Relocating

For about a week I've been trying to decide what my first blog should be about. I have many ideas but don't know where to start. Then it came to me, the thing that I've been spending every free minute thinking about or researching on line...RELOCATING. It has been an ongoing battle for the last 2 months now. We actually made the decision several months ago but have been deep into the research only recently. There is so much to consider when relocating to a different state, especially when you have children. You have to consider the area, is it kid friendly, is it safe, how far is it away from the schools we will attend, WHAT schools will we attend, are they reputable, what are their scores, how do they rate, what is their student - teacher ratio? Where will we work, how far are we willing to commute, is the area we find work in good enough to live in, what are the crime statistics?
I know no one in the area we are looking to moving to so that makes it very difficult. I have no one to tell to keep an eye out for me or give me information about job openings. I don't even know the first steps to take in relocating. The reasonable thing, to me, would be to first find employment, and from there everything else will fall into place. We already have in mind the areas we would live. We thought okay, once we get a call for an interview we would fly in and "best" case scenario, they would want us to start immediately, well, why not rent a hotel room or an apartment for a little while, start working and bring the family up one free weekend to get them settled into our new lives. The hardest part of this all for me has been the job search. I have sent out over 250 resumes, I have registered online with every possible temp agency and job search engine. I have had ONE call that started out good and ended with "well honey you need to wait until you get into town to start job searching and why not give us a call then." Okay so I started thinking how in the world would that work. I quit my job now, use all my savings to move to another state and 6 months later I still haven't found a job. To me, that doesn't sound very promising. I don't really know anyone that has "successfully" relocated between states unless it was with their current jobs that they were moving or they went and lived with a relative until they got on their feet. I'm not a quitter, not by any means, but man, this is hard. I know the internet is not the best way to find a job as I am competing with thousands of other people and I doubt 10 of the 250 resumes I sent out were even looked at. So I started thinking what's the best way to get it done. Networking. Nothing works better than networking and knowing someone or having someone put a word in for you at a company where you have sent in your resume. But that has proven to be just as hard for me. I finally came to the conclusion to take a weeks vacation and go to my future city and hope to get at least an interview or two while there.
So tomorrow is a new day and a new round of resume submitting. I wish I knew another way. I will update my progress as the days pass and more attempts are made.