Life is on an upswing

January 21, 2005 · Comments

Good news. I just got off the phone with my brother-in-law. He sounded **amazing**. He is recovering beautifully from the surgery and may be released from the hospital as early as Tuesday. I can’t believe how wonderful he sounded. We’re still holding our breath waiting for the pathology, but for right now the prognosis couldn’t be better.

Which leads me to my big news that I’ve been holding on to for the past week or so. I needed to make sure that I told people that needed to hear it directly from me, for fear that they would be insulted if they read it on my website first. If you’re reading this here first and you think I should have told you, I apologize.

We have decided to put our beautiful house on the market and relocate. We put a lot into this house. We put more money into this house in the past 8 years than we spent to buy it. If you’re new to my site, you can read about our remodeling adventures [here](http://momathome.com/misc/renovation/). I never got around to updating it to the new design of the site, but you can see the pictures and get an idea of what we did. I love this house. I’m invested and involved in Stamford, particularly in issues around education.

So why are we moving? Eric is still unemployed. He’s close to getting a job, but the cost of living in Fairfield County, CT is ridiculously high. And for the high cost of living, the schools should be outstanding and they’re just not. They’re not bad, but they’re not on par with what it costs to live here. The elementary school my kids go to is very, very good and as I told the principal yesterday, if my kids could stay in this school to college we probably wouldn’t be doing this. But the middle and high schools are over crowded and underfunded and test under the state average overall. My girls are very bright and are both tracking above age level in school. But they work best when expectations are high. There is no greater gift I can give my children than education, and the experience with my brother-in-law this week drove that point home and put my priorities straight.

So we are looking at communities in Central New Jersey where the cost of living is considerably less and the public school districts are considerably better.

We have had 4 realtors through here in the past few days. We know which one we want to sign with, but we’re letting all 4 give us their opinion. It’s been fun to give them the grand tour, and I’m thrilled at the number that they think that this house will sell for. The plan is to have the sign on the lawn sometime around February 14th. We promised the girls that they would finish the school year here, and we will keep that promise.

As much as I’m going to miss Stamford and the friends we’ve all made here, I *know* this is the right move for my family. As long as there’s broadband where we’re going, I can do what I do from anywhere.

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