Cramped--or the story of our most recent move...

There are harder things in life than having to live with four active children in a three bedroom apartment--much, much, much harder things. Moreover, I know living in that apartment for a year was a financial life-saver that enabled Will to really get his company off the ground. Finally, I have friends who are still living in an apartment with many children so I am going to try really hard not to complain about this whole ordeal. (Wish me luck.)

We moved into our apartment knowing we would live there for a year at the most. We even told people we would start looking for another house to rent in six months. But we've been on the "start-up" roller coaster ride for a long time and our roller coaster hit some seriously heart stopping drops while we lived in our apartment--making it financially sensible to stay in the apartment as long as possible.

"As long as possible" turned out to be about four months shorter than we planned when an ongoing conflict between us and our downstairs neighbors over noise did not end up going our way. The short story of the conflict is that they were three single ladies who liked to party at night and sleep in the morning. We were a family with four very active children who were in bed at 8 pm and out of bed at 7 am. A recipe for a constant case of the stress-hives if ever I've seen one. Our landlords were also raising the rent to unreasonable rates so it was time to move.

We started our search in the neighborhood of our apartment so the kids could stay at their same school--no places for rent. We expanded the search to include our old-old neighborhood and new neighborhoods in our area--no places for rent. Well, there were places to rent, they were just dives and offered at crazy-high prices. So we expanded our search...

Finally, we ended up looking at neighborhoods across the Bay--gasp! Knowing it would mean a long commute for Will but more affordable housing for us. Sure enough we found a house we loved and in a community we knew we would love.

This move was a bit of a fire-sale compared to our last move. Every thing fell into place very quickly and we were loading up the u-haul three weeks after we got our very first look at our new place--lickety-split.

In the few weeks before we moved we told our friends, teachers, classmates, fellow church congregation members, doctors, piano teacher, and a few strangers about our departure. We were floored with the response those near-and-dear gave us. They were legitimately upset to hear we were leaving! Which was hard because we were sad to be leaving too. I guess when you've lived in a place for so long it feels like home people will miss you if you go.

There are about a thousand things I miss about living on the peninsula and a lot of them are the friends we made. Happily, we are not that far away--Will makes the drive ever day. So we still get to see our friends, it just takes more gasoline.

Happier still, we seem to have landed in a wonderful spot. We are making good friends here too. The schools are great and the landscape is beautiful. The weather has been comfortable and we are getting to know the community bit, by bit.