Out of Breath...

Things are nutty around here! The only home Kenzie has ever known will soon be someone else's. That prospect crumbles my heart a wee bit. It's such a great house and I'm sad it's going to be haunted by some ugly new inhabitants. It's been a roller-coaster ride with our buyers whom can best be described as shrewd and absolutely neurotic negotiators. I wish we could say that we've "won" the game, but essentially we've been backed into a corner and are walking away with our freedom.

And...we have finally arrived at a plan and it's in absolute motion. We've got a tight deadline of a rapidly approaching 'closing' date. Lot's to wrap up and worry about, but lots of hope for a different life and future.

We're moving back to the good 'ole Midwest. Home of the humidity, mosquitos, & snow. Home to our immediate families and the prospect of Kenzie finding companionship with her cousins. A home where her Mama doesn't work a bazillion hours a day for families that aren't her own... and a home where her Daddy likes his job. A home where the cost of living isn't so suffocating and we'll have "more" & simultaneously "less."

We'll miss the beach, the quaint sidewalk cafes, the gentle breezes and brilliant sunny day... after sunny day. We'll enjoy a more colorful and profound transition of the seasons. We'll enjoy the resume of landscaping when the growing season restarts -vs.- all freaking yearlong. We'll miss the mountainscape out our back windows. We'll gain a more gently sloping landscape - peppered with trees that grow lush and thick along the river & property lines (& no the stigma of the Midwest being FLAT and barren is absolutely not true!). No more orange, nut & fruit groves - but we'll see prairie after prairie of rolling wheat fields that whisper with the breeze. No more crazy lizards and snail hunts - but we'll have lightening bugs to chase instead. No more palm trees, except for the crazy evergreens that are trimmed to look like one. And, we'll have lots of big oaks that make excellent leave piles in the fall. We'll make snow forts and go sledding in the winter, instead of being barefoot and yet simultaneously "chilly" when it's 70-ish degrees.

The differences are many, and each place is unique..... and now one will be home, while the other is not.
Goodbye California....Hello Midwest.