We're Moving! ...to Iowa.

We're packing our things and moving to Iowa!

If you are like most of our friends and family, you're squinting your eyes at the screen and thinking, "What?! Iowa? Why Iowa? What's in Iowa? Corn?"

We have had this conversation countless times over the past year. Let me tell you, this isn't just on a whim. This is a thoroughly researched and calculated decision that Andrew and I have worked on for years now. All of our research and work has led us to the next chapter of our family's life... in Des Moines, Iowa.

If you've never spent time in Iowa, you probably are picturing silos and corn. Lots of corn.

In reality, there are a lot of amazing things about Iowa and, specifically, Des Moines. For example, did you know Des Moines, Iowa is the wealthiest metropolitan area in the entire country? It's true. When you compare cost of living to the average salary in cities across the United States, Des Moines is numero uno. This has played out true for us. For tens of thousands of dollars less that what we paid for our town home, we can get a single family home in Des Moines. Yet, Andrew's position in tech support actually pays more in Iowa. Make more, spend less!

Of course, Des Moines isn't the only city with lower cost of living, and that was one of the main factors we took into account when making our decision to move. We actually created a list of about 30 cities with lower cost of living in places we would be open to moving to. The cities we included were in states like North Carolina, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. We based our information off of a cost of living index. If you've never used a cost of living index before, 100 is the national average. If a city's score is over 100, then it's over the national average. If it's under 100, then it costs less than the national average. You can find a city's score based on housing costs, health care costs, food costs, and more.

After creating our list of affordable cities, we started to look into other information that mattered to us. Colorado, as you might imagine, has some of the highest rates of drug use in the country. Even when marijuana is not included in the statistic, drug use rates in Colorado are near the top. If it was just Andrew and me, that wouldn't matter. The prevailing attitude in Colorado is that the government should have a small role to play and not police what people do to their bodies. Well, I suppose that's fine & dandy for some, but the lax drug laws and attitude are not the environment we want our kids raised in. Sure, there are drugs everywhere. We get that. Yet, there's a difference between a place where only 3% of the people use drugs regularly and a place where over 15% of people do. And guess what? Iowa is tied for the lowest rates of drug use in the entire country.

So, we started to think about Iowa fairly seriously. Des Moines is the wealthiest city in the country (income vs cost of living), and Iowa has the lowest rates of drug use. We had pages and pages of data we sorted through. We looked at firearms death rates. I know many people don't share the same attitude as me in regards to guns. I don't like them. I grew up in Chicago and never even had to see a gun until I moved to Colorado. Here, people we know keep an arsenal of weapons in their homes. Friends have conceal carry permits and weapons, and some sleep with loaded guns under their pillows. I'm afraid of what it will be like as our kids get older and start going to homes like those. We researched the firearms death rate in each state. You can see a list of death rates per 100,000 people at this link. The national average is 10.1 firearms deaths per 100,000 people. Colorado is over the national average (11.5). So is Texas (11.1) and North Carolina (11.7). States we had on our list with lower firearms deaths were Iowa (6.3), Nebraska (7.3), Minnesota (6.2), and Wisconsin (7.9). Iowa was looking pretty good, once again.

I actually started to rank each city on our list according to each criteria. Over and over again, Iowa had the best or close to the best numbers of the criteria that mattered to us. It wasn't even close. Des Moines, Iowa outranked every other city on our list.

People from Iowa have a lot of pride in their state. When we started to be more open about the possible decision to move to Iowa, we had two basic reactions from the people we told. People who never spent time in Iowa thought we were crazy. However, people who live in Iowa had nothing but glowing reviews. I have an aunt and uncle who have lived in the same house in western Iowa for decades. I told them we were starting to seriously think about moving to Iowa. My uncle told me there are a lot of jobs available in Des Moines. It's the number one insurance city in the country (third in the world). He also told me the tech industry is booming there, and everyone is in need of people trained in the IT field. In fact, billions of dollars are currently being invested in Iowa from companies like Facebook and Google. My uncle added, "And did you know that Des Moines was chosen by Forbes Magazine as the best city to raise children?"

I researched it, and it's true. In 2010, Forbes Magazine created a top 10 list of cities to raise a family. Starting from number 10, the list is: Buffalo, NY; Albany, NY; Knoxville, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Ogden, UT; Provo, UT; Syracuse, NY; Rochester, NY; Harrisburg, PA; and Des Moines, IA as number one.

We visit Des Moines every so often because my brother lives in Des Moines. My sister lives in Nebraska, so we often just meet there instead of driving the extra few hours to Iowa. Still, we love visiting Des Moines. Yes, Iowa is known for farming, but that's because they have fertile land. Now imagine what that means for neighborhoods. Everything is so green and lush. My brother almost never waters his lawn. There's thick, moist grass that you can walk on barefoot. The trees are dense, and ivy grows over everything. The nights have the sound of my childhood: crickets and frogs. Everything is so alive! When we were there last time, we went to the large farmer's market the city hosts every Saturday morning the late spring, summer, and early fall. The Huffington Post has a list of nine can't-miss farmer's markets, and the Des Moines Farmer's Market is on the list. We also went to the Des Moines Arts Festival, which is consistently ranked in the top 10 art festivals in the country. Basically, the city hosts events and festivals that are worth seeing! Iowa is far from being a hick state. Remember that they were the fourth state to allow gay marriage, and they are very active politically (Iowa is a swing state, and they are usually the first state to vote in a caucus to determine Presidential candidates). When we were last there, Andrew and I sat out on the patio together. We listened to the nighttime and watched the lightning bugs. He said, "Becky, I could definitely move here."

Months and months later, we were still nailing down our decision. We are planners and wanted to cover every angle. We were still considering other cities, even Green Bay, Wisconsin! In the end, Andrew said he wanted to be a 1 day's drive from Denver so we can easily go back to visit friends and family. I agreed. It really helped make our final decision: We were going to move to Des Moines, Iowa!

We've been pretty hush-hush about our decision and progress made toward the move. We spoke to my brother first--about a year ago now--to make sure it would be OK with him. A few months later, there was a housing boom in Colorado. We decided to take advantage of the seller's market to sell our town home, and, so, we broke the news to the rest of our friends and family. We weren't yet ready to make the move, but we thought it was best to sell our house when the timing was good. That's why we've been staying with family for the last few months! Now, Andrew has a really great job offer, and we've worked at getting a single family house lined up. We should be settled in before too long!

We expect many aspects of the move to be difficult. We will have to make new friends, get used to new routines, and not have our parents nearby. That will be hard, but we hope to be happy with our decision in time. We're very excited about the increase in quality of life--being able to afford and live in a single family home, being able to walk to school & businesses, and enjoying a short commute to work. Wish us luck on this next big adventure!

Colorado Hikes: Roxsborough State Park

Happy Labor Day weekend! Andrew's up in the mountains with some friends, and my aunt and uncle are in town from Iowa. We decided to check out Roxborough. I'd actually never been there before, even though it's a popular day hike.

The day was perfect for hiking. We have had the craziest weather for Colorado, and I love it. It was overcast and cloudy, as it has been for much of this past month. It made for cooler temperatures and good hiking weather. I don't recommend doing this hike with kids on a hot, sunny day because there was no shade. It wasn't a problem at all for us today!

Unless you have a state parks pass, the entrance fee is $7. I didn't even think of that when I agreed to go with my family. Thankfully, my dad offered to buy our entrance fee! My mom brought her jogging stroller along. What would I do without my parents?

The main trail that we took (the Fountain Valley Trail) is mostly flat. We accessed it from the visitor's center. As we walked, there were a few lookout points to hike up to. We chose to do those, and they weren't all that easy with little kids. I wouldn't have been able to do those parts with the kids myself.

After the first part of the hike, we switched and put Oliver in the stroller. I carried Jo almost the rest of the way! At one point, my mom tried to relieve me, but Jo wasn't having it.

We left the stroller behind to hike up to Lyons Overlook. Oliver hiked up there himself! It was beautiful.

There was sand near the overlook that the kids played in. Oliver declared that it was brown sugar.

We didn't do the full loop. My dad helped me get the kids back to the visitor's center after Lyons Overlook. The visitor's center was air conditioned, and the kids got to color and relax. It was nice. They had a board on the wall that marked all the animals people have reported seeing and on what days. There have been a lot of black bear sightings recently! In July, there were a lot of mountain lion sightings, so definitely don't let any little kids wander off.

Back to Reality

I spent a long weekend on the East Coast. My cousin had her wedding in New Jersey. We have a very large family on my mom's side, and it's impossible to go to everyone's weddings and graduations and even funerals. We do our best to go when we can, but it was especially important to me to make this trip. I had enough miles with Frontier to go. My ever-generous parents were planning on attending, too, and so they let me ride along in their rental car and even stay in their hotel room for free. How many people get to spend a weekend on the East Coast for next to nothing? I feel incredibly lucky.

Andrew and his parents watched the kiddos while I was away. I missed their faces and their cute quirks, but I was also able to enjoy my time with virtually no responsibilities. It was pretty amazing not having to worry about where the kids were at all times, if they were OK, if they were getting into mischief, if they were hungry or needed a diaper or needed to use the potty. I wouldn't have been happy without them for a long period, but three days was nice.

It's good to be back home with them, but it's also hard getting back into the swing of things. When I get back from vacation, I become such a procrastinator for a few days.

If you enjoy reading about travel or want information on some places to go or things to see, you can find my travel blog entries from our trip here: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/WhirledPeas/Trips/22359. I think the best travel tip in there includes our 1-2 hour stop in New York City. If you are ever passing through New York and need to know what to do with a bit of time on your hands, definitely check it out!

I do my best to keep that blog separate from this one. Whereas this blog is all about my family life, my kids, and my projects--something for my kids to look back on one day--that blog is typically about what to see and do as well as my critiques of places I go to eat or tour. So, not shown in that travel blog are most of the pictures of my family (unless it's kind of relevant to the travel). Here are a few snapshots of my loved ones (as you can see, there were little ones for me to hold and play with when I needed a mommy fix):

One of my many beautiful cousins pictured above is going to be throwing a birthday party in Iowa this summer. I'm considering driving up with the kids by myself (eek!). My husband thinks I'm crazy, but I don't think it will be that bad. Right?

A Kushy Weekend

For my Grandma Jo's memorial weekend, we had aunts, uncles, cousins, and so many others here in town. Aunt Gerry and Wayne flew in from Maine, Tina and Aunt Linda flew in from Boston, Uncle Mark came from Ohio, Uncle Matt came from Missouri, Julie came from Nebraska, Aunt Jackie came from California, Jana and Ian (who I met for the first time) came from Portland, and Aunt Carol, Uncle Mike, Missy, Mia, Glen, Jo and Jack all drove in from Iowa.

Tina stayed at my apartment. I was so stoked to have my first house guest! Andrew and I totally bleached the shower and toilets and vacuumed and had fun grocery shopping. I'm telling you, we're ready to be a regular bed & breakfast now. Tina was the best house guest, ever (and I'm not just saying that because she's my only house guest). She totally let me give her a tour and just generally showed an interest in everything, right down to the bagels. Hurray for her! Next time, I'll make her try Rock Band. Also next time, we won't be so exhausted from socializing so we can go for runs!

Having Julie in town was a hoot, too. I spent a lot of my time with her and Tina, just generally laughing it up and throwing our opinions out about everyone and every thing. Good times.

Uncle Mark and I talked a lot about the Disney World Half Marathon we're running in January. Turns out, in addition to us and my mom, his daughters Dina and Amber are planning on running in it. This'll be too much fun!

Andrew enjoyed meeting people and demonstrating his magic skills. At some point, he even had Jana and Ian practicing the disappearing coin trick. Too cute.

The most difficult part of the weekend was, of course, the memorial itself. We went up to Andrew's parents' land near Fairplay and sang and talked of our memories. I started to get upset about scattering Grandma's ashes. Not that I thought it was a bad idea; I knew it's what she'd wanted. It just is hard to say goodbye, I guess. I felt angry about not having her with us, and I hated thinking about everything she doesn't get to see. I know I'll move past those feelings and be able to enjoy her memories, but it's just so hard sometimes, and I feel so mad that I don't get to have her around anymore. I wish I could say more, but I'm so emotionally drained! It was a toughie, for sure.

And now... now things have quieted down. Some family is leaving already tomorrow morning. This means I'll sleep in, wake up slowly, and then reach out and connect with those that are still hanging out in town. I'm wiped, and I think it's time to cuddle up with a book and then head to sleep.

Goodnight!