From Frozen Years to Golden Years: Leaving Alaska {Part 1}

We’ve been gearing up for our minimalist move for months, and it’s finally complete!  We’re now at home in sunny Los Angeles, California, but the move was by no means quick or easy.  Luckily I’ve been taking notes and pictures throughout the whole process so I could share the story of our escape from Alaska to California!
The first part of our story was the Minimalist Move, which was a transformational experience in itself.  The process was so emotional that my husband asked me to write about it so that we would remember the way it felt later.  If you missed any of the Minimalist Move story, start here:

• {Mobile Lifestyle} There’s No Place Like Home, But…
• Minimalist Move – Still Going Strong
• Minimalist Move: I’m in Agony As I Separate Myself From Stuff
• Minimalist Move Day 52: Happy Birthday to Me!
• Minimalist Move Day 58: The Final Load For Charity
• Minimalist Move Day 66: Digging Deep For More Donations
• Minimalist Move Day 68: The Mountain of Boxes of Papers

Our story of Leaving Alaska is really a huge testimony to how God’s plan for us all is so much more infinite and detailed than we could ever imagine, and how closely each part of it hinges on every other part.
We knew we had to sell our house months ago when my husband was laid off from his job of 11 years.  He started putting in applications all over the country and we went minimalist to get our house ready for sale and us ready to move out of Alaska (something we’d both wanted to do for a long time).
Every day we sold and donated more and more until almost nothing was left.  We enjoyed our last night in the nursery before the baby furniture was picked up by the buyers from Craigslist.  Seven and Prynne each got turns for a final rock with mommy before bedtime, and daddy taped a farewell video.

 
We had the final moving sale:

We put our house up for sale, sold our 2nd car, and waited.  The second day the house was for sale, we got a call from our realtor that she was going to show it to a prospective buyer.
A few showings came and went, a few job interviews came and went.  The job he was most excited about (not to mention any names, but their headquarters are in Redmond, WA) interviewed him,  offered him the job, and then before sending the contract by email, changed their mind!  Back to square one.
Next, my husband got a call to fly to Seattle for a 2nd interview with a different company for a tech job.  We knew we only had the budget for one face-to-face interview, since we had to pay for the trip ourselves, and we hoped this was the one!  We also had to pay for $2,000 of our house sale at closing, since we only owned the house for one year.  All the money considerations were tightly linked and had no room for variation from my moving budget.
The interviewer gave Michael the impression that this was the final meeting with the rest of the staff before they offered him the job.  He went, they said good things, and he flew back home.  We assumed we were moving to Seattle and started making plans.  Days went by.  No word.  More days went by.  Michael finally called them to follow up and found out that they just didn’t feel strongly enough about his interview and decided not to hire him!
Back to square one again, but this time there was an offer on our house.  No job or new home to move to, and the house offer couldn’t possibly work because it had us paying for all of their closing costs and many other expenses that we couldn’t afford.
On top of that we were waiting to hear back from our accountant about our tax return.  Would we owe $10,000 or $20?  Would we get money back?  Until we got that important phone call, we would have no idea what our financial situation for the move really was.
The direction our journey turned next was so unexpected that if it was written into a movie, no one would think it was believable!  Next, read From Frozen Years to Golden Years: Leaving Alaska {Part 2}.