Sunday, May 7, 2017

Springtime for Garretts

The past few months have been quite the mental and emotional roller coaster for us. We have known since last year that this would be our final year in Utah (long story short, it is due to teacher licensing issues). However, we never felt we would be here for a very long time, even though we felt it necessary for us to move here 3 years ago for some reason. We weren't expecting to be moving quite yet- thought we had another year or two at least here, but plans change when there are some things that are out of your control. We have been applying for jobs the past couple months, but weren't quite sure where we needed to go next. I had a few job offers come through, and Nate ended up with a job offer in the same place as me- but we turned it down, because it just didn't feel right (it was on the northern Californian coast in the Redwoods, FYI). We resigned our positions for the end of the year with the Granite School District and put our house up for sale (and it went under contract within a couple hours after zero showings) with no idea where we would be going, but we knew we had to leave. So, a couple other job offers came through for me, but we were really torn between which we should choose. We had it in our mind for nearly the past year of a place we wanted to go- it was familiar, close to family and friends, next to Oregon, and just seemed like a good idea. However, I always had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that things may not work out the way we expected. So after lots of back and forth and angst about the right decision, we made it. I did not expecting to be announcing this but..........................
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Hee hee

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Keep going

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It's a good one....

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We are moving to Stuttgart, Germany in August! I accepted a position as an SLP assessor for DODEA. I'll be based out of Panzer Kaserne military base assessing at a few of the schools at the 4 bases in Stuttgart. We are SO EXCITED! I went to Germany once in high school, and have been wanting to go back there ever since. I even took German in high school (though at this point, my German skills have kind of gone down the toilet. I still remember the "Ich bin ich" song from German 1, though, so I am a rock star at asking people their name.) Looks like Nate will have a 4th language to add to his list within the next few years. It's a 2 year contract, and at the end of 2 years, DODEA decides if they want to keep me or not, and then if we decide to do another contract, they fly us home for the summer and then we go back for another two years. Otherwise, we just get move back home to our home of record. Come visit us! After we get our permanent quarters, which will be off-base in a house somewhere. We're planning on taking the kids to Disneyland Paris sometime next year (spring break, maybe) as a "sorry we dragged you across the ocean even farther away from family" thing, so hit me up if you want to join us. Paris is only 6 hours from where we will be living, and we'll also be just 2 hours from Switzerland. Assuming our house closes as scheduled, then we'll be living with my mom in Eugene the majority of the summer after we hit up Boise and possibly do a Seattle trip- so you can come visit us there, too, before we leave! Oregon has pretty awesome summers, so I'm pretty excited about that. If anyone has any good advice for relocating to Europe- please share! We're trying to figure out what to take and get rid of and the power converter/transformer/plug adapter thing. Possibly will be taking a trip to Costco to stock up on peanut butter, too.