Four years ago when Waldo’s Mom called him and told us that she had cancer we decided that we had to move to be closer to her. We were renting so it was a pretty easy decision. Also making it even easier, Waldo’s parents lived in the same town that most of my family lived. So Win Win. Within I believe 3 weeks or something like that we had packed up all of our stuff, worked it out with our jobs to work from home while we were gone and we left. We had figured this would last a year or two. The cancer was very advance and we knew that we hated California (or at least the Central Valley) so we wouldn’t be staying any longer than necessary.

A year after moving to California Waldo’s parents decided to move to Idaho. Rita (Waldo’s Mom) was still going strong and felt that the clean air and better people of Idaho would help her recovery better than the nastiness of California. Since we lived with them and as stated before hated California we decided to give Boise a try. I was sad to leave my family after only 1 year, and not nearly as many visits as I had hoped, but it was the best thing for us so we packed up again and headed East.

As it turns out we loved Boise. There was a zoo, aquarium, kids science museum and great places to shop for natural foods. Everything we could want. We ended up spending 3 years in the Boise area. Waldo’s Mom loved it too, not for the same reasons as we did, but she liked it. To all of our surprise and happiness she lived another 2 years before the cancer finally got the better of her. 2013 was a hard year for our families. In the Spring we lost my paternal grandmother, in September we had our miscarriage, about 2 weeks later we lost Waldo’s Mom and then 6 weeks later my maternal grandfather Pop suddenly died.  Other little things also happened to us, but those are the biggies.

After losing Rita we couldn’t leave Waldo’s Dad right away so we stayed. We knew it wouldn’t last forever, Waldo’s job would need him back at some point. Well that point came a few months ago. We got the phone call or email, honestly I can’t remember how it came, but the end result was that we needed to move back to Montana.

Now don’t get me wrong, we love Montana. We have friends here. Do you know how hard it is to make friends when you a) work at home b) don’t do church c) don’t go out to clubs/bars and the like? Well it’s nearly impossible. We finally made friends with 1 very nice couple right before we moved back, I hated to leave them, but had to do it. Anyway, back on track. We also love how beautiful Montana is and while I haven’t visited the East side of the state, I’ve seen pictures so I can say this with some certainty, the area we live is the most beautiful part of all. We are also aware that there are down sides, such as we aren’t really outdoorsy people, and there’s no zoo and such here so being outdoors is how people live here. And there’s like 6 months of winter here. Winter is coming. People it’s no joke. There will be snow. Sure there was snow in Idaho, but not like here. It’s like never ending. But we have friend and friends with kids so YAY!

After the call (whatever) came we started to put all of our ducks in a row. We didn’t have a set date that we had to be back, but it had to be reasonable. We started packing up the things that we could live without and started to look for a rental. A major problem quickly because apparent, rentals in the Kalispell, MT area didn’t last long and because we have a cat that cut out about 9 out of 10 of the possible places. I don’t understand what so many people have against cats, but it’s a real thing and really started to get us know. One day while telling Waldo’s Dad how hard it was turning out to be to find a rental he suggested we try to buy. And thus the seed was planted. Waldo talked to a friend who had recently bought a house with a Rural Development Loan and after getting the name of his mortgage loan person and his realtor we were off. We applied and got the loan. We called the realtor and got to look at the listings. On the second day we had access to the house listings we were narrowing down the ones we liked and came across a new build in a nice neighborhood within our price range and we loved the kitchen. We called the realtor and because it was a new build and had only been on the market 2 days and they were doing showings daily she suggested that we put in an offer. We did and it was accepted. We packed up the car the next day and drove to Montana to see the house that we put an offer on.

It’s a townhouse which isn’t ideal and it’s about 1200 sq ft so it’s smaller than we really wanted, but we loved it. We were very happy about putting in our offer. While we were looking at the house we realized a guy Waldo worked before lives across the street and we met the wonderful woman that lives next door. Between that and the view out the backdoor I’m pretty sure we would have bought it no matter what, but we did like just about everything else luckily.

We went back to Idaho and started the whole process of getting the things the inspector fixed and closing on the house. We also pack like mad. It all worked out because just about 5 weeks after starting the whole loan process we were opening the garage to our first home and while we miss Waldo’s Dad, we couldn’t be happier.

So I started this with stating that we had moved again, but I’m putting it down here that this will be the last time for quite a while.

Our ride.

Lily and Daddy at a rest stop in Idaho.

Our new home.

OUR VIEW!