Saying goodbye

Isn't this one of the worst parts of "moving" usually? Yes, the upcoming is always very exciting, but saying goodbye to friends, places, memories can be tough... I've learned that I am much more sentimental when it comes to this kind of stuff than S is. I'm always requesting a drive by our "first apartment" whenever we're up that way and S always gives me a look and says, "Why in the world would you want to stop by there??"

I think this move will be particularly bittersweet in this way. One of us pretty much always lived in MD during our relationship, engagement, then marriage so it really does feel like the closing of a chapter for us. In a way, it's neat to look back on everything that's happened in the 6 years since I moved down to MD, and I can see many ways that God has grown both me individually as well as S and me as a couple. We'll especially miss some dear friends that we've made here and the close proximity to my family, but we're also excited to see where the Lord is leading us. I'll admit, there is part of me that's excited that we're going to live in the city with all that comes with that (lots of cultural activities, yummy ethnic food, car-less living, etc...). There's also nervousness and apprehension since, as someone put it to me recently, living in NYC as a single person is SO different than living there as a family with young kids. Amen to that.

Speaking of young kids... Our little man A will be saying bye to all of his friends that he's "grown up" with in church nursery. We had our last ice cream date with our good friends, the Ws, whose little girl E is A's best friend, b-day twin (born exactly 5 hrs apart to the minute), and future wife (if proposals by 2yos have any predictive value) earlier this week and it occurred to us, not for the first time, that our kids' lives are about to be turned upside down. More so for A since he's at an age where he "gets" that we're not living in the only apartment he's ever known, that we won't get to see Gong-gong and Paw-paw (my parents) as much anymore, and that we don't get to see his buds anymore. And yet, we're teaching him to be flexible, to deal with change, and hopefully to become more resilient, which in the long-run I think is a good thing especially since he's quite the emotional, resistant-to-change kid. Still... goodbyes are hard.