Why We Moved to Boomtown, USA (Williston, ND)

I love beards.  I admit it.  But the "nice and tidy ones that don't make you wonder what might be living in it" kind.  My husband had a great beard, but then had to shave it down to a goatee for work.  (I may have shed a tear or two.)  

This is an example of one of the many sacrifices we're making by moving to ND.  Not that ND isn't a great place, but we definitely liked where we were.  ::cough, Duluth, MN cough:: 

For those of you who don't know why we moved, here you go... 

Debt.  

And lots of it.  

Graduating college right as the economy took a dump, we each went from our choice of decent paying jobs, and having more than one of them at a time, to only having one job each that didn't pay very well.  

I know, I know, I should be happy that we had jobs at all, and I am.  But we started drowning, very quickly. We followed all of the "rules" for  achieving our house with a picket fence, but in the end that didn't matter.  

(I partially blame the ridiculous cost of higher education.)  

I suppose I could have just gone to law school or something and chosen a higher paying career, but I wanted to be a counselor (gosh darn it).  

So There We Were...

So there we were, me with a Masters degree, each with full time jobs (with great benefits at least) and we still couldn't pay all of our bills.  

Something had to change.  

We knew there wasn't a very good chance of us winning the lottery, but then again you'd have to play the lottery to win it... so when we found out about this opportunity we decided to take a leap of faith; faith in ourselves, in each other, in a higher power, and move to the biggest boomtown in the US.  (At least that's what the sign says.)  Williston, ND.  

Thanks to some family and friends already out here, Chris had a great job waiting for him, we had a beautiful not-so-little camper ready for us to move into, and the promise that I would be able to find a job very quickly.  

Our Sacrifice 

Our sacrifice comes in the form of;

• Moving away from people we love 
• Leaving the most beautiful place we've ever lived
• Each of us quitting our full time job 
• And simply not being sure if we'd even like it here.  

But, even with all of the reasons not to move, the possibility of being able to pay off our debt and provide a better life for our future children was enough to tilt the scales.  

So there you go.  This isn't about us.  It's about providing for our future "them".