It has been a while since I blogged, then again, I have not been in Oz since the end of May. Here are my final thoughts before heading off to the begin the real adventure of actually living there.
The past month without Evan here at home has been both rewarding and hard. The rewarding part is that I spent more one-on-one time with the kids each evening and on the first few weekends. The kids and I spent many evenings after dinner watching the LARGE frogs in a little pond across from us. We enjoyed the plethera of hummingbirds who had found my feeder and over time got braver and braver about flying up close to us. We had a pair of young deer in our yard who stayed quite a while and were not very afraid of us. We spent time with my mom and Jenny and Skyped whenever we could with Evan. The hard part was not having my best friend and my rock around during this tumultously busy time. Renting out our home, selling/giving away three-fourths of all our belongings, working full time and managing the sheer number of things that needed to get done forced me to shut off my emotions so that I could just focus on getting the work done. I won't lie, there was one day that I completely broke down on the phone when Evan called and it was hard not having him here in person to talk to. I knew this before being apart from him, but was reminded again of what an amazing friend, partner and confident I have in Evan. Thank GOODNESS he is with us now!
During the past month, I had to rely on friends and family to help me whenever they could on weekends and I am quite sure I overwithdrew on my favors from my mom and Jenny during this time. I am lucky to have such amazing friends and family, which makes leaving them behind all the more hard. Up until now, I have just been focused on getting the work done and making sure everything goes smoothly. I have not been sad or scared, despite the fact that everything about my life is going to change soon. Evan is home, the house is mostly empty, I have AWESOME renters and a great neighbor who has agreed to take care of the house while we are gone and I finally have a moment to reflect and allow my emotions to color my thoughts. I realize that although I am very excited and know this is the right move for us, I am sad about leaving the amazing people in my life behind. It is not the same as moving away to California or even the East Coast. Despite Skype and other great technologies, the reality is that the conversations are not as easy, the timing less convenient due to time zone differences and I will live in a totally different culture. I will change, hopefully for the better, and it is hard to change without your loved ones to be around to support you when you need a lift back up.
I am going to miss my parents dearly. They are still young and active, but both are getting older. It makes me sad that they are going to age while I am gone and even sadder that I will not be here at a moment's notice if they need me for anything. It also worries me that I will be so far that I will be less connected to what is going on in their lives. It is inevitable that this will happen - even if they make a conscious effort to stay in touch with me. Life just gets in the way and the things that are right there are distracting. I guess that is the good thing about family though, time can go by, things can change but no matter what, your family loves you. I will hold on to that thought.
I am so thankful that Skype and Facebook exist so that I can stay in touch with my friends. We leave behind some amazing friends and while we may not see them often or for a while, I hope to stay close to them by keeping up on their postings and emails. Please drop us a line to say "hi" whenever as it is always nice to hear from a friendly and familiar person when you are quite literally on the other side of the world.
Time to wipe off the tears, put the fears to rest and get back to packing my family up. We are meeting Evan's parents at Disneyland on Tuesday, which promises to be a very fun family vacation before we get on a plane and head for the great Down Under.
G'Day Mate! Catch you on the flip side.
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