Goodbye Arizona, Hello Utah

I guess this post has been a long time coming. I haven't wanted to write about it because it seems to make it real and final. We are leaving Arizona and moving to Utah. I recognize that I have many friends who would love to be in our shoes and move up to Utah, but I have been struggling with this for the past month, since it first started to look like it would really happen.

Last year, around September, we sort of brought up the possibility of moving to Utah when In-N-Out expanded into Salt Lake and Provo. It seemed so much in the distant future that I didn't really think it would actually happen. In January, we moved back to our house. When Corey got close to the end of his final semester of school, he asked me if Utah could be a possibility. I guess I was hoping that if Utah was in our future, that In-N-Out would just ask Corey to go there and then we could decide. Instead, it has been kind of a volunteer thing. In-N-Out needs and wants managers to go out there, but mostly that happens on a volunteer basis. I'm guessing that if nobody wanted to go, they would start in with some incentives or something, but I don't really know for sure.

We kind of came to the agreement that we would only go if it meant becoming a store manager for him. Since he wasn't even a second manager yet, that really didn't seem likely. But Corey really has had his heart set on this opportunity to help open In-N-Out in a new market, so when push came to shove, he finally convinced me to let him tell his bosses that he would be willing to go even as a second manager, a promotion he finally received in April.

So since he graduated, our world has been spinning out of control, at least mine has. All of a sudden, moving to Utah became reality and we have now put our house on the market and have received 3 offers already. We don't get to accept/reject the offers, though, because we are doing a short sale, due to the difficult market and mortgage situation we have found ourselves in. So the bank gets to decide whether or not to accept or reject these offers.

So, there it is. We are moving to Utah. I will miss Arizona. I'm not sure I'm ready to face the cold again. I'll miss swimming almost every day in water that is 90 degrees and warmer. I'll miss endless sunny days. I'll miss my parents close proximity and the relationship they've had with my kids will be forever changed. I will miss our ward and neighborhood and how I can just walk from our house to Westley's school and the YMCA and pool right next door in less than five minutes. I'll miss owning my own home for the time being. I'm sure there will be good things about moving to Utah. But I will miss Arizona. It's all happened so fast I've barely been able to blink!