Part 6...If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense"...

As I was sitting in my new living room, watching my kids play in the fluffy green grass of our new backyard, I thought to myself. "Am I really ready to leave Montana?"

I would delve into the intricacies of my love hate relationship with Montana now, but that blog is going to be looong, so we'll tackle that later.

I made a list of pros and cons about staying and moving. They each had amazing pros and serious cons. There were things I had hated about Montana, that I had grown to love and now found endearing. There were things I loved about Utah, that I now found annoying and was nervous to have to go be in that kinda mix again. I never REALLY felt like Montana was HOME, but my kids did. I never REALLY felt like Utah was HOME either. I haven't lived in Vegas for 10 years and even then, the home I grew up in was gone, so that wasn't HOME either. Was I homeless??

I thought of my little babies and what they would think of moving, yet again, but this time away from everything they knew. After all, Macy had lived in Montana since she was 15 months old and Luke and Miley were natives! My kids are resilient, though. They are happy and adventurous kids, so I knew that even if it was a little sad to leave, they would be excited for the new chapter. That's when I realized home was wherever I was with my husband and kids. Cliché but oh, so true. I could live anywhere as long as I had my redhead and my little hoodlums around to love and take care of.

At that moment the answer became clear.  I truly felt like we could move to Utah and be perfectly happy, or we could stay in Montana and be perfectly happy. It was 6 one way, half a dozen the other. For me, it was boiling down to logic.

Rich came home that night and we stayed up too late talking about our options. I shared with him how I felt about being happy in either place. He said he was feeling the same exact way. He said he really felt like Heavenly Father was letting us choose and that either way, we would be happy with our choice.

So we talked about technicalities. The job in Utah would be less finance work and more management, which is the thing Rich's resume is leanest on. He could really step away from a lot of accounting and zero in on and sharpen his management skills at Clearfield. The cost of living was much more affordable in Utah and we would even be able to finally buy a house. We would be short road trips away from BOTH sets of grandparents in Utah as opposed to a 12 hour drive or an expensive flight away from them in Montana. Last but not least, the job in Utah was an an attractive pay increase and their retirement contribution was higher, and like Danny always said, "If it don't make dollars it don't make sense." After weighing the options, it was turning out that although, it may be emotionally hard to leave Montana, it was wiser, both financially and career wise, to take the job in Utah.

So after all the drama of getting the boot from the blue house, being forced to "live" at the dead bird house, taking a two week vacation in Boise, some more "living "at the dead bird house, then moving to the McDonald's house....the Great Housing Crisis of 2013 was ending with us packing up and moving to Davis County Utah.

Well.. actually we were already kinda packed. :)