What on earth are we doing?

(WARNING: this is a long and boring post, so don't feel obligated to read.)

Why would we move?
If you think it's totally random that we're leaving (especially since people never really move away from the Central Coast), we HAVE known for a long time that we wouldn't live in Santa Maria forever and ever. Just a temporary place to be where Kevin could keep his job in Santa Barbara by commuting, and so I could finish school at Cal Poly SLO.

Over the last few years God's been stirring our hearts to do something new. We tossed around different ideas, even considered moving to Africa to do some sort of humanitarian work. But we didn't really feel like that's what God had for us right now. (Maybe someday.)

One conviction we really came to have was living in/near an urban area. We'd been really impacted by some of Tim Keller's stuff, and having transracially adopted children, we felt that we wanted to raise them somewhere a bit more diverse than California's Central Coast. (If you live here too then you know it really wouldn't take much.)

Kevin's cousin and then his brother moved their families out to the Denver metro area awhile ago. In looking at the different cities across the country, we decided Denver seemed the best option. It was affordable for us, there were some good schools, lots of living options, we had family there, there's a huge Ethiopian immigrant population and therefore some cool cultural opportunities, it's more diverse.

All along the way we've prayed that God would open the doors if this was the right thing, and close them if it was the wrong thing (He tends to be good at that!) Kevin was able to find a job opportunity. We randomly stumbled across an amazing church in downtown Denver that is committed to so many of the things God has been showing us, and reaching the city with the Gospel. Things at Kevin's current job have slowed down, and he's ready for a change. Commuting's getting too difficult, especially with four kids. Living 35 minutes away from church has gotten really old. Basically, things have started to feel like they're winding down. It's time to move on.

Why would we move to Denver itself?

When we visited in August we planned to buy a home in a suburb; there are some super nice ones there, and having a family, it makes good sense. Our realtor did take us to one neighborhood in the actual city of Denver however, the very last home we looked at with her, that I totally fell in love with and was my favorite. It was built in the 1900s in a historic old neighborhood filled with brick bungalows. We never really further considered too seriously that neighborhood (except for me nagging Kevin on a regular basis that I wanted to live in an old bungalow. But it was farther from his potential job, the school wasn't quite as good, etc.)

WELL, flash forward several months, and we had to face the idea that if we moved to one of the suburbs, our kids would not regularly be exposed to people of other races, socioeconomic classes, etc., and that is a huge value for us, and part of why we were moving in the first place. Not to mention a lot of the homes WEREN'T overly close to Kevin's workplace.

SO we started looking elsewhere and found a suburban-type neighborhood RIGHT BY Kevin's office (as in 2 miles away, a recovering-commuter's dream!) and assumed that's where we'd buy, based on proximity, and that we'd somehow find a way to expose our kids to other types of people. BUT God slammed THOSE doors shut because every home we looked at there had floors that were sloping and buckling because of expansive soils. Lovely! (And, now what???)

Meanwhile I was still obsessed with the older homes and that neighborhood in Denver, so I still longingly looked at them on realtor.com, and one day there was a relatively large home whose price had dropped to our price range. It zoned to an extremely good, highly-rated, diverse school in the Denver Public Schools system. We realized that somehow, this neighborhood and house made the most sense, and that when we felt like God wanted us "in the city", He apparently did. (This part of Denver isn't really high density or overly urban-feeling. It's a desirable neighborhood that should hold value well. And it's so full of character, I love it!)

SO that has been our journey. I'll share updates about the house itself another time, in part because this post is way too long already! And hardly any pictures either, that is brutal!