UCGal: thanks for your post. We are considering school districts and still have a lot of research to do, but it does seem like there is a lot more support for the suggested therapies in SoCal than NC. Also, as you stated,family being near by would be a huge plus. We never truly appreciated how difficult it would be raise a children so far from our support network. We’ve made friends here but it’s not the same as life long friends and family.

Flu: Thanks for your thoughtful post. and I’ll address your questions.
1) No we really can not afford 20-30K/year ongoing. We figure we can afford it for a few years by cutting our spending and tapping our savings, but then what? what happens if our second child needs something too.
2) a quick back of the envelope calculation would be out of pocket worst case senerio 24K and best around 15K. still a lot for us.
3) this is a big one for me. I’ve tried talking it over with my husband and have told him many many times that I want him to be happy and if he doesn’t want to take a lower level or paying job I’m ok with that and we’ll figure out a way to make it work. He’s response is always, he doesn’t want to talk about it and that we can have that discussion when/if he gets the job. But I don’t understand why he’d want to go through the hassle if he decides he doesn’t want to take the job. I know that he really wants to move back to CA too and has said it’s been a bruise to his ego that its taking so long, but he won’t really discuss jobs much more than that. I will say though that he is very unhappy at his current employer, he likes what he does, but not the people or politics he works with.
4) we’re not too concerned with that, but it would be nice if it worked out. we’ll also be selling a home in NC at a little lost (no where new CA levels), but it would be nice to buy where prices are down and while interest rates are low too. also, if we do get back to SoCal, I can’t imagine we’d ever leave again.

I’ll repeat what I said above to UCGal. Being closer to family is a huge motivating factor. Even before the dx we were hoping to move back, we just were not in a hurry, but with all this added stress it would be really nice to have our support network close. Even having a date night or help with the kids when one of us is sick would be huge. I know we have a lot to think about. I appreciate all your thoughts.