See, you guys touched on exactly why we are having a hard time deciding. We have a beautiful house here on a lake in (!) the city. There's no way we could get this in NJ. Also, the house alone couldn't be found there since most of the houses there are old and little and very expensive compared to here. On the other hand, way of life i think would be much better.

I have a lot of issues with Atlanta:

- too many bugs
- too hot in the summer so you can't do fun stuff in the summer
- no sidewalks so you can't walk your child easily
- no parks that are safe in the day except for 2 - bad for kids
- crime - i just don't feel safe here
- religion...it's soooooo evangelical here

To be fair- the good stuff:

- an awesome awesome international farmers market
- a choice of mosques (but would probably be more so in NJ AND they have the al-khoei mosque in NYC. That would rock!
- the weather. Winter is practically nonexistent...but for that you have the miserable summers....can't win or lose with weather here
- you can grow anything here - but they will be eaten by bugs

Now, i'm from Colorado and Oregon before that so two beautiful outdoorsy states and i miss that. I would rather live in a small house if i had fun outside my house. I feel so locked up here. I don't have any Muslimah momma friends here either and know i would in Jersey. I think NJ would be more to my liking outdoorsy wise too. Also, the area we would be moving to is very wealthy (bad for a house for us but good for crime, schools, parks, etc.)

I think i want to go to NJ for a week and sit in a Walmart for a couple hours and see what i see. I think Walmart gives you a good perspective on what people are like there - in all walks of life and you get to see the various social classes in action. Here, people are so rude and incompetent (scary to hear someone say that's how Jersey is...) dear God, can't we relocate to a good state? Maybe another opening will come up and we can go someplace cool.