The Move

J and I, we were just babies it seems.  When we got married a whole 5 years ago.  It seems like a lifetime in some ways, since then.  I guess if you ask Little One and Little Miss, it has been. 

After our wedding we went right on our honeymoon.  When we got back, we said goodbye in the airport.  J went off to officer training with the Navy, I went back to the vestiges of our pre-married life in Arizona, packed it up (ok the movers packed it up) and my mom and sister and I drove it out East and planted it in Maryland. 

By the time J got there, we were all moved in.  So you see, our whole married life took place there.  We worked, got a puppy, bought a house.  Renovated the house with our own novice hands, made friends- great ones- got to know the neighbors.  Brought home our two sweet babies to that house, and watched them grow like the gardens we planted. 

So it was a little sad to go.  To leave all that we had built, and especially the people we’d grown close to.  It was a little sad to know that it was our last trip to the peach picking farm, our last festival on the National Mall, our last meal at our favorite places.  We will miss the DC area.  It is a seriously amazing place!  We will miss the familiar conveniences of a home made to fit our preferences, and we will REALLY miss our friends.

But! But the world is so big, and life is so wide open, and to have the chance to explore it and expand it and find even more great people and favorite places is thrilling.  To get to do it all together as a family, a traveling band of exclamation marks (Look! A beach! Look! A pizza place!) is a kind of fun that feels almost like flying. 

We will miss the place we became a family.  But I hope that it will become the first of many dots that we will someday be able to plot out on a map, with winding, swooping lines between them.  I hope the friends and experiences we picked up there will be the start of a great, eclectic collection.  It’s a beginning.