About this blog

I'm starting this blog as a place to write about where and how I live with my family. The phrase "we're not from here", or some variation of it, is one that I've uttered all my life to explain that we don't have family in town, or we don't know the way to get to some obscure neighborhood, or simply to say "I'm sorry, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about". I come from a long line of folks who have picked up and moved to find something better, so that phrase has been a subtext of my life. I've decided to make it the subtext of this blog.

We live in a Midwestern city that prides itself on having once been a much better place than it currently is, though currently it really isn't all that bad. My job brought us here a few years ago. We moved here from one of those beautiful mountain-bedecked Western cities that makes people say "you moved from there to be here???" with complete incredulity. All I can say is, "yep, we sure did". The irony is that the job that brought me here went away when the company was sold only a few months after our move, and now I work from a home office for the same company that I used to work for in that lovely Western city. But I work from home, and I make more, and we love our neighborhood, our house, and our cost of living. Somehow it still seems worth the move.

Our daughter is almost five, and our son is almost two. My wife works three days a week in an industry that is currently booming. Her job also gives her a lot of flexibility, which means that we get to share a lot of parenting duties. We're not exactly practicing ESP, but I do pull my weight around here, and I enjoy it.

I suppose I may reveal more about our identities, location, jobs, etc. as time goes on. I want this blog to be about parenting, about money, about the struggles of living far away from family in a place where it's unusual to NOT be from here (the story of my life). I love to read personal finance blogs, so I'm sure I'll reference my favorites from time to time and blog about my own PF observations & tips. We'll see about the parenting part. I love being a father, so I'm sure parenting & family topics will find their way into my blog as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read what I have to say. I hope you come back soon!