Headed West

Sometimes life throws you a curveball and you actually swing at it. 

In case you haven’t heard, we are moving to Seattle!  This is truly one of the most exciting and, at the same time, nerve-racking events of my life…On one hand, it is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen — all the water and the mountains and the gorgeous old homes and the rows and rows of houseboats.  On the other hand, it’s SOOOOO far from home.  I mean, it’s in the Pacific Time Zone for crying out loud.  If you want to get to Europe from there, you “fly over the pole.”  The NORTH pole.  Like where Santa lives.  But, on the flip side, it’s only a five hour flight to Hawaii, so that’s a plus…

I guess I should back up and give you some insight as to how we got here.  Sometime way back in August, Heath got a phone call from a recruiter.  As a lawyer, this is really nothing new.  I used to get calls two or three times a week trying to entice me to jump ship and join another (virtually identical) law firm in downtown Dallas.  I always gave them the same response: “Why would I want to go down the street and do the same boring  job for the same ungrateful clients for the same pay at some random place where I don’t even know anyone?  At least here I have friends.”  Heath, conversely, always chats these people up.  When he was at the firm, he would feign interest and gather all kinds of good information (who was hiring, why they were hiring, how much they were paying, why they thought he’d be willing to leave the firm, etc.) and then he would take all that info to our recruiting department and gossip about it.  Clever, I must admit.  Anyway, now that he works “in house,” the calls don’t come as frequently and they are usually not your top offers (“How would YOU like to be general counsel of The Michael Scott Paper Company?”)  What I’m trying to say is that this particular call in August caught his attention. 

The recruiter was from Seattle and she was calling on behalf of Amazon.  Dot Com.  And they wanted Heath.  Not that that should surprise anyone that knows Heath.  He’s kind of a big deal.  At first the offer was very flattering, and we joked about how we would just dump our entire lives here and move to Seattle and drink coffee and wear flannel and discover bands.  Haha, funny, right?  But, as I mentioned before, Heath has a hard time telling these recruiters to buzz off, so she kept calling.  Eventually, we decided it wouldn’t hurt for him to interview with them, brush the dust off his resume, and maybe get a free trip out west.  Of course, the first thing they did was give him a writing assignment.  Oh, wait, this is not as fun as a free trip, I thought.  He worked on it really hard, though, as he does everything.  He even let me “proofread” it, and of course I went nuts and tried to re-write the whole thing.  I was surprised at how much I missed that stuff!  Short-story-long, he (we!) knocked it out of the park, and he moved on to the next phase.

From there, everything started happening really fast — he flew out there and met a bunch of people, they called his references, he was getting phone calls from all kinds of muckety-mucks at Amazon at weird hours (ok, Pacific Time Zone hours).  Pretty soon, I knew we had moved on from the “haha, funny, right?” stage to the “oh wow, you’re serious?” stage.  Before we knew it, he had a real offer and people were calling us about setting up a house-hunting trip!  At that point, I freaked out just a little bit.  I mean, I had never even set foot in the state of Washington!  So, Heath convinced them to call the trip a “decision-making trip” instead of a “house-hunting trip” and that calmed me down some.  Although all we really did on the trip was look at houses!

We took the trip a couple weekends ago and made the decision shortly after our return to Dallas.  We are both giddy with excitement and scared to death at the same time.  We’re trying not to be super sad about leaving our friends and family behind, but that is definitely the hardest part.  We are extremely lucky to have such supportive families and loved ones, who have kept the guilt-trips to a minimum and the promises to visit to a maximum!  Heath will be starting the job on January 4th, and Frank and I will join him as soon as the house is sold (hopefully around the same time!).  We just love the looks of Seattle and can’t wait to discover all the hidden charms. 

We were saying the other day that Seattle reminds us of a cross between Little Rock and Chicago and Lawrence and Estes Park and Blue Mountain Beach…in other words, the places our hearts go to when we are happy!

I’m Updating the Blog, Molly!

Ok, things have been super crazy around here lately, what with Halloween and traveling and WALKING!  So, I’m going to try to do a quick recap to get you all up to speed.  Oh, and about the title of the post — saw one of my dearest friends from law school this weekend, and she let it slip that she blog-stalks me (no judgment), but that she is mad when I don’t post new updates very often.  I totally get that.  I read a ton of blogs, and I’m always like, “Dang, lazy-a**es, why don’t you ever update?” (even though I don’t do it myself).  So, short-story-long, this one’s for you, Mols.

We’ll start with last weekend.  On Saturday, the Lake Highlands Area Early Childhood PTA (say that 5 times fast) held a Halloween Carnival at one of the local elementary schools.  Because we knew we were going to be out of town on Halloween, we thought this would be a great opportunity to dress Frank in his costume.  We had a great time.  He loved playing all of the carnival games, especially the bean bag toss, and getting a balloon animal.  Here are a few pics:

As if that weren’t enough excitement for one weekend, we also took him to his first Cowboys’ game at the new stadium last Sunday.  It was a 3:15 game, so we figured it would be one of the few games this season that was to take place during his waking hours.  He had a blast at the game — playing with cousins Audrey and Tanner, clapping everytime the crowd went wild, flirting with Aunties Tiffany, Kallie, and Joy!  Here are some snapshots:

I should probably mention that all of these pictures were taken before Frank ate some of my nachos, puked all over himself and Heath, and we ended up leaving at halftime.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

So, let’s move on to the following week.  As you know if you’ve been reading, Frank has been toying with the idea of walking for over two months now.  He has completely mastered the “holding onto two fingers” walk and more recently the “I will take a couple of steps if I don’t know you’re looking” walk.  People kept telling me he would walk when he was ready, and sure enough, he was ready on Friday!  Heath had been traveling for work most of the week, but he was home Friday morning to get ready for our weekend away.  Plus, we had just picked Johnelle and Corey (Frank’s activity directors for the weekend) up from the airport.  Now I know he just wanted a larger audience!!

We were so thrilled that we were all there for his first REAL steps!!  Way to go, Frank!

Big thanks to Johnelle and Corey for taking care of our boy for the weekend.  We were able to go to Lawrence, KS for my friend Carrie’s wedding.  I loved being able to show Heath around Lawrence and take him to some of my favorite law school haunts!  The weather was gorgeous, and we were glad to be somewhere with fall colors for a change!  We bought Frank a KU polo and a National Champs basketball.  It was only the second time I’d been back to Lawrence since graduation in 2002, and the first time was almost three years ago.  I loved seeing my girls again (Shannon, who is pregnant with her second child!; Molly, whose fabulous boyfriend we FINALLY met; and the blushing bride, Carrie, looking gorgeous as always and happier than I’ve ever seen her).  Though we don’t see each other as often as we’d like, I sure do love those girls and owe them big time for getting me through law school!!

Well, that’s the gist of what’s been going on in Dixonland.  Right now, though, I’ve had a napping baby for the past hour…and still haven’t showered today…so I gotta run!