Where are we?

So much has happened in the past year, I've given up on making an effort to post major milestones and I'm just going to fast forward to our life as it's happening.

In late 2010 I was approached to take a 3 year international assignment with my company in the position of development manager for our site in Vancouver, BC. After many long discussions and several trips to Vancouver to evaluate and decide if this was right for us, we accepted the opportunity in early 2011.


This meant big changes for us. Allison had to quit her job, we had to put our house on the market, sell a car, organize packing all of our stuff up for a move, find housing in Canada, get drivers licenses, buy a car in Canada, organize renters insurance, car insurance, sort out medical benefits, apply for work permits, get passports for the kids, get utilities closed off in PA and started in Canada, change mailing addresses, setup new emails, phones, visit with family, attend going away parties, get Owen out of school in the US, and then registered and setup in a school in Canada, establish bank accounts, ... oh and all this with me traveling every other week back and forth between Vancouver and Lancaster during February and March..... and it was time to complete all performance reviews at the office.

In the middle of it all, we're both on this emotional roller-coaster.. for Allison it's a huge life change... saying goodbye for a time to family, co-workers and friends that she was very close with... for me, also leaving family and a fantastic team of engineers that I help to build and develop over the past 4 years in Lancaster. I was gone over Valentines day, and our anniversary.... making it more difficult yet. We laughed, we cried, we fought about details, we lost a lot of sleep, ate a lot of ice cream and in the end, made it through.

Allison was the glue through this process. I tried to manage all the details getting setup in Canada, and she did everything back in PA, all while taking care of our wonderful kids, who seem to have been able to magically adapt and take on this new life without a second look back.

So we committed in late January, and kicked it all into motion.... I'll pick up the blog from this point...