We are Moving

Oh...where do I begin.  Ryan and I have always felt that our ultimate destination as a family would be Atlanta.  Towards the end of 2012, we started talking about what it would look like for us to move to Atlanta.  My parents had been talking about putting their house on the market and Ryan has always loved my house.  (If you know anything about Ryan and houses, you know this is HUGE because he is almost impossible to please when it comes to house hunting!).  We talked with my parents after the holidays and let them know that before they sold the house to someone else, we wanted them to talk to us.

Sometime in mid January, we found out that a connection of Ryan's had been named the new head football coach at Mt. Pisgah. Sarah taught elementary school at Mt. Pisgah for several years and it is literally within walking distance of my parents house so we got really excited about the possibility!  Ryan spoke with the new head coach a few times and it was pretty much a done deal that he would have a teaching job and be the Defensive Coordinator.  We came to Atlanta to interview (keep in mind I was about 37 weeks pregnant at this point).  The interviews went well, but we had some concerns about a few things from our end.  They were also recruiting for a new high school principal so things were put "on hold" for a bit until that position was filled.  It was really quite the rollercoaster ride.  We went from - you definitely have a job, to we can't hire for this position until we have a principal, to we can hire you just for athletics, to we can't afford you for just athletics.

During this time, we had to let ECS know if we would be coming back next year.  Ryan was able to get a few extensions on his contract, but ultimately, we knew we needed to make a decision.  We prayed about it and decided to tell ECS we wouldn't be coming back even though we didn't have a job in Atlanta.  It felt totally crazy at the time, but we were just trusting that God would provide for us and really felt like we needed to take this step of faith to get to where we felt God was wanting us to be.  It was really hard to make the decision to leave ECS.  That community was so wonderful to us and even as I thought about sending Madison Claire to school there, I was *so* excited. They get Christian education in a way that we didn't find in Nashville and haven't yet been able to find in Atlanta.  We will so miss being a part of that community.

So...we re-engaged with my parents and began talking seriously about buying their house.  Fortunately, we knew that I could do my job from anywhere.  Ryan wanted to get to Atlanta as soon as possible so he could start meeting with people in person and interviewing, so we decided mid-April that we were going to move and made plans to actually move May 22nd.  Keep in mind Caroline was born on April 9th.  CHAOS!!!!

Ryan began interviewing for other positions in Atlanta and was highly recruited by a top, private Christian school here, Westminster.  He was offered a great job that was really hard to turn down (especially when we didn't have anything else at the time), but the football commitment was going to be really intense and he basically wouldn't see the kids at all during football season which wasn't what we wanted for our family. I have always been so grateful for how engaged Ryan is with me and the kids and this is just another example of him prioritizing us.  Seriously, so blessed!

While he was interviewing with Westminster, he also had a meeting with a friend of Ryan Fetz's who works at a Performance Enhancement facility in Buckhead.  They had a great conversation and Ryan decided to take the year off of teaching and coaching to pursue an interest of his - strength & conditioning.  He is employed as an independent contractor with Fusion ATL.  More to come on how the Lord has blessed his efforts in a later post.  For now, suffice it to say "We are Moving"...or rather "We moved".