so... we have an apt.

ok. since this is the first post... i guess i should do an update... bring ppl up to speed.

madeleine and i were in alaska a couple of months ago and fell in love with the place. i'll put up some pics so you can see why.

both of us were never set on staying in detroit after we had decided to come back to the u.s. so for my parents and others in detroit, it wasn't a huge surprise when we announced that we were moving. most people did, though, think we were nuts when they found out where. come up once and you will fall in love too. i promise.

ok. so... huge thank you to brook, joe's better half, for finding the apt on craigslist. it is on the third floor (which means that we have a view of the ocean and mountains behind it), has a fireplace and is furnished. the fact that it is furnished is big. it would've cost us $5000 to move all of our stuff up there. so my plan is to get a job up there and when we are ready to move into a bigger place to have the stuff moved up. no real point in doing it now anyways.

right now the only thing that we're really worried about is jobs. i'm going to start back at school in the spring to get my masters in teaching and mad wants to eventually open her own gardening company, but for now, for the winter, we need to just find something to pay rent for the new apt.

packing and planning is what fills most of our time right now. without the option of taking everything with us we have to choose what we want to take with us in our little saturns. another shocking part of it is the distance of the drive. i've driven to florida a few times and once to colorado. having done this i thought to myself, "ah... can't be that bad." then i saw this. it is about the same distance as driving from germany to india! wow.

joe sent me a couple of pics of the new place today and i almost made a feces in my pants. it is amazing. look at the pic from our front door. holy crap. can you imagine walking down to the car every day and seeing THAT? i can't wait.