You want to move WHERE????

In August of 2007, I announced to Wayne that I thought we should move to Barrow, Alaska. Those of you who know Wayne well know that he is very analytical. I had learned this about him in the past three years, so before I presented the idea I wrote out 2 pages explaining all the benefits of moving to Barrow so I could convincingly "sell him" on it. Well, he wasn't convinced. But thankfully, he didn't outright reject the idea either. So, slowly but persistently I worked on him. I wanted to be out of California by the time the summer heat set in. :)

I'm not sure when he really started seriously considering the possibility, but at some point we started talking about how we should rent a place close to the beach for a few months if we were really going to move to Alaska. In February 2008 we were eating pizza at this little place in San Diego, and we started joking about how cool it would be to just sell all our stuff and drive up to Alaska with what we could fit in the car. It seemed crazy at first, but by the end of the meal we were both saying, "hmmm...maybe we could do it..." 

A few days later, we stumbled on an add on Craigslist for a beach house for rent from April 1-June 7. It was (miraculously) affordable! Most beach houses in the summer rent for at least $2000 a week, but we got an AMAZING deal on this one because the tenant had a lease through June but needed to move out in April. We decided to jump on it before someone else did, and in so doing our plans to move to Alaska were finalized! We would move to the beach house on April 1st, we would both quit our jobs by mid-May, we'd have a California vacation for a few weeks, and then come move-out day on June 7th we'd be on the road to Alaska! Thus began our two month dream life in our little apartment at 3306 Oceanfront in Newport Beach...