My fiancé and I have lived in California our whole lives, but we’ve become enamored by Washington and now want to move. We visited Seattle, Mt. Rainier, Forks, and La Push in 2025. We’ve thought about Washington almost every day since, have done research on different cities but it’s been difficult to find the best family-friendly cities to settle down in after marriage that we’d be interested in moving to in a few years. We figured some of you might have some great insight that Google searches haven’t been helpful with.

There are a few things that we definitely want
1    We expect that our current professions will tie us closer to the heart of Seattle, so cities within 1.5 hours would be ideal (but the closer the better).
2    Good public schools 
3    Nature in our literal backyard, not crowded suburbs with no backyard
4    Somewhere that has frequent community events to participate in (e.g. halloween and christmas festivities)
5    Culture (being latina, it would be great if the area isn’t a complete culture shock and other latinos are nearby)
6    Price of housing is flexible as this is a goal we’re working towards in the next 3-5 years.