Boomerang

We got the news a few weeks ago. We're moving back east next summer. Charlottesville, Virginia to be exact. Yep, the east coast / west coast sling shot continues for us. Christopher has the opportunity to spend a year getting an advanced law degree, so we'll be moving sometime mid-summer so he can report for classes at the beginning of August.

Seriously. I don't know why I continue to be shocked when news like this comes down. I mean, Christopher's in the MILITARY...that's what we do, move around. But this move has really rocked my world. We (me especially) just kind expected that he would get a different set of orders next summer that would keep us here for another three years. I have been really digging in to make a full, meaningful life for us here. We are loving our church, and have made great new friends there. I love Millie's preschool and had just assumed it would also be Simon's. We've made other friends here in town and in our neighborhood. Heck, we signed a two year lease on our house this past summer. So my last few weeks have been spent in denial & processing. I'll move into the acceptance stage soon, I think. Maybe after the holidays when my to-do list clears up.

There's lots and lots to be very thankful for with this news. Most importantly, Christopher will be home with us. He'll be going to school all day, which is going to be hard work for sure, but it won't involve a deployment. I am just so thankful for that. Also, we'll be so close to our families. Back in the land of weekend trips just for the heck of it. We'll be close enough to our DC friends to make day trips for birthday parties and last minute GET ME OUT OF THIS HOUSE playdates. And I think this is the closest we'll ever get to live to Richmond, my college home-town. I'm imagining lots of walks around campus with my college friends and our kids.

This kind of stuff flashes me back to my childhood. My dad was in the Air Force, so we moved around every few years. I don't know if my parents were intentional about breaking the news to us, but it always seemed to happen the same way. Dad comes home. All four of us kids are called into the living room (the fancy one with the couches we weren't allowed to jump on; not the family room with the tv and toys; uh oh...this is serious). "We have something we need to talk about," one of them would start. And then they'd explain to us how awesome it was going to be to move from Omaha to New York or Maine to Kansas. Then they'd have to explain where Kansas was. Then they'd have to promise to try to find us a house with a swimming pool so that Kansas would seem like an exotic paradise to us kids. Anyway, I finally feel like I'm inching closer to this reality for my own little family. Mils has a very loose comprehension of time (yesterday and tomorrow are about the extent of it), so we'll wait a while to discuss it with her. Which is a good thing. I want lots of time to soak in the beauty of life right here where we're at.