Monday, February 19, 2018

Hello & Goodbye

Hello, Family and Friends!

I know it's been awhile, but words have been hard lately.

You see, we are saying Goodbye to our home and relocating to a new state.

Sometimes home is less about the place where you are living, and more about the people who are close. That's why my husband and I are planning to load up our kids and belongings and relocate to the Sunshine State the first week of April.

This may seems surprising, considering that I have been pretty quiet on the blog since October. I know I mentioned that we were dealing with some family drama.

In order to explain the context, I really need to go back to August 2006 when my husband and I had just returned from a year living in Japan. We had very few possessions to our name and no children, so we felt like we could go anywhere. However, we did want to start a family and maybe even own a home at some point, so we kept those things in mind when we were choosing where to live. We settled on moving to Pennsylvania to be near my mother in law .

We have been in Pennsylvania for more than 11 years now. My husband has been working for the same company all this time, and I went to graduate school here. We have had three beautiful children. We bought a home.

My mother in law was the main pillar of our support system here. Our children have always had holidays and birthdays and sleepovers at Nana's house. So when she put her house up for sale last summer and moved back to Florida, it really shook us. We have incredible friends here and a community that we know and love. But we never really intended to raise our children without some extended family close by.

We knew when we took our vacation to Florida in October that it would be a pivotal moment for us as a family. Could we see ourselves moving back after all this time? Were we willing to risk our savings to make the move? Would the kids be comfortable with family they didn't know as well?

As it turned out, the kids were extremely comfortable. We all were. For the first time in months, I felt my panic attacks lift. I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about moving, but it was too hard to come back to Pennsylvania and leave all of our extended family behind.

We started looking at the logistics of a move as soon as we came back from vacation, but pretty soon the holidays were upon us. We ended up going to Florida (again) for Christmas with my extended family, and (again) it was incredibly hard to leave.

So we contacted a realtor and gave notice at work. We reserved a modest, 16' truck and made plans to stay with my brother and his fiancee while we get situated. It's imperfect and terrifying. But it's also easier than staying where we are.

I am so grateful to all of the people who have helped and supported us here. It's hard to say Goodbye, but it's a great opportunity to say Hello to a new adventure.