goodbye, california: move part 1

my last post of 2013 expanded on the crushing heartbreak i felt about moving.

my first post of 2014 is an apathetic hello from our new home.  but ill save the apathy for later.  for now, this is the in-between-the-old-and-the-new-home post.  or, one of them.

during december, brian worked from denver while i stayed home in ca, doing my thing and trying to pack.  that didnt really happen, to be honest [and i felt lots of bad-wife guilt for that but whatever].  mostly i palled around with my friends and ate dinner at my parents every night and tried to not think past christmas.  and for the most part i was successful.

christmas baby!  a recreation of a picture of me at my first christmas

christmas was lovely, with my brother and his wife coming in from utah, getting to talk to my other brother via skype on christmas day from his mission in ga, and an adopted brother on his mission in pa.  we gifted, and caroled, and ate, and skyped, and played, and it was quite merry. just the way christmas should be.

Rudolph. im a horrible person.

but the day after, it was back to the grind stone and packingpackingpacking.  our truck was dropped off on friday, and we had some guys from church come help with the loading of the truck with my dad acting as supreme-truck-tetris-player on saturday morning while my grandpa enjoyed baby time, and some girl friends came and helped me clean in the afternoon while mommasita (my mom) and granny (her mom) wisked off the baby.  it was a very very long day, but made so much more bearable by all the help we got from friends and family. we camped out in the empty house that night with sleeping bags and a packnplay, went to church on sunday, stopped at my parents house for goodbyes and dinner, and we hit the road.  we planned to drive to slc and stay a day with brians mom-we would leave in the evening so that baby would sleep and we would go as far as we could go before stopping for the night.

bye bye, little house. 

it wasnt so bad, saying goodbye to my friends, but only because i didnt have to do the tearful hugs [mostly-one friend left a few days before and after a last breakfast together, i sobbed].  i mostly saw them at church and because we were so busy with herding kids/husbands or being herded by kids/husbands, it was more of a "see you later" kind of thing.  which at first i was disappointed by, but then i was thankful for. as youll read about in a moment.

however, saying goodbye to my family was much harder than any time before. ive always walked out the door with a hug and a wave and "see ya" when the time came to move to the next place.  as we picked up the sweetness and our stuff, my mom reached for her for one last hug and kiss.  my eyes welled up watching her love a little girl that i know reminded her so much of me as a baby.  instead of watching them, i turned to hug my dad.  which was a bad idea.  as he told me everything would be good, his voice caught, and i struggled to hold back tears.  and by struggled i mean i failed.  but i held it together for the most part with just a couple errant tears leaking down my cheeks. 

by the time we got into the car, i was totally fine.  no scratchy voice, leaky nose, or anything.  but as we got onto the freeway, brian asked me to say a quick prayer that we would be safe as we drove.  that was a bad idea.  here we are, brian is driving down the freeway in the dark, the baby blowing bubbles in the backseat, the dog scrunched in the trunk with some luggage walking around in circles trying to get comfortable, and i have my eyes closed, my head bowed, and im blubbering through sudden tears.  quite amusing, and im sure  what brian was thinking as he reached over to grab my hand with a little smile on his face.

i asked for peace, that i would be able to let go of the sadness of leaving my friends and family, and that id be able to make new friends.  and at the moment, i was SO glad i didnt have a chance to spend too much time saying goodbye.  cuz then this ridiculousness would have happened multiple times.  

so we drove.  sweetness fell asleep before we had even crossed the bridge to benicia, so we just drove more.  and drove and drove.  we found a hotel that would take a dog, and we tried to sleep on the craptastic, tiny bed they called a double but was really pretty much a twin.

did i mention that the next day was our anniversary?  5 years of matrimony.  that day dawned to a bed shared with a dog who wouldnt stop whining at 2 am and had his dreams come true when brian let him on the bed.  the three of us, squished into a tiny bed, were quite a sight.  i had somehow become the third wheel  during the night and was barely clinging to the side while brian and the dog were cozily cuddled together.  brian laughed as i got out of the bed to cuddle with the baby, asking "did you ever think when we got married that in 5 years youd wake up to a baby buzzing her lips to herself and your husband cuddling with the dog in the bed of a gross hotel?"  

happiest dog in the world.  

nope, cant say i imagined that. i also didnt imagine id be moving across the country on that day either.  but im so glad thats how that day started-i needed this new adventure to start with something i could laugh about.  i needed to feel hope and happiness with the people [erm, dog] i already have.  if i couldnt laugh and be happy with them, i was going to be awfully lonely in colorado.  that morning i was able to look around and say "its going to be ok," and believe it.  

5 years. whew. 

as we piled into the car and got drive-thru hashbrowns and egg-foodstuffs and got on the freeway, brian in an uncharacteristically giggly voice pronounced, "we have the cutest dog, and cutest baby.  how did we get so lucky? i have the best family."  and all i could do was smile and nod because my voice had suddenly decided to get all scratchy again and my eyes were in danger of leaking.  this time not because i was sad. this time because i was thankful that i was taking this cute and awesome family of mine with me on this adventure; thankful that the peace i so desperately needed was coming; thankful that the next five years were starting with even more love than the first five years did.

batdog, the sweetness, and us.

and just like that, we were halfway to our new home.