moving forward...

I always intended to leave my home town.  I've been here my whole life and it's never been a place I really felt at home.  I never wanted to raise a family here.

At 30 years old, with a six month old, 3 dogs, 4 cats and a charming fiance, I was beginning to think it was time to accept the fact that, like it or not, I was putting down roots here.

Then my fiance came home from work early one Monday about a month ago.  He'd been laid off.  Bad news.  Horrible, really.  I work part time as a home health aide, but 20 hours a week at just over minimum wage wasn't going to touch our rent, much less our other bills.  I was scared.  Even with unemployment, it was going to be rough.  We spent a week thinking and discussing our options.  I picked up a few extra hours here and there to try and help.

It was rough.  I missed my baby a lot.  I was worried about our survival, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking that this could be our chance to leave here.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the thing to do.  I went to my fiance and told him that if he got another job here we'd get comfortable.  We'd have another kid, our daughter would start school and we'd find a bigger house, but it would still be here.  I told him I wanted to leave.

He agreed.

We settled on Decatur Illinois pretty easily.  He has some extended family there and we'd be a lot closer to his immediate family to the north.  Looking up rentals online, we found that they were beyond affordable.

Once we made the decision I felt free.

We're leaving!  Here we go!!!

We used our tax returns and bought a 6x12 trailer.  We're going to load up all our possessions, our daughter, and our dogs and cats and move to Illinois.  In about 2 weeks....

I've already started purging my unnecessary encumbrances.  I have a lot of stuff, and it's time to start fresh.