huge announcement: casacaudill is going expat!

I've been itching to make this announcement public for weeks now, so here it is ...

WE'RE MOVING TO IRELAND.

Alan is transferring from his company's SF office to their office just outside of Dublin, and we're looking at being over there sometime in August.









So, how did this all come about?

The plans started out as a "what if?" question one night when we got to talking about our five year plan. We have known for a long time that we wanted to leave the Bay Area and were looking to move to either Portland or Cleveland. When things went south with my job around this time last year, Portland was taken off the table as it no longer made sense for us to be there. We'd talk late into the night about how awesome it would be to one day move to Europe, and we'd list all of the places that sounded intriguing to us in order of preference. London, Dublin, Edinburgh were all in the top 10.

Then, one day Alan came home and mentioned that a guy in his office was transferring to Dublin and it was one of those, "wow, that's so cool for him" type of conversations. It didn't even occur to us that first day that it would be an option for us. Then, as Alan's job began to morph and his responsibilities in working on international projects became more pronounced, we had an epiphany moment.

He talked with a co-worker he went to college with who was high up in the organization and he told Alan that it would be doable. That was in September 2014. Since then there have been organizational changes, including Alan having two new bosses and his friend leaving the company, but we got word last week that the expat deal had been approved. The paperwork is being finalized now and unless something goes incredibly sideways it's happening.

This is really happening.

This is truly a dream come true for us, and I can't tell you how thankful I am that Alan works for a company that not only values his contributions as much as they do, but also who looks out for his desires and helps make them happen. It's a rare sort of organization that will work with an employee on something of this magnitude. Yes, it makes sense for them from a business perspective but they're making it happen because they value him and they know that something like this ensures a ton of employee satisfaction. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

So ... the countdown begins.