in 2000 we bought a home in cleveland during the peak of the sellers market there. when we moved in 2005, cleveland was already a canary in the housing market and we were not able to sell our house in a years time. we ultimately began renting it.

in 2007 we decided to improve the quality of our lives by taking an adventure half way around the world to new zealand where natalie could work in a job where they would also provide a house and car.

we were promised we wouldn’t have any trouble securing visas for everyone in the family including our au pair carolina so natalie quit her job, i sold my car, i changed jobs to one that would allow me to work remotely (even if remotely was from new zealand) and we put our house up for rent.

five days before we were scheduled to leave immigration new zealand denied carolina’s visa request. apparently there’s no category that matches carolina’s request so it was denied. now we can’t travel without breaking up our extended family and interrupting the spanish language immersion both our kids have had since birth.

but almost everything is packed and the new tenants show up on wednesday. i now own two homes and have nowhere to sleep.

so you’ll notice the countdown in the right side bar has changed from “countdown to nz” to “countdown to odyssey”. i don’t know where we will be going over the next year, or in the next week for that matter, but stay tuned and i’ll tell you all about it…