Our trip to Paris in May 2010 made me realize that I wanted to live somewhere else besides Kanas. Initially we’d hoped to move to Europe, but when that didn’t work out we decided to move anyway. We did a lot of research, picked a place and went to check it out. It took my husband ten months to find a new job and five weeks later we left. We actually drove away from Kanas City two years to the day from when we left for Paris. I love the symmetry.

They say you eat an elephant one bite at a time. This is what always pops into my head when I think of the last two years and what was involved in moving our family of five 1100 miles from De Soto, Kansas to Durham, North Carolina. Over those two years there were hundreds of conversations, hours and hours of research and planning and dozens of other little things that added up to this huge move. In the middle of it, nothing seemed that big of a task. It’s easy to do research. Plan a trip. Look for a job. Packing up the house was a little bit more of an ordeal, but people do it all the time. But looking back now on this move I feel like I ate an elephant.

During the process of making it happen, it all seemed pretty easy. Now that it’s done, I’m in a bit of shock, I think. I keep finding myself wanting to say, “Look what we did! That was no small thing, but we did it! Isn’t that cool?!”

In a way it makes me feel very…powerful. Like I can do anything.

“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.”

– Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey