Chances are, unless you already live there, at least once you've contemplated or dreamed about moving to the beach and never looking back. My husband and I always vacationed at Virginia Beach because it's a very sentimental place for us. It's where we fell in love and our story began. We dreamed of one day retiring there. Both raised in a small town in Eastern Ky, even visiting the beach was no small feat. It involved driving 9 hours with very small children and an even smaller budget. Every time things got really hard, which was quite often, we'd remind ourselves that one day we'd be lying on our beach. In July we were really discouraged. Things had been particularly hard financially. Our oldest child had been accepted and making preperations to attend college. The job I had taken that permitted me to work from home and avoid putting our baby in day care was a contract position and would soon be ending only adding to the financial pressure. We loved the home we'd been renting but knew with the limited amount of available jobs in our remote area we wouldn't be able to afford to remain there long. My husband had been under a tremendous amount of stress at work and learned the promotion he had long been awaiting was never coming. What could we do? Finally, the stress got the better of us and we lost our minds, or so our loved one's thought. I told my husband, "You only live once. We can struggle at the beach just as well as we can here, and surly there are more jobs available there". We had nothing to loose. Other people lived where we would spend all year scrambling to save enough money to visit. The more we talked about it the less crazy it sounded. We pulled my retirement and used it to buy a used camper to stay in temporarily because we had no idea what neighborhood to even begin looking in. We owned a truck and a car that were paid for but soon learned the truck wasn't big enough to pull the camper. We had already moved nearly everything out of our house and into storage. We pulled into a car lot, explained our dilema, and traded both our vehicles to a truck that came with a hefty payment. It was the only one we even test drove. We simply didn't have time to shop around because we didn't want to loose the money we already paid to reserve the campground. It was like we were living in a movie. Everything was happening so fast! It was such a hard decision to make. Leaving meant not getting to see my stepson, who lives with his mother, or my daughter in college as often, and my young daughters weren't going to get to see their grandparents as much. Staying meant never knowing if a better life awaited with the opportunity to finally be able to provide a good life for our kids. We knew we just couldn't continue the way we had been going and ever expect to succeed. My husband was able to find work almost immediately! We soon found an apartment in a safe neighborhood. Being 4 minutes from 1 of several malls compared to the 2 hours we were used to and the variety of activities and restaurants is amazing. Unfortunately, money is still incredibly tight, and we miss our family terribly. We still don't really know anyone in the area. No date nights or any alone time for that matter really made us realize how much we took their Nana for granted. It's still too soon to know for sure if we made the right decision but how can we insist our children follow their dreams and create their own destiny if we don't lead by example? Life's too short for what ifs and maybe somedays. Even if we fail, at least we gave it our best shot, and that they can be proud of.
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