Lots of moving parts, but when I was thinking about this, I arrived at a similar conclusion to what you recommend - have the conversation with my current employer, and also to timebox it. The latter part works because I'm nearly certain my wife doesn't want to be gone for more than a year or two. We'll see on the former. School's already started for the year, so I'm thinking I can have this conversation with plenty of lead time and do the relocation next summer.
Could I ask the time difference that you were working with, and if it was a particular challenge? I'd be 6 hours ahead of eastern time and I'm not sure yet whether I would want to commit to working EST from abroad - it's certainly doable, but I'm not sure that I want to work until 10-11pm each night.