, but it feels like the right place to be. Family, friends and fun: it's a great combination!