The Move.

If your work stayed remote and you had the option to move to anywhere you wanted… Where would you go?

Last August we asked ourselves that very question.

My temporary benching at the radio station was seeming more permanent with each corporate email update (although, they weren’t downsizing, okay???! *eyeroll*) and the developers at Doug’s company were thriving working from home. Productivity was abounding and it didn’t look like things would go back to how they were before any time soon.

When we had moved to Kansas City back in 2013 it was because C2FO was required to relocate their developers as an investment stipulation, so we really only planned on being there as long as Doug was with the company. Seven years later, the world finds itself in a pandemic and Doug asks his boss if relocation would ever be an option. It was really out of curiosity more than anything. We had been tossing around the idea of selling our current place for a while. Find a charming, little Tudor home nestled in an adorable Brookside neighborhood - far from the traffic of our six-lane front yard. Something with space out back for the dogs to run around and an extra room maybe, so guests wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch and in the event a baby should appear we wouldn’t have to pretend the upstairs landing was a nursery. You know, practical thinking. But when Doug’s boss gave the go-ahead to relocate anywhere with functioning internet and cell service, we unexpectedly found ourselves asking - “Where else would we go?”

Well, it ought to be somewhere ripe with outdoor opportunities. Lockdown really brought that to the forefront. Somewhere we don’t have to drive hours and hours just to get in a good hike. It would be fun if this place was bike accessible and if there were lots of scenic dog walking routes. And of course, having lived my entire life in the midwest, I’d hate to give up the experience of all four seasons. It would have to be somewhere we could still road trip to visit family - can’t live too far from them. Especially with an adorable nephew to love on and baby niece on the way. (Doug’s sister is due with baby #2 in August!)

Colorado kept coming up in conversation - Doug’s family had lived there for a while during his elementary days and my sister was currently living in Loveland - so we decided to visit and see what we thought about the towns along the northern front range. Fort Collins stood out - a fun, college town. Smaller than KC, but big enough to have two Targets and close enough to Denver, so we could still fly places and get our Ikea fix and catch a Chiefs game when they come to town. Plenty of country stations on the FM to worm my way into if I wanted as well as access to VO representation with agencies in the city - and! - they had a plan in place to get fiber to the entire city. It ticked a lot of boxes. The more we explored and Googled the more we could see ourselves living there and soon after, our planning became less hypothetical.

Now, to anyone who has ever bought and sold a house at the same time - I salute you. What a fun experience in self-torture. Riding the normal emotional rollercoaster of home buying and doubling it with the anxiety of selling - Good lord! Lol. Lucky for us, we had a couple of excellent realtors. Our KC gal knew our market well and our CO realtor was honestly the world’s greatest. Our first day looking at houses, we went to thirteen different properties. In one afternoon. It was crazy. We came to Fort Collins knowing basically nothing about the area and left with a folder full of notes and our brains bursting with recommendations and points of interest and - most importantly - the best bike routes to get to all the different breweries. *wink*

We ended up heading back to KC after that weekend having made no offers and still trying to wrap our heads around the fact that this was something we were actually doing. Lol. As soon as we got back to town, Kim (world’s greatest realtor) called us. One of the houses that had went under contract before we got to look at it earlier that day had just became available. The buyers pulled out and instead of putting the listing back on the market, the seller’s realtor called Kim and said she’d basically hold it for us if we decided we wanted to make an offer. It was a remodeled ranch with a finished basement and massive, fully-fenced backyard. Minutes from Horsetooth Reservoir, it offered front and back yard views of the foothills and hiking opportunities literally right outside our front door - a gem of a property on the western edge of town. One that hadn’t even been on the market a full day before the fish came biting.

Now, at this point we hadn’t gotten any offers on our KC house yet, so we were pretty nervous about moving forward on a house in another state that we hadn’t seen with our own eyeballs yet while we were still hearing crickets after a heavily-trafficked open house weekend in Kansas City, but… when things like this happen - like when a realtor decides to give you a 24 hour grace period to put in an offer without having to engage in the politics of a bidding war - I feel like that’s one of those cosmic nudges where you just have to lean in and take the leap. Kim had said to us when we started our search that if you would be disappointed if someone else got the house, that’s when you know. We remembered feeling that way about our KC house when we originally bought it. Minutes after seeing it, we put in an offer. But, we hadn’t seen this one yet. Going all in on a house “sight unseen” can seem like the beginning of one of those big life “ragrets” - to quote that one movie…

We ended up getting a FaceTime tour that night via our realtor’s phone and after we slept on it, the next day we rang her up and told her to write up the offer! Carpe diem, right?? If we didn’t jump on it, someone else likely would and Doug had said how he had a feeling about the house just seeing pictures of the listing online. He was bummed that we didn’t get to see it that weekend and his gut was telling him to go for it and I figured, what the hell. Doug’s not one for willy-nilly decision making, the yard’s huge - let’s do it! It was equal parts terrifying and thrilling and mere moments after our KC realtor called and told us we had an official offer on our place! Madness! And instant security. Lol. Honestly. That was a red letter day for our endorphins for sure.

We ended up going back out to Colorado the following day to see the place in person - and, while I will say that Doug initially took to the house quicker than I did, once I saw the backyard and the foothills view, I was a fan. Most of the homes we looked at didn’t have big yards (a deal breaker for me as our dog’s sole yard advocate - lol) and lots didn’t even have yards at all. Since the climate is drier out here, lots of homes just have landscaping or rocks or sometimes nothing - very different than KC or NE. This place was sitting on a half acre which was rare for a property in the city proper. Visions of Doug and I clinking wine glasses and bottle necks on a patio beneath strings of bulb lights while a fire pit softly crackled danced in my head, and when Kim told me there were mature fruit trees and bushes on premise, I was all in. Mature, producing fruit trees?? Come on! We also found out that the previous owners were one of the founders of one of our favorite breweries in town! That had to be a sign, right?

We thought so. *wink*

As we moved forward in the process, the stars continued to align and as our closing dates got closer and more and more of our stuff ended up in UHaul boxes, the reality of moving to a brand new state (which was currently on fire, by the way) and leaving our friends and KC community behind started to kick in. The emotions of selling our first home together made us misty-eyed and nostalgic. But, the excitement of taking on new adventures together in a place we felt drawn to set in as well. There’s something to be said about the feeling of you and your partner taking on the unknown together, and coming on the heels of almost a year spent in a global shut-down it felt like the right time to do it. One of those things, where you know your decision will sound like it’s coming out of left field when you tell people about it, but you just can’t help but have a grin on your face thinking about it.

We didn’t get to have a big send-off with Covid still running amok, but we did get to see most of our core crew in a series of last hurrah “one-on-ones” in the weeks leading up to the move and by November 13th, we were officially Fort Collins residents! I was planning on filling you in on some of what we’ve been up to since then, but I’ve clearly rambled on for far too long on this post - Ha! So, I suppose I’ll leave all that rambling for next time.

‘Til then, enjoy that extra daylight and those warming spring temps! We’ll chat soon. -B