let's pretend

Let's pretend you could move anywhere. You didn't have jobs holding you back and had the freedom to go wherever and put down roots anywhere your heart desired.  How would you choose?  What factors would you weigh?

I feel at a crossroads.  A really weird one. It's not bad.  I can't complain at all.  I just.... Feel in limbo.  

We want to move.  It likely won't be until later this year or even next year.  Or maybe the year after that.  We don't have a timeline.  Ryan is home now so we don't have his job weighing us down. We are in this amazing, yet peculiar, situation where we can literally go wherever the hell in this world we want to go.  It's kind of crazy and overwhelming. (No oilers, we won't be heading to Utah)

I would love to buy an old farm and renovate but I also would love to build our dream home.   However.... WHERE do we do this?   I can't imagine like, picking a town and buying land and building having never lived there before.  However the thought of moving to a new town/state and renting and then building sounds like a lot of work hahaha!  Moving sucks.  But I don't want to lock ourselves in somewhere and end up not loving the area (however we do live in Jackson soooo unless it was a total po-dunk town it will likely have more to offer than where we are at.  

Do I start with schools?   Though I constantly consider homeschooling.  Do I start with communities and what they have to offer?  Or do I look for real estate and hope that where we find something we love that the area falls into place too?  

After last winter I was ready to get out of Michigan but this winter hasn't been bad at all.  Totally tolerable.   I would miss the snow and the kids being able to do winter things but can we find somewhere that winter doesn't linger forever? (Not likely).  I would love to move south--- we always love love love North Carolina but will I die in the summer heat?  Maybe we should look more towards Michigan's west coast to be closer to the "michigan ocean" haha but then that'll bring harsher winters.   

Ugh.  The decisions.  Luckily it's not something we have to do right now.  Financially, I want to have a huge hunk of a down payment for something awesome. And the next few months our financial advisor has us socking away a disgusting amount of money into an IRA to try to avoid paying so much to lovely Uncle Sam (joys of hitting the high tax brackets.  Gag.) so for now we have no plans to go anywhere but I know once #4 arrives our house is going to begin to feel more cramped than it already does.  

So I just wonder, aloud, where would you go if you could pack up and go wherever?   What would weigh into your decisions?