On the Road Again..

I wish I could write in beautiful detail all about our eventful month. I really wish I could capture it all just perfectly on this little blog page, to open up and laugh about in the future, to read and remind myself of the way I have been feeling each and every minute of this madness. However, let's be realistic. I barely have time to keep this little family fed and looking semi decent  (third week of suitcase living over here.) We are currently just in survival mode, please don't judge..

It started when Gracie was not even a month old, and Christmas came to visit in all it's glorious chaos. As if that chaos wasn't enough, we added a little chaos of our own. The week of Christmas we started selling all of our crap newlywed furniture. I'm assuming it seemed like a KSL jackpot to many of our Christmas time purchasers, but nothing left our house without a little pit forming in my stomach. I watched every piece be carried down the driveway, until it was safe in the car of it's new owner. Trust me, I'm not afraid to admit that I may be a little on the overly sentimental side. But honestly, we are talking the kitchen table-our first big purchase together as the Allen-Allen's. It was assembled in front of a big kitchen window with all the naive joy of two little amateurs..how can you say goodbye to that without a little tug on the ol heartstrings. So one by one our accumulated belongings left, and I learned that "things" just really aren't as important as I thought they were.

I decided that some other day when it's not so close to the surface I might bring myself to blog about saying goodbye to our little Sugarhouse cottage. I might blog about when I vacuumed Cooper's empty nursery for the last time, and let myself have a little private break down remembering the nights that I had rocked him to sleep in that room, and the mornings I couldn't wait to open that door and see his sweet face. I also might blog about saying goodbye to our neighbors in the driveway, who have been there since year one of our marriage, who followed us from South Jordan, whose door Cooper knocked on all Summer, who taught us exactly what kind of neighbors we want to be to all of our neighbors in the future. They will forever be considered our family.
Maybe someday I'll blog about shutting the door of 1740 Downington for the last time, and walking down the steps to the loaded car. I tried not to remember that Cooper first learned to climb on those steps this summer (I video taped it 4 times) and I tried not to remember that we brought both our little babies home here.

I might get to the point where I blog about eating Zupa's on moving day in an empty front room with Jaimee, Tyler Sophie and Tuck. Probably not anytime soon though. For now, I am not facing the fact that I will not be able to spend weekday mornings, weekend game nights, Sunday dinners, and summer afternoons with them whenever I please. I am pretending that next week we will take Cooper and Sophie to the mall and let them ride the merry-go-round, and Cooper will follow Sophie wherever she goes. I'm avoiding the fact that my sister is the best friend I could ever ask for, and I have never been so far away from her for so long.

 

I also plan to blog about saying goodbye to all of our other good friends and family, all of the people who have made Utah feel like home. This doesn't include the goodbyes to my beloved Sugarhouse Park, Primary Children's, and just good old Utah in general. This is the place where I became a wife and mom for the first time. It is a place where I have only the happiest of memories.

When we drove away at 6pm (only an hour late on moving day, impressive, right?)we had two sleeping babies in the back and almost everything we owned stuffed inside our little Nissan Rogue. It was a peaceful drive down a dark empty highway. We talked for a good solid three hours about the memories we had made, and the amazing people we met who just basically have inspired us, and we realized we want to be like them someday, wherever we end up..and we concluded that maybe we were leaving the place we love as just a little bit better people then we were when we arrived, thanks to those around us.

So maybe I sound a little depressing in this post, but what's the purpose of a blog if the feelings stated aren't real and true. Don't get me wrong, I really am soo SO excited for our move, but I have been an emotional mess lately. Sunday morning we just put the cherry on top of our streak of goodbyes with a goodbye to Shawn at the Idaho Falls airport. Despite all the stress the past month has provided, he and I have had some good times together. We haven't had work and we haven't had school. We have been together 24/7. It wasn't easy saying goodbye for a few weeks. And maybe a few weeks is not an epic life changing amount of time to be away. It's true, soldiers like my brother bravely leave their wife and kids for a year or more. Businessmen like my dad travel for weeks at a time on a regular basis. So what's the big deal??
I realized what the big deal was-I am just a proud wife at the moment. I simply just wanted to be there with waffles on the first day of school, and a good luck note in the back pack. I really wanted to be there after school and ask a lot of annoying questions and try to hear every single detail of the day. I really wanted to sit back at the white coat ceremony on Monday, and just enjoy the moment.  But that's life. Shawn prefers cereal to waffles any day, and I can still be annoying and ask every detail of the first day of school over skype. I guess I just realized when that brown and yellow sweatshirt walked through security and waved goodbye, that all of this is really happening, life is about to change for us, and we are really growing up around here..

So here we go. We are on the road. We are on the road to a goal that we really want to achieve and it feels great to be getting started. We are on the road to Grenada for two years, and who knows where after that. Everything else is a mystery. But that's the adventure in it all. And when we get sick of the road, which inevitably happens to people on their roads in life, we will sit down and remind ourselves about the day that we thought our road was impossible. Then we will dust ourselves and start again, being grateful that we have such an amazing opportunity, and that this is our very own road, and it's leading us just where we need to be. And where would the excitement be without a little adventure thrown at us?!

I am hearing words from Shawn like "dinner at the beach," "sunset on the balcony," and "pools days twice a week" that are making me begin to wonder if Grenada is just some mystery island created especially for me. Those words define my paradise. We are heading out February 1st. Can't wait to start our adventure, and can't wait to have our family back together again! Happy memories are to come..

We love you Dad, we are soo proud of you, can't wait to see you soon
 xoxo