An End

When you're in the middle of it, deep into the details of living your life and getting through each day, it's tough to realize just how happy -- content -- you are.  I slide this way too easily...focusing on the hard stuff and forgetting all that's great around me.  

Fortunately, in the military, we are confronted with the chance to really reflect on the life that we are making and the life we are leaving behind.  Every couple of years we stop and look back, feel the emptiness in our hearts as the goodbyes pile up and the unknown looms ahead.  And for some reason, the hole in my heart feels just so big this summer.  We are leaving so much behind.  A life fully lived with people who deeply touched us.  Friends who jumped in beside us and carried us through some tough times.  Just really loved us well.  

Our friend and neighbor hosted a little farewell gathering for us on our very last night in Norfolk.  There has maybe never been a more perfect summer evening.  Kids of all ages running in packs to secret hiding spots, making fire-pit smores, climbing tree forts, living it up.  And all my friends, reflecting on how lucky we are to have found each other, begging each of them to plan a visit to us soon.  

It was a perfect send off.  A great measurment of just how fully we dug into life these past two years.  A feeling of love and hope for our next adventure.

These babies are all less than a month apart, and have know each other for nearly all their lives.  There are hardly words for what these friends, Sara and Kim, and their families mean to me.

Addy made the decorations for the party.  I was touched.



My Kim, hanging with my kids.  She is their other mother, I think!

Thanks for the send off my friends!

Diving In

As you can imagine, this has been an overwhelming week for us.  We have had highs (funny evenings at the biergarten, beautiful encounters with warm, friendly Germans).  We have had lows (more than our share of illness given our circumstances, an emotional and exhausting hunt for housing). Overall, though, we have hope.  Hope that on the other side of these intense weeks (the military calls it 'indoctrination'...how perfect), we'll find a new normal for ourselves.  A spectacularly interesting and challenging life is ahead.  

So let's start with the good stuff first.  On Saturday (six days after our arrival) we hit the backroads for our first German castle.  Our real life Disney World.  This was a promise we made to the kids weeks ago and they were psyched to make it happen.  We visited Schloss Hohenzollern, about an hour south of us.  We arrived at noon to learn that the castle would be closed to tourists until 2:00 because the royal family was having a baby christening in the castle.  Thankfully we had picnic supplies with us, so we went down the hill a bit and found the perfect spot in the shadow of the castle.

We finally made it to the castle for our tour (a colassal rookie mistake -- Hannah is simply not made for civilized group tours of fancy places.  Never again.)  We all put on giant slippers and made our way around.  By the end, Hannah was in full melt down -- face down on her nigh nigh beneath the armor and swords of the kingdom.  Whatever.  I kind of wanted to cry, too.